Thriving within the turbulence: a complexity theorizing approach to social innovation by nonprofit organizations

This chapter embraces complexity theory as a basis for theorizing social innovation in nonprofit organizations (NPOs) operating in the Australian disability sector, which is currently grappling with the implementation of a disruptive policy reform leading to a paradigm shift in the funding of disability support services, the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). To cope and thrive within a new NDIS-fueled marketplace, disability NPOs need to pursue socially innovative agendas. Through a review of cross-disciplinary literatures on social innovation and the use of a complexity theorizing approach that integrates multiple theories (i.e. institutional theory, resource dependence theory, and user innovation theory), this chapter proposes a holistic complexity-based framework that can potentially: explain how disability NPOs develop social innovations operating at the edge of chaos, help improve the ability of research to tackle societal and managerial problems, and hence strengthen management scholarship.