The perspective of complex responsive processes draws on analogies from the complexity sciences, bringing in the essential characteristics of human agents, understood to emerge in social processes of communicative interaction and power relating. The result is a way of thinking about life in organizations that focuses attention on how organizational members cope with the unknown as they perpetually create organizational futures together. This book introduces and explores the possible meanings of the idea of ‘working live’. It makes sense of the sense-making experience itself, drawing attention to the way ideas and concepts emerge ‘live’ in all conversations in organizations. An appreciation of the open-ended, improvisational nature of ongoing human communication becomes key to such an understanding. This book will be of great value to readers looking for reflective accounts of real life experiences in organizations, rather than further prescriptions of what life in organizations ought to be.
Author(s): P. Shaw
Year: 2006
Language: English
Pages: 160
Book Cover......Page 1
Half-Title......Page 2
Title......Page 4
Copyright......Page 5
Contents......Page 6
Contributors......Page 9
Series Preface......Page 10
Preface......Page 12
1. Introduction: Working Live......Page 16
Editor's Introduction to Chapter 2
......Page 32
2. Theatre, Improvisation and Social Change......Page 34
Editor's Introduction to Chapter 3
......Page 59
3. Risk and 'Acting' into the Unknown......Page 61
Editor's Introduction to Chapter
4......Page 88
4. Presence and spontaneity in Improvisational Work......Page 90
Editor's Introduction to Chapter 5
......Page 110
5. Leading in the Moment: Taking Risks and Living with Anxiety......Page 112
6. Complex Responsive Processes as a Theory of Organizational Improvisation......Page 139
Index
......Page 157
