Download or read book Managing the Unknowable written by Ralph D. Stacey and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 1992-11-11 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's What You Don't Know That Counts Discover the important roles chance and uncertainty play insuccessful strategic planning. In this ingenious work, author RalphD. Stacey shows managers how their companies can benefit from theunexpected developments that impact their business and how they canprepare to creatively leverage the opportunities such developmentspresent. He explains how an appreciation of conflict and teamdialogue can help managers discover and build on the innate energyof their organizations. And he illustrates his theories withreal-world examples from Sony, Kodak, Federal Express and othernoted market innovators.

Download or read book Chaos and Organization in Health Care written by Thomas H. Lee and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-02-10 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two leading physicians' prescription for solving our health care problems: organizing the fragmented system that delivers care. One of the most daunting challenges facing the new U.S. administration is health care reform. The size of the system, the number of stakeholders, and ever-rising costs make the problem seem almost intractable. But in Chaos and Organization in Health Care, two leading physicians offer an optimistic prognosis. In their frontline work as providers, Thomas Lee and James Mongan see the inefficiency, the missed opportunities, and the occasional harm that can result from the current system. The root cause of these problems, they argue, is chaos in the delivery of care. If the problem is chaos, the solution is organization, and in this timely and outspoken book, they offer a plan. In many ways, this chaos is caused by something good: the dramatic progress in medical science—the explosion of medical knowledge and the exponential increase in treatment options. Imposed on a fragmented system of small practices and individual patients with multiple providers, progress results in chaos. Lee and Mongan argue that attacking this chaos is even more important than whether health care is managed by government or controlled by market forces. Some providers are already tightly organized, adapting management principles from business and offering care that is by many measures safer, better, and less costly. Lee and Mongan propose multiple strategies that can be adopted nationwide, including electronic medical records and information systems for sharing knowledge; team-based care, with doctors and other providers working together; and disease management programs to coordinate care for the sickest patients.

Download or read book Organizations and Chaos written by H Richar Preismeyer and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1992-11-30 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique book brings chaos theory out of the physics laboratory and into the business boardroom; it demonstrates how chaos theory can be applied to the practical world of business. Priesmeyer takes a fresh look at management in organizations using a unique method of displaying nonlinearity in common business data. He shares a simple procedure for displaying chaotic systems with the reader and the result is an entirely new perspective on marketing, finance, production, and human resource issues. The book is unique because it avoids any difficult mathematics and still delivers very practical applications for managers of all types. In some cases the implications for specific jobs such as that of a retail store manager, a sales manager, and a counselor are discussed in detail. The discussions of free will and visioning will have a real impact on anyone involved in planning. Part One of this book presents the notion of Corporate Chaos Theory and provides the concepts methods used by the author. Chapter 1 introduces the concept of nonlinearity and blends a discussion of chaos in biology into an example in business. Chapter 2 explains the simple method used by Priesmeyer in detail and applies that method to demonstrate organizational limit cycles. Chapter 3 draws on an analogy with cardiology to explain organizational behavior. Part Two consists of four chapters addressing applications in the functional areas of business. Chapters examine marketing, managerial finance, chaos in the production process, and a wide range of human resources issues, including stress. The chapter on production processes addresses new quality approaches and shows the weaknesses of common quality control tools and procedures. The final section of the book addresses decision making. Chapter 8 is directed to anyone involved in forecasting. It also includes an amusing attack on traditional statistics. The following chapters address Strategic Decision Making and provide a preliminary agenda for any company wishing to explore the methods in greater detail. Chapter 11 brings chaos theory down to a common, personal level, and explains the implications for certain specific jobs ranging from sales representatives to marriage counselors. The final chapter readdresses the concept of free will and includes an insightful exercise and conversation.

Download or read book Crisis Chaos and Organizations written by Daniel J. Svyantek and published by IAP. This book was released on 2022-01-01 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The COVID-19 pandemic provides an illustration of how chaotic changes to large systems are caused by small, seemingly insignificant environmental events such as the initial case(s) of COVID-19 in China. From this small starting point for the pandemic, there have been (and continue to be) millions of lives lost and trillions of dollars spent trying to alleviate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. World government and corporate leaders are striving to deal with this pandemic, but uncertainty is felt across the globe. Unprecedented strategies (e.g., the United States government’s multi-trillion-dollar stimulus package (s)) have been used to halt the spread of COVID-19. These small events cascade throughout larger and larger systems leading to unforeseeable consequences. Organizations must experiment and make decisions on how to react. Decisions must be made and implemented to see what the effects of these decisions are. The chapters in this volume provide important insights for all organizations during this time of crisis. The chapters express bottom-up and top-down approaches to a crisis-initiating environmental change by organizations. The chapters provide insight into the way organizations perceive the effect of COVID-19 as 1) a permanent or transitory change in the organization’s environment; and 2) as a crisis or opportunity. Taken together, the chapters provide both scientists and practitioners with a starting point for understanding the impact of COVID-19 on organizational theory and on management practice for readers.

