Complexity, Organizations and Change: An Essential Introduction

Complexity science has seriously challenged long-held views in the scientific community about how the world works. These ideas, particularly about the living world, also have radical and profound implications for organizations and society as a whole.

Complexity, Organizations and Change, available in paperback for the first time, describes and considers ideas and insights from complexity science and examines their use in organizations, especially in bringing about major organizational change. This key book explores how organizations, their design, the way they operate and, importantly, the people who co-create them, are thought of.

Explaining the history and development of complexity science in an accessible way for the non-scientific reader, this outstanding book describes key concepts and their use in theory and practice. Illustrated with real-life examples from organizations in the UK, Europe and the USA, the book includes an in-depth case study of an organization which used complexity principles as part of a strategic change intervention. From this, useful models for introducing a complexity-based change process are derived.

Complexity, Organizations and Change will appeal to academics, researchers and advanced students who are interested in complexity science and what it means for strategy, organization and management theory and organizational change.

Elizabeth McMillan is currently a Research Fellow at the Open University where she co-founded the Complexity Science Research Centre. She is also a co-founder and a Director of the UK Complexity Society and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, with many years experience as a senior manager.