Collaborative sustainability: Proactive and reactive responses in a complex adaptive system approach

This presentation outlines an exploration of typologies of responses as part of a new view of collaborative project sustainability seen in terms of a complex adaptive system, one that responds to funders needs for evaluation... [ view full abstract ]

This presentation outlines an exploration of typologies of responses as part of a new view of collaborative project sustainability seen in terms of a complex adaptive system, one that responds to funders needs for evaluation of dynamic change across and beyond project lifetimes. Preliminary analysis suggests that complexity thinking may be useful in setting up sustainability processes from project outset. This would open new measures to support sustainability that would remove the current reliance on linear models.

The characteristics of flexibility and adaptability are necessary for responses that enable system action or response to their environment. Such actions and responses can be considered as either proactive or reactive, where both can be related to the capacity to explore and exploit the environment in order to improve system fitness and support collaborative project sustainability. This presentation outlines how sustainable collaborative networks must be able to foresee and act (proactive) or withstand and respond (reactive) optimally to ever-new and changing contexts in ways that mean they can continue to create and command value for stakeholders across contexts. The presentation provides evidence that adaptability and flexibility, therefore, could be considered the necessary foundational backbone for an evaluative framework supporting optimal collaborative project sustainability.

Fundamentally, the ability of a collaborative network to be proactive and reactive in order to respond and evolve for sustainability is its capacity to transfer knowledge for learning and subsequent action. This knowledge transfer is made possible through the complex relationships and interactions between actors, facilitated by the associated mechanisms, processes and infrastructure that support these relationships, and interactions. Thus relationships, and the creation of a culture of collaboration, are considered central to the success of collaborative initiatives. Viewing collaborative sustainability as acting within a complex adaptive system enables us to better understand how the process of knowledge transfer occurs in a collaborative process; this process including feedback loops and non-liner interactions leading to emergence, and the continual creation of new wholes. Social network analysis, used as an exploration tool, provides the means to assess relationship development and associated interactions across the macro and micro levels at particular moments in time; the macro level focusing on the outcomes of interactions across the system and the micro level understanding how relationship and position within a network influence resources acquisition and transfer.