Managing the Unknowable: Strategic Boundaries Between Order and Chaos in Organizations / Edition 1

by Ralph D. Stacey

Overview

It's What You Don't Know That Counts

Discover the important roles chance and uncertainty play insuccessful strategic planning. In this ingenious work, author RalphD. Stacey shows managers how their companies can benefit from theunexpected developments that impact their business and how they canprepare to creatively leverage the opportunities such developmentspresent. He explains how an appreciation of conflict and teamdialogue can help managers discover and build on the innate energyof their organizations. And he illustrates his theories withreal-world examples from Sony, Kodak, Federal Express and othernoted market innovators.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781555424633
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	11/11/1992
Series:	Jossey-Bass Management Series
Edition description:	1st Edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.24(w) x 9.72(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Ralph Douglas Stacey is a British organizational theorist and Professor of Management at Hertfordshire Business School, University of Hertfordshire, in the UK and one of the pioneers of enquiring into the implications of the natural sciences of complexity for understanding human organisations and their management.

Table of Contents

Preface.

The Author.

New Mind-Sets for Managing the Future.

The Failure of Conventional Management: Using Orderly Strategies ina Disorderly World.

Stable Instability: Creating the Far-from-EquillibiumOrganization.

Creativity and Continuous Chaos: Discovering the Undiscovered inComplex Organizations.

Strategic Thinking and Continuous Contention: Confronting anOpen-Anded Future.

Strategic Agenda: Deciphering the Patterns in Goals andActions.

Strategic Control: Managing the Boundary Between Plans andChange.

Participation, Heirarchy, and Stability: Finding the MiddleGround.

Steps Toward Managing an Unkowable Future.

Note.

Index.

Editorial Reviews

Stacey (strategic management, U. of Herefordshire, England) shows how the principles of chaos science not only can, but necessarily do, affect the management of business organizations. He explains how managers can use the daily chaotic interactions within a company, the unavoidable uncertainties and instabilities, to increase efficiency and competitiveness; and presents case studies from Sony, Kodak, Federal Express, and other corporate giants. Assumes no knowledge of how management, or any other nonlinear dynamical system, was thought to work before chaos. Published in Europe as Managing Chaos: no date noted. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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