Download or read book Understanding Complexity in Organizations written by Timothy Ludwig and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-02-11 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Organizations are complex entities that must adapt the practices of their employees and management to meet the demands of a dynamic environment. Organizations are behavioral systems that coordinate interactions among its members and environment. Changing practices in one area of an organization can generate a reaction throughout the entire system, thus affecting the behaviors of those working within other areas, the experience of customers, and important organizational results. Behavioral Systems Analysis (BSA) focuses on these complex contingencies from the macro system all the way down to individual behavior. This book contains articles by internationally recognized experts in Behavioral Systems Analysis who discuss the role of organizational practices in their study of performance improvement and cultural change from both practical and conceptual perspectives. Business and non-profit managers will find tools and case studies to help understand and diagnose their organization’s dynamics. Scholars will appreciate articles’ theory and real-world descriptions when considering their own research direction. Finally, all students of management theory, behavior analysis, and human resources will find this collection a thought-provoking tool for their understanding of behavioral systems and their application in organizations. This book was published as a special issue in the Journal of Organizational Behavior Management.

Download or read book Complexity and Creativity in Organizations written by Ralph D. Stacey and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining insights from the new science of complexity with insights from psychoanalysis, Stacey posits that repressing the anxiety caused by the unstable, ever-changing nature of today's business world also represses the creative impulses - the "spaces for novelty" - that allow members of a workforce to produce their best work. Using the science of complexity as a starting point, he pulls together many insights into behavior and organizational functioning that currently lie at the edges of research and practice. This book invites people to explore what the new science might mean for understanding life in organizations, and shows how it can be used as a framework for understanding the processes that produce emergence rather than intentional strategies. Stacey presents an entirely new perspective on what it means for an organization to learn.

Download or read book Complexity and Organizational Reality written by Ralph D. Stacey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-12-18 with total page 695 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Cultural Complexity in Organizations written by Sonja Sackmann and published by SAGE Publications, Incorporated. This book was released on 1997-03-28 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The multiple-cultures perspective advocated in this book suggests that culture in organizational settings is more complex, pluralistic, diverse and contradictory than previously acknowledged. Contributors address culture at various levels including national, industrial and organizational. Issues covered include: implicit managerial understandings and overt practices; the growth and decline of organizations with a focus on culture, managerial control strategies and subculture formation; change and temporary reconciliation; factors that influence homogeneity and heterogeneity and that contribute to a strong corporate culture; and issues of gender, ethnicity and social and organizational identity as concepts that may foster a better understand

Download or read book The Organizational Complex written by Reinhold Martin and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2005-09-23 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A historical and theoretical analysis of corporate architecture in the United States after the Second World War. The Organizational Complex is a historical and theoretical analysis of corporate architecture in the United States after the Second World War. Its title refers to the aesthetic and technological extension of the military-industrial complex, in which architecture, computers, and corporations formed a network of objects, images, and discourses that realigned social relations and transformed the postwar landscape. In-depth case studies of architect Eero Saarinen's work for General Motors, IBM, and Bell Laboratories and analyses of office buildings designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill trace the emergence of a systems-based model of organization in architecture, in which the modular curtain wall acts as both an organizational device and a carrier of the corporate image. Such an image—of the corporation as a flexible, integrated system—is seen to correspond with a "humanization" of corporate life, as corporations decentralize both spatially and administratively. Parallel analyses follow the assimilation of cybernetics into aesthetics in the writings of artist and visual theorist Gyorgy Kepes, as art merges with techno-science in the service of a dynamic new "pattern-seeing." Image and system thus converge in the organizational complex, while top-down power dissolves into networked, pattern-based control. Architecture, as one among many media technologies, supplies the patterns—images of organic integration designed to regulate new and unstable human-machine assemblages.

