10 September 2014

Call for papers: "Management and Complexity"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Business and Globalisation.

More and more managers find that organisational reality develops independently of their efforts. More planning and control doesn’t seem to be the answer to this. Since the beginning of this millennium a stream of thinking about this question has emerged (as yet in small academic circles), in which the findings of complexity sciences are used as an analogy for looking at organisations: the so-called ‘complex responsive processes perspective’.
 
From this perspective, organisations are not seen as systems but as ongoing local interactions between people, leading to global patterns without any plan or blueprint. The main question for managers becomes then not ‘What can I do make the organisation become what I want it to become?’ but ‘What am I doing and experiencing while this organisation is becoming what it becomes?’.
 
This special issue invites submissions from authors who have undergone this (more or less radical) change in their thinking and who want to share their experiences on a practical as well as theoretical level.
 
Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
  • What theory of action is implied by the complexity perspective on organisations?
  • How can the role of a business consultant be reframed from a complexity perspective?
  • The important role of writing in organisations
  • Learning to become a manager while becoming a manager
  • How can academic research in organisations be performed when there is no outside stance?
  • What are the methodological implications of a complexity perspective on organisations?
  • How unplanned change emerges while implementing a multi-project management system

Important Dates
Submission of manuscripts: 1 February, 2015
Notification to authors: 1 April, 2015
Final versions due: 1 June, 2015

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