Managing in uncertainty: complexity and the paradoxes of everyday organizational life

Abstract

"The reality of everyday organizational life is that it is filled with uncertainty, contradictions and paradoxes, yet managers are expected to bring about the impossible: to transform themselves and their colleagues, to design different cultures, to choose the values for their organization, to be innovative, to control conflict and to have inspiring visions. Whilst managers will have had lots of experiences of being in charge, they may not always be in control. So how might we frame a much more realistic account of what's possible for managers to achieve? Many managers are implicitly aware of their messy reality, but they rarely spend much time reflecting on what it is that they are actually doing. Drawing on insights from the complexity sciences, process sociology and pragmatic philosophy, Chris Mowles directly engages with some principal contradictions of organizational life concerning innovation, culture change, conflict and leadership. Mowles argues that if managers began by understanding organizational life as inherently uncertain, and interactions between people as complex and often paradoxical, they would start paying more attention to different things. Managing in Uncertainty will be of interest to students, researchers and practitioners looking at management and organizational studies from a critical perspective"--