informal coalitions

Book Review: Complexity and Organizational Reality by Ralph Stacey

The world’s major financial institutions, commercial organizations and public policy bodies are peopled by scores of MBA graduates, advised by the world’s foremost consultancies, and informed by millions of research papers, books and journals on business and organizational performance. 

Despite this, the global economy plunged into a crisis that nobody planned, few predicted and none of these ‘highly tuned’ organizations was able to control.  How could this be?  And, equally significantly, how is it that most things have gone on largely ‘as normal’ in the face of these high-level failures?

These are the questions that Ralph Stacey invites us to consider in his latest book, Complexity and Organizational Reality.

I recently reviewed the book for the March 2010 edition of AMED's e-journal, Organisations and People.  Apart from the editorial, the journal is accessible only to members of AMED and to subscribers.  However, a copy of my review can be downloaded here (PDF - 89kB), for personal, non-commercial use only.

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Further details of the book can be found in the Publisher's catalogue or on Amazon UK.

More information on AMED can be found on the Association's website.

Paradox, complexity and organizational dynamics

Or, if you want to get to grips with organizations you need to use both ‘ands at the same time!

In Informal Coalitions, I argue that managers need to "embrace paradox" as part of a complexity-aware, change-leadership agenda. By that I mean that it is important for them to recognize the irresolvable tensions that exist in every aspect of organizational life. To do so opens the door to quite a different understanding of organizational dynamics from that which dominates conventional management thinking. And it further exposes the flaws in those approaches that view the search for clarity, predictability and control  as the essence of  orgnizational leadership.

However, earlier this week, a friend (@rotkapchen) related a Twitter conversation that she had had with someone who is well known in the complexity field.  It seems that they had dismissed the notion of paradox in organizations, seeing it as a "mystical concept" that is unrelated to organizational complexity.

I felt that I couldn’t let this pass without comment.  So here's why I think that paradox is a fundmental dynamic of all organizations.