The following is the text of the Ralph Stacey Memorial Lecture which I gave at Hertfordshire Business School on Weds 5th October 2022. It accompanies the video which you will find in the post below.
The response to the lecture was give by Patricia Shaw, who co-founded the Doctor of Management programme with Ralph and the late Doug Griffin.
If you’d like to pop in for just an hour to hear about the new book, to meet others interested in complexity, to meet old friends and perhaps some new ones, and to celebrate the legacy that Ralph Stacey has left us, then write to me at c.mowles@herts.ac.uk and I’ll send you a link 24 hours ahead of the launch.
I am writing to let you know that I heard from Ralph Stacey’s family on Sunday that Ralph died peacefully in hospital on Saturday night after a short illness over the summer.
Many of you who follow this site may already know a lot about Ralph and will have met him in person. For those who didn’t know him, here is a brief obituary.
Ralph was trained as an economist graduating with his PhD from LSE in 1967. He came to Hatfield Polytechnic in 1985 having worked in corporate planning for the construction company John Laing, and having briefly been an investment analyst in the City of London. In the same year that the polytechnic became a university, 1992, Ralph was made a Professor of Management.
Ralph was one of the pioneers of adopting analogies from the sciences of complexity into theories exploring group dynamics in organisations. He published his first book in 1990, and went on to write 12 in all, including a textbook which is now in its 7th Edition. Just as important as his publishing record is his founding of the Complexity and Management Centre in 1995, and the establishment of group supervision for doctoral students. He combined the group approach with the development of a conceptual framework he, Doug Griffin and Patricia Shaw termed complex responsive processes of relating, a radical critique of systems theories, into the Doctor of Management programme. As those of you following this blog will know, the DMan is still running 20 years later and has just produced its 71st doctoral completion.
He was a scholar with a global reputation and was invited to speak all over the world. He made contributions to the field of organisational theory, to the development of experience-based pedagogy, and to the thinking of the Institute of Group Analysis where he trained as a group analyst in the 1990s. Ralph ran clinical groups in the NHS as well as groups within the university of Hertfordshire, including working with management teams.
Ralph continued to have a part time role as a supervisor on the DMan programme into his mid-70s and only finally retired three years ago. Some of you reading this post will have attended the retirement event at Roffey Park and experienced the great esteem in which he was held by everyone present.
Those of you who have met him will know that Ralph was a great story-teller. Despite his genius he was self-deprecating; he was kind, generous and provocative. He was also, at times, fantastically stubborn.
Ralph was a figure of great stature in the academic world. He was a loyal employee of HBS for over 30 years. But above all he was a great colleague, and with his immense gifts and deep wisdom he was very supportive of everyone who sought his help. Ralph helped us understand the world differently, as complex and paradoxical, and through his insights he helped us better understand ourselves. For many of us, he taught us how to think critically and reflexively.
We will be thinking of ways of continuing to discuss his legacy in the coming weeks and months.
If you would like to say something about Ralph and what he meant to you I have created a tribute page here.
This video is a very poor quality recording of Ralph Stacey giving his last exposition of complex responsive processes at the Complexity and Management Conference June 2018 before his retirement.
Apologies for both sound and picture quality.
Here is the link to the public booking page for the June 8-10th Complexity and Management Conference 2018. This year’s theme is: Taking Complexity Seriously: Why Does It Matter?
At the conference we are marking Ralph Stacey’s retirement from the DMan programme and the University of Hertfordshire after an academic career of more than 30 years.
I’m afraid the site is a bit clunky – for example, if you want to book both the conference and the workshop you have to choose the conference first then continue and book the workshop on the next page. All board and lodging is covered in the cost of the conference fee, but there is no accommodation included in the workshop fee.
Both workshop and conference will take place at Roffey Park Institute. However, Roffey Park only accommodates 60 people and we are expecting over 100 delegates, so those who don’t stay at Roffey will be placed in a hotel nearby. Transport to and from the hotel will be provided free of charge.
The one-day workshop on Friday 8th is an introduction to complex responsive processes as a body of thought: how did it develop, what ideas underpin it and how do we take up the ideas, for example, on the Doctor of Management programme? Participants will have lots of opportunities to link the ideas to their everyday experience at work through discussion. This one-day workshop is probably not suitable for anyone already very familiar with the perspective. The one-day workshop is introduced by Ralph Stacey and Chris Mowles.
