Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Business
Complexity Leadership In Bureaucratic Forms Of Organizing: A Meso Model, Mary Uhl-Bien, Russ Marion
Complexity Leadership In Bureaucratic Forms Of Organizing: A Meso Model, Mary Uhl-Bien, Russ Marion
Department of Management: Faculty Publications
We consider Complexity Leadership Theory in contexts of bureaucratic forms of organizing to describe how adaptive dynamics can work in combination with administrative functions to generate emergence and change in organizations. Complexity leadership approaches are consistent with the central assertion of the meso argument that leadership is multi-level, processual, contextual, and interactive. In this paper we focus on the adaptive function, an interactive process between adaptive leadership (an agentic behavior) and complexity dynamics (non-agentic social dynamics) that generates emergent outcomes (e.g., innovation, learning, adaptability) for the firm. Propositions regarding the actions of complexity leadership in bureaucratic forms of organizing are …
The Role Of Leadership In Emergent, Self-Organization, Donde Ashmos Plowman, Stephanie Solansky, Tammy E. Beck, Lakami Baker, Mukta Kulkarni, Deandra Villarreal Travis
The Role Of Leadership In Emergent, Self-Organization, Donde Ashmos Plowman, Stephanie Solansky, Tammy E. Beck, Lakami Baker, Mukta Kulkarni, Deandra Villarreal Travis
Department of Management: Faculty Publications
As complex systems, organizations exist far from equilibrium where the ongoing interaction of system components leads to emergent and self-organizing behavior. What, then, is the role of leadership in systems where change often emerges in unexpected ways? In this paper, we build on the work of Marion and Uhl-Bien who suggest that in complex systems leaders enable rather than control the future. While traditional views of leadership focus on the leader’s responsibility for determining and directing the future through heavy reliance on control mechanisms, we offer empirical support for a different view of leadership based on a complexity perspective of …