Table Of Content‘That our lives become increasingly complex is part of our common experience.
How to navigate complexity, however, is another matter. It is here where we need
reliable and insightful guides. Chris Mowles has provided such a brilliant guide.
True to form, this is a multi- dimensional guide, ranging from the self, trough
organizations, to the world at large. With every chapter, the reader is encouraged to
complexify his/ her understanding – new ideas and questions crop up, judgment is
sharpened and a new sensibility emerges. This is an highly enlightening book fit for
our challenging times.’
Haridimos Tsoukas, University of Cyprus and
University of Warwick, United Kingdom
‘Chris Mowles provides us with a useful antidote to the notion that complexity
thinking can solve “wicked problems”. This book takes seriously the social relations
which shape organisations, and people’s day to day lived experience. It provides
readers with different ways of thinking about continuity and change, and some very
practical ways in which managers and leaders can behave differently.’
Chris Roche, Professor of Development Practice and
Director of the Institute for Human Security and Social Change
at La Trobe University, Australia
‘Professor Mowles’ work offers those who care about organizational life the chance
to consider the impossibility of controlling outcomes or predicting the future.
Within his descriptions and stories of leading and participating, I have found a
rewarding and refreshing invitation to pay more attention to the present, to value
emotion, confusion or difference and be re- invigorated when collective thought
and discovery result in changed minds and renewed agreements for action.’
Cathy Risdon, Professor and Vice Chair, Director, Health Services,
McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada
‘Over the past few years, there has been a major shift in the research culture of uni-
versities. Research fundamentally motivated by innate human curiosity has been
subjugated to research driven by strategic objectives chosen by university man-
agement. Researchers are fired because they do not align with strategic object-
ives, because they dare to critique management orthodoxy. Chris Mowles’ book
is extremely important because it resists this destructive trend and makes a serious
contribution to keeping critical management traditions alive.’
Ralph Stacey, Founder of the Doctor of Management
Programme at the University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom
‘Complexity science is often presented as a superficial means of joining up dots. Not
here. Complexity contributes to interrogating what is seemingly “obvious” (e.g.
individual sovereignty) or “normal” (consumerism). Crucially, Mowles connects
awareness of complexity to processes of critical reflection. He shows how, as a “key
idea”, complexity can contribute to developing forms of action that are less naïve
and self- defeating.’
Hugh Willmott, Professor of Management, Bayes Business
School (formerly Cass), City University London, United Kingdom
‘In this timely volume, Chris Mowles distils perhaps the most important lesson of
complexity thinking: in an uncontrollable world, success comes less through our
attempts to design it than through the quality of our participation in it. This book
will lead you through the implications of this insight for many spheres of organ-
izational and social life, from power and communication to self- understanding and
judgment.’
Andrey Pavlov, Professor of Strategy and Performance, Cranfield
School of Management, Cranfield University, United Kingdom
‘This book poses a radical challenge to more orthodox theories of managing and
leading. Mowles takes this further by investigating what forms of knowledge are
most helpful consistent with our experience that our plans inevitably lead to unex-
pected outcomes. Management is seen as an improvisational practice that can influ-
ence, but never control an uncontrollable world. There are ethical implications for
both too much and too little authority.’
Peter Karnøe, Professor at the Department of Planning,
Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark
‘Why is it that we crave certainty when all around us we see unfathomable com-
plexities? Chris Mowles argues that the models and frameworks that offer us the
comforts of certainty can never fully answer this question. We must also develop
social practices that guide us in taking resilient actions. He brings his argument viv-
idly to life by drawing on examples from the global COVID-1 9 pandemic. Lessons
learned are every bit as relevant to other crises, whether they are approaching, or
indeed are already upon us.’
Barbara Simpson, Professor of Leadership and Organisational
Dynamics, Strathclyde Business School, United Kingdom
COMPLEXITY
This book interprets insights from the complexity sciences to explore seven types
of complexity better to understand the predictable unpredictability of social life.
Drawing on the natural and social sciences, it describes how complexity models are
helpful but insufficient for our understanding of complex reality.
Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the book develops a complex theory
of action more consistent with our experience that our plans inevitably lead to
unexpected outcomes, explains why we are both individuals and thoroughly social,
and gives an account of why, no matter how clear our message, we may still be
misunderstood. The book investigates what forms of knowledge are most helpful
for thinking about complex experience, reflects on the way we exercise authority
(leadership) and thinks through the ethical implications of trying to co- operate in
a complex world. Taking complexity seriously poses a radical challenge to more
orthodox theories of managing and leading, based as they are on assumptions of
predictability, control and universality. The author argues that management is an
improvisational practice which takes place in groups in a particular context at a
particular time. Managers can influence but never control an uncontrollable world.
