Coherence in the Midst of Complexity


Book Description

A discussion on the social complexity approach, where dialogue and stories allow for the degrees of freedom needed for the opportunities of emergence to take root. The authors focus on the experience of coherence and how such experiential lessons differ from the establishment and maintenance of categories and labels.




Coherence in the Midst of Complexity


Book Description

A discussion on the social complexity approach, where dialogue and stories allow for the degrees of freedom needed for the opportunities of emergence to take root. The authors focus on the experience of coherence and how such experiential lessons differ from the establishment and maintenance of categories and labels.




Handbook of Research Methods in Complexity Science


Book Description

This comprehensive Handbook is aimed at both academic researchers and practitioners in the field of complexity science. The book’s 26 chapters, specially written by leading experts, provide in-depth coverage of research methods based on the sciences of complexity. The research methods presented are illustratively applied to practical cases and are readily accessible to researchers and decision makers alike.




Normal Family Processes, Fourth Edition


Book Description

Widely adopted, this valued course text and practitioner guide has expanded the understanding of family normality and healthy functioning in our increasingly diverse society. The editor and contributors are at the forefront of research and clinical training. They describe the challenges facing contemporary families and ways in which clinicians can promote resilience. With consideration of sociocultural and developmental influences, chapters identify key family processes that nurture and sustain strong bonds in couples; dual-earner, divorced, single-parent, remarried, adoptive, and kinship care families; gay and lesbian families; culturally diverse families; and those coping with adversity, such as trauma,ÿ poverty, and chronic illness.ÿNew to This Edition*Reflects important research advances and the changing contexts of family life.*Additional chapter topics: kinship care, family rituals, evidence-based assessment, and neurobiology.*All chapters have been fully updated.




Handbook on Complexity and Public Policy


Book Description

'Over recent years Complexity Science has revealed to us new limits to our possible knowledge and control in social, cultural and economic systems. Instead of supposing that past statistics and patterns will give us predictable outcomes for possible actions, we now know the world is, and will always be, creative and surprising. Continuous structural evolution within such systems may change the mechanisms, descriptors, problems and opportunities, often negating policy aims. We therefore need to redevelop our thinking about interventions, policies and policy making, moving perhaps to a humbler, more 'learning' approach. In this Handbook, leading thinkers in multiple domains set out these new ideas and allow us to understand how these new ideas are changing policymaking and policies in this new era.' - Peter M Allen, Cranfield University, UK




The Routledge Companion to Organizational Change


Book Description

Organizations change. They grow, they adapt, they evolve. The effects of organizational change are important, varied and complex and analyzing and understanding them is vital for students, academics and researchers in all business schools. The Routledge Companion to Organizational Change offers a comprehensive and authoritative overview of the field. The volume brings together the very best contributors not only from the field of organizational change, but also from adjacent fields, such as strategy and leadership. These contributors offer fresh and challenging insights to the mainstream themes of this discipline. Surveying the state of the discipline and introducing new, cutting-edge themes, this book is a valuable reference source for students and academics in this area.




Leadership in Complexity and Change


Book Description

If we needed a reminder that the world is complex and in constant motion, then 2020 certainly delivered. Suddenly, the inherent uncertainties and ambiguities of leadership were starkly revealed for all to see as the dynamics of complexity and change played out intensively, and very publicly, on the global stage. Leadership in Complexity and Change draws on complexity science to paint a picture of a world in constant motion, where leadership is enacted in the midst of complexity and continuous change. We must learn to engage with complexity. If not now, when? Part I of this insightful book brings complexity science to life by considering the practical challenges of complexity and its implications for leadership. Part II considers how leaders can reinvigorate existing tools and approaches with a new mindset, before offering some new tools and practices for learning informed leadership. Part III concludes by considering the person in the practice of leadership in complexity and change. Key ideas are presented through mini-cases and practical examples embedded throughout the book. This book will help executives, managers, and professionals recognise where some of the challenges come from understand why those challenges persist engage with the dynamic patterning of organisational life appreciate the scope for leadership recognise the choices that can be made choose how to manage themselves Events around the book Link to a De Gruyter Online Event in which the author Sharon Varney together with Jean Boulton, Leading authority on complexity theory and its implications for the social world, and Ian Rodwell, Head of Client Knowledge and Learning at Linklaters LLP, discuss what it means to be an effective leader in an uncertain world and that one should develop the ability to keep an eye on the emerging future: https://youtu.be/vSi732fdqbc




Accountability Research


Book Description

This book discusses (auto- )ethnographies of accountability, undertaken (in close collaboration) by a multinational group of accounting and organization theory researchers over a period of three years. The key assumption underlying the book is that accountability is inherently an identity- creating process where the study of account- making has to be done participatively, with radical openness to the one(s) being researched, as well as to their context. That openness we call ‘ethnography’. The values or assumptions inherent to the practices of account and identity-making, in a specific context, are what (auto- )ethnographies seek to describe and identify. These values and assumptions warrant critical, ethical reflection, and this is what the researchers presented here have tried to provide. The chapters in this book all are mini- studies of relatedness. The scale of examination is intimate; the reflections provided by the researchers are mainly methodological. This book is of interest to accounting and organization theory students and scholars who believe that accountability can fruitfully be studied through (auto-) ethnography. The book extends currently existing views on how accountability can be handled and discharged between researchers and their researched, when local, intimate settings are studied.




Independent Thinking in an Uncertain World


Book Description

Any effective response to an uncertain future will require independently thinking individuals working together. Human ideas and actions have led to unprecedented changes in the relationships among humans, and between humans and the Earth. Changes in the air we breathe, the water we drink and the energy we use are evidence of Nature – which has no special interest in sustaining human life – looking out for itself. Even the evolutionary context for humans has altered. Evolutionary pressures from the digital communication revolution have been added to those from natural systems. For humans to meet these challenges requires social re-organisation that is neither simple nor easy. Independent Thinking in an Uncertain World explores workable, field-tested strategies from the frontiers of creating a viable future for humans on Earth. Based on research results from hundreds of social learning workshops with communities worldwide, many of them part of Australian National University’s Local Sustainability Project, authors with diverse interests explore the gap between open-minded individual thinking and closed socially defined knowledges. The multiple dimensions of individual, social and biophysical ways of thinking are combined in ways that allow open-minded individuals to learn from one another.




Human Centered Organizational Culture


Book Description

This book is part of the Human Centered Book Trilogy, the 2021 volumes of the Routledge Human Centered Management HCM Series. HCM books are pioneering transformation from the traditional humans-as-a-resource approach of the industrial past, to the humans at the center management and organizational paradigm of the 21st century. HCM is built on talent and wellbeing of people in the workplace driving work engagement, quality standards, high performance and productivity for long-term organizational sustainability in the global VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) environment. This book was carefully crafted by recognized international human centered scholars from four continents. Although all organizations seek to have an optimal culture, unstoppable disruptions in the VUCA environment easily derail even the best efforts. Conventional assumptions of culture as a unifying organizational force are hardly defendable today. HCM maintains that culture is not only about cohesiveness and consensus but effective management of conflict and disagreements continuously testing the capacity of people to work together. This book is about organizational transformation positioning people at the center. Complementary chapters integrate as antidotes to overcome disruptions in the VUCA environment and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic affecting people and organizations worldwide. This and its two complementary titles Soft Skills for Human Centered Management and Global Sustainability and Sensible Leadership: Human Centered, Insightful and Prudent are timely readings for leaders, managers, researchers, academics, practitioners, students and the general public responsible for organizations across industries and sectors worldwide pursuing quality standards and organizational transformation to attain sustainability.