Download or read book Six Simple Rules written by Yves Morieux and published by Harvard Business Review Press. This book was released on 2014-03-11 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New tools for managing complexity Does your organization manage complexity by making things more complicated? If so, you are not alone. According to The Boston Consulting Group’s fascinating Complexity Index, business complexity has increased sixfold during the past sixty years. And, all the while, organizational complicatedness—that is, the number of structures, processes, committees, decision-making forums, and systems—has increased by a whopping factor of thirty-five. In their attempt to respond to the increasingly complex performance requirements they face, company leaders have created an organizational labyrinth that makes it more and more difficult to improve productivity and to pursue innovation. It also disengages and demotivates the workforce. Clearly it’s time for leaders to stop trying to manage complexity with their traditional tools and instead better leverage employees' intelligence. This book shows you how and explains the implications for designing and leading organizations. The way to manage complexity, the authors argue, is neither with the hard solutions of another era nor with the soft solutions—such as team building and feel-good “people initiatives”—that often follow in their wake. Based on social sciences (notably economics, game theory, and organizational sociology) and The Boston Consulting Group’s work with more than five hundred companies in more than forty countries and in various industries, authors Yves Morieux and Peter Tollman recommend six simple rules to manage complexity without getting complicated. Showing why the rules work and how to put them into practice, Morieux and Tollman give managers a much-needed tool to reinvigorate people in the face of seemingly endless complexity. Included are detailed examples from companies that have achieved a multiplicative effect on performance by using them. It’s time to manage complexity better. Employ these six simple rules to foster autonomy and cooperation and to effectively handle business complexity. As a result, you will improve productivity, innovate more, reengage your workforce, and seize opportunities to create competitive advantage.

Download or read book Simply Effective written by Ron Ashkenas and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2009-02-08 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The level of complexity in most organizations today is staggering-and it's only getting worse. There are so many choices to be made, people to involve, processes to manage, and facts to analyze, it's impossible to get things done. And in today's hypercompetitive world, that can be fatal. Yet complexity doesn't happen on its own. Managers unwittingly create it, often through well-intended decisions. In Simply Effective, Ron Ashkenas provides a playbook for regaining control, focused on the four major causes of complexity: -Constant changes in organizational structures -Proliferation of products and services -Evolution of business processes -Time-wasting managerial behaviors The author provides a diagnostic for identifying how these causes of complexity are affecting your organization-and presents practical tactics for combating each one. Ashkenas also explains how to craft a strategy that will make simplification an ongoing driver of your company's success-no matter where you work in your organization. Abundant examples from companies like ConAgra Foods, GE, Cisco, Zurich Financial Services, and Johnson & Johnson illuminate his points. A crucial resource in today's overly complex age, Simply Effective should be required reading for everyone on your management team.

Download or read book Complexity and the Experience of Managing in Public Sector Organizations written by Ralph Stacey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-05-07 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fundamental problem of public sector governance relates to the very way of thinking it reflects; where organization is thought of as a ‘thing’, a system designed to deliver what its designers choose. This volume questions that way of thinking and takes a perspective in which organizations are complex responsive processes of relating between people. Bringing together the work of participants on the Doctor of Management program at Hertfordshire University, this book focuses on the move to marketization and managerialism, paying particular attention to human relationships and group dynamics. The contributors provide narrative accounts of their work addressing questions of management, pressures, accountability, responsiveness and traditional systems perspectives. In considering such questions in terms of their daily experience, they explore how the perspective of complex responsive processes assists them in making sense of experience and developing practice. Including an editors’ commentary which introduces and contextualizes these experiences as well as drawing out key themes for further research, this book will be of value to academics, students and practitioners looking for reflective accounts of real life experiences rather than further prescriptions of what organizational life ought to be.

Download or read book Complexity and Management written by Ralph D. Stacey and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Changing Conversations in Organizations written by Patricia Shaw and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Complexity Learning and Organizations written by Walter R.J. Baets and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-01-24 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating book argues for a new way of looking at the world and at human systems, companies or (Western) society as a whole. Well-researched and well-argued, this book skilfully guides the reader through a complex and interesting subject.

