Combining insights from the new science of complexity with insights from psychoanalysis, Stacey posits that repressing the anxiety caused by the unstable, ever-changing nature of today's business world also represses the creative impulses - the "spaces for novelty" - that allow members of a workforce to produce their best work. Using the science of complexity as a starting point, he pulls together many insights into behavior and organizational functioning that currently lie at the edges of research and practice. This book invites people to explore what the new science might mean for understanding life in organizations, and shows how it can be used as a framework for understanding the processes that produce emergence rather than intentional strategies. Stacey presents an entirely new perspective on what it means for an organization to learn.

Michael D. Mumford

Providing a critique of the ways that complexity theory has been applied to understanding organizations, and outining a new direction, this book calls for a radical re-examination of management thinking.

There is a demand to be new and special, conspicuous and singular. How did this creativity complex and its imperative to be creative come about? Gathering and interweaving forty short and incisive essays, this companion maps, investigates, and illuminates the contemporary creativity complex.

This book reflects on the increasing variety of perspectives in organizational innovation research, paying attention to the antecedents, but also to the outcomes, of innovation. Some chapters analyze the ‘dark side’ of innovation, including the potential negative consequences of innovative behaviors, or of defying the innovation maximization fallacy. Others explicitly consider affective responses after innovation efforts, and assume that positive or negative effects rely on the context in which innovations occur, and on the way in which people manage the process of innovation. Several contributions adopt the dialectic approach by considering the multiple pathways and mechanisms that could lead to innovation at organizations. Most of the chapters include the interaction of actors’ characteristics (from employees or teams) together with situational constraints from the task or the social context, and outline the relevance of processes like team learning; motivation variables like basic need satisfaction; congruence of motives or meaningfulness at work; dynamics of communication networks; and affective variables. This edited collection offers a rich picture of current research and management trends in the field and contributes constructively toward promoting the dialectic perspective on creativity and innovation in the workplace. This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology.

The rapid pace of technological change and globalization of products, competition and services have conspired to place a new premium on innovation for firms across the world. Although many variables influence creativity and innovation, the effective leadership of creative teams has proved especially important. This timely Handbook presents the state of the art for what leaders must do to lead creative teams and how they should do it.

Creative Management and Development has been updated with newly commissioned and leading edge chapters on intuitive cognition, complexity, emotion, team innovation, development and well-being. The textbook retains seminal papers on creativity, perception, style, culture and sustainable development. The contributors to this textbook represent a broad spectrum of perspectives from among the most distinguished names in the field. They give a clear overview of the topics discussed whilst explaining their practical implications. This textbook is published as a Course Reader for The Open University Course Creativity, Innovation and Change (B822).