Designing quality management systems as complex adaptive systems

Complex adaptive systems research adds to the theory of how to design systems that are resilient to change in turbulent environments. This paper reports a case story about using complex adaptive systems theory for designing a quality management system in a politically turbulent organization. The story explains how the quality management system evolved rapidly, exploiting the turbulence of the organization, but collapsed after six years. Through an analysis and discussion of what went wrong, three key issues are identified and explained; (1) topology of quality management systems, (2) controlling the controllers, and (3) projects perspective vs. systems perspective. Implications for a revised design strategy are discussed.