Harnessing complexity for better social outcomes: a reform and research agenda

This chapter draws together the book’s contributions and sets out a working model for building complexity-capable public services. It revisits Alex and Amy’s story from the introduction to illustrate how this service reform trajectory can feel challenging and uncertain in practice, but also deeply necessary. We end the book by setting out a broad research agenda to prompt critical engagement with this new service reform trajectory. We describe five key questions we consider the most significant: the accountability question, the assurance question, the unintended consequences question, the pragmatism question, and the research question.