Exploring Complexity in Multi-System Partnerships

This chapter reflects on two partnership cases across a ten-year span that the author developed, coordinated and for one case, dissolved. It provides a theoretical framework that brings together complexity theory concepts and Bakhtinian theories on dialogism (Bakhtin in The dialogic imagination. The University of Texas Press, 1981; Bakhtin in Speech genres and other late essays. University of Texas Press, 1986). This enables an understanding of the intersections that occur in multi-voiced partnerships and how these create complex systems that are in continuous flux. The survival of partnership systems depends on their ability to adapt. This chapter is a reflective account of two partnerships to analyse these complex systems. The analysis demonstrates the importance of space for dialogic negotiation and actors’ ability to handle change which requires flexibility and adaptability. This chapter illustrates that partnerships, as complex systems, exist in a space of constant tension as the system seeks to find stability in an unpredictable and heterogeneous society.