Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics, Fourth Edition - Softcover

Stacey, Ralph D.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0273658980 ISBN 13: 9780273658986

Publisher: Pearson, 2003

Synopsis

In the fourth edition of this successful text, Ralph Stacey continues to question the view that organisations operate and succeed in relatively stable environments. He argues that in order to succeed in uncertainty and continual change, organisations need to create new perspectives and learn from the chaos within which they operate.

This edition continues to focus on this radically different approach to strategic management. The central tenets of this approach have to do with unpredictability and the limitations of control, and therefore it argues against the rational models of planning and control covered in other strategy textbooks. This is done by emphasising the importance of narrative, conversation and learning from one's own experience as the central means by which we can gain understanding and knowledge of strategy in organisations.

About this title

About the Author

Ralph Stacey is Professor of Management at the Business School, University of Hertfordshire. He is the Director of the Complexity and Management Centre at the University of Hertfordshire and author of a number of books and papers on complexity and organisations: The Chaos Frontier (1991); Managing the Unknowable (1992); Complexity and Creativity in Organizations (1996); Complexity and Management: fad or radical challenge to systems thinking? (with Griffin & Shaw, 2000); Complex Responsive Processes in Organizations: learning and knowledge creation (2001): He consults to management groups in organisations and is also a member of the Institute of Group Analysis.

From the Back Cover

In the fourth edition of this successful text, Ralph Stacey continues to focus on a radically different approach to strategic management. The central tenets of this approach are concerned with unpredictability and the limitations of control, and argue against the rational models of planning and control covered in other strategy textbooks. This is done by emphasising the importance of narrative, conversation and learning from one's own experience as the central means by which we can gain understanding and knowledge of strategy in organisations.

New to this edition:

• Sharper distinction between systemic and process thinking with new chapters on the philosophical origins of systems and process thinking, second order and critical systems thinking.
• New material on theory of complex responsive processes, particularly to do with control, leadership and ethics.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Most books on organisational strategy seek to account for superior performance in organisations and they prescribe methods by which to secure competitive advantage as the basis of improved performance. The tendency is to reify the organisation and regard it as a system. There is also a tendency to reify an organisation's strategy, defining that strategy as the direction of the whole organisation's movement into the future. The concern is then with identifying the forces operating on that direction so that the forces may be manipulated by managers to secure their desired outcome for their organisation's future.

This book differs from those just mentioned. Instead of being concerned with superior performance, it focuses on a prior concern, which is the matter of how we are thinking about organisations and strategy. For example, why do we think that an organisation is a system and what are the consequences of doing so? What view of human psychology is implicit in prescribing measures that managers should take to select the direction of an organisation's movement into the future? This book differs from many others in seeking to locate current thinking about strategy in the history of Western thought and thereby identify taken-for-granted assumptions about human psychology and human interaction. It seeks to challenge thinking rather than describe the current state of thinking about strategy and organisational dynamics.

The challenge to current ways of thinking is presented in the contrasts that this book draws between systemic and process ways of thinking about strategy and organisational dynamics. While the systemic perspective is concerned with improvement and movement to a future destination, process thinking is concerned with complex responsive processes of human relating in which strategies emerge. From this perspective, strategy is defined as the emergence of organisational and individual identities so that the concern is with how organisations come to be what they are and how those identities will continue to evolve. From a process perspective, the question of performance improvement has to do with more authentic participation in processes of communicative interaction, power relating and the creation of knowledge and meaning.

The challenge to ways of thinking presented in this book also comes in the form of insights from the complexity sciences. The book will explore the differences for organisational thinking between a way of interpreting these insights in systemic terms and a way of interpreting them in process terms.

In this fourth edition I have made a number of changes. The number of chapters on the theory of strategic choice has been reduced because that theory is extensively covered in a number of other books. The intention here is not to provide a detailed coverage of the theory but to tease out the way of thinking it reflects. This edition makes a sharper distinction between systemic and process thinking than the third edition did, particularly by including new chapters on the philosophical origins of systems and process thinking and by adding new chapters on second-order and critical system thinking. New material has also been included on the theory of complex responsive processes, particularly to do with control, leadership and ethics.

The purpose of this book is to assist people to make sense of their own experience of life in organisations. For this reason the case studies included in the third edition have been removed because they tend to be carefully structured accounts of someone else's organisational experience, usually written with some point in mind, which the reader is supposed to see. This is not consistent with the purpose of assisting readers to make sense of their own experience. So, instead of case studies, there are seven management narratives, that is, personal accounts of the experience of life in organisations. Readers are invited to think about the sense they make of this experience. The main point, however, remains for readers to use the material in this book to make sense of their own experience.

I am grateful to users of previous editions who have made helpful comments and to my colleagues and other participants in the MA/Doctor of Management programme on organisational change at the University of Hertfordshire (in association with the Institute of Group Analysis).

Ralph Stacey
London
May 2002 Supplements

Online support materials for students and lecturers including additional references and useful weblinks, and a commentary on the text for lecturers are available at booksites/stacey.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pearson
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0273658980
• ISBN 13: 9780273658986
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 4
• Number of pages: 486