The past decade has seen
increasing focus on the importance of information and knowledge in economic and social
processes, the so-called 'knowledge economy'. This is reflected in the popularity amongst
practicing managers and organizational theorists of notions of learning, sense-making,
knowledge creation, knowledge management and intellectual capital in organizations and
more recently, of emotional intelligence as an important management skill.
Complex Responsive Processes
in Organizations:
*Argues that the information
processing view of knowledge creation held by systems thinkers is no longer tenable
*Develops the alternative
perspective of Complex Responsive Processes of relating, drawing on the complexity
sciences as a source for analogies with human action.
*Places self-organizing
interaction at the centre of the knowledge creating process in organizations
* Learning and knowledge
creation are seen as qualitative processes of power relating that are emotional as well as
intellectual, creative as well as destructive, enabling as well as constraining.
* Questions the belief that
organizational knowledge is essentially codified and centralised.
* Understands organizational
knowledge to be located in the relationships between people in an organization and to
reflect the qualities of those relationships.
Series Information:
Complexity and Emergence in
Organizations
Author Biography:
Ralph Stacey is Professor of
Management and Director of the Complexity and Management Centre at the University of
Hertfordshire, and a member of the Institute of Group Analysis. He is also consultant to
managers at many levels accross a range of organizations and the author of a number of
books and articles on strategy and complexity theory in management
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