This paper suggests the Complexity Theory as being a new conceptual basis that is capable of adapting administration to the kind of environment that contemporary organizations deal with. Then, a management approach "Complex Administration" is presented that aims at bringing the knowledge from this new science to the organizational universe. Based on the so called "complex adaptive systems", the key-concepts for our approach are established. Therefore, autonomy, cooperation, aggregation and self-organization are suggested as principles of "Complex Administration". Hopefully, by focusing on these four points, managers will be able to accomplish their task of influencing organizational performance. Aiming at demonstrating our approach, we present a case study carried out in a Brazilian industrial organization, which had developed an autonomous management system in one of its plants. This system illustrates the new role played by manager, who goes from commanding and controlling to autonomous individuals coaching.
Complexity; management; autonomy; cooperation; self-organization.
