Description
Book SynopsisRalph Stacey is Professor of Management at the Business School, University of Hertfordshire. He is a supervisor on the innovative Doctor of Management programme at the University of Hertfordshire and the author of a number of books and papers on complexity and organisation.
Chris Mowles is Professor of Complexity and Management at the Business School, University of Hertfordshire. He is director of, and supervisor on, the innovative Doctor of Management programme at the University of Hertfordshire and the author of two books and a number of papers on complexity and organisation.
Table of ContentsBrief contents
List of boxes xiv
List of tables xv
Preface xvi
1 Strategic management in perspective: a step in the professionalisation
of management 2
2 Thinking about strategy and organisational change: the implicit
assumptions distinguishing one theory from another 28
Part 1 Systemic ways of thinking about strategy and organisational
dynamics
3 The origins of systems thinking in the Age of Reason 48
4 Thinking in terms of strategic choice: cybernetic systems, cognitivist
and humanistic psychology 66
5 Thinking in terms of organisational learning and knowledge creation:
systems dynamics, cognitivist, humanistic and constructivist psychology 100
6 Thinking in terms of organisational psychodynamics: open systems
and psychoanalytic perspectives 128
7 Thinking about strategy process from a systemic perspective: using a
process to control a process 150
8 A review of systemic ways of thinking about strategy and organisational
dynamics: key challenges for alternative ways of thinking 176
9 Extending and challenging the dominant discourse on organisations:
thinking about participation and practice 202
Part 2 The challenge of complexity to ways of thinking
Part 3 Complex responsive processes as a way of thinking about
10 The complexity sciences: the sciences of uncertainty 238
11 Systemic applications of complexity sciences to organisations: restating
the dominant discourse 266
strategy and organisational dynamics
12 Responsive processes thinking: the interplay of intentions 302
13 The emergence of organisational strategy in local communicative
interaction: complex responsive processes of conversation 338
14 The link between the local communicative interaction of strategising
and the population-wide patterns of strategy 362
15 The emergence of organisational strategy in local communicative
interaction: complex responsive processes of ideology and power relating 388
16 Different modes of articulating patterns of interaction emerging across
organisations: strategy narratives and strategy models 416
17 Complex responsive processes of strategising: acting locally on the
basis of global goals, visions, expectations and intentions for the
‘whole’ organisation over the ‘long-term future’ 456
18 Complex responsive processes: implications for thinking about
organisational dynamics and strategy 486
References 519
Index 545
