Complexity and Management: Research, Research Degrees and Conference (CMC)
Complexity and Management is a well developed research area at the Business School of the University of Hertfordshire.
Since the beginning of this work in 1992, complexity and management researchers have sought to create links between academic work and organisational practice using a complexity perspective in which the inevitable paradoxes and ambiguities of organisational life are not finally resolved but held in creative tension.
This perspective draws on analogies from the natural complexity sciences, interpreted in the sphere of human action in terms of American pragmatism, European process sociology and group psychology, to develop new ways of understanding organisations and their management which emphasise self-organisation and emergence in processes of ordinary conversation and everyday politics.
At the centre of this research activity is the Doctor of Management research degree programme which has so far produced 51 graduates – see Doctor of Management and Master of Arts completions.
Closely linked to the programme is the publishing activity in which researchers explore a complexity perspective as a way of understanding the work of those managing, researching, consulting, developing, writing, and otherwise engaging in organisations – see the book series Complexity and Emergence in Organizations and Complexity: The Experience of Organizing.
The complexity and management research community comes together once a year for the June Complexity and Management Conference (CMC) of graduates and all others interested in this work.
E-Mail: c.mowles@herts.ac.uk for Chris Mowles.
