Complex Systems Leadership Theory

Written by leading experts in the field, this volume seeks to provide new insights and tools that have only recently become apparent through advances in complexity science.

This book introduces leadership and organizational scholars to the potenial of complexity science for broadening leadership study beyond its traditional focus on leaders’ actions and influence, to a consideration of leadership as a broader, dynamically and interactive organizing process. The book offers a primer on complexity science and its applications to organization studies, and compares the logics of complexity science with those underlying traditional leadership approaches. It describes methodological approaches for studying leadership from a complexity perspective, and offers examples of applications of complexity science to leadership theory. Chapters are written by top scholars in complexity and leadership theory.

Complex Adaptive Leadership, a Gower bestseller, has been taught in corporate leadership programmes, business schools and universities around the world to high acclaim. In this updated paperback edition, the author argues that leadership is a complex dynamic process and should involve all those engaged in a particular enterprise. Nick Obolensky has practised, researched and taught leadership in the public, private and voluntary sectors, and in this exciting book he brings together his knowledge of theory, his own experience, and the results of 19 years of research involving 2,500 executives in 40 countries around the world.

Interest in complexity theory, a relation of chaos theory, has become well established in the business community in recent years. Complexity theory argues that systems are complex interactions of many parts which cannot be predicted by accepted linear equations. In this book, Keith Morrison introduces complexity theory to the world of education, drawing out its implications for school leadership. He suggests that schools are complex, nonlinear and unpredictable systems, and that this impacts significantly within them. As schools race to keep up with change and innovation, he suggests that it is possible to find order without control and to lead without coercion. Key areas: * schools and self-organisation * leadership for self-organisation * supporting emergence through the learning organisation * schools and their environments * communication * fitness landscapes This book will be of interest to headteachers and middle managers, and those on higher level courses in educational leadership and management.

This book covers the proceedings from the 2016 International Symposium on Chaos, Complexity and Leadership, and reflects current research results of chaos and complexity studies and their applications in various fields. Included are research papers in the fields of applied nonlinear methods, modeling of data and simulations, as well as theoretical achievements of chaos and complex systems. Also discussed are leadership and management applications of chaos and complexity theory.

"Our ability to understand and improve the field of education depends upon our ability to understand human development, culture, and society. We cannot understand what is happening in schools unless we understand the context in which schools exist. Through meaningful stories of school leadership and critical reflections on theories of complex systems, this book offers a framework for understanding how the intractable dilemmas of education reflect and embody the social, cultural, and developmental patterns of society. From the concrete dilemmas of school leadership to the abstract vistas of integral meta-theory, this book is a guide to understanding how it all fits together, and how to encourage the holistic growth of students, teachers, leaders, and educational systems"--

This work proposes that Carl Menger’s Subjective Theory of Value (STV), and its subsequent elaboration by Ludwig von Mises as Praxeology, provides a useful alternative to more common methods in the study of action and social phenomena, and more specifically, to leadership in complex social systems. Rather than being based on rationality assumptions and algorithmic predictability, the STV emphasizes transient subjectivity shaped by a complex world of lacking information, mistakes, disequilibrium, uncertainty and attempted error correction that defy mathematization and exact prediction. As such, it is a framework to make sense of human action systems in terms of subjective understanding, learning, and uncertainty, rather than quantitative predictability. Accordingly, the aim of this work is to explain the STV as a general theory of action and to demonstrate its capability in developing adequate qualitative theory and to elaborate on some of the major topics that its implications raise with regard to leadership. The power of the method can be seen in that its procedure naturally branches out to facilitate an understanding of a broad selection of processes and may provide the basis for a universal theory of leadership.

Lead effectively in today's complex health systems! As hospitals and healthcare organizations strive to meet standards to achieve status in the Magnet Hospital Recognition Program and address the issues in the Institute of Medicine’s Nursing Work Force Issues Initiative, they must be able to respond in ways that embrace rapid change. The 3rd Edition of this groundbreaking text addresses the leadership roles advanced practice nurses can assume in this new environment. It defines the concept of complexity and teaches the leadership skills that are best suited for complex adaptive systems, while also enabling you to build the self-awareness you need to learn new ways to lead. Case studies help you apply your new skills and prepare for your advanced practice roles.