Complex Adaptive Leadership: An Evidence-Based Model Extending Uhl-Bien and Arena

• In Event: Complexity Theory, Educational Leadership, and Policy: Principles and Applications

Abstract

Objectives and Purpose of the Study

The objective of this session is to present research findings from a new doctoral study (Fossey, 2022) using complexity theory to describe and interpret the (complex) adaptability of senior executives in charge of state-level healthcare at the chaotic outset of COVID19 (Guastello et al., 2009). Researchers asked, “How do leaders of Alberta Health Services enable (or constrain) adaptability in their senior leadership teams?” We chart, for the first time, the adaptive capacity of teams responsible for all health care services in most of Alberta. Finding few informal networks, a structural misalignment among leaders, and sparse experimentation among senior leadership teams complying with random government edicts. Using complexity lenses, we reveal team features and dynamics that sometimes enable, but mostly constrain healthcare system adaptability, offering a model for studying and leading healthcare teams.

Theoretical Framework

We take a post-structural organization theoretical stance using complexity leadership epistemology (Uhl-Bein & Arena, 2017), systems thinking, and network organization theory to describe three lead team thinking and actions. From this, we describe and map three cases of senior team network relations, and group attractors, and interpreted generative tensions with patterns of emergence found in 12 senior healthcare leaders. Additionally, we describe their innovations, proactivity, and paradoxical mindsets so important to highly adaptive, emerging complex adaptive organizations (Kershner & McQuillan, 2016).

Methods and Data Sources

Researchers employed an interpretive, qualitative descriptive, and comparative case study of three regional health care leadership executive teams responsible for health care provision to millions of clients. We used referential sampling to find 12 leader participants in three health regions at the onset of the COVID 19 pandemic, gathering. thick and rich data from using in-depth, one-on-one, semi-structured interviews that allowed lead team characterizations and relation network mapping. Trustworthy data from axial coding and thematic analysis included secondary document reviews and the close monitoring of study-period healthcare ecosystem events relevant to three lead teams.

Results and Conclusions

We found a surprising shortage of informal networks among leaders adapting as the pandemic exploded. A profound misalignment was found among mutually trusting and supportive leaders with mismatched priority issues, impeding high-capacity teamwork. Additionally, we found very little experimentation that could lead to innovation and emergence beyond a state of disequilibrium caused by top-down government directives, compliance, and fragmented relationships (Kowch, 2021). From the findings, we add to complex adaptive leadership and scholarship to include relational organization diversity, redundancy, and adaptive capacity with proactive paradox-welcome mindsets. A new ADAPTING model (Acceptance, Diversity, Attraction, Proactivity, Trust, Innovation, Networks, Generative Tension) offers a new frame for scholars and leaders of systemic adaptability.

Scholarly Significance of the work

This session will show leaders and organization scholars a new approach to research, describe, and improve adaptive capacity within teams and organizations in chaos. Specifically, we offer a new analytic lens that widens complexity leadership theorizing to include innovation, actual relational network structures, paradox thinking and generative tensions that can be the energy for organizational change and emergence.

Authors

• Richard Douglas Fossey, University of Calgary
  Presenting Author

• Eugene G. Kowch, University of Calgary
  Presenting Author