Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics : The Challenge of Complexity

Renowned for its unconventional thinking, Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics continues to be a refreshing alternative for students and lecturers of strategic management specifically looking for ‘something different’. Stacey challenges the conceptual orthodoxy of planned strategy, focusing instead on the influence of more complex and unstable forces in the development of strategy. 

This book explores and challenges ways of thinking about strategy and organisational dynamics and raises questions about systemic and responsive processes, utilising insights from the complexity sciences. The purpose of this book is to assist people to make sense of their own experience of life in organisations, to explore their own thinking and to pay attention to and so what they do.

Ideal for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate study, this critically detailed account deals with up-to-the minute issues, raising the challenge of complexity within practice and theory.  As such it remains unique amongst strategic management text books.

 ‘Stacey's defining strength is his critical approach which challenges students to make sense of contested knowledge. His passionate interest in the subject is reflected in the dynamic and exciting development of the text and communicated through a remarkably clear writing style.’

Steve Hills, Sheffield Hallam University

‘Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics is a landmark academic text. As well as continuing to offer a well-argued critique of conventional management wisdom, it provides a unique and authoritative treatise on what is a truly distinctive application of the complexity sciences to organizational leadership and change.’

Chris Rodgers, organizational consultant and author of Informal Coalitions

Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics remains unique amongst strategic management textbooks by taking a refreshingly alternative look at the subject. Stacey challenges the conceptual orthodoxy of planned strategy, focusing instead on the influence of more complex and unstable forces in the development of strategy. 

Ideal for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate study, this critically detailed account deals with current issues, raising the challenge of complexity within practice and theory.  

New to this edition:

• A new introduction outlining the book’s unique approach and remit.

·        A brand new chapter on dominant discourse and what evidence there is for its prescriptions.

·        A brand new chapter which blends second order systems thinking and communities of practice with new material on social constructionist approaches and labour process theory.

• A focus on what strategic management might mean from the perspective of complex responsive processes.

Ralph Stacey is Professor of Management at the Business School, University of Hertfordshire. He is a supervisor on the innovative Doctor of Management programme at the University of Hertfordshire and author of a number of books and papers on complexity and organisation.