Complexity and Management (CMG)

Overview

Complexity and Management (CMG) is a well developed research area at the Business School of the University of Hertfordshire.

Since the beginning of our 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
• group psychology

The intention is 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 54 graduates.

• Download a list of CMG Doctor of Management and Master of Arts completions.
• Find out more about CMG PhD completions.

Publishing activity

Closely linked to the programme is the publishing activity in which researchers explore a complexity perspective as a way of understanding the work in organisations of those:

• managing
• researching
• consulting
• developing
• writing
• engaging

See the book series Complexity and Emergence in Organisations and Complexity: The Experience of Organising.

  

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.