Creativity and the Management of Change

by Tudor Rickards (Manchester Business School, University of Manchester)

• ISBN13: 9780631210689
• ISBN10: 0631210687
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-11-01
• Publisher: Wiley

Summary

This ground-breaking book provides an overview of key business topics for advanced students following a business studies course. In addition, it describes how readers can build a platform of understanding of conventional wisdom, and how to study that platform in order to discover new and potentially valuable ideas that depart from the supplied orthodox views.The basic premise of the book is that theory of business always has to be connected with personal discovery processes if it is to be applied effectively in practice. The approach has been extensively tested in the author's courses with international business students over a period of twenty years. It involves 'journeys of exploration' using scanning methods and creative problem-solving.The journey takes the reader into business areas such as creativity, innovation, strategy, marketing, decision-making, leadership, economics and general change management. Readers can use the book for its authoritative overviews of many of the core components within the business studies curriculum. More advanced students or managers can apply the discovery processes to go beyond the limits of what they teach you at business school. There are, in addition, up-to-date reference materials and footnotes for the reader with topic research needs.

Author Biography

Tudor Rickards is Director of Residential Executive MBA programmes within the Federal School of Management, Manchester. He has published extensively, won numerous awards in his specialist areas of study, and holds the position of Professor of Creativity and Organizational Change at the Federal School. He has held visiting positions at the Universities of Kiel and Buffalo, New York, where he retains the Alex Oxborn Visiting Professorship. Tudor is also editor of the Blackwell journal of Creativity and Innovation Management.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	ix
Foreword	xi
Preface	xiii
Acknowledgements	xvi
The Basic MBA and Beyond	1	(20)
Introduction	1	(2)
The Bits of Jigsaw of Contemporary Business Courses	3	(1)
The Platform of Understanding of Business Orthodoxy	4	(4)
Challenging the Platform of Understanding: Images of Discovery	8	(2)
Thinking Outside the Box: Developing `Thinking About Thinking Skills'	10	(4)
The Start of a Journey of Exploration	14	(7)
Creativity: The Slumbering Giant of Organizational Studies	21	(20)
Introduction	21	(1)
The Traveller's Platform of Understanding of Creativity	22	(1)
Building a Platform of Understanding of Practitioner Perspectives of Creativity	23	(3)
Creativity Theories: Reconstructing Historical Landmarks	26	(8)
Puzzling Out the Creativity Stories	34	(1)
Creativity's Hidden Promise for Management Studies	35	(6)
Innovation Revisited	41	(20)
Introduction	41	(2)
The Economics Platform of Understanding of Innovation	43	(3)
Organization-level Studies of Innovation	46	(2)
From Theories to Practice: Stage Models of Innovation	48	(5)
Beyond the Stage Models of Innovation: Thinking Outside the Box	53	(1)
Where the Innovation Jigsaw Puzzling is Taking Us	54	(2)
Conclusions	56	(5)
Marketing and Strategy Revisited	61	(20)
Introduction	61	(2)
In Search of the Bits of the Marketing Jigsaw	63	(3)
Making Sense of the Marketing Platform of Understanding	66	(2)
Pioneers of Strategy	68	(3)
Mintzberg's Guerrilla War on Strategic Orthodoxy	71	(3)
Strategy and Marketing Revisited	74	(7)
Decision-making Revisited	81	(20)
Introduction	81	(4)
The Impact of Simon and his School on Decision-theory	85	(3)
Judgemental Heuristics in Managerial Decision-making	88	(2)
The Behavioural Edge of the Platform of Understanding	90	(1)
Multi-party Decision-making	91	(3)
Decision-theory Revisited	94	(2)
An Experiment with a Decision Approach of Non-Western Origins	96	(5)
Culture and Climate Issues	101	(16)
Introduction	101	(3)
Historical Influences in Culture's Platform of Understanding	104	(3)
Recent Reframers of Culture: Identification of Three Paradigms	107	(2)
Cultures of Excellence	109	(1)
Puzzling Out Orgnizational Climate	110	(2)
Making Sense of the Culture-Climate Confusions	112	(5)
Leadership and Managerialism	117	(16)
Introduction	117	(2)
Historical Eras in Leadership Research	119	(4)
The Voices of Transformation in the 1980s	123	(2)
Charisma and Vision in Transformational Leadership	125	(2)
Emergent Leadership	127	(1)
Making Sense of the Leadership Platform of Understanding	127	(6)
The Management of Change	133	(22)
Introduction	133	(3)
Lewin and the Development of Action-centred Change Theories	136	(2)
The Sociotechnical and Psychodynamic Schools	138	(1)
The `Taming' of Lewin's Legacy	139	(1)
The Hard-systems Tradition	140	(1)
The Learning Systems Schools	141	(2)
The Transformationists: Kanter, Handy, Peters	143	(1)
The Total Quality Revolution	144	(3)
Business Process Reengineering	147	(1)
Making Sense of the Jigsaw Pieces of Change	148	(7)
Postmodernism: A Jolt to the System?	155	(16)
Introduction	155	(2)
An Exploratory Journey Towards Postmodern Territories	157	(2)
A `Bluffer's Guide' to Postmodern Terms	159	(3)
The Franco-European Postmodernists	162	(2)
The End of Modernism or the Beginning of Late Modernism?	164	(1)
Reflexive (`High') Modernity	165	(1)
Postmodernism and the Gender Issue	166	(1)
Taking Stock: Postmodernism and its Relevance to Management Studies	167	(4)
Economics and Beyond	171	(22)
Introduction	171	(1)
Early Economic Ideas	172	(1)
Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations	173	(1)
The Development of Classical Economics	174	(1)
The Transition to the Neoclassical School	175	(1)
The Development of the Keynesian Consensus	176	(1)
The Nature of Monetarism	177	(1)
The Neoclassical Positions on a Political Spectrum	178	(2)
The Themes of the Neoclassical Jigsaw	180	(2)
Neoclassical Framing of Other Economic Positions and Places	182	(3)
Puzzling Out Homo economicus	185	(2)
Towards a New Economic Paradigm	187	(6)
References	193	(17)
Index	210