Managing the Unknowable: Strategic Boundaries Between Order and Chaos in Organizations

This creative approach to successful strategic planning is based on understanding and directing the complex, often chaotic daily interactions that take place within companies. Ralph Stacey explains how an appreciation of the roles of control, conflict, and team dialogue can help managers discover and build on the innate energy of their organizations and urges managers to find a new respect for the positive power of instability and chaos.

Preface.

The Author.

New Mind–Sets for Managing the Future.

The Failure of Conventional Management: Using Orderly Strategies in a Disorderly World.

Stable Instability: Creating the Far–from–Equillibium Organization.

Creativity and Continuous Chaos: Discovering the Undiscovered in Complex Organizations.

Strategic Thinking and Continuous Contention: Confronting an Open–Anded Future.

Strategic Agenda: Deciphering the Patterns in Goals and Actions.

Strategic Control: Managing the Boundary Between Plans and Change.

Participation, Heirarchy, and Stability: Finding the Middle Ground.

Steps Toward Managing an Unkowable Future.

Note.

Index.