Category Archives: practice

Complexity and Management Conference 2nd-4th June 2023

Leave a reply

Complexity, uncertainty, breakdown: coping, recovering and finding hope in dark times.

The Complexity and Management Conference 2023 will address what can feel like a constant state of breakdown, potentially undermining things we may previously have taken for granted, such as plans, rules, loyalties, markets, knowledge, and how we exercise authority in groups. 

If you are interested in the difference it makes to take the complex interplay of relationships seriously, particularly in dark times, then this year’s conference is for you. The conference is a mix of input and small and large group discussion, and conversation is the currency of participation. It will greatly enhance the conference if delegates bring concrete examples of their workplace dilemmas. Delegates are welcome to offer ideas for workshops in the afternoon of the first day, Saturday 3rd June. 

The conference runs from 7.00pm  Friday evening 2nd June, beginning with drinks and the inaugural dinner, and finishes after lunch on Sunday 4th June.

On Friday 2nd there is a one-day introductory workshop offering insights into the perspective described as complex responsive processes of relating, which runs between 9.30am and 4.30pm. Again, workshop participants are encouraged to bring concrete examples from their workplace as a resource to bring the ideas alive.

The conference is organised in collaboration with KIOL Executive Programme at University College Copenhagen and because of this it is likely to be full. Book soon and avoid disappointment.

The payment page is now live and can be found here. The conference fee includes all board and lodging.

Do write to me if you would like to convene a workshop.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

Chris

Just 5 days left to claim your early-bird discount -Complexity and Management Conference 3-5th June 2022

Leave a reply

When we talk about the theory of practice and the practice of theory, does this mean that the conference is going to be very dry and abstract? The focus of the research community which organises the annual Complexity and Management Conference is on human beings and the complex dynamics they get caught up in when they try and get things done with other people. So we are interested in what we say and do, what we think we mean when we say particular things, how trying to go on together sometimes brings about the opposite of what we intend, and how our identities are changed in the process. We are concerned with reflecting on, and becoming reflexive about everyday organisational dilemmas.

The conference begins with a gala dinner on Friday 3rd June @7pm and welcome drinks.

The mode of the whole conference is conversational. This year we are delighted to have engaged Prof Davide Nicolini of Warwick Business School to give the key note because of his insightful work on the importance of practical knowledge.

There is an opportunity for delegates to present their ideas too, on Saturday afternoon 4th June. This might be a paper or a chapter in a book, or it might be something troubling at work which presenters want to use a group as a resource to think about.

On Sunday we reflect on what we have been talking about on Saturday with the help of faculty members from the Doctor of Management programme. Thereafter we have one more round of reflection in groups and finish off with lunch.

It’s exhausting but invigorating at the same time. Hope to see you there. Book here.

Complexity and Management Conference 3-5th June 2022- early bird booking ends in 10 days.

Leave a reply

What can you expect if you sign up for the Complexity and Management Conference, which focuses on the theory of practice and the practice of theory?

The conference is set in the beautiful gardens and rolling meadow of the Roffey Park Institute. The food is great, and all board and lodging is included in the conference fee.

It begins with a gala dinner on Friday 3rd June @7pm and welcome drinks. The dinner is a chance to meet the other delegates and begin lively conversations which ease you into the weekend. We have a wide variety of delegates; consultants, academics, managers from all over the world. Sone are graduates of the DMan programme and many are not

The mode of the whole conference is conversational. Rather than requiring delegates to present papers they are working on, we choose a theme for the weekend, invite a good speaker to give us some ideas to think about, then engage all weekend in sharing practical dilemmas from the workplace. This year we are delighted to have engaged Prof Davide Nicolini of Warwick Business School to give the key note because of his insightful work on the importance of practical knowledge.

There is an opportunity for delegates to present their ideas too, on Saturday afternoon 4th June. This might be a paper or a chapter in a book, or it might be something troubling at work which presenters want to use a group as a resource to think about.

