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.

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.

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.

This book places everyday talk and role-modelling interactions at the forefront of an alternative change-leadership agenda, and introduces a number of practical approaches to help line managers and organizational specialists deliver this agenda more successfully. It is essential reading for organizational practitioners at all levels.

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.

This book interprets insights from the complexity sciences to explore seven types of complexity better to understand the predictable unpredictability of social life. Drawing on the natural and social sciences, it describes how complexity models are helpful but insufficient for our understanding of complex reality. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the book develops a complex theory of action more consistent with our experience that our plans inevitably lead to unexpected outcomes, explains why we are both individuals and thoroughly social, and gives an account of why, no matter how clear our message, we may still be misunderstood. The book investigates what forms of knowledge are most helpful for thinking about complex experience, reflects on the way we exercise authority (leadership) and thinks through the ethical implications of trying to co-operate in a complex world. Taking complexity seriously poses a radical challenge to more orthodox theories of managing and leading, based as they are on assumptions of predictability, control and universality. The author argues that management is an improvisational practice which takes place in groups in a particular context at a particular time. Managers can influence but never control an uncontrollable world. To become more skilful in complex group dynamics involves taking into account multiple points of view and acknowledging not knowing, ambivalence and doubt. This book will be of interest to researchers, professionals, academics and students in the fields of business and management, especially those interested in how taking complexity seriously can influence the functioning of businesses and organizations and how they manage and lead.

When it comes to solving complex problems, we often perform elaborate rituals in the guise of best practices that promise a world of order, certainty, and control. But reality paints a far different picture, which practitioners are often reluctant to discuss. A witty yet rigorous journey through the seedy underbelly of organisational problem solving, The Heretics Guide to Best Practices pinpoints the reasons why best practices dont work as advertised and what can be done about it. Hugely enjoyable, deeply reflective, and intensely practical. This book is about weaving human artistry and improvisation, with appropriate methods and technologies, in order to pool collective intelligence and wisdom under pressure. Simon Buckingham Shum, Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University, UK This is a terrific piece of work: important, insightful, and very entertaining. Culmsee and Awati have produced a refreshing take on the problems that plague organisations... If youre trying to deal with wicked problems in your organisation, then drop everything and read this book. Tim Van Gelder, Principal Consultant, Austhink Consulting

The Academy of Management is proud to announce the inaugural volume of The Academy of Management Annals. This exciting new series follows one guiding principle: The advancement of knowledge is possible only by conducting a thorough examination of what is known and unknown in a given field. Such assessments can be accomplished through comprehensive, critical reviews of the literature--crafted by informed scholars who determine when a line of inquiry has gone astray, and how to steer the research back onto the proper path. The Academy of Management Annals provide just such essential reviews. Written by leading management scholars, the reviews are invaluable for ensuring the timeliness of advanced courses, for designing new investigative approaches, and for identifying faulty methodological or conceptual assumptions. The Annals strive each year to synthesize a vast array of primary research, recognizing past principal contributions while illuminating potential future avenues of inquiry. Volume 1 of the Annals explores a wide spectrum of research: corporate control; nonstandard employment; critical management; physical work environments; public administration team learning; emotions in organizations; leadership and health care; creativity at work; business and the environment; and bias in performance appraisals. Ultimately, academic scholars in management and allied fields (e.g., sociology of organizations and organizational psychology) will see The Academy of Management Annals as a valuable resource to turn to for comprehensive, up-to-date information--published in a single volume every year by the preeminent association for management research.

What Newton′s Principia was to his natural science colleagues, Russ Marion′s The Edge of Organization is to today′s social scientists. This book clearly elucidates the arrival of the social sciences at the end of the alley of modernism but then presents us with the tools and ideas to climb out of a dead end, rise above old limitations, and take flight for new horizons bright with promise for advancing both theory and praxis. . . . For social scientists, it is both the most relevant and most easily apprehended treatment to date of the totality of chaos and complexity theory and technique. --Raymond A. Eve, Editor, Chaos, Complexity, and Sociology The Edge of Organization offers a readable, comprehensive, and integrated overview of the new sciences of chaos and complexity. Author Russ Marion describes formal and social organizations from the perspective of chaos and complexity theories. His multidisciplinary approach will appeal to students and scholars across a wide range of social sciences. This book is generously illustrated and includes comprehensive references plus an annotated bibliography of useful books and articles. The Edge of Organization will appeal to students and professionals in sociology, management/ organization studies, management studies, marketing, political science, public administration, and psychology.

Although chaos theory refers to the existence between seemingly random events, it has been gaining the attention of science, technology and managements fields. The shift from traditional procedures to the dynamics of chaos and complexity theory has resulted in a new element of complexity thinking, allowing for a greater capability for analyzing and understanding key business processes. Chaos and Complexity Theory for Management: Nonlinear Dynamics explores chaos and complexity theory and its relationship with the understanding of natural chaos in the business environment. Utilizing these theories aids in comprehending the development of businesses as a complex adaptive system.