Product Description: In the past decade, complexity-based thinking has exerted an increasing, yet somewhat controversial authority over management theory and practice. This has in some part been due to the influence of a number of high-profile articles and the not inconsiderable hype which has accompanied them...read more

Product Description: In the past decade, complexity-based thinking has exerted an increasing, yet somewhat controversial authority over management theory and practice. This has in some part been due to the influence of a number of high-profile articles and the not inconsiderable hype which has accompanied them...read more

A fundamental problem of public sector governance relates to the very way of thinking it reflects; where organization is thought of as a ‘thing’, a system designed to deliver what its designers choose. This volume questions that way of thinking and takes a perspective in which organizations are complex responsive processes of relating between people. Bringing together the work of participants on the Doctor of Management program at Hertfordshire University, this book focuses on the move to marketization and managerialism, paying particular attention to human relationships and group dynamics. The contributors provide narrative accounts of their work addressing questions of management, pressures, accountability, responsiveness and traditional systems perspectives. In considering such questions in terms of their daily experience, they explore how the perspective of complex responsive processes assists them in making sense of experience and developing practice. Including an editors’ commentary which introduces and contextualizes these experiences as well as drawing out key themes for further research, this book will be of value to academics, students and practitioners looking for reflective accounts of real life experiences rather than further prescriptions of what organizational life ought to be.

Product Description: The contributors to this book are leaders, consultants or managers in organizations who provide narrative accounts of their actual work and daily experience. They explore how the perspective of complex responsive processes assists them to make sense of their experience and so to develop their practice...read more

Product Description: Part of the Complexity as the Experience of Organizing series, this book applies complex responsiveness theory to real-life leadership experiences. It features contributions from and details the experience of organizational practitioners, leaders, consultants and managers from various organizations through narrative accounts...read more

Product Description: The second half of the twentieth century witnessed the emergence of the most complex global organizations ever known. Taking a complexity theory perspective, this book explores the key factor that sustains them: leadership. The book examines how leadership is currently understood primarily from a systems based perspective, as an attribute of the individual, the leadership role being to articulate values, missions and visions and then persuade others to adhere to them...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Complexity theory is generating increasing interest amongst strategic thinkers. This fascinating book covers issues such as predictability, creativity and relationships as it considers how complexity, and its central principles of emergence and self-organization, are being used to understand organizations...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)