Post-contingency:Considering complexity as a matter of choice

Post-contingency draws from contingency studies and their indication that the performance of alternative planning approaches is influenced by the different environmental circumstances encountered. Complexity is in these contingency studies among the criteria used to distinguish between various environmental circumstances. The performance of alternative planning approaches is subsequently considered to depend on the degree of complexity encountered. Counterintuitively, complexity is now approached from a ‘static perspective’. Rather than appreciating complexity from the perspective of a dynamically evolving world, it is then seen as but as a characteristic of a planning situation to be identified and contingently responded to in the ‘here and now’. While such a reading of complexity is arguably simplistic and limited, post-contingency argues it can nevertheless be useful. Post-contingency goes one step further than ‘classic’ contingency studies and their suggestion that the complexity of the environment directly informs planning approaches and organizational formats. Rather, post-contingency considers the role of those involved in decision-making in perceiving, interpreting and responding to complexity. The argument is that both interpreting issues’ complexity and subsequently relating a planning approach to these issues are, at least partly, socially mediated choices. Post-contingency, therefore, argues that complexity is not presented to us planners as an objectified reality, nor that it determines planning choices. Instead, post-contingency highlights notions of perception and choice as essential intervening variables in how policy approaches and organizational formats are adapted to changing conditions of complexity and uncertainty.