Abstract
The world has changed: Since the financial crisis, there has been an increased awareness about the globally interconnected world of business; its complexity and sustainability. Some would believe that its unpredictable and situations change rapidly which is resulting in the obsolescence of existing models to deal with complexity and uncertainty. Some call the situation today a “VUCA” environment (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) (http://knowledgenetwork.thunderbird.edu/research/2012/07/09/kinsinger-walch-vuca/).
The mainstream of applied management tools and frameworks is still unchanged: While the business environment is rapidly undergoing a change, the business tools and frameworks are lagging behind.
Need for broader knowledge and application new concepts and frameworks: This book attempts to bring together and discuss concepts, tools and frameworks for management to cope with the new situation. The book will be of use to academics, practitioners and those who are just starting to engage with the business world.
Keywords
- VUCA
- Complexity
- Next society
- System theory
- Complexity theory
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Achouri C (2011) Wenn Sie wollen, nennen Sie es Führung: Systemisches Management im 21. Jahrhundert. GABAL Verlag GmbH
Ambiguity (2014) Ambiguity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiguity
Ariely D (2008) Predictably irrational. HarperCollins, New York
Ashby WR (1957) An introduction to cybernetics. Chapman & Hall, London
Baecker D (2011) Zukunftsfähigkeit: 16 Thesen zur nächsten Gesellschaft. Revue für Postheroisches Management, Heft 9, 2011, 8–9
Bartholomees JB Jr (2008) Theory of war and strategy. US Army War College, Carlisle
Beck K, Beedle M, Van Bennekum A, Cockburn A, Cunningham W, Fowler, M et al (2001) Manifesto for agile software development. http://agilemanifesto.org
Bennett N, Lemoine J (2014) What VUCA really means for you. Harv Bus Rev 92(1/2):27
Böhle F (2011) Management der Ungewissheit–ein blinder Fleck bei der Förderung von Innovationen. In: Jeschke S et al (eds) Enabling innovation. Springer, Berlin, pp 17–30
Bouée CE (2013) Light footprint management: leadership in times of change. A&C Black, Edinburgh
Brynjolfsson E, McAfee A (2011) Race against the machine. Digital Frontier, Lexington
Brynjolfsson E, McAfee A (2014) The second machine age: work, progress, and prosperity in a time of brilliant technologies. WW Norton, New York
Byrne D, Callaghan G (2013) Complexity theory and the social sciences: the state of the art. Routledge, Abingdon
Dittes FM (2012) Komplexität. Springer, Berlin
Dörner D (1989) Die Logik des Misslingens. Rowohlt, Reinbek
Drucker P (2001) The next society. http://www.economist.com/node/770819
Drucker P (2007) Managing in the next society. Routledge, New York
Duncan RB (1972) Characteristics of organizational environments and perceived environmental uncertainty. Adm Sci Q 17:313–327
Epstein LG (1999) A definition of uncertainty aversion. Rev Econ Stud 66(3):579–608
Érdi P (2007) Complexity explained. Springer, Berlin
Espejo R, Reyes A (2011) Organizational systems: managing complexity with the viable system model. Springer, Heidelberg
Gillon BS (1990) Ambiguity, generality, and indeterminacy: tests and definitions. Synthese 85(3):391–416
Grote G (2009) Management of uncertainty: theory and application in the design of systems and organizations. Springer, London
Holland JH (2014) Complexity—a very short introduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Johnson N (2007) Simply complexity. Oneworld, Oxford
Kahