Ralph Stacey's Page
http://complexityandmanagement.wordpress.com/ BK Expert Community Member Author
Ralph Stacey is a professor of management at the Business School of the University Hertfordshire and also a visiting lecturer at universities in Sweden, the Netherlands, and Malta. He is an active consultant to top management teams in major companies and the author of a several books on...
Complexity and Creativity in Organizations is the most comprehensive and thorough book yet written on how the new science...
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Working in groups : what practical difference does it make to take complexity seriously?
Complexity and Management Conference 2017 – 2nd– 4th June: Roffey Park Management Centre Human beings are born into groups and spend most of their working lives participating in them. Groups can be creative and improvisational, transforming who we think we are, and they may also be destructive ...
April 19, 2017
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
What does it mean to ‘design’ complex organizations?
In this post I am curious about a set of approaches which seem to have family resemblances with, and claim to be at least partly based on, insights from the complexity sciences similar to ones taken up and developed on this blog. As with the last post I try to understand the methods in their ow...
April 19, 2017
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Complex responsive processes in Sydney, Dec 12/16 2016
Chris Mowles is visiting Australia the week beginning 12th December and will be running a two day intensive workshop and a breakfast meeting with 10000hours . The two day workshop is entitled: LEADING IN UNCERTAINTY – 13/14th December The workshop is suitable for experienced leaders, managers...
April 19, 2017
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
After a series of workshops in Australia a colleague observed to me that the perspective of complex responsive processes is very good at taking apart the dominant discourse on management. It does so systematically and methodically, and although making no claims to be the only school of thought ...
April 19, 2017
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Complexity and Management Conference 2-4th June 2017
Working in groups: what practical difference does it make to take complexity seriously? One day introductory workshop on complexity and management Friday 2nd June. 2017Complexity and Management Conference 2-4th June 2017. The booking page is now live and can be found by clicking this link. Th...
April 19, 2017
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Uncontrollable flatulence: narrative argument as strategy-making
In the following clip from the film Crash (2004) two employees negotiate strategy. The LAPD has a strategy to stamp out racism, but a rookie police officer (Ryan Phillipe) has found himself sharing a police car with someone (Mat Dillon) whose behaviour towards black people makes him feel very ...
April 19, 2017
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Details of the Complexity and Management workshop, Friday 2nd June 2017
The participants who attend the annual Complexity and Management conference experience the same dynamics as members of any other group, even if it’s a temporary group. For example, one repeating theme at the conference is the established/outsider dynamic of those who have been through the Docto...
April 19, 2017
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Complexity and Management Conference 2nd-4th June – Agenda
What are the pressures in contemporary life which make it difficult to be in groups? A couple of weeks ago I worked with a group of senior managers from a British university. They told me about the changes they had noticed in the undergraduate student population over the last decade or so, whic...
April 19, 2017
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Can we ever be clear with each other?
Over the past couple of months I have come across Gervase Bushe’s Clear Leadership method being promoted by a number of OD practitioners and institutions, so I thought it would be worth spending a blog post discussing the ideas that he puts forward and to offer a critique from the perspective o...
September 30, 2016
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Emotions in group life – insights from political turmoil in the UK
For those readers of this blog outside the UK, and who may have a less detailed understanding of what has been happening here, contemporary British politics offers some perfect examples of individual and group behaviour at the extreme. This drama could be of great interest to organizational sch...
July 27, 2016
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
The entrepreneurial self and the social self: reflections on the 2016 CMC
Here are a series of articles which illustrate the way in which business vocabulary has entered into our way of talking about ourselves and our relationships: This is from Forbes magazine and suggests you treat yourself as a product and a brand. This is from the Wall St Journal and shows a fam...
July 12, 2016
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Last few places remaining – Complexity and Management Conference June 10-12th 2016
What practical difference does it make to take every day organizational experience seriously? What ways of working may help better illuminate how we co-operate and compete to get things done? How helpful is it to understand the patterning of human interaction as complex responsive processes of ...
May 20, 2016
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Learning to talk to one another – politics and practical judgement
I went to hear Prof Colin Crouch promote his new book The Knowledge Corrupters: Hidden Consequences of the Financial Takeover of Public Life at the Institute for Government. Crouch’s thesis is that the financialisation of public institutions reduces the meaning of what they do to a limited numb...
April 12, 2016
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Taking complexity seriously – what difference does it make in organisations?
Complexity and Management Conference June 10-12th 2016 This is a reminder that there is only one month to go to claim your early bird discount for this year’s conference. You can book your place at the conference here: http://tinyurl.com/hougy85 At the conference we will be commemorating the wo...
