Complex Responsive Processes In Organizations

Author : Ralph Stacey
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2003-09-02
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781134535187

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Complex Responsive Processes in Organizations by Ralph Stacey Pdf

The past decade has seen increasing focus on the importance of information and knowledge in economic and social processes, the so-called 'knowledge economy'. This is reflected in the popularity amongst practicing managers and organizational theorists of notions of learning, sense-making, knowledge creation, knowledge management and intellectual capital in organizations and more recently, of emotional intelligence as an important management skill. This insightful book: argues that the information processing view of knowledge creation held by systems thinkers is no longer tenable develops the alternative perspective of Complex Responsive Processes of relating, drawing on the complexity sciences as a source for analogies with human action places self-organizing interaction at the centre of the knowledge creating process in organizations. Learning and knowledge creation are seen as qualitative processes of power relating that are emotional as well as intellectual, creative as well as destructive, enabling as well as constraining, and the result is a radical questioning of the belief that organizational knowledge is essentially codified and centralized. Instead, organizational knowledge is understood to be in the relationships between people in an organization and has to do with the qualities of those relationships.

Author : Ralph D. Stacey,Douglas Griffin,Patricia Shaw
Publisher : Psychology Press
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0415247616

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Complexity and Management by Ralph D. Stacey,Douglas Griffin,Patricia Shaw Pdf

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.

Author : Ralph Stacey
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2003
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:1137352310

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Complex Responsive Processes in Organizations by Ralph Stacey Pdf

The past decade has seen increasing focus on the importance of information and knowledge in economic and social processes, the so-called 'knowledge economy'. This is reflected in the popularity amongst practicing managers and organizational theorists of notions of learning, sense-making, knowledge creation, knowledge management and intellectual capital in organizations and more recently, of emotional intelligence as an important management skill. This insightful book: argues that the information processing view of knowledge creation held by systems thinkers is no longer tenable develops the alternative perspective of Complex Responsive Processes of relating, drawing on the complexity sciences as a source for analogies with human action places self-organizing interaction at the centre of the knowledge creating process in organizations. Learning and knowledge creation are seen as qualitative processes of power relating that are emotional as well as intellectual, creative as well as destructive, enabling as well as constraining, and the result is a radical questioning of the belief that organizational knowledge is essentially codified and centralized. Instead, organizational knowledge is understood to be in the relationships between people in an organization and has to do with the qualities of those relationships.

Author : Ralph D. Stacey
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 695 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2009-12-18
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781135188665

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Complexity and Organizational Reality by Ralph D. Stacey Pdf

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.

Author : Ralph Stacey,Douglas Griffin
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 210 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2007-05-07
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781134210527

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Complexity and the Experience of Managing in Public Sector Organizations by Ralph Stacey,Douglas Griffin Pdf

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.

Author : José Fonseca
Publisher : Psychology Press
Page : 154 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2002
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0415250293

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Complexity and Innovation in Organizations by José Fonseca Pdf

Taking a critical look at major perspectives on innovation, this book suggests that innovation is not a designed functional activity of a firm or an intentional process through which firms anticipate changes in conditions. Jose Fonseca proposes that the concepts behind the innovation experiences cannot be traced to any particular time, space or individual, even if one person has figured prominently. The innovative ideas in the examples considered did not occur as a direct product of a purposeful search triggered by the perception of some problem to solve, nor did they result from a sequential process that was laid out in advance. Instead, innovative ideas were a product of streams of conversations that extended over long periods of time and were characterized by critical degrees of misunderstanding and redundancy. Fonseca's book presents innovation as new meaning potentially emerging in ongoing, every-day conversations. Drawing on the theory of complex responsive process, developed in the first two volumes of this series, Fonseca presents a particular way of understanding innovation. The experiences of innovation studied in this book suggest that innovations do not start with a match between a need to be satisfied and a set of competencies and tools purposefully brought together to meet the need. On the contrary, identification of need is a consequence of success, rather than a pre-condition. The innovations studied in this book (a selection of innovation experiences from Portugal are considered) were subject to constant and never ending redefinition.

Author : Ralph D. Stacey
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 367 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2003-03-06
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9781135479527

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Complexity and Group Processes by Ralph D. Stacey Pdf

This book suggests an alternative way of understanding human relating. Highly relevant not only for therapeutic groups but also those who are managing, leading and working in organizations.

Author : Patricia Shaw
Publisher : Psychology Press
Page : 214 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2002
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0415249147

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Changing Conversations in Organizations by Patricia Shaw Pdf

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.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : SAL ,Helsinki Univ. of Technology
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Human behavior
ISBN : 9789512271689

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Systems Intelligence - Discovering a Hidden Competence in Human Action and Organizational Life by Anonim Pdf

Author : Philip Streatfield
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 174 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2003-09-02
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781134577040

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The Paradox of Control in Organizations by Philip Streatfield Pdf

Business leaders are expected to be 'in control' of the situation in which their businesses find themselves. But how can organizational leaders and managers control matters entirely out of their hands; such as the next action a competitor takes, or the next law a government may pass? In this book, Philip Streatfield reflects on his own experience as a manager to explore the question: who, or what is 'in control' in an organization? Adopting the perspective of complex responsive processes developed in the first two volumes of this series, the author takes self-organization and emergence as central themes in thinking about life in organizations. He focuses on the tension between spontaneously forming patterns of conversation and intentional actions arguing that the order of organizations emerges through a combination of collective interaction and individual intentions. The argument is developed by considering the day-to-day experiences of life in a large pharmaceutical organization, SmithKline Beecham. In today's organization, managers find that they have to live with the paradox of being 'in control' and 'not in control' simultaneously. It is this capacity to live with paradox, and to continue to participate creatively in spite of 'not being in control', that constitutes effective management.

