Healthcare organizations operate in environments characterized by regulatory intensity, professional pluralism, technological disruption, and chronic resource constraints—conditions well described by complexity science. Traditional bureaucratic leadership models can secure reliability and compliance, yet they often suppress the interactional dynamics through which adaptation and inclusion emerge. This manuscript advances Complexity Leadership Theory (CLT) by integrating complex adaptive systems thinking, institutional theory, and social capital theory to explain how healthcare organizations can embed disability inclusion as an adaptive capability. A comprehensive literature synthesis prioritizes healthcare-specific peer-reviewed evidence on distributed and collective leadership, relational coordination, psychological safety, high-reliability organizing, and disability-inclusive workforce development in health professions. Drawing on these streams, the paper develops an integrated conceptual model and a set of theoretically grounded propositions linking institutional pressures, bureaucratic structures, enabling leadership, social capital formation, and inclusion-related performance outcomes. Implications are offered for healthcare executives seeking to strengthen resilience, innovation, and equity in complex systems, as well as for researchers designing multilevel empirical tests of complexity-informed inclusion interventions.
Cite this paper
Poston, N. (2026). Applying Complexity Leadership Theory to Advance Disability Inclusion and Adaptive Capacity in Healthcare Organizations. Open Access Library Journal, 13, e15065. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/oalib.1115065.
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