Complex Thinking in the Face of the Epistemic Disruptions Required in Twenty-First-Century Public Management

The aim is to reflect on some reasons why public management has remained anchored in questioned paradigms of classical science, as well as lagging behind the great advances of modernity, consolidated mainly from the second half of the twentieth century by the revolutionary contributions of information technology (IT), systems theory, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, cybernetics, quantum science, and relational or complex thinking, among others. In fact, today the actions of the State do not effectively respond to its mission in terms of timeliness, relevance, and impact of its management regarding the citizens’ needs and expectations, daily affected by the disruptive changes and the stagnation of social development which, so far in the twenty-first-century, shows a deepening of the inequality gap. For methodological purposes, it begins with the critical diagnoses of the main current exponents of public administrative knowledge and confronts them with some strategies proposed and driven by the challenges and constant innovations demanded by modern management. This analytical journey and its conclusions motivate the generation greater awareness to improve public management.