The inaugural drinks reception and supper will begin at 7pm on Friday evening and is included in the cost of the conference.
The conference comprises:
The first key note speech on Saturday 9th June in the morning from Ralph Stacey outlining the development of complex responsive processes, followed by Q and A.
Small group work on the ideas arising from the keynote.
Lunch
In the afternoon there are parallel workshops, which will run twice, convened by members of the broader community of practitioners, academics and other interested parties who would like to discuss some aspect of complexity thinking that they have developed. A full list of the workshops will be circulated closer to the conference.
Supper will be at 8pm.
On Sunday 10th June Chris Mowles will try to give an overview of some of the key themes which have arisen during the conference. Thereafter there will be further group work and a concluding plenary.
Lunch is at 1pm on the Sunday, after which the conference closes.
Hope to see you there.
This is to give early notification that next year’s Complexity and Management Conference will take place at Roffey Park between 8-10th June 2018.
The conference will be held to mark the retirement of Ralph Stacey from the university and from the faculty of the Doctor of Management programme.
There will be more details in the autumn to give more details of the conference topic and the other key note speakers in addition to Ralph.
The participants who attend the annual Complexity and Management conference experience the same dynamics as members of any other group, even if it’s a temporary group. For example, one repeating theme at the conference is the established/outsider dynamic of those who have been through the Doctor of Management programme, or are currently on it, and those who haven’t. Participants who have been exposed to the programme because they are graduates, or because they are regular conference attenders are likely to talk in a way which may feel exclusionary to those who are new. Almost every year, new attendees at the conference raise the question as to whether we could have done more to make them feel welcome. There is always the ghost of the DMan-demon at the conference.
For this reason we are holding a one day introductory workshop on Friday 2nd June, to present some of the key ideas which inform the perspective of complex responsive processes of relating. It is a public workshop open to all, not just those who will go on to attend the conference For those who do, it may, or may not, make a difference to the quality of their participation. The conference begins the same evening with supper at 7pm.
You can book for the one day workshop, for the workshop and conference, or just for the conference here. There is a discount for early-bird booking before April 30th. For more details on the workshop, continue reading below: Continue reading
New edition published this month: the revised and updated version of Ralph’s textbook including sections on process organisation studies, new organisational examples and more up-to-date references.
The following post is written by Karina Solsø Iversen, who is a senior consultant at Attractor in Denmark and a student on the Doctor of Management programme at the University of Hertfordshire.
Danish book on complex responsive processes
It is a Friday night at7.30. The sun is shining outside in the beautiful garden of Roffey Park Institute which is the location for the quarterly residentials on the doctorate program (DMan) of the complexity and management research group. I sit in the lounge together with my new colleagues whom I have just met a few hours ago. This is my first residential. One of my new colleagues, Mick asks me: What are you doing as a professional? Happy that someone is interested in getting to know me I reply that I work as a consultant. He asks me what I do then. I tell him that I am a process consultant working with organizational development. He looks at me in a mischievous way and asks me once again the exact same question – what do I do then? Somewhat irritated and a bit insecure about what is going on, feeling like I am taking part in a test, I reply that I facilitate conversations between people coming from different departments, professions or hierarchies in order for them to create solutions together. Mick smiles and asks me once again what I then actually do …
A few months ago, my DMan colleague Pernille Thorup and I published a Danish introductory book on complex responsive processes. In Danish it is called: Leadership in Complexity. An introduction to Ralph Stacey’s theory about organization and leadership. Continue reading
Early bird rate ends April 30th 2014.
Orthodox management literature contains many of the same assumptions about organisational culture: that changes in culture can be linked to organisational success and improvement; that culture is a mixture of the tangible (rules, behaviour, rewards) and the intangible (symbols); that culture can exist in an organisation and in sub-units within an organisation; that it can be ‘diagnosed’ and changed, perhaps with an ‘n’ step programme moving from existing to preferred cultures; that it is often precipitated by a leader having an inspiring vision.
For a discussion of alternatives from a complexity perspective come to the Complexity and Management Conference.
The key note speaker is Professor Ralph Stacey, one of the world’s leading scholars on complexity and management.
There will be lots of opportunity for lively discussion throughout the weekend.
Conference fees include all board and accommodation from 7pm Friday 6th to lunchtime Sunday 8th June. Book here.
Complexity & Management Centre 