Good evening from UK.

I am researching for an MSC assignment entitled " All Phases and Aspects of Strategic management are too complex to manage". Discuss.  This is a wide subject and the wide ranging literature on the subject makes it complex from the outset.  I only have 3,000 wds. Any thoughts on what phases and aspects I should concentrate on? Any wider thoughts and advice also greatly received. Whittington, Minzberg and Porter are central I guess but they seem to dominate the literature and I would like some fresh ideas?

Thanks

GRW

can I suggest

http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/A_Complexity_Approach_to_Sustainability.html?id=ousOQgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y

I suggest you look at books by Ralph D. Stacey - Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics (2007) and/or Complexity and Organisational Reality (2010). You may also want to read Elisabeth MacMillan's book Complexity, Management and the Dynamics of Change. Other relevant books on Complexity Science by Prigogine, I may be worth while. Good luck.

Hello,

You may be interested in the following article:

http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jors/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/jors201197a.html

This article is not really linked to S-as-P, but to strategy development and complexity.

Best,

Stathis

George,

1. It would be a good point by and large to start your essay with the notion of complexity, its properties, and its definition(s). The thing is that "complexity" in itself is, ahem... complex.

The most important (and you won't find it in any textbook) is that there is no objectively complex things in the nature. All the complexity resides in our brain. There are systems around us comprising various number of elements with different interrelations. Some of them are regarded by us as "complex" - but there is no direct correlation between those numbers and the observed complexity.

2. From this point of view, cognitive psychology and the new discipline of judgment and decision making will be of more help than cybernetics. The only useful thing from the cybernetics field I see is the Ross Asby's law of requisite variety. Managing complexity should not be equal to fighting complexity by reducing it. Managing complexity means harnessing it, balancing the inevitable outside complexity with carefully engineered complexity of your organization.

Hello Garance,

Thank you for participating in the SaP-IN forum.

The topic here is general (strategic management and complexity), and the queries raised could face any researcher who’s not familiar with this area of the literature- whether they are postgraduate students or not. Hence, any resources cited here will be valuable information for other researchers.

Hope this clarifies things :)

Tamim

Hi, you will find all you need in this thesis “The ancient past and the present phenomenon of strategy" (see page 117). (Mintzberg, Porter, and others). The link is:

http://skemman.is/stream/get/1946/8173/21589/1/The_ancient_past_and_the_present_phenomenon_of_strategy_-_Gisli_Jon_Kristjansson_2011.pdf

Best regards, Gisli Jon Kristjansson

Is one of the purposes of this list to provide MSc students with advice to complete essays? Rather puzzling!

Dr Garance Marechal
Lecturer
The University of Liverpool Management School
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Thanks for the advice & Reference Stephen. I have passed the info to my tutor Wil Williams in GLAMORGAN UNI for his thoughts as we did not focus on this particular complexity concept, which looks very interesting.

Rgds

George R Wiseman

Can I suggest you look to organisational cybernetics and its insights into complexity.. e.g. Can a Cybernetics Lens Contribute to the Business Strategy Domain? Kybernetes, (special issue: Progress in Organisational Cybernetics) 40(3/4), 507-527
please let me have your thoughts on this perspective

best wishes
Dr. Stephen A Harwood
Lecturer (International Business, Strategy and Operations)
University of Edinburgh Business School, 29 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh, EH8 9JS
E-mail: stephen.harwood@ed.ac.uk
Landline: 0131 651 5243
Publications: http://drsharwood.blogspot.com/p/publications.html

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