To become more skilful in complex group dynamics involves taking into account
multiple points of view and acknowledging not knowing, ambivalence and doubt.
This book will be of interest to researchers, professionals, academics and students
in the fields of business and management, especially those interested in how taking
complexity seriously can influence the functioning of businesses and organizations
and how they manage and lead.
Chris Mowles is Professor of Complexity and Management at Hertfordshire
Business School, University of Hertfordshire, UK.
KEY IDEAS IN BUSINESS AND
MANAGEMENT
Edited by Stewart Clegg
Understanding how business affects and is affected by the wider world is a challenge
made more difficult by the disaggregation between various disciplines, from
operations research to corporate governance. This series features concise books that
break out from disciplinary silos to facilitate understanding by analysing key ideas
that shape and influence business, organizations and management.
Each book focuses on a key idea, locating it in relation to other fields, facili-
tating deeper understanding of its applications and meanings, and providing critical
discussion of the contribution of relevant authors and thinkers. The books pro-
vide students and scholars with thought- provoking insights that aid the study and
research of business and management.
Sustainability
A Key Idea for Business and Society
Suzanne Benn, Melissa Edwards and Tim Williams
Human rights
A Key Idea for Business and Society
Karin Buhmann
Complexity
A Key Idea for Business and Society
Chris Mowles
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Key-
Ideas- in- Business- and- Management/ book- series/ KEYBUS
COMPLEXITY
A Key Idea for Business and Society
Chris Mowles
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 Chris Mowles
The right of Chris Mowles to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Mowles, Chris, author.
Title: Complexity : a key idea for business and society / Chris Mowles.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. |
Series: Key ideas in business and management |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Subjects: LCSH: Complex organizations. |
Organizational change. | Organizational sociology.
Classification: LCC HM786 .M69 2022 (print) |
LCC HM786 (ebook) | DDC 302.3/5–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021030901
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021030902
ISBN: 978- 0- 367- 43385- 7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978- 0- 367- 42568- 5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978- 1- 003- 00284- 0 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/ 9781003002840
Typeset in Bembo
by Newgen Publishing UK
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xii
1 Introduction: the predictable unpredictability of the world 1
2 Complex models: radical challenge to management orthodoxy 18
3 Complex action: the uncertain outcomes of individuals
negotiating in groups 39
4 The complex self: the ‘I,’ ‘me’ and ‘we’ 60
5 Complex communication: persuading and being persuaded 82
6 Complex knowledge, complex knowing 103
7 Complex authority: the leader in the group and the group
in the leader 124
8 Complex ethics: widening our circle of concern 143
9 Conclusions: towards greater humility and humane ways of
working 163
Index 179
PREFACE
This book has been a long time in the writing, although it was only relatively
recently commissioned by Routledge. The invitation came after a long period
sketching out something to write and then the commitment I gave to the pub-
lisher spurred me on to stop dithering. In categorizing the book into seven types
of complexity, I am conscious how one type blurs into another: the reader will
find that I write about practical judgement, for example, in at least three chapters.
Equally, themes like power come up in a number of chapters, as does the idea of the
thoroughly social self. The categories are to a certain extent arbitrary. Then there
are also types of complexity that I haven’t done full justice to. Time, for example, is
fundamental to a complex understanding of social life, given that complex systems
are ‘path-d ependent’: what has happened has a big influence on how things are
now, what can happen. Although we often miss the complex interconnectedness
of people, things and events, there are certain junctures, like the Brexit vote in the
United Kingdom, for example, where whole nations, can become something radic-
ally different. Today isn’t always yesterday plus or minus 5%. So apologies for what
the book doesn’t cover in depth as much as for what it does.
I first tried out the ideas for the book three years ago at the Complexity and
Management Conference, an annual event held with my colleagues who teach on
the Doctor of Management programme at the University of Hertfordshire. The
occasion was the retirement of the founder of the programme, Ralph Stacey. In his
final public lecture, he gave a very moving overview of why he had become pre-
occupied with the complexity sciences, why he had moved from a career in the
City of London to becoming an academic and how fulfilling that had proved both
in terms of his achievements and his generative relationships with colleagues. It was
the relationships which he valued the most. He talked about the continuous sat-
isfaction he had gained from watching sometimes less formally educated students