Download or read book Complexity written by Chris Mowles and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-29 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Complexity and Innovation in Organizations written by José Fonseca and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking a critical look at major perspectives on innovation, this book suggests that innovation is not a designed functional activity of a firm or an intentional process through which firms anticipate changes in conditions. Jose Fonseca proposes that the concepts behind the innovation experiences cannot be traced to any particular time, space or individual, even if one person has figured prominently. The innovative ideas in the examples considered did not occur as a direct product of a purposeful search triggered by the perception of some problem to solve, nor did they result from a sequential process that was laid out in advance. Instead, innovative ideas were a product of streams of conversations that extended over long periods of time and were characterized by critical degrees of misunderstanding and redundancy. Fonseca's book presents innovation as new meaning potentially emerging in ongoing, every-day conversations. Drawing on the theory of complex responsive process, developed in the first two volumes of this series, Fonseca presents a particular way of understanding innovation. The experiences of innovation studied in this book suggest that innovations do not start with a match between a need to be satisfied and a set of competencies and tools purposefully brought together to meet the need. On the contrary, identification of need is a consequence of success, rather than a pre-condition. The innovations studied in this book (a selection of innovation experiences from Portugal are considered) were subject to constant and never ending redefinition.

Download or read book Organize for Complexity written by Niels Pflaeging and published by Betacodex Press. This book was released on 2014-02-20 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long-awaited update for work and organizations in the knowledge age

Download or read book Conquering Complexity in Your Business How Wal Mart Toyota and Other Top Companies Are Breaking Through the Ceiling on Profits and Growth written by Michael L. George and published by McGraw Hill Professional. This book was released on 2004-07-12 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conquering the complexity in products and services can generate larger contributions to profits and growth than nearly any other business strategy Here's a guarantee: Somewhere in your business, there is too much complexity. You may also be losing out by having too little complexity where it counts - in the products, services and options you offer to customers. Either way, the impact of complexity is enormous in terms of lost profit and missed growth opportunities. Conquering Complexity in Your Business shows how to break through the ceiling on profits and growth by implementing the three rules for conquering complexity: Eliminating complexity that customers will not pay for Exploiting the complexity that customers will pay for Minimizing the costs of the complexity you offer You'll find methods and tools you need to: Identify the offering and process complexity in your business Quantify the impact of that complexity Decide which complexity you want to keep and which to eliminate Select specific approaches to eliminate different kinds of complexity This knowledge will significantly improve your ability to grow profit, revenue, and shareholder value.

Download or read book The Paradox of Control in Organizations written by Philip Streatfield and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Business leaders are expected to be 'in control' of the situation in which their businesses find themselves. But how can organizational leaders and managers control matters entirely out of their hands; such as the next action a competitor takes, or the next law a government may pass? In this book, Philip Streatfield reflects on his own experience as a manager to explore the question: who, or what is 'in control' in an organization? Adopting the perspective of complex responsive processes developed in the first two volumes of this series, the author takes self-organization and emergence as central themes in thinking about life in organizations. He focuses on the tension between spontaneously forming patterns of conversation and intentional actions arguing that the order of organizations emerges through a combination of collective interaction and individual intentions. The argument is developed by considering the day-to-day experiences of life in a large pharmaceutical organization, SmithKline Beecham. In today's organization, managers find that they have to live with the paradox of being 'in control' and 'not in control' simultaneously. It is this capacity to live with paradox, and to continue to participate creatively in spite of 'not being in control', that constitutes effective management.

Download or read book Managing Complexity in Global Organizations written by Ulrich Steger and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2007-04-04 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book delivers new IMD insights on an emerging challenge - how to deal with overwhelming complexity. Global organizations face a complex decision-making environment. On one side, diversity of cultures, customers, competitors and regulations creates complexity; on the other, competitive pressures cause expanding countries to extract more synergies across products and regions. In such a climate, a new way of thinking, acting and organizing is needed beyond the familiar ‘control’ mindset. Drawing together insights from across the expert faculty, Managing Complexity in the Global Organization presents IMD’s framework on how to understand complexity and its four key drivers (diversity; interdependence; ambiguity and flux), along with solutions on specific issues in a variety of functions, industries and markets. The focus is on providing practical solutions based on real-life examples.