Complexity and Creativity in Organizations - Hardcover

by Ralph Stacey (Author)

This text seeks to demonstrate what leadership means in an environment where complete control is not possible. Explaining what self-organization means in human systems, it provides a model of the learning organization that takes into account the real-life anxieties that are involved.

Back Jacket

Combining insights from the new science of complexity with insights from psychoanalysis, Stacey posits that repressing the anxiety caused by the unstable, ever-changing nature of today's business world also represses the creative impulses - the ""spaces for novelty"" - that allow members of a workforce to produce their best work. Using the science of complexity as a starting point, he pulls together many insights into behavior and organizational functioning that currently lie at the edges of research and practice. This book invites people to explore what the new science might mean for understanding life in organizations, and shows how it can be used as a framework for understanding the processes that produce emergence rather than intentional strategies. Stacey presents an entirely new perspective on what it means for an organization to learn.