Author : Ralph Stacey
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 194 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2012-06-25
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781136296796

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Tools and Techniques of Leadership and Management by Ralph Stacey Pdf

Many of today’s books on the tools and techniques of leadership and management provide descriptions of long lists for use in decision-making, leading, coaching and project management. This book takes a completely different approach. It contests the claims that the tools and techniques are based on evidence and explains why human activities of leading and managing are simply not amenable to scientific proof and consequently, why long-term futures of organizations are unpredictable. The book undertakes a critical exploration of just what these tools and techniques are about; showing that while they may lead to competent performance they cannot go further to expert performance because expertise involves going beyond rules and procedures. Ralph Stacey investigates the many questions that are thrown up as a result of this new approach. Questions such as: How do we apply this new way of thinking? What are the practical tools and techniques it gives us? What is the role of leaders in an unpredictable world? How does complexity affect the way organizations are structured and function? This book will be relevant to students on courses and modules that deal with leadership, decision-making and organizational development and behaviour as well as professional leaders and managers who want to develop their own understanding and techniques.

Author : Claus Jacobs
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 165 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2012-12-06
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9783322811196

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Managing Organizational Responsiveness by Claus Jacobs Pdf

Responsiveness - conceived of as an organization's ability to listen, understand and respond to demands put to it by its stakeholders - has become a crucial, yet underresearched concept in strategic change and organization development. Claus Jacobs develops a concept of enactive responsiveness that transcends the traditional stimulus-response metaphor by re-introducing the dialogical and relational dimensions of responsiveness.

Author : Raymond E. Miles,Charles C. Snow
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 424 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2003-03-26
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780804767170

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Organizational Strategy, Structure, and Process by Raymond E. Miles,Charles C. Snow Pdf

"Books and articles come and go, endlessly. But a few do stick, and this book is such a one. Organizational Strategy, Structure, and Process broke fresh ground in the understanding of strategy at a time when thinking about strategy was still in its early days, and it has not been displaced since." —David J. Hickson, Emeritus Professor of International Management & Organization, University of Bradford School of Management Originally published in 1978, Organizational Strategy, Structure, and Process became an instant classic, as it bridged the formerly separate fields of strategic management and organizational behavior. In this Stanford Business Classics reissue, noted strategy scholar Donald Hambrick provides a new introduction that describes the book's contribution to the field of organization studies. Miles and Snow also contribute new introductory material to update the book's central concepts and themes. Organizational Strategy, Structure, and Process focuses on how organizations adapt to their environments. The book introduced a theoretical framework composed of a dynamic adaptive cycle and an empirically based strategy typology showing four different types of adaptation. This framework helped to define subsequent research by other scholars on important topics such as configurational analysis, organizational fit, strategic human resource management, and multi-firm network organizations.

Author : Gervase R. Bushe,Robert J. Marshak
Publisher : Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Page : 455 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2015-05-26
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781626564053

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Dialogic Organization Development by Gervase R. Bushe,Robert J. Marshak Pdf

A Dynamic New Approach to Organizational Change Dialogic Organization Development is a compelling alternative to the classical action research approach to planned change. Organizations are seen as fluid, socially constructed realities that are continuously created through conversations and images. Leaders and consultants can help foster change by encouraging disruptions to taken-for-granted ways of thinking and acting and the use of generative images to stimulate new organizational conversations and narratives. This book offers the first comprehensive introduction to Dialogic Organization Development with chapters by a global team of leading scholar-practitioners addressing both theoretical foundations and specific practices.

Author : Maurice Yolles
Publisher : IAP
Page : 887 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2006-09-01
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781607528081

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Organizations as Complex Systems by Maurice Yolles Pdf

Managing the Complex is an ambitious title - and it would be an audacious one if we were not to begin with a frank admission: to date few to none of us have a skill set which includes managing the complex. We try various things, we write about others, and we wonder about still others. When a tool, perspective, or technique comes along which seems to evoke success, we emulate it probe it and recoil at the all too often admission that it was situation and context which afforded success its opportunity, and not some quality intrinsic to the tool perspective or technique. Indeed, if the study of complexity has done anything for managers, and for those who espouse managerial theory, it is in providing a ‘scientific foundation’ for the notion that context matters. Those who preach abstract ideas have then to reconcile themselves to the notion that situation and embodiment matters. Those who believe in strong causality and determinism are left to wrestle with the role of chance, uncertainty, and chaos. Those who prefer to argue that men move history are confronted with the role of environment and affordances, while those who argue the reverse are left to contend with charisma, irrationality of crowds, and the strange qualities we know as emotions. A series on complex systems has less ambitious goals to contend with than this. Such a series can deal with classifications, and categories, and speak of ‘noise’ as if it were not the central focus of the problem. Managing the complex is about managing ‘noise’ or perhaps we should say it is about ‘dealing with’ ‘accepting’ ‘making room for’ and ‘learning from’ ‘noise’. The articles in this volume and in volumes to come will each be considered as ‘noise’ by some and as ‘gems’ by others, but we hope that practicing managers and academics alike will find plenty of fuel to drive their personal explorations into understanding, and perhaps even managing, the complex.