Table of Contents

• 1 Strategic management in perspective: a step in the professionalisation of management
• 2 Thinking about strategy and organisational change: the implicit assumptions distinguishing one theory from another
• 3 The origins of systems thinking in the Age of Reason
• 4 Thinking in terms of strategic choice: cybernetic systems, cognitivist and humanistic psychology
• 5 Thinking in terms of organisational learning and knowledge creation: systems dynamics, cognitivist, humanistic and constructivist psychology
• 6 Thinking in terms of organisational psychodynamics: open systems and psychoanalytic perspectives
• 7 Thinking about strategy process from a systemic perspective: using a process to control a process
• 8 A review of systemic ways of thinking about strategy and organisational dynamics: key challenges for alternative ways of thinking
• 9 Extending and challenging the dominant discourse on organisations: thinking about participation and practice
• 10 The complexity sciences: the sciences of uncertainty
• 11 Systemic applications of complexity sciences to organisations: restating the dominant discourse
• 12 Responsive processes thinking: the interplay of intentions
• 13 The emergence of organisational strategy in local communicative interaction: complex responsive processes of conversation
• 14 The link between the local communicative interaction of strategising and the population-wide patterns of strategy
• 15 The emergence of organisational strategy in local communicative interaction: complex responsive processes of ideology and power relating
• 16 Different modes of articulating patterns of interaction emerging across organisations: strategy narratives and strategy models
• 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’
• 18 Complex responsive processes: implications for thinking about organisational dynamics and strategy
• Reference
• Index

About the Author

Ralph 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.