Management Papers
Complexity Management Overview
In this paper, we give a high-level overview of the domain of complexity management. We can understand complexity management as the application of complexity theory to the practice of management....
Managing Complexity Short Film
A short film looking at the rise of complexity in industry and management. Complexity management is the application of complex systems theory to the management of complex organizations and...
The World of VUCA
A short video introducing the acronym VUCA. VUCA is an acronym used to describe situations or environments that engender high levels of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity....
A is for Ambiguity
Ambiguity is the quality of being open to more than one interpretation. It results in the haziness of reality; the potential for misreading and mixed meanings to conditions...
Complex Systems Key Features
In this short paper, we will be trying to give a clear outline to some of the basic concepts within complexity theory and the difference between simple linear systems and complex systems....
Emergent Organizations
This paper looks at the idea of emergence, a central topic within systems theory; how through the synergistic interaction of the individuals within the organization we get the emergence of global...
System Dynamics An Overview
System dynamics is one modeling language from systems theory that is used in the management of large complex systems in order to try and capture these local causal links and how their...
System Thinking Management
In this paper, we look at the foundations of complexity management by talking about the two different paradigms, synthesis and analysis, where analysis involves modeling something in terms of its...
Collaborative Organizations
Interdependence is a key characteristic of complex organizations of all kind and in this paper we discuss how independence and interdependence create very different dynamics, what are called in...
Self-Organizationing Teams
In this paper, we look at the process of self-organization where organization emerges out of local interactions. We firstly give some context to this research by talking about the rise of...
Network Organizations
With the rise of connectivity, we are creating new forms of organization within our economies, both on the institutional and physical level. Institutionally we are seeing the rise of networked...
Platform Organizations
Complex systems are fundamentally open systems, that is to say, that they have such a high level of connection and exchange with their environment that we can no longer define and manage them in...
Agile Project Management
Only 35 percent of projects are successful - delivered on time, on budget and with full scope of features and functions - 46 percent are challenged - the project is completed and the new...
The Nature of Wicked Problems
With developed economies reaching the end of the process of industrialization we have witnessed the rise of new forms of highly complex challenges that have moved to the forefront of social concerns....
Complex Projects
"For organizations to survive and thrive in today's global economy, they must find ways to dramatically improve the performance of large-scale projects."...
Volatility
The rapid pace of change within the global economy has been driven largely by technological development, as the rate of technological innovation has greatly increased over the past few decades...
The VUCA World
A basic premise of complexity management would be that over the past few decades with the rise of information technology, financialization, globalization, and sustainability the world has gone...
VUCA Explained
The common usage of the term VUCA began in the 1990s and derives from military vocabulary, where it refers to the experience of officers in operations. It tries to capture the uncertain and...
Complex Project Management
A project is a temporary endeavor composed of a set of tasks that are coordinated into achieving a particular result. It is designed to execute on the organization’s strategy...
Wicked Problems Explained
The concept of a wicked problem first derives from social planning and political science. Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber formally described the concept of wicked problems back in the 1970s,...
Self-Organizing Teams
Self-organization is one of the major themes within complex systems and a pervasive phenomenon in our world, complex organizations like schools of fish, ant colonies, and car traffic manage to...
Collaborative Organizations
In this video, we look at how creating collaborative organizations requires connecting people and aligning their incentives and interests with the whole organization. We talk about how through...
Platform Organizations
Here we look at open platform organizations, where a platform organization is an organization that supports the interaction or exchange between two or more other parties....
Systems Dynamics
System dynamics is one modeling language from systems theory that is used in the management of large complex systems in order to try and capture these local causal links and how their...
Complexity Management – Emergence
In this video we talk about systems thinking and the two basic approaches to management, that of reductionism and emergence. We look a the idea of obliquity and give various example of the...
Systems Thinking Management
In this video we look at systems thinking as applied to management. Systems thinking is a paradigm, a paradigm is the fundamental conceptual framework or model we use for interpreting events...
Complexity Management Introduction
In this video we will be giving a highlevel overview to the domain of complexity management all of which we will be going over in more detail in coming videos. We can understand complexity...
Networked Organizations
We are pleased to present our short film about complexity management and networked organizations with narration from Don Tapscott. The rise of networked organizations can be seen as a new form of...
Age of Disruption: Trailer
Age of Transition is a series of short films on the fundamental changes taking place within the global economy at the turn of the 21st century as it evolves into a more complex form....
Ambiguity
Ambiguity is the quality of being open to more than one interpretation. It results in the haziness of reality; the potential for misreading and mixed meanings to conditions. In relatively simple...
Uncertainty
Uncertainty is the inability to know everything fully. It is a fundamental property of complex systems primarily due to, the large number of elements, high interconnectivity, interdependence,...
Services Economy
A services economy is an economy whose primary activity it based in the tertiary or services sector. The services revolution can be described with reference to very straightforward empirical...
The Rise Of Complexity
As the Industrial Age appears to be coming to a close we are left scrabbling for new terms to define the world we live in in the 21st century and there are no shortage of candidates from the...
Peer-Production
Peer production is a way of producing goods and services that relies on self-organizing groups of individuals. In such communities, the labor of a large number of people is coordinated towards a...
Paradigm of Sustainability
The paradigm of sustainability is a new way of seeing post-industrial societies and their relationship to the natural environment, it is a recognition of the fundamentally unsustainable nature to...
Information Society
An information society is a society whose primary economic activity is the processing and exchanging of information and knowledge. It is built upon a new wave of technological development brought...
Globalization
Globalization represents the proliferation of relations on a global scale. The abstract phenomenon of globalization is one of the major processes of change in our world today. It is a social,...