Strategy Implementation and Organisational Change: A Complex Systems Perspective

The relations between strategy and organisational change constitute one of the most significant challenges of management theory and practice. Broadly defined complexity-related studies, including cybernetics and systems thinking, were expected to provide instruments for a better understanding of relations between strategic management and organisational change. One of the most challenging problems in relations between strategic management and organisational change is strategy implementation. In the initial concepts of strategic management, the implementation was treated just as an easily identifiable stage: strategic analysis—strategic decision—strategy implementation. As a result, the following question arises. How have the ideas from broadly defined complexity-related studies been helpful in a better understanding of the relations between strategy implementation and organizational change? The analysis presented in this chapter aims at giving preliminary answers to the above question. In addition to the traditional arguments favouring applications of complexity-related ideas in management, the argument about time perspective can be added. The status quo of applications of complexity-related concepts in management allows for a more comprehensive assessment than was possible in the 1990s and at the beginning of the twenty-first century when the fascination of chaos and complexity theories too often led to excessive and naïve expectations.