Ralph Stacey

Strategy as order emerging from chaos

Abstract Scientists are developing revolutionary new ways of understanding how nature functions. They have recently discovered that systems in nature (for example, a gas) are capable of endless variety because their dynamics are chaotic—unpredictable new patterns emerge through a process of spontaneous self organization (for example, a laser beam). Since human organizations are dynamic feedback systems just as natures systems are, these new discoveries—chaos and self organization—apply to organizations and provide managers with a fundamentally different way of understanding their strategic development. With this new frame of reference we can see that it is impossible for managers to plan or envision the long-term future of an innovative organization. Instead, they must create and discover an unfolding future, using their ability to learn together in groups and to interact politically in a spontaneous, self-organizing manner.

Emerging strategies for a chaotic environment

Abstract The possibility that any member of a system can foresee its future depends upon the dynamical properties of the system. Todays predominant management view is that ‘human agents’ in an organisation can foresee the future outcomes of their actions sufficiently well jointly to intend comprehensive organisational outcomes. This predominant view is based on the metaphor of an organisation as a machine or as an organism adapting to a given environment. The new science of complexity leads us to see organisations as complex adaptive systems. Such systems are creative when they occupy a space at the edge of disintegration, and here their specific futures cannot be foreseen. The price we pay for creativity and free will is an inability to foresee and intend future outcomes.

The challenge of human interdependence: Consequences for thinking about the day to day practice of management in organizations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to locate the dominant discourse on organizations and their management in the history of Western thought. Such location highlights the fundamental, taken‐for‐granted assumptions underlying the dominant discourse. The purpose is also to identify an alternative way of thinking about organizations, which derives from different fundamental assumptions.Design/methodology/approach – The approach adopted in the paper is to review two fundamentally different approaches in Western thought to understanding the nature of the individual human agent, the organization and the relationship between them. One approach derives from the philosophy of Kant and the other from Hegel.Findings – The exploration of different ways of thinking in this paper leads to a major undermining of the dominant discourse and overturns the most widespread prescriptions for strategic management and the management of change.Originality/value – In doing so the paper has profound significance for the concept...

Speaking of Complexity in Management Theory and Practice

This paper describes a complexity perspective on organizational life by drawing on three distinctive sources. First, we describe the way different natural scientists talk of their work in simulating complex dynamical systems. Second, we listen to the contribution of social scientists in describing the dynamics of human interaction and third, we describe group analytic practice as it illuminates the emotional, prelinguistic processes at work in the group matrix. We argue that together these insights allow us to speak of the nature of self-organization in human systems in a way that emphasizes inter subjectivity, emergence and de-centred agency in contrast to the dominant voice in much management thinking which emphasizes objectivity, control and individual agency. We then relate how the complexity perspective we describe informs our approach to organizational consulting in which we participate in networks of self-organizing everyday conversation whereby the patterned structure of organizational activity is paradoxically both sustained and changed.

Knowing and Acting in Conditions of Uncertainty: A Complexity Perspective

As practitioners working with groups and organizations, we have reflected together on what we think is happening when we find ourselves acting into situations in which the intention motivating the action as its goal is itself emerging in the very action. Along with others, we have been excited by the ideas of self-organization in the natural sciences and also theories of practice, for example, tacit and explicit knowledge, in the social sciences. Together, these promise fresh insights into the potential of organizations. However, we find ourselves diverging significantly from writers who at first sight seem to be using similar ideas, but they do so with an exclusive focus on strategic choice and intention. To illustrate what we mean, we explore the work of Nonaka and Takeuchi and how they use Polanyis idea of the participant observer. We do this to identify contradictions we see in their approach. We also discuss the implications of an alternative understanding of participation and what this indicates about what can and cannot be “managed” in the creation of new knowledge.

Governance and cooperative networks: An adaptive systems perspective

Abstract The Governance debate is usually couched in terms of the efficacy of formal structures to ensure a degree of cooperation sufficient to bring about order in human affairs. It is assumed that intended global outcomes for a system can be linked back to the local actions of agents in that system. Sections 2 and 3 argue that studies of complex adaptive systems provide reasons for questioning whether it is possible to link the local actions and intentions of agents to the global behavioral patterns of the systems of which they are a part. The governance debate therefore needs a stronger focus on the dynamics of human systems to produce emergent order. This article is about the implications for governance of the cooperative informal networks that fuction in competition with the formal systems which spawn them. Section 4 presents a case study of an international agency for technical assistance, which illustrates the points made in sections 2 and 3: people in that organization spontaneously self-organized to form a learning system out of which a new strategic direction for their organization and governance emerged. Tensions between the shadow organization and the formal organization generated new forms of behavior. This process of bounded instability—tension and conflict—is essential to break down old patterns of thought and behavior and to allow the new to emerge. This is typically how complex adaptive systems evolve. In the fight against poverty and underdevelopment, those in authority and control need to be aware of the limitations on their capacity to orchestrate local actions so as to realize their own prior global objective within their organizations in breaking down old assumptions and creating new approaches to dealing with difficult issues. Therefore, the international organizations need to support adaptiveness in action, using an informal cooperative networking approach, which implies a new type of governance. If their managers (or new ones replacing them) do not introduce new mechanisms and approaches, with a faster response time, the prospects for their organizations are not bright, and their capacity and governance is very poor.

29th S.H. Foulkes Annual Lecture: Organizational Identity: The Paradox of Continuity and Potential Transformation at the Same Time

The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Group Analysis, Vol 38/ Issue 4, 2005, Copyright The Group-Analytic Society, by SAGE Publications Ltd at : http://gaq.sagepub.com/

Complexity and the Group Matrix

This article explores the potential that the natural sciences of complexity may have for offering analogies and insights with regard to communicative processes in a group and the concept of the group matrix. Foulkess last formulation of the concept of the group matrix is reviewed, before the author draws on the thoughts of G.H. Mead on mind, self and society, and on some analogies from the complexity sciences, to suggest a formulation of the emergence of mind in communicative interaction within a group.

Complexity and the Experience of Values, Conflict and Compromise in Organizations

1. Introduction Ralph Stacey and Douglas Griffin 2. Finding Room for Values in Required Ways of Working: Values, Power, Conflict and Compromise in Aid Agencies Chris Mowles 3. Working at the Edge of Polarized Conflict in Organizations Arnie Grant 4. Compromising as Processes of Moving Forward in Organizations Iver Drabaek 5. Leadership and Self-Mastery Martin Daly 6. The Role of Propaganda in Managing Organizational Change: Ethics, Conflict and Compromise in Consulting Stephen Billing

Reflexivity, Self-Organization and Emergence in the Group Matrix

In this article the concept of the group matrix as a self-organizing process of intersubjective narrative themes that organize the experience of being together is developed, discussing how Foulkes dealt with the problem of the part and the whole, the individual and the group in three different ways without holding the paradox. It is argued that if we see the self-referential nature of the group matrix we are able to hold the paradox of it fortuning and being formed by itself at the same time; also that the notion of the group matrix as a group mind is a reification that sustains the Cartesian duality and unnecessarily mystifies the notion of matrix. When the matrix is thought of as a self- referential process that self-organizes to produce its own evolution in an emergent way we can dispense with notions of group minds and work with an experience-near concept.