Managing Organizational Complexity

Author : Ralph Stacey,Douglas Griffin
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 210 pages
File Size : 54,6 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 : Yves Morieux,Peter Tollman
Publisher : Harvard Business Review Press
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2014-03-11
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781422190562

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Six Simple Rules by Yves Morieux,Peter Tollman Pdf

New tools for managing complexity Does your organization manage complexity by making things more complicated? If so, you are not alone. According to The Boston Consulting Group’s fascinating Complexity Index, business complexity has increased sixfold during the past sixty years. And, all the while, organizational complicatedness—that is, the number of structures, processes, committees, decision-making forums, and systems—has increased by a whopping factor of thirty-five. In their attempt to respond to the increasingly complex performance requirements they face, company leaders have created an organizational labyrinth that makes it more and more difficult to improve productivity and to pursue innovation. It also disengages and demotivates the workforce. Clearly it’s time for leaders to stop trying to manage complexity with their traditional tools and instead better leverage employees' intelligence. This book shows you how and explains the implications for designing and leading organizations. The way to manage complexity, the authors argue, is neither with the hard solutions of another era nor with the soft solutions—such as team building and feel-good “people initiatives”—that often follow in their wake. Based on social sciences (notably economics, game theory, and organizational sociology) and The Boston Consulting Group’s work with more than five hundred companies in more than forty countries and in various industries, authors Yves Morieux and Peter Tollman recommend six simple rules to manage complexity without getting complicated. Showing why the rules work and how to put them into practice, Morieux and Tollman give managers a much-needed tool to reinvigorate people in the face of seemingly endless complexity. Included are detailed examples from companies that have achieved a multiplicative effect on performance by using them. It’s time to manage complexity better. Employ these six simple rules to foster autonomy and cooperation and to effectively handle business complexity. As a result, you will improve productivity, innovate more, reengage your workforce, and seize opportunities to create competitive advantage.

Author : Kurt Richardson,Kurt Antony Richardson
Publisher : Information Age Pub Incorporated
Page : 571 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2005
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1593113196

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Managing Organizational Complexity by Kurt Richardson,Kurt Antony Richardson Pdf

In introducing this first volume of a series exploring issues in managing complexity, Richardson (Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence) contends that no one has yet developed a reliable skill set for learning from the noise of complex systems. In 30 papers, multidisciplinary international contributors analyze complex organizations,

Author : Raul Espejo,Alfonso Reyes
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 264 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2011-04-01
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9783642191091

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Organizational Systems by Raul Espejo,Alfonso Reyes Pdf

Organizational Systems clarifies the application of cybernetic ideas, particularly those of Beer's Viable System Model, to organizational diagnosis and design. Readers learn to appreciate the relevance of seeing the systemic coherence of the world. The book argues that many of the problems we experience today are routed in our practice of fragmenting that needs to be connected as a whole. It offers a method to study and design organizations and a methodology to deal with implementation problems. It is the outcome of many years of working experience with government offices as well as with all kinds of public and private enterprises. At a more detailed level this book offers an in depth discussion of variety engineering that is not available either in the primary or secondary literature.

Author : Elizabeth McMillan
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2008-08-28
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781134115129

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Complexity, Management and the Dynamics of Change by Elizabeth McMillan Pdf

The insights of complexity science can allow today’s managers to embrace the challenges and uncertainty of the twenty-first century, and successfully oversee organizational change and development. Elizabeth McMillan's book brings these ideas into perspective by: outlining the historical relationship between science and organizations reviewing current perspectives on organizational change and best practice citing real-life examples of the use of complexity science ideas discussing issues which may arise when using ideas from complexity. Written in an accessible style to bridge the gap from scientific theory to commercial applicability, this text shows how organizations can become more effective, democratic and sustainable through complexity science.

