Complexity and viability in service ecosystems

Complexity is an unbrella that has been addressed and studied in numerous disciplines, with arguments and results that are always stimulating, challenging and contentious. Mathematicians, philosophers, biologists, computer scientists, engineers, and sociologists have all attempted to determine its constructs, define its consequences and, principally, derive interpretation schemas and models that can mitigate its consequences. The fundamental cause of this efforts is that complexity is related to unknown dynamics, unpredictable events, and the existence of a multitude of agents capable of influencing a process or decision. Within service research, scholars have devoted growing attention to complexity and its related issues due to the undoubtedly complex nature of service ecosystems. Marketers and other types of actors are often uncertain decision makers who are uncomfortably playing their roles when making choices as customers, partners, opinion leaders, governements, suppliers and inventors.