Complexity and Organizational Reality

Complexity and Organizational Reality

Author: Ralph D. Stacey

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-12-18

Total Pages: 695

ISBN-13: 1135188661

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Approaches to leadership and management are still dominated by prescriptions – usually claimed as scientific – for top executives to choose the future direction of their organization. The global financial recession and the collapse of investment capitalism (surely not planned by anyone) make it quite clear that top executives are simply not able to choose future directions. Despite this, current management literature mostly continues to avoid the obvious – management’s inability to predict or control what will happen in the future. The key question now must be how we are to think about management if we take the uncertainty of organizational life seriously. Ralph Stacey has turned to the sciences of uncertainty and complexity to develop an understanding of leadership and management as the ordinary politics of daily organizational life. In presenting organizations as a series of complex responsive processes, Stacey’s new book helps us to see organizational reality for what it actually is – human beings engaged in many, many local conversational interactions and power relations in which they negotiate their ideologically based choices. Organizational continuity and change emerge unpredictably, rather than as a result of any overall plan. This is a radically different picture from the one painted by most of the management literature, which explains "organizational continuity and change" as the realization of the global plans and choices of a few powerful executives within an organization. Providing a new foundation for understanding complexity and management, this important book is required reading for managers and leaders wanting to understand the reality of complexity in organizations, including those engaged in postgraduate studies in leadership, organizational behaviour and change management.


Complexity and Management

Complexity and Management

Author: Ralph D. Stacey

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 9780415247610

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Providing a critique of the ways that complexity theory has been applied to understanding organizations, and outining a new direction, this book calls for a radical re-examination of management thinking.


Managing in Uncertainty

Managing in Uncertainty

Author: Chris Mowles

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-03-24

Total Pages: 189

ISBN-13: 1317550358

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The reality of everyday organizational life is that it is filled with uncertainty, contradictions and paradoxes. Yet leaders and managers are expected to act as though they can predict the future and bring about the impossible: that they can transform themselves and their colleagues, design different cultures, choose the values for their organization, be innovative, control conflict and have inspiring visions. Whilst managers will have had lots of experiences of being in charge, they probably realise that they are not always in control. So how might we frame a much more realistic account of what’s possible for managers to achieve? Many managers are implicitly aware of their messy reality, but they rarely spend much time reflecting on what it is that they are actually doing. Drawing on insights from the complexity sciences, process sociology and pragmatic philosophy, Chris Mowles engages directly with some principal contradictions of organizational life concerning innovation, culture change, conflict and leadership. Mowles argues that if managers proceed from the expectation that organizational life as inherently uncertain, and interactions between people are complex and often paradoxical, they start noticing different things and create possibilities for acting in different ways. Managing in Uncertainty will be of interest to practitioners, advanced students and researchers looking at management and organizational studies from a critical perspective.


Informal Coalitions

Informal Coalitions

Author: C. Rodgers

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2006-10-10

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0230625215

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This book places everyday talk and role-modelling interactions at the forefront of an alternative change-leadership agenda, and introduces a number of practical approaches to help line managers and organizational specialists deliver this agenda more successfully. It is essential reading for organizational practitioners at all levels.


Changing Conversations in Organizations

Changing Conversations in Organizations

Author: Patricia Shaw

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 9780415249140

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Focusing on the essential uncertainty of participating in evolving events as they happen, this book considers the creative possibilities of such participation from a complexity perspective.


Organizational Survival in the New World

Organizational Survival in the New World

Author: Alex Bennet

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004-02-18

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1136375058

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In this book David and Alex Bennet propose a new model for organizations that enables them to react more quickly and fluidly to today's fast-changing, dynamic business environment: the Intelligent Complex Adaptive System (ICAS). ICAS is a new organic model of the firm based on recent research in complexity and neuroscience, and incorporating networking theory and knowledge management, and turns the living system metaphor into a reality for organizations. This book synthesizes new thinking about organizational structure from the fields listed above into ICAS, a new systems model for the successful organization of the future designed to help leaders and managers of knowledge organizations succeed in a non-linear, complex, fast-changing and turbulent environment. Technology enables connectivity, and the ICAS model takes advantage of that connectivity by fostering the development of dynamic, effective and trusting relationships in a new organizational structure. This book outlines the model in chapter four, and then breaks down the model into its components in the next two chapters. This is a benefit to readers since different components of the model can be implemented at different times, so the book can guide implementation of one or all of the components as a manager sees fit. There are eight characteristics of the ICAS: organizational intelligence, unity and shared purpose, optimum complexity, selectivity, knowledge centricity, flow, permeable boundaries, and multi-dimensionality.


The Academy of Management Annals

The Academy of Management Annals

Author: James P. Walsh

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 750

ISBN-13: 080586220X

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The Academy of Management is proud to announce the inaugural volume of The Academy of Management Annals. This exciting new series follows one guiding principle: The advancement of knowledge is possible only by conducting a thorough examination of what is known and unknown in a given field. Such assessments can be accomplished through comprehensive, critical reviews of the literature--crafted by informed scholars who determine when a line of inquiry has gone astray, and how to steer the research back onto the proper path. The Academy of Management Annals provide just such essential reviews. Written by leading management scholars, the reviews are invaluable for ensuring the timeliness of advanced courses, for designing new investigative approaches, and for identifying faulty methodological or conceptual assumptions. The Annals strive each year to synthesize a vast array of primary research, recognizing past principal contributions while illuminating potential future avenues of inquiry. Volume 1 of the Annals explores a wide spectrum of research: corporate control; nonstandard employment; critical management; physical work environments; public administration team learning; emotions in organizations; leadership and health care; creativity at work; business and the environment; and bias in performance appraisals. Ultimately, academic scholars in management and allied fields (e.g., sociology of organizations and organizational psychology) will see The Academy of Management Annals as a valuable resource to turn to for comprehensive, up-to-date information--published in a single volume every year by the preeminent association for management research.


The Science of Successful Organizational Change

The Science of Successful Organizational Change

Author: Paul Gibbons

Publisher: Financial Times/Prentice Hall

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780134000336

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"Identifies dozens of myths, bad models, and unhelpful metaphors, replacing some with twenty-first century research and revealing gaps where research needs to be done ... Links the origins of theories about change to the history of ideas and suggests that the human sciences will provide real breakthroughs in our understanding of people in the twenty-first century ... Change fundamentally involves changing people's minds, yet the most recent research shows that provision of facts may 'strengthen' resistance ... will help you build influence, improve communication, optimize decision making, and sustain change"--Jacket.


Chaos and Complexity Theory for Management: Nonlinear Dynamics

Chaos and Complexity Theory for Management: Nonlinear Dynamics

Author: Banerjee, Santo

Publisher: IGI Global

Published: 2012-11-30

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 1466625104

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Although chaos theory refers to the existence between seemingly random events, it has been gaining the attention of science, technology and managements fields. The shift from traditional procedures to the dynamics of chaos and complexity theory has resulted in a new element of complexity thinking, allowing for a greater capability for analyzing and understanding key business processes. Chaos and Complexity Theory for Management: Nonlinear Dynamics explores chaos and complexity theory and its relationship with the understanding of natural chaos in the business environment. Utilizing these theories aids in comprehending the development of businesses as a complex adaptive system.


Game Based Organization Design

Game Based Organization Design

Author: Jeroen van Bree

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2013-11-06

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 1137351489

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There is a widening gap between the current organizational reality and the tools and methods available to managers for addressing its challenges. Game Based Organization Design shows that one of the ways to bridge this gap is to introduce insights and approaches from video game design into the design of organizational systems.