Page 29 - The Complexity Perspective 20 02 18

Above developed from A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making David J.
Snowden & Mary E. Boone

Business Systems Are Embedded in a Context

A business system (e.g., a firm) sits inside a context that is populated
by agents/actors as individuals and other systems (firms, government).

We are concerned with three types of context:
● General Context: This is the largely unbounded world filled

with active players acting in their own interests as they see them
and reacting to local pressures. A business system, such as a
firm, sits inside this broad context and is itself an agent of the

context.

Additionally, the agents (e.g., employees) inside the firm also
exist inside the general context and bring with them personal &
professional values and community assumptions prevalent in

the context to work every day.

● Enacted Context: This is the sliver of the total context with
which a system consciously chooses to interact. Every firm
enacts its own context. It could, for example, be a product-
market with a specific set of competitors, or on a larger scale a

country or the slice of the populace from which it draws its
workforce. No firm interacts with the entire context, only that
part it chooses to interact with. The selection of the enacted

context is, of course, one of the biggest strategic decisions a firm
makes.

● Ecosystem: A business ecosystem is the network of
organizations – including suppliers, distributors, customers,

competitors, government agencies, and so on – involved in the
delivery of a specific product or service through both
competition, cooperation, and co-operation. A firm's ecosystem

is largely congruent with its enacted context.

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©Business Games Works 2018 (Version 1)