On Sunday we reflect on what we have been talking about on Saturday with the help of faculty members from the Doctor of Management programme. Thereafter we have one more round of reflection in groups and finish off with lunch.

It’s exhausting but invigorating at the same time. Hope to see you there. Book here.

The theory of practice and the practice of theory – booking now

Leave a reply

Complexity and Management Conference 3-5th June 2022.

For the past two years the annual Complexity and Management Conference has been held online. Yes, it’s worked well enough, but we’re delighted to be able to plan for an in-person event this June. Meeting face to face, exploring, discussing, maybe disagreeing is consistent with the theme of the conference this year which is the paradox of practice and theory. The kind of knowledge we are interested in, knowledge from practice for practice, is dialectical and emerges from the back-and-forth between engaged human bodies. It is a social achievement involving taking turns, listening, thinking, speaking: it’s about learning to improvise together as an ensemble performance, with all the slips, detours and ambiguity that this implies.

For those unfamiliar with the CMC, this is a not an orthodox conference where people sit on panels and present their academic papers, leaving five minutes at the end for a hurried discussion. There is a place for these, but our interest is in taking the time we need to talk about what matters to us, to do justice to the organisational dilemmas we find ourselves dealing with. The quality of what emerges is consistent with the quality of participation of everyone present. Talking together with no particular end in view is also a practice which develops over time and is uncertain of outcome. In today’s instrumental organisations free flowing discussion is often viewed with suspicion. But at the CMC you are likely to meet others who are committed to exploration, and in taking the time to see where the deliberation leads.

We are delighted to have Prof Davide Nicolini @NicoliniDavide  giving us material to think about in his key note on Saturday morning 4th June. Thereafter the afternoon will be given over to anyone wanting to present their work or ideas in parallel workshops. On Sunday we respond to the previous day, and continue the discussion till lunchtime.

On Friday 3rd June there is a seminar and discussion on my latest book Complexity: a key idea for business and society, which is a way on introducing some of the main concepts informing the perspective of complex responsive processes of relating.

There is an early bird discount until the end of April 2022. Click this link for the conference and/or the introductory seminar.

Write to me with any queries to c.mowles@herts.ac.uk

Complexity and Management conference 3-5th June 2022 – open for booking.

5 Replies

This year’s Complexity and Management Conference 3- 5th June: The Theory of Practice and the Practice of Theory, with key note speaker Prof Davide Nicolini is now open for booking.

As usual there is an early bird discount until April 30th.

On Friday 3rd June there is an introductory day on complex responsive processes. This is suitable for anyone wanting to discuss what’s going on for them at work and to think about it in terms of complex group dynamics, as preparation for joining the main conference starting Saturday at 9.00.

Complexity and Management Conference 3-5th June 2022 – the theory of practice and the practice of theory

3 Replies

Practitioners often have an ambivalent relationship with theory, and much academic writing may not help. Academic articles can often seem obscure and are usually aimed at other academics rather than managers and consultants working in every day organisational life. Scholars in business schools have long been aware of the problem and have written about the crisis of relevance of organisational scholarship. Equally, there may also be a tendency among consultants to climb aboard the latest bandwagon, to try too quickly to squeeze complex ideas into grids and frameworks, and to instrumentalise. Consultants are paid to know and perhaps to simplify.

How, then to navigate between the potential collapse of important ideas into instrumental two by two girds and frameworks, on the one hand, and the kind of knowledge that is valued in the Academy? What kind of knowledge do we need from practice for practice?

During next year’s Complexity and Management Conference, June 3-5th 2022, we are delighted to welcome Prof Davide Nicolini to help stimulate our thinking about practice and knowledge.  Davide is Professor of Organization Studies at Warwick Business School where he co-directs the IKON Research Centre and co-ordinates the Practice, Process and Institution Research Programme. His current research focuses on the development of the practice-based approach and the refinement and promotion of processual, relational and materialist research methods. 

