This book reframes theoretical, methodological and practical approaches to public administration by drawing on complexity theory concepts. This book was originally published as a special issue of Public Management Review.

Elizabeth Anne Eppel is a Senior Research and Teaching Fellow in the School of Government at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her research interests are complexity in public policy processes, governance networks, and collaborative governance.

Mary Lee Rhodes is Associate Professor of Public Management at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Her research is focused on complex public service systems and the dynamics of performance. Her current research is on the nature and dynamics of social innovation and impact, and she is developing research on social finance, and resilience of urban systems.

Introduction - Complexity theory and public management: a 'becoming' field 1. Association between decisions: experiments with coupled two-person games 2. Understanding the influence of values in complex systems-based approaches to public policy and management 3. 'What insights do fitness landscape models provide for theory and practice in public administration?' 4. Engaging with complexity in a public programme implementation 5. Bridging complexity theory and hierarchies, markets, networks, communities: a 'population genetics' framework for understanding institutional change from within 6. Utilizing complexity theory to explore sustainable responses to intimate partner violence in health care 7. Sustainability of collaborative networks in higher education research projects: why complexity? Why now? 8. Cultivating resiliency through system shock: the Southern California metropolitan water management system as a complex adaptive system