Download or read book The Edge of Organization written by Russ Marion and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 1999-01-14 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Chaos Organization and Disaster Management written by Alan Kirschenbaum and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2003-11-18 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chaos Organization and Disaster Management offers a scholarly survey of disaster response behavior and management in the face of natural and manmade catastrophe. The author provides a methodological and empirical platform from which to initiate a critical analysis of disaster management. Sparked by a unique field study of the Israeli experience during the Gulf War, this book demonstrates the massive divide between individual responses to disaster and the actual functioning of disaster management organizations. It exposes the fundamental flaws of disaster management agencies, analyzing disasters from the perspectives of both agencies and potential victims. Formulating an alternative approach to disaster management that draws upon the advantages of privatization, this volume appraises methods of measuring disaster agency effectiveness, emphasizing the citizen vantage point and stakeholder evaluations. It outlines the intrinsic bureaucratic constraints that impede the efficacy of government agencies, and reveals the disconnect between organizational and victim perceptions of disaster. By highlighting a new empirically based understanding of disaster behavior, the book recommends moving the focus of disaster management to a social process model that will save lives.

Download or read book Managing Chaos and Complexity in Government written by L. Douglas Kiel and published by Jossey-Bass. This book was released on 1994-09-20 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To keep government operating smoothly, changes in public managementpolicy and strategy usually follow the old rule of change--that itmust evolve in a systematic and incremental fashion. But in today'sunpredictable world of shrinking budgets, demands for betterservice, and greater accountability, playing by the old rules justdoesn't make sense. In this book, L. Douglas Kiel presents a framework that addressesthe new chaotic reality of public management and the need forresponsive change and innovation. By acknowledging the potentialfor positive change and renewal that can arise from uncertainty andinstability, Kiel offers managers a paradigm for transforminggovernment performance. In easy to understand terms, the author offers an overview of theconcepts of chaos theory and the science of complexity and hedemonstrates how public administrators can apply these concepts tocreate a new vision of organizational change. The book presents arange of both traditional and innovative managementtechniquesshaping organizational cultures, flattening hierarchies,and re-engineering work--and evaluates their capacity to alloworganizational systems to respond to change. Written for public administrators and the faculty and students ofpublic management, this book describes the importance of disorder,instability, and change and examines how new chaos theories areapplied to public management. Drawing on data from the author'scase studies, the book is filled with charts, graphs, and practicalcomputer spreadsheet exercises designed to give public managers andstudents of public management hands-on experience to meet thechallenges of organizational change.

Download or read book Enabling Creative Chaos written by Katherine K. Chen and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-09-15 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer of 2008, nearly fifty thousand people traveled to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert to participate in the countercultural arts event Burning Man. Founded on a commitment to expression and community, the annual weeklong festival presents unique challenges to its organizers. Over four years Katherine K. Chen regularly participated in organizing efforts to safely and successfully create a temporary community in the middle of the desert under the hot August sun. Enabling Creative Chaos tracks how a small, underfunded group of organizers transformed into an unconventional corporation with a ten-million-dollar budget and two thousand volunteers. Over the years, Burning Man’s organizers have experimented with different management models; learned how to recruit, motivate, and retain volunteers; and developed strategies to handle regulatory agencies and respond to media coverage. This remarkable evolution, Chen reveals, offers important lessons for managers in any organization, particularly in uncertain times.

Download or read book Managing Chaos written by Lisa Welchman and published by Rosenfeld Media. This book was released on 2015-02-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few organizations realize a return on their digital investment. They’re distracted by political infighting and technology-first solutions. To reach the next level, organizations must realign their assets—people, content, and technology—by practicing the discipline of digital governance. Managing Chaos inspires new and necessary conversations about digital governance and its transformative power to support creativity, real collaboration, digital quality, and online growth.

