First, in a business context, managers should attend to relationships at all levels within their organizations. The second rule is that small changes can have large effects. And third, interesting and unpredictable properties can be expected to emerge from a system. As a result, it is hard, if not impossible, to implement a strategic plan for anything but the short term. A hoped-for direction can be set but not the ultimate goal.
People often think of complexity theory as a metaphor.
We certainly don't think of it like that because that is like saying it's just another fad. What we're saying is that underlying principles found in nature apply to human organizations. Take the property of emergence, for instance. But it comes about in a nonlinear way, so the order can't be predicted. When we translate computer models into human terms, the autonomous agents are people and the interactions among them are relationships.