As usual the currency of the conference is discussion, and the weekend will comprise lots of opportunities to talk about the experience of trying to get things done together. The conference will begin 7pm Friday 3rd June and end at lunchtime on the Sunday. The booking website will go up in the New Year.

Complexity and Management Online Symposium 9.30-5.00pm Sat Nov 20th, 2021. Booking soon!

Leave a reply

One of the great promises of an accelerated and globalised world, is that it would increase autonomy, freedom and choice. But that’s not how it has turned out, according to German sociologist Hartmut Rosa . Instead social acceleration has led to greater disorientation and fragmentation and a deficiency of resonance. We find ourselves in frenetic standstill. Nothing remains the same, but nothing essentially changes. The more rapidly changing circumstances oblige us to plan to keep up, the more we realise the plans we do make and our methods of planning are inadequate for the new situations we find ourselves in. Acceleration produces its own disruptions, traffic jams, outages and lacunae.

We are also remade in our relationship with ourselves and with the world. In rapidly changing times greater social advantage is gained by those who have fewer commitments, are more flexible in their sense of self and their convictions. The idea that we might have enduring principals, values if you like, to which we cleave, appears slightly old fashioned. Why would we stand firm for anything in a society which appears to value endless adaptability and flexibility? At the same time we encounter an increase in life events, but a hollowing out of experience, which can lead to depression  and ennui, and an attenuation of resonant relationships. This makes it harder to gain determinacy, to recognise ourselves and others in a shifting world.

Are there advantages to be gained, then by waiting, by dwelling with events to transform them into experience? Is this an argument for staying put, for standing firm, for not rushing on to an idealised future, or at least not yet, but to reflect on what’s going on and to take the time to do so.

The online Complexity and Management Symposium is a good place to do this. The working title is: The Complexity of Waiting. It’s an online event for anyone who enjoys reflecting in large groups and small on the experience of being in relation in the early 21st C.

Enjoy the sense of irony that we have been kept waiting by the university for the booking site to go up. But , it may only be a week before you can collapse the excitement of waiting into the purchase of a ticket for the event. In the meantime, if you would like to offer a workshop in the afternoon related to the theme of the Symposium, please contact me on c.mowles@herts.ac.uk .

I hope to see you there.

Complexity and Management Conference 4-6th June 2021 – booking now.

Leave a reply

The Complexity and Management Conference 4-6th June 2021 – The Complexity of Practice, is open for booking now. Here is the booking page.

This year we are delighted to have Professor Hari Tsoukas, who is well known to many of you,  as our key note speaker. Hari is Columbia Ship Management Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Cyprus and Distinguished Research Environment Professor of Organization Studies at Warwick Business School. He is best known for his contributions to understanding organizations as knowledge and learning systems, for re-viewing organizational phenomena through the lens of process philosophy, for exploring practical reason in organizational contexts as well as the epistemology of reflective practice in management, and for bringing insights from Aristotelian, Wittgensteinian and Heideggerian philosophy to organization and management studies.

The staging of this year’s conference is no less an uncertain undertaking than last year’s. So we are organising for a face to face event, but at the same time preparing to go online. This means that the booking page requires you to make two payments. The first is a deposit (£100), and the second (£700) is to top up the payment to the full conference fee amount (£800). Should the face to face event be cancelled and we move online, we will refund you the top-up amount (£700) and keep the deposit as payment for the online event. This is the way the university best copes with refunds and it will save you going through the whole process again.

The event will, as usual, be highly participative and deliberative. If face to face, the conference begins on the evening of Friday 4th June with complementary drinks and gala dinner, and ends after lunch on Sunday 6th June. The conference fee covers all board and lodging for the event at Roffey Park Institute, Horsham UK. If we move online the conference will be just Saturday 5th June from 9am till 5.30pm.

There are limited places, so book early to avoid disappointment. I will send out an agenda early May once it is clear what kind of event we will be staging.

Whether face to face or online, the afternoon of Saturday 5th will comprise seminars presented by conference delegates emerging from some aspect of their work related to the conference theme on which they would like to convene a discussion. If you would like to convene such a seminar, please contact me.

