The Challenge of Adaptive Capability in Public Organizations

Abstract

This article describes an attempt within the Danish Crime Prevention Council to improve adaptive capability. The article applies a complex adaptive system perspective and analyses the organizational identities of the Council to determine how processes of integration, differentiation and fragmentation influence adaptive capability. The findings emphasize the importance of path dependency in actor's attempts to adapt. Based on this finding, the article suggests that the complex adaptive system perspective can be enriched by an institutional theory.

Key words:

• Complex adaptive systems
• policy networks
• strategy
• adaptive capability

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A previous draft of this article has been presented at the EGPA annual conference in Toulouse in September 2010. The author would like to thank Jenny Lewis for comments.