Understanding Complexity in Organizations

Understanding Complexity in Organizations PDF Author: Timothy Ludwig
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317986946
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
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.

Understanding Complexity in Organizations

Understanding Complexity in Organizations PDF Author: Timothy Ludwig
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317986946
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 263

Get Book

Book Description
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.

Understanding Complexity in Organizations

Understanding Complexity in Organizations PDF Author: Timothy Ludwig
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317986938
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
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.

Complexity in Organizations

Complexity in Organizations PDF Author: Stig O. Johannessen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000590836
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description
Written with pace and clarity, this book is a comprehensive and compact overview and introduction to the research landscape of complexity in organizations. In addition to conveying a gripping history of how complexity has influenced organizational ideas, theories, and practices throughout the 20th century and into our present age, the book sheds light on how ground-breaking ideas in chaos and complexity research have emerged and challenged the very foundations of science into a changed vision of nature, society, and human organizations. As well as being an exciting investigation into complexity research in organizations, the book shows how, in the past, researchers who were immersed in the power politics of their day grappled with the theme of complexity in their quest to understand the dynamics of organization in nature and society. By welding fundamental theoretical themes and practical implications into the political and social contexts in which they emerged, this overview provides both depth and breadth to the history, as well as the future, of studies of complexity in organized activity. The book is a lucid and essential study of a topic that will be of interest to scholars, researchers, and students in the fields of business and management, especially those with an interest in the ways that complexity affects and transforms organizations.

Complexity and Organizational Reality

Complexity and Organizational Reality PDF Author: Ralph D. Stacey
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135188661
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
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.

The Effective Organization

The Effective Organization PDF Author: Dennis Tafoya
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136959807
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Project Overview: What the Book’s About "It may not be possible to predict when an organization will confront an operation-challenging event but it is possible to predict the organization's capacity to manage the event when it emerges." (Introduction to Chapter Nine) Performance is the reason why organizations exist. Through performance organizations meet the needs of internal and external stakeholders as defined by their mission, goals and objectives. This is true for all organizations. If a retailer won't stock goods a customer wants, the customer will shop elsewhere. If a religious organization does not meet the needs of its followers, they leave. If a cult doesn't meet the needs of its memberships they seek their goal fulfillment elsewhere. If a manufacturing center can't produce goods that meet customer standards, the customer will reject it. Complexity theory, a tool used to examine the nature of dynamic systems like organizations, can contribute to our understanding of organizations and ways to improve their performance. The models and material outlined in the book illustrate ways competency and organizational programs, processes and procedures are used to manage emerging risks, threats and vulnerabilities that challenge today's organizations. Collectively this information enables the identification of individual organization profiles as a way to advance our understanding of an important theory, complexity, in an applied setting -- organizations. Unique typologies describing organizations (four types), events that effect organizations (six types) and the fundamental structure for organizations are presented to enable the forecasting of an organization's capacity to manage different events as they emerge and how behavior organizes around these events. Academicians studying organizations and practitioners interested in improving them can use this information to facilitate baseline, descriptive thinking and analysis or more sophisticated examinations aimed at understanding the dynamic nature of organizations as fully functioning systems. At the heart of the effort is the examination of what it takes to get the performance needed to achieve a vision or mission and why, despite planning, training and evaluation, few organizations can guarantee or maintain desired levels of performance when faced with events, routine to extreme, that shape their existence. Particular emphasis is placed on understanding how knowledge, evaluation, information and, communication management practices need to be tailored to fit particular organizations rather than treated as a "one size fits all" approach. These are not limited, theoretical discussions but are presented as ways to efficiently talk about an individual organization's profile or competencies within a class of, or in contrast to, other organizations.

Complexity and Management

Complexity and Management PDF Author: Ralph D. Stacey
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415247610
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
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.

Complexity, Organizations and Change

Complexity, Organizations and Change PDF Author: Elizabeth McMillan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134379862
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Available in paperback for the first time, this book describes and considers ideas and insights from complexity science, and examines their use in organizations, especially in bringing about major organizational change.

The Interaction of Complexity and Management

The Interaction of Complexity and Management PDF Author: Michael R. Lissack
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313013942
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
What is complexity science? What is management? And how are the two linked? The potential of complexity science in the fields of management and organization studies has been explored before, yet there is little agreement on what complexity science truly is. Lissack and Rivkin, along with a panel of distinguished academics and executives, identify critical topics in the study of complexity science. They reveal complexity science to be a process, one seeking and understanding of the systems we inhabit, and ways of applying that understanding to the management of organizations. Complexity science is not a management fad, and the authors do not treat it as such. Instead, they offer useful and fascinating viewpoints on how work is managed in an age of business uncertainty, and how it can be more successfully managed with the aid of this rapidly evolving new field of science. Their multidisciplinary book combines systems theory, statistical modeling, and individual and organizational learning in an innovative new context. The volume takes a pragmatic approach: if it works, it's right. And complexity science, say the authors, work extremely well. This book is an important resource for upper level executives, specialists in organizational behavior, and their colleagues in the academic community.

Six Simple Rules

Six Simple Rules PDF Author: Yves Morieux
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
ISBN: 1422190560
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
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.

Organize for Complexity

Organize for Complexity PDF Author: Niels Pflaeging
Publisher: Betacodex Press
ISBN: 9780991537600
Category : Complex organizations
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The long-awaited update for work and organizations in the knowledge age