First of all, they should be in interactions with each other to a high level (Anderson, 1999; Tan, Wen, & Awad, 2005). By interactions, communication can be perceived simply; however, when looking at it more carefully, the action and the reaction can be more meaningful concerning its perception; an individual acts and another individual reacts to it, and vice versa. The action of the individual which then triggers the reaction might have either direct or indirect impact on the reactive responses. These can be clarified with some examples. In a software development company, a customer requested for the conformity of an ongoing software project to a new quality standard. The project manager is needed to adjust the project’s cost, time, and scope to the new requirements, and his reactions have been directly influenced by the change request. After the approval of the changes by the project manager and the top management, the changes are communicated to the development team to act accordingly. The customer decision is taken as the trigger action, and the conformity of the team is the last reaction that was affected indirectly through the mediator role of the changes of the project attributes. The direct or indirect nature of the impact can be determined this way: If the action forces the changes on the other action without any mediators, the impact is taken as direct; however, in the situation where an action changes the context for performance of the other action, the impact is regarded indirect. Identifying the chain of interactions enables us to specify the triggers, changes, and notably the dynamics of a system. In relation to this, two not-apparent-blurred-bordered mindsets come up: taking the changes as a cycle or considering them as a chain. The chain cannot be necessarily a finite one, and when it is infinite, the determination of its future path, whether it is going back to its initial point which makes it a cycle, would not be easy to trace. This may result in the usage of the cycle and chain words interchangeably in some cases.

In addition to the interactions between the parts, the system interacts with its environment as well (Oughton, Usher, Tyler, & Hall, 2018). CAS is a kind of open systems; the systems which exchange energy and information with the environment surrounding them (Ali, 2015). The environment outside, beyond the borders of a system, can be decomposed into immediate and universal environment. The immediate environment is the part in close contact with the system, and it is posited in a bigger environment itself, the universal environment. Taking a hospital as the system, the national health organizations can be its immediate environment, and all the international health organizations make the universal environment. From another point of view, for a hospital in a small town, the town can be perceived as the immediate environment and the country can be assumed in the role of the universal environment. In line with the purpose of the study, several environments might be identified which they may be nested in each other or having parts in common with the other environments or unique to themselves; nevertheless, all are part of the universal environment. The changes can be imposed on the system from the environment or the other way around. Although the environment is bigger than the system in size, or we may say it is infinite, the changes that the system pushes toward the environment can be small but still effective enough to make changes to the environment. From a CAS perspective, even a small change should be taken into consideration as it may lead to remarkable changes in the future of the system.

The second characteristic of the individuals is the interdependencies between them and as a whole with the larger environment (Anderson, 1999; Tan, Wen, & Awad, 2005). The interdependencies between the components of the system restrict their freedom. Interestingly, reducing or increasing the levels of freedom of the components of a system plays an important role in the determination of its level of complexity as well as the scale whether small or large (Siegenfeld & Bar-Yam, 2020). If the freedom given to the agents is low, they may have less options regarding the behavior they will show in response to the changes. This will probably restrict their degrees of creativity and innovation. In contrast, when the agents have much freedom, more than the ideal level, they will behave in every possible way, regardless of the history of the system and the decisions of other agents. This will end with chaos which is not a favorable state for the organizations. Besides, understanding the tradeoff between complexity and scale can assist in making decisions on narrowing the scope of manufacturing or widening it.

Similar to the interdependencies between the components of the system, interdependency with the environment exists to different extents. Being too interdependent with the environment means more efforts needed to be made to conform to the changes, and if done successfully, it actually implies more adaptability. The less a system is interdependent with its environment, the less it is impacted from it which then enables the firm to act more freely. This situation can be either hazardous or beneficial to the firm, depending on the many visible and invisible factors. It is like just a situation at which a technology company introduces a new gadget to the market. The outcome of the radical innovation when the firm has its own way of thinking and making, irrespective of what is imposed on it from the environment, will vary, bringing about two possible cases; the new gadget may become either so popular or a huge disappointment. This is the exact point at which the famous questions arises; ‘adapt or not to adapt, if yes, so to what extent?’

The third characteristic of the individuals is acting in unpredictable ways by using their freedom (Van Eijnatten, 2004). This unpredictability exists in the long term, but not in the short term (Schueler, 1996). In the case of the individuals as parts of the system, predicting the behavior and the decision of them can be possible if the predictions are being made for a short time, close to now. However, foreseeing the outcomes, the further future might not be as easy as it seems to be. The sensitivity to initial conditions makes the situation harder for predictions due to the fact that even a small change in the behavior of an individual or a decision slightly different from the previous ones can lead to completely different conditions in the future.

The fourth characteristic of the individuals is their ability to research, learn, self-organize, and adapt to the changes in their environments at various levels (Carlisle & McMillan, 2006). It is noteworthy that the environment plays a key role in the adaptation of an organization. Even if the sources seem to root in the decision of a manager or the implementation of a new procedure, the main reason is the environment definitely. In the previous examples, some changes in the environment might have triggered the change of strategy in a firm or the need for the modification of the procedures. Apart from the impact of the environment, the agents’ capabilities should also be taken into account. The critical capability for adaptation is learning. What is seen in the real world cases is that not all employees are willing to learn, and not all of those who are willing to learn, learn at the same speed with the others. Even the amount of what they learn during a certain amount of time varies which is the reason why for some job positions, being a quick learner is included as the characteristics of the individuals the companies are looking for. Particularly, learning becomes so momentous when the nature of environment is highly dynamic and turbulent.