Complexity and Management Centre
The annual Complexity and Management Conference, held this year between 7th-9th June 2024 at Roffey Park in Horsham, UK, is intended as an opportunity to make sense of the rationally irrational processes that we get caught up in at work. The currency of the conference is conversation, reflection and meaning-making about things that matter to us in the workplace and beyond.
The topic for this year is culture which is often considered to be thing-like, and capable of manipulation by leaders and managers to create the outcomes we think we want. These are often ideals of high performance, collaboration and positivity.
However, whatever we think of as culture, the habituated pattern of behaviour which allows us to recognise each other as we co-operate and compete, is not so easily subjected to our plans and intentions. We are as much shaped by the habitus as we can shape it.
This year we are delighted to invite Professor Candida Yates to help us explore this theme . She will talk about a current research project where she is trying to understand how the community imaginary is developed and sustained. Drawing on work she is undertaking with a community on the south coast of the UK, Professor Yates will give examples of art-based and psycho-social approaches to exploring to the emergence of meaning in a UK maritime community through the exploration of thoughts, feelings, politics and experience.
Candida Yates is Professor of Culture and Communication, Bournemouth University. She is an interdisciplinary scholar and applies a psychosocial approach to culture, politics and society and has published widely in that field. She works with academics, clinicians, creatives and cultural organisations to create new understandings of emotion and affect in the public sphere. She is a Co-Director of the BU Centre for the Study of Conflict, Emotion and Social Justice and sits on the Executive Boards of the Association for Psychosocial Studies; is a Founding Scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Council and is an Academic Research Associate of the Freud Museum. She is Joint-Editor of the Routledge book series: Psychoanalysis and Popular Culture, andis a Contributing Editor on the journals Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, and The Journal of Psychosocial Studies.
The conference starts with an inaugural supper on the evening of Friday June 7th and will finish after lunchtime on the 9th June. The conference fee includes all board and lodging at Roffey Park Insitute, which is a residential setting.
There will also be an introductory day on complexity and organisation and the unique perspective of complex responsive processes on Friday 7th.
The booking page will go up on the University of Hertfordshire website at the end of this month.
For any queries contact me on c.mowles@herts.ac.uk
Complexity & Management Centre 