April 12, 2016
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Complexity and Management Conference 10-12th June 2016 – booking now open
‘What Mead is proposing is a different way of thinking about everyday social interaction, not as observers of experience but rather as participants in experience, the nature of which is self-organising sense-making. He is drawing attention to what we are doing every day in all our actions and a...
January 15, 2016
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Complexity and Management Conference 2016 – 10-12th June: Hertfordshire Business School
Complexity and Management Conference 2016 – 10-12th June: Hertfordshire Business School Taking complexity seriously – what difference does it make in organisations? Venue: Roffey Park Management Centre A familiar question from many managers who respond to our presentations on the relevance of ...
December 4, 2015
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Complex responsive processes in Denmark
The following post is written by Karina Solsø Iversen, who is a senior consultant at Attractor in Denmark and a student on the Doctor of Management programme at the University of Hertfordshire. Danish book on complex responsive processes It is a Friday night at7.30. The sun is shining outside i...
October 7, 2015
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics – 7th Edition
New edition published this month: the revised and updated version of Ralph’s textbook including sections on process organisation studies, new organisational examples and more up-to-date references.
October 7, 2015
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Politics, impartiality, reflexivity – reflections on the 2015 Complexity and Management Conference
I promised to write up my presentation from the 2015 Complexity and Management Conference, which was entitled Exploring our Experience of Every Day Politics in Organizations. My task was to pull out a few themes which struck me, and to respond to the keynotes of Svend Brinkmann and Patricia Sha...
July 29, 2015
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Complexity and Management Conference June 2015 – themes and agenda
At the Complexity and Management Conference this weekend (5th-7th June at Roffey Park) we will be discussing a variety of themes concerning power and politics in organisations. As a small contribution to the discussion I offer the following: There are two managerial tendencies in contemporar...
June 2, 2015
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Early Bird Discount Ends April 30th
The Complexity and Management Conference 5-7th June 2015 Early Bird Discount ends 30th April 2015. The conference title is: Exploring our experience of everyday politics in organisations. The key note speakers are Prof Svend Brinkmann and Prof Patricia Shaw. The booking page can be foun...
April 15, 2015
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Here are three new publications from DMan faculty members published this month: Commons and Lords: a Short Anthropology of Parliament – Emma Crewe The House of Commons: an Anthropology of MPs at Work – Emma Crewe Managing in Uncertainty: Complexity and the Paradoxes of Everyday Organisational L...
April 3, 2015
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Complexity and Management Conference 5th-7th June 2015
This is just to remind you that if you book your place for the Complexity and Management Conference June 5-7th before the end of April you get a £50 early-bird discount. The link to go to the university booking page is here: http://tinyurl.com/k7t2rd4 The theme for the conference is: Explori...
March 13, 2015
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Complexity and Management Conference, 6-8th June 2014
Only one week to go before the close of the early bird rate for this year’s Complexity and Management Conference on organisational culture. Book here. Key note speaker: Prof Ralph Stacey Good conversation, good food, great venue.
March 6, 2015
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Leadership and the ‘vision thing’
Roberto Martinez, manager of Everton football club which did very well in the Premier League in the UK this season, says that he always had a vision that the team would play in the European Champions League, for which his team has now qualified. Meanwhile political pundits, and sometimes member...
March 6, 2015
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Previous blogs have outlined key features of the theory of complex responsive processes of relating between members of organisations as a way of making more sense of what we actually do in our everyday lives in those organisations. This theory makes a number of claims. The first is that change ...
March 6, 2015
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Predictability and Organisations
Yesterday, I was struck by an article in the Business Section of the Sunday Times with this heading: Directors told to predict future under new code. That I should be struck by such a heading is, of course, hardly surprising since I have been publishing books and papers for the last 24 years ar...
March 6, 2015
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Thinking as a subversive activity
While a number of posts on this blog have been dedicated to calling in to question the claims of contemporary management theory to enable managers to predict the future, there can be no doubt that much of it is dedicated to controlling employees. Or rather, there are always new developments in ...
March 6, 2015
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Complexity and Management Conference 5-7th June 2015
Exploring our experience of everyday politics in organisations. How do we experience power and politics in contemporary organisations? How do we negotiate conflict and compromise? There are always possibilities in the hurly burly of everyday life for us to act differently despite the fact tha...
March 6, 2015
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Ralph Stacey posted a blog post
Against Common Sense: managing amid the paradoxes of everyday organisational life
The following is the text of a talk given by Chris Mowles at the University of Hertfordshire on Friday Feb 13th as part of the MBA Masterclass series. In this talk I try to cover four things: I address why I think there is a problem with much contemporary management theory and explain why I thi...
March 6, 2015
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Ralph Stacey is now a member of Berrett-Koehler Community
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