importance of complexity and chaos theories, as a philosophy of thinking with the constructs of the dynamic organizational theory

The Importance of Science /Philosophy of Complexity in Dynamic Organisational Theory

An Emerging Paradigm in Management Thinking

The world we live in keeps on changing at an intense rate . This rate of change challenges our individual ability to keep up with it Organisations are forced to change more rapidly and radically than ever in to survive and outwit the competition . The organisations we work in are changing in terms of their strategies , their structures their systems , their boundaries as well as their expectations of their staff and their managers . The quantum

of change in organisations has been on a steady rise over the past two to three decades , and this rate of change is set to accelerate at dizzying pace . To see that the pace of change does not outpace our capacity to deal with it , leading change becomes a paramount concern for the managers and all the enterprising individuals in general within an organisation . The management guru John Kotter asserts the overwhelming importance of corporate adaptability . A need for change is not always predictable , and in the modern fast-paced world , it will be necessary for organisations to remain flexible and always on high alert to readily implement change

Kotter (1996 ) regrets that many people are still clinging to the twentieth-century career and growth model ' He observes

A strategy of embracing the past will probably become increasingly ineffective over the next few decades . Better for most of us to start learning now how to cope with change

It is in the context of continual change , growth and adaptation that the science of complexity ' becomes important . In terms of what they offer to a holistic theory of change , among other things , the ideas of chaos and complexity have massive implications for modern management . To a large extent , the dominant paradigms in systems thinking to management have been characterised by the stable equilibrium approach . They have emphasised efficiency , effectiveness , and control to the exclusion of everything else . Even when reference to dis , unpredictability chance , dialectical evolution , etc , is made , there has been a lack of as coherent a theoretical framework within which these "erratic " aspects of organisation can be studied , understood , and integrated into the broader organisational philosophy . Such a framework is supplied by the complexity theory , which is being increasingly regarded as a new paradigm of thought in business management . Since the 1970s and 1980s there has been a slow , growing alignment of complexity theory with business and management practices (Gharajedaghi 1999

Complexity theory is fundamental in allowing us to move away from bureaucracy to the more fluid , organic , relationship-centered organisational structures that are more appropriate to the ethos of the modern generation . Bureaucracy is past-oriented in many ways , and innovation is thoroughly future-oriented . At its very root , the entrepreneurial process of innovation and change is at odds with the administrative process of ensuring repetitions of the past . Structures and practices that may work well for the perpetuation of the known are not generally conducive to the process of innovation...