When a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil, does it influence the weather in Brooklyn, NY? This is one of the arguments in chaos theory in complex systems. Although the butterfly effect is an extreme example, complex systems are becoming easier to understand and manage in a small world with Big Data, where Google is a verb and six-degrees of separation is a shrinking reality.
Best practice standards, particularly those coming from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), are being revised or newly created to account for the butterfly effect. ISO is doing this by insertion of “context” clauses into standards such as current ISO 31000:2009 risk management, revisions to ISO 9001 (quality) and ISO 14001 (environmental management) both expected to be final by late 2015, and the newly created ISO 45001 (occupational health and safety management system) with the final standard expected by late 2016.