Author : Ralph D. Stacey,Douglas Griffin,Patricia Shaw
Publisher : Psychology Press
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 51,8 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 : Ulrich Steger,Wolfgang Amann,Martha L. Maznevski
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2007-04-04
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 047051311X

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Managing Complexity in Global Organizations by Ulrich Steger,Wolfgang Amann,Martha L. Maznevski Pdf

This book delivers new IMD insights on an emerging challenge - how to deal with overwhelming complexity. Global organizations face a complex decision-making environment. On one side, diversity of cultures, customers, competitors and regulations creates complexity; on the other, competitive pressures cause expanding countries to extract more synergies across products and regions. In such a climate, a new way of thinking, acting and organizing is needed beyond the familiar ‘control’ mindset. Drawing together insights from across the expert faculty, Managing Complexity in the Global Organization presents IMD’s framework on how to understand complexity and its four key drivers (diversity; interdependence; ambiguity and flux), along with solutions on specific issues in a variety of functions, industries and markets. The focus is on providing practical solutions based on real-life examples.

Author : Ralph D. Stacey
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 264 pages
File Size : 47,9 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 : Chris Mowles
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 182 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2015-03-24
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781317550358

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Managing in Uncertainty by Chris Mowles Pdf

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.

Author : Elizabeth McMillan
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 206 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2003-12-18
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781134379866

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Complexity, Organizations and Change by Elizabeth McMillan Pdf

Available in paperback for the first time, this book describes and considers ideas and insights from complexity science, and examines their use in organizations, especially in bringing about major organizational change.

Author : Xiufeng Liu
Publisher : Information Age Publishing
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1607524694

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Managing Organizational Complexity by Xiufeng Liu Pdf

Author : Kurt A. Richardson
Publisher : IAP
Page : 593 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2005-06-01
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781607524694

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Managing Organizational Complexity by Kurt A. Richardson Pdf

Author : Stig O. Johannessen
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 124 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2022-03-03
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781000590838

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Complexity in Organizations by Stig O. Johannessen Pdf

Written with pace and clarity, this book is a comprehensive and compact overview and introduction to the research landscape of complexity in organizations. In addition to conveying a gripping history of how complexity has influenced organizational ideas, theories, and practices throughout the 20th century and into our present age, the book sheds light on how ground-breaking ideas in chaos and complexity research have emerged and challenged the very foundations of science into a changed vision of nature, society, and human organizations. As well as being an exciting investigation into complexity research in organizations, the book shows how, in the past, researchers who were immersed in the power politics of their day grappled with the theme of complexity in their quest to understand the dynamics of organization in nature and society. By welding fundamental theoretical themes and practical implications into the political and social contexts in which they emerged, this overview provides both depth and breadth to the history, as well as the future, of studies of complexity in organized activity. The book is a lucid and essential study of a topic that will be of interest to scholars, researchers, and students in the fields of business and management, especially those with an interest in the ways that complexity affects and transforms organizations.

Author : Niels Pflaeging
Publisher : Betacodex Press
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2014-02-20
Category : Complex organizations
ISBN : 0991537602

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Organize for Complexity by Niels Pflaeging Pdf

The long-awaited update for work and organizations in the knowledge age

Author : Udo Lindemann,Maik Maurer,Thomas Braun
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2008-09-24
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN : 9783540878896

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Structural Complexity Management by Udo Lindemann,Maik Maurer,Thomas Braun Pdf

Product design is characterized by a steady increase in complexity. The main focus of this book is a structural approach on complexity management. This means, system structures are considered in order to address the challenge of complexity in all aspects of product design. Structures arise from the complex dependencies of system elements. Thus, the identification of system structures provides access to the understanding of system behavior in practical applications. The book presents a methodology that enables the analysis, control and optimization of complex structures, and the applicability of domain-spanning problems. The methodology allows significant improvements on handling system complexity by creating improved system understanding on the one hand and optimizing product design that is robust for system adaptations on the other hand. Developers can thereby enhance project coordination and improve communication between team members and as a result shorten development time. The practical application of the methodology is described by means of two detailed examples.