The Marketing Book 5th Edition

78 The Marketing Book

This distinction is particularly important
when we consider the notion of ‘markets as
networks’ as a perspective to understand the
nature of competitive market phenomena. If
we understand the nature of the phenomena
we are trying to understand as essentially
emergent, then there remains considerable
value in attempting to model the relevant
structure of rules or relationships that charac-
terize the environment.^6 If, on the other hand,
we are more inclined to an enactive view of
the relationship between organizations and
their environment, we need to consider the
degree to which the structure of the network
is not more than a surface phenomenon, itself
resulting from other deeper processes: in this
analysis we need to consider the phenomena
that Giddens (1979) identifies in terms of
‘structuration’. In this process agents and
organizations are simultaneously both creators
of structures, but also have their action con-
strained by these structures.
However, even if we are willing to give a
relatively privileged ontological status to the
detailed network structure in a particular con-
text, we may still face insurmountable prob-
lems in developing high-level regularities from
a more detailed analysis. As Cohen and Stewart
(1995) assert:

We’ve argued that emergence is the rule rather

than the exception, and that there are at least

two distinct ways for high-level rules to

emerge from low-level rules – simplexity and

complicity.^7 Can we write down the equations

for emergence? The short answer is no...

Essentially what is needed is a mathematical

justification for the belief that simple high-

level rules not only can, but usually do,

emerge from complex interactions of low-level

rules. By ‘emerge’ we mean that a detailed

derivation of the high-level rules from the

low-level ones would be so complicated that it

could never be written down in full let alone

understood.

(p. 436)

It seems that whilst Cohen and Stewart warn

convincingly about the dangers of drowning in

the detail of low-level rules, they give only

limited useful advice as to the practical nature

of the alternatives. There has recently been a

spate of interest in mathematical approaches

under the general title of ‘Complexity’. In the

context of the economics of forms of market

organization, perhaps the most obvious is that

due to Kaufmann (1995):

Organizations around the globe were becoming

less hierarchical, flatter, more decentralized,

and were doing so in the hopes of increased

flexibility and overall competitive advantage.

Was there much coherent theory about how to

decentralize, I wondered. For I was just in the

process of finding surprising new phenomena,

that hinted at the possibility of a deeper

understanding of how and why flatter, more

decentralized organizations – business, political

or otherwise – might actually be more flexible

and carry an overall competitive adavantage.

(pp. 245–246)

With a fine, if unintentional, sense of irony, the

chapter in Kauffman’s book which addresses

(^6) Actually, even this statement incorporates another
critical assumption. As Mingers notes in commenting on
assumptions about the nature of social systems and the
degree to which they can be seen as self-producing
(autopoietic), even those who develop such an analysis
define the nature of the organizations and their environ-
ment in unexpected ways:
Luhmann... in conceptualizing societies as autopoi-
etic... (sees them) as constituted not by people but
by communications. Societies and their component
subsystems are networks of communicative events,
each communication being triggered by a previous
one and leading in turn to another... People are not
part of society but part of its environment.
(p. 211)
(^7) Cohen and Stewart use specific meanings for both
‘simplexity’ and ‘complicity’ which roughly describe phe-
nomena where in the former case similar low-level rules
create high-level similar structures, whereas in the latter
case ‘totally different rules converge to produce similar
features and so exhibit the same large scale structural
patterns’ (p. 414). As they emphasize, in the case of
complicity one of the critical effects is the way in which
‘this kind of system... enlarges the space of the possible’
(original emphasis).