Complexity Sciences

Douglas Griffin (1946–2015), with Ralph Stacey and Patricia Shaw at the University of Hertfordshire's Complexity and Management Centre, developed the theory of complex responsive processes: organizations are not systems to be designed from outside but ongoing patterns of human interaction. Leadership, in this view, is skilled participation in conversation.

Griffin (with Stacey and Shaw) applied complexity sciences to organizations: outcomes emerge from local interactions no one controls. The leader is a participant in conversation, not an architect above it.

The era: Distributed & Complex — Distributed, dispersed, interdependent, embedded in interaction; leadership as learning; global competencies; combine all theories.

Leadership as participation in complex responsive processes.

Where this work feeds the Open Sky frameworks.

Fellow travelers on these threads:

• Griffin, D. (2002). The Emergence of Leadership: Linking Self-Organization and Ethics. Routledge. Google Scholar ↗
• Stacey, R. D., Griffin, D., & Shaw, P. (2000). Complexity and Management: Fad or Radical Challenge to Systems Thinking? Routledge. Google Scholar ↗