Download or read book Chaos and Complexity Theory for Management Nonlinear Dynamics written by Banerjee, Santo and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2012-11-30 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Leading at the Edge of Chaos written by Daryl R. Conner and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 1998-10-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Praise for Leading at the Edge of Chaos "If your organization is facing any anticipated chaotic event in the next six months-and who isn't-you should read Daryl Conner. His tough-minded definitions of winners vs. losers will make you think twice." -Craig E. Weatherup, Chairman and CEO, The Pepsi-Cola Company "Conner's new book is thoroughly original and useful on the mastery of leading change." -Warren Bennis, Distinguished Professor of Business Administration, University of Southern California, and author of Organizing Genius "Daryl Conner has done it again! The leading authority on managing change has given us what we need right now. Leading at the Edge of Chaos offers prescriptive advice for leading in today's world, where the tempo and thrust of change has escalated. A must read for anyone who is still breathing and leading." -Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The One Minute Manager(r) "Delightful and thought-provoking . . . [links] deep organizational research with useable 'real world' advice . . . I would recommend this book to others-senior line leaders and their management teams." -Kenneth Schwenke, Senior Vice President, Human Resources, Aramark Corporation "In the new reality in which the human need for control is continuously assaulted by escalating change, Daryl Conner provides [organization leaders] . . . steps to take . . . in clear language and vivid images, with psychological insight and knowledge born out of broad hands-on experience." -Judy Bardwick, author of In Praise of Good Business and Danger in the Comfort Zone "Every executive who is leading constant change in their organizations should read this book." -Don Beattie, Chief Executive, Personnel, The BOC Group (U.K.) "Gone are the days when innovations and new ventures were incremental in scope and sequential in nature. In their place is 'perpetual unrest,' unending, fundamental changes . . . " -Daryl Conner In his 1993 classic, Managing at the Speed of Change, Daryl Conner showed managers how to implement business innovations on time and under budget. In this groundbreaking new book, he shows them how to ride the whirlwind. The tempo of change has sped up to a dizzying pace over the past few years. Globalization, rapid-fire technological innovation, and mounting pressure for shareholder value have pushed the markets into a state of ceaseless turmoil. What was cutting-edge change management theory just five years ago now seems naive. Success amidst such a maelstrom of change calls for much more than what change management models have to offer. It calls for a radically new kind of organization, nimble enough to adapt instantly to changing market conditions, and piloted by leaders versed in the art of Leading at the Edge of Chaos. This book is not about decision making; it is about execution. It is not about predicting change; it is about adapting to it at a moment's notice. Internationally renowned "Change Doctor" Daryl Conner defines the new roles that all leaders must assume in order to direct the changes that are crucial to their organizations' survival. He schools them in all of the essential components of the change process. And, most importantly, he arms them with action steps for instilling their companies with the nimbleness and resilience needed to survive and thrive in today's supervolatile markets. Conner also introduces the revolutionary concept of human due diligence-the human equivalent of financial due diligence and an indispensable tool for orchestrating major enterprisewide transitions. Strategic, results-oriented, and proactive, human due diligence focuses on people's capacity to absorb change as a limited resource, and offers tools for ensuring that there is sufficient capacity available to face the next challenge-and the many others sure to follow.

Download or read book The Chaos Imperative written by Ori Brafman and published by Crown Currency. This book was released on 2013-08-13 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the bestselling tradition of Switch and Made to Stick, Ori Brafman reveals how organizations can drive growth and profits by allowing contained chaos and disruption the space to flourish, generating new ideas that trigger innovation. In The Chaos Imperative, organizational expert and bestselling author Ori Brafman (Sway, The Starfish and the Spider) shows how even the best and most efficient organizations, from Fortune 500 companies to today's US Army, benefit from allowing a little unstructured space and disruption into their planning and decision-making.

