Complexity: The Experience of Organising
Edited by Ralph Stacey, Douglas Griffin and Patricia Shaw
Complexity: the Experience of Organizing is a sequel to the highly successful series Complexity and Emergence in Organizations also edited by the editors of this series. The first series has attracted international attention for its development of the theory of complex responsive processes and its implications for those working in organizations. The perspective of complex responsive processes draws on analogies from the complexity sciences. This brings in the essential characteristics of human agents namely consciousness and self-consciousness, understood to emerge in social processes of communicative interaction, power relating and evaluative choice. The result is a way of thinking about life in organizations that focuses attention on how organizational members cope with the unknown as they perpetually create organizational futures together. This second series aims to develop that work by taking seriously the experience of organizational practitioners, showing how taking the perspective of complex responsive processes yields deeper insight into practice and so develops that practice.
Contributors to the volumes in the series work as leaders, consultants or managers in organizations. The contributors provide narrative accounts of their actual work, addressing questions such as: What does it mean, in ordinary everyday terms, to lead a large organization? How do leaders learn to lead? What does it mean, in ordinary everyday terms to consult to managers in an organization? How does the work of the consultant assist managers when the uncertainty is so great that they do not yet know what they are doing? What does executive coaching achieve? What happens in global change programmes such as installing competencies, managing diversity and assuring quality? Why do organizations get stuck in repetitive patterns of behaviour? What kinds of change can be facilitated? In considering such questions in terms of their daily experience, the contributors explore how the perspective of complex responsive processes assists them in making sense of their experience and so develop their practices.
The books in the series are addressed to organizational practitioners and academics who are looking for a different way of making sense of their own experience in a rapidly changing world. The books will attract readers looking for reflective accounts of ordinary everyday life in organizations rather than idealised accounts or further idealises prescriptions.
Volumes in the series:
A Complexity Perspective on Researching Organizations: Taking Experience Seriously, edited by Ralph Stacey and Douglas Griffin
Contents
1. Introduction by Ralph Stacey
2. Experience and method: a complex responsive processes perspective on research in organizations by Ralph Stacey and Douglas Griffin
3. Belief, truth and justification: issues of methodology, discourse and the validity of personal narratives by Richard Williams
4. Emerging participative exploration: consultation as research by Bjørner Christensen
5. Letting go, keeping connected and change at the Phoenix project by Mary O’Flynn
6. To understand a practice of consulting by Ian Johnson
7. Organizational development in the National Health Service by Nicholas Sarra
Complexity and the Experience of Leading Organizations, edited by Douglas Griffin and Ralph Stacey
Contents
1. Introduction: leading in a complex world by Ralph Stacey and Douglas Griffin
2. Leadership and the role of conflict in processes of mutual recognition: the emergence of ethics by Douglas Griffin
3. Leadership, power and problems of relating in processes of organizational change by Richard Williams
4. The role of leader and the paradox of detached involvement by John Tobin
5. Values, Spirituality and Organizations: a complex responsive processes perspective by Ralph Stacey
6. Leadership and Cult Values: moving from the idealised to the experienced by James Taylor
7. Executive Coaching and Leading by Andrew Lee 8. Leadership, learning and skill development by Michael Shiel
Experiencing Emergence in Organizations: local interaction and the emergence of global pattern, edited by Ralph Stacey
Contents
1. Introduction by Ralph Stacey
2. Local and global processes in organizational life by Ralph Stacey
3. The local experience of a global diversity initiative in a multinational pharmaceutical company by David Scanlon
4. The emergence of global stability in local interaction in a consulting practice by Michael Nolan
5. Experiencing national education policies in local interaction by Richard Williams
6. Technology as social object by Stig Johannesen and Ralph Stacey
7. Writing in organizational life: how a technology simultaneously forms and is formed by human interaction by Alison Donaldson
Complexity and the Experience of Managing in the Public Sector, edited by Ralph Stacey and Douglas Griffin
Contents
1. Introduction by Ralph Stacey and Douglas Griffin
2. Ways of Thinking about Public Sector Governance by Ralph Stacey
3. The Experience of Leading Public Sector Organizations in a Performance Management Regime by Richard Williams
4. The Emotional Experience of Performance Management in the Health Sector: The corridor by Nicholas Sarra
5. The Experience of Clinical Risk Assessment in the Health Sector by Karen Norman
6. The Experience of Power, Blame and Responsibility in the Health Sector by Penelope Lacey
7. The Experience of Strategic Planning and Performance Management in the Education Sector by Seamus Cannon
Experiencing risk, spontaneity and improvisation in organizational change: working live, edited by Patricia Shaw and Ralph Stacey
Contents
Preface
1. Introduction: What happens next? by Patricia Shaw
2. Theater and social change by Preben Friis and Henry Larsen
3. Risk and ‘acting’ into the unknown by Henry Larsen
4. Management, improvisation and spontaneity: using theatre as a mode of consulting by Preben Friis
5. Leading in the moment: taking risks and living with anxiety by David Walker Appendix: Brief review of the perspective of complex responsive processes by Ralph Stacey
Complexity and the experience of values, conflict and compromise in organizations
Contents
1. Introduction by Ralph Stacey and Douglas Griffin
2. Finding room for values in required ways of working: values, power, conflict and compromise in aid agencies by Chris Mowles
3. Working at the edge of polarized conflict in organizations by Nol Groot
4. Compromising as processes of moving forward in organizations by Iver Drabæk
5. Leadership and self-mastery: values and the “no compromise” response by Martin Daly
6. The role of propaganda in managing organizational change: ethics, conflict and compromise in consulting by Stephen Billing
