CHAOS AND COMPLEXITY THEORY IN MANAGEMENT: AN EXPLORATION FROM A CRITICAL SYSTEMS THINKING PERSPECTIVE

摘要

This paper presents the theoretical and practical findings emerging from an exploratory study of Chaos and Complexity Theory (C&CT) as an alternative approach to propitiate new understandings about the nature of management in organisations. They show that C&CT is not theoretically coherent enough to be applied in practice. The paper involves a theoretical and a practical part. The theoretical exploration is conducted from a Critical Systems Thinking (CST) perspective. It involves a theoretical inquiry particularly of Stacey's account of C&CT, presented in: Complexity and Creativity in Organisations. This is presently considered to be one of the fullest and probably the most widely read management account on the subject. Jackson's framework of CST, used to interrogate systems approaches constitutes the selected approach to conduct this theoretical exploration. From this theoretical exploration a series of findings were produced. They reveal incoherencies, which were further explored through the findings emerging from the exploration at the practical level. The practical exploration was conducted in the Humberside Training and Enterprise Council (H-TEC), which introduced C&CT ideas as part of its process of becoming a learning organisation. Based on these findings, this paper thus presents a critique and suggests ways forward. In order to do this, the research model used to conduct the exploratory study supporting this critique is described first. This sets the scene to give an account of the findings, that is the theoretical incoherencies and their manifestations in the practice. The paper concludes with a reflection about the implications of the theoretical incoherencies, indicating what C&CT can deliver and suggesting how it can be used in the practice.