Download or read book Organizations and Chaos written by H Richar Preismeyer and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1992-11-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique book brings chaos theory out of the physics laboratory and into the business boardroom; it demonstrates how chaos theory can be applied to the practical world of business. Priesmeyer takes a fresh look at management in organizations using a unique method of displaying nonlinearity in common business data. He shares a simple procedure for displaying chaotic systems with the reader and the result is an entirely new perspective on marketing, finance, production, and human resource issues. The book is unique because it avoids any difficult mathematics and still delivers very practical applications for managers of all types. In some cases the implications for specific jobs such as that of a retail store manager, a sales manager, and a counselor are discussed in detail. The discussions of free will and visioning will have a real impact on anyone involved in planning. Part One of this book presents the notion of Corporate Chaos Theory and provides the concepts methods used by the author. Chapter 1 introduces the concept of nonlinearity and blends a discussion of chaos in biology into an example in business. Chapter 2 explains the simple method used by Priesmeyer in detail and applies that method to demonstrate organizational limit cycles. Chapter 3 draws on an analogy with cardiology to explain organizational behavior. Part Two consists of four chapters addressing applications in the functional areas of business. Chapters examine marketing, managerial finance, chaos in the production process, and a wide range of human resources issues, including stress. The chapter on production processes addresses new quality approaches and shows the weaknesses of common quality control tools and procedures. The final section of the book addresses decision making. Chapter 8 is directed to anyone involved in forecasting. It also includes an amusing attack on traditional statistics. The following chapters address Strategic Decision Making and provide a preliminary agenda for any company wishing to explore the methods in greater detail. Chapter 11 brings chaos theory down to a common, personal level, and explains the implications for certain specific jobs ranging from sales representatives to marriage counselors. The final chapter readdresses the concept of free will and includes an insightful exercise and conversation.

Download or read book Chaos Catastrophe and Human Affairs written by Stephen J. Guastello and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2013-05-13 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether talking about steering a wheelbarrow over rugged terrain or plotting the course of international relations, human performance systems involve change. Sometimes changes are subtle or evolutionary, sometimes they are catastrophic or revolutionary, and sometimes the changes are from periods of relative calm to periods of vibrant oscillations to periods of chaos. As a general rule, more complex systems are likely to produce more complex forms of change. Although social scientists have long acknowledged that change occurs and have considered ways to effect desirable change, the dynamical processes of change have been poorly understood in the past. This volume combines recent advances in mathematics and experimental design with the best available social science theories to produce a new, integrated, and compact theory of work, organizations, and social evolution. The domains of application extend from human decision-making processes to personnel selection and work motivation, work performance under conditions of stress, accident and health risk analysis, the development of social institutions and economic systems, creativity and innovation, organizational development and group dynamics, and political revolutions and war. Relative to other literature on nonlinear dynamical systems theory (NDS), this book is unique in that it integrates new developments in NDS with substantive psychological theory. It builds on many recent developments in organizational theory to show that nonlinear dynamics were often implicit in those works all along. The result is an entirely new way of viewing social events, understanding change processes, and asking questions about social systems. This book also contains much new empirical work and explains the newly developed methods for testing these new hypotheses.

Download or read book Project Management at the Edge of Chaos written by Alfred Oswald and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-03-21 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Complexity is a gift that can be made available for the successful implementation of projects, and used to create a new order or to change an existing one. Based on scientific facts, the authors present a systematic approach, which integrates complexity and its multitude of facets and gives practical recommendations for dealing with complexity in projects. The methods paradigm in project management is currently undergoing a massive upheaval. Projects are complex entities that cannot be tackled using traditional methods, such as classical cause and effect approaches. Complexity, and the associated phenomenon of self-organization, is a natural, but hidden designer. It offers a great opportunity in its use as a key driver for the implementation of projects. This requires identification of the principles of complexity and then using these for project management. In this book, the latest findings from natural sciences and brain research are used and transferred within a practice-oriented framework. The authors describe the methods of complexity regulation in projects and how self-organization for the management of projects can be applied.

Download or read book Organizational Physics The Science of Growing a Business written by Lex Sisney and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are hidden laws at work in every aspect of your business. Understand them, and you can create extraordinary growth. Ignore them, and you run the risk of becoming another statistic. It's become almost cliche: 8 out of every 10 new ventures fail. Of the ones that succeed, how many truly thrive-for the long run? And of those that thrive, how many continually overcome their growth hurdles ... and ultimately scale, with meaning, purpose, and profitability? The answer, sadly, is not many. Author Lex Sisney is on a mission to change that picture. After more than a decade spent leading and coaching high-growth technology companies, Lex discovered that the companies that thrive do so in accordance with 6 Laws - universal principles that govern the success or failure of every individual, team, and organization.

Download or read book Thriving on Chaos written by Tom Peters and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 1988-11-30 with total page 740 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The national bestseller that offers prescriptions for an economic world turned upside down. A New York Times bestseller for eleven months.