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

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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.

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

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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.