Call for papers: Complexity, Leadership and Change Processes

Call for papers: Complexity, Leadership and Change Processes

A special issue of International Journal of Learning and Change

This special issue is dedicated to exploring the importance of leadership in relation to complexity phenomena and change processes. In particular, we invite papers exploring the experience of leading and how traditional views of leadership qualities and behaviour must respond to a new highly dynamic, global, and knowledge based economy. We focus attention on leadership as social process meaning that the action of leading is of crucial interest. What are leaders doing when they are leading? What do they experience when trying to influence others? What are their responses to events and developments that are not planned and expected? How do they deal with the numbers of paradoxes arising in organisations; for instance, the paradoxes of stability and change, production and innovation, control and delegating decision power, ethics and moral?

We are interested in the question of what roles of the leader are appropriate under unpredictable demands of knowledge development, creativity, innovation and in new global contexts. Important considerations are those of identity and diversity, power and communication. In relation to this, this Special Issue invites different and original ideas concerning the phenomena of complexity, such as self-organisation, paradox, emergence and human interaction dynamics, both from what has come to be known as the complexity approaches to organisational studies and from other areas dealing with complexity.

We invite submissions which address both theoretical and empirical aspects of complexity, leadership and change processes. Papers constructed to move theoretical and methodological thinking are particularly encouraged. Studies using narrative accounts of own experience, action oriented consultative research and ethnographical approaches are welcomed together with other forms of case studies.

We are interested in papers covering, but not limited to, the following areas, with special emphasis on complexity approaches and the experience of leading:

• Paradigm shifts in thinking about leadership and change processes in complex organisations
• Advances in organisational complexity theory with respect to leadership and change processes
• Leadership as social process
• The experience of participative and explorative attitudes in the performance of leadership
• Leadership in knowledge intensive organisations, research projects and innovation processes
• Leadership processes and ethics in complex organisational settings
• Effects of leadership processes in organisational change programs
• Leadership processes and communication
• The nature of control in leading
• Power and conflict in leadership processes
• The emergence and importance of identity, diversity and values in the actions of leading
• Leader's response to organisational culture, continuity and change
• New perspectives on knowledge creation and learning in the processes of leading
• The experience of leading in multicultural and global contexts

Important Dates
Authors should send a 150 word abstract as an e-mail attachment to the Guest Editor (stig.johannessen@samfunn.ntnu.no) by: 15 December 2007

Please indicate subject: 'Call for papers – Abstract'. All abstracts must be submitted as Microsoft Word documents, Times New Roman 12, single space. They must contain on the first page a title, authors' names, postal addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, and keywords. Full papers are most welcome and will be considered in the review process. Abstracts will be subject to a blind review.

Schedule

Full paper due: 1 March 2008
Notification of acceptance: 30 April 2008
Final version of paper due: 30 June 2008