On Friday 4th June, whether face to face or online, there is an introductory workshop to the ideas which inform the Doctor of Management (DMan) programme, a perspective we term complex responsive processes of relating. The workshop too will be very participative and discussive, drawing on delegates’ every day experience at work.

Looking forward to seeing you there, one way or another.

Complexity and Management Conference and workshops 5/6th June 2020

1 Reply

Complexity and Collaboration – implications for leadership and practice

The booking sites for the workshops on Friday 5th June and the Complexity and Management Conference on Saturday 6th June are now open to the public.

The workshop Improvising in the complexity of collaboration and conflict on Friday 5th June 9-5pm will explore the enabling constraints of ‘working live’ whilst remaining socially distant from colleagues. The workshop is likely to be most beneficial to delegates who have previously attended one of our programmes or conference, or are familiar with our way of working. Access to Zoom and a desk based PC plus a phone or a tablet is required.

The workshop  is convened Prof Karen Norman, Prof Henry Larsen and colleagues from the Universities of Southern Denmark and Hertfordshire and is open to 20 participants (with a wait list if oversubscribed).

The booking site is here.

The workshop An Introduction to Complex Responsive Processes on Friday 5th June 9-5pm is on the main principles of the perspective of complex responsive processes, which we offer every year. It is a highly participative introduction to complexity and its organisational implications drawing on delegates’ workplace experience, and is offered by Prof Chris Mowles. Maximum 30.

The booking site is here

This year’s conference entitled Complexity and Collaboration – implications for leadership and practice is on Saturday 6th June 9.00– 5 pm and we are delighted to have Prof Barbara Simpson as our keynote speaker from first thing in the morning. The rest of the day will be highly participative and discussive, involving break out groups to discuss the keynote. In the afternoon workshops will be offered by conference delegates on aspects of their work related to the theme. Members of faculty will sum up some of the key themes of the day in a final plenary which will be as participative as the size of the conference will allow online. Maximum 60 people.

The booking site is here.

Looking forward to seeing you there. Apologies if you have already received this information elsewhere.

 

Complexity and Management Conference on Collaboration 5-7th June 2020. Booking open now.

Leave a reply

Complexity and Collaboration – implications for leadership and practice

Being part of a group engaged in a joint enterprise provokes all kinds of mixed feelings and responses in people: it can be uplifting and satisfying, while at the same time triggering frustrations and petty rivalries. Without other people it’s hard to get work done, while at the same time work would be easy if it weren’t for other people. Collaboration pitches us into the uncertainty of exploring our interdependencies with others. It has also become a buzz-word in contemporary organisational life and has been linked to idealisations of innovation, trust and highskydiving-functioning teams. But is collaboration more like happiness – we will know after we have collaborated successfully that we have done so, but the moment we set it up as a goal to be achieved instrumentally it will continue to evade our grasp? When are we collaborating and when are we colluding?

This year’s Complexity and Management Conference 5-7th June at Roffey Park near Horsham UK , will take the experience of collaboration seriously and explore the implications for management, leadership and practice more generally. To support us with the task Prof Barbara Simpson has kindly agreed to be our key note speaker on Saturday 6th June. In the afternoon of the Saturday there will be workshops led by conference delegates linked to the conference theme. If you would like to put your name forward to convene such a workshop, please let me know.

On Friday 5th June there are two one day workshops. One is an introduction to the perspective of complex responsive processes, which informs the professional doctorate, the DMan, offered by the University of Hertfordshire. This workshop is suitable for people who would like a basic introduction to the ideas and is convened by Prof Chris Mowles. The second workshop, Improvising in the complexity of collaboration and conflict, introduces techniques of improvised theatre through ‘working live’ with professional actors on participants’ stories from their workplace. The workshop is convened by Prod Henry Larsen and Prof Karen Norman.

The conference booking page is now open and can be accessed here. Workshops and conference can be booked separately and together. The conference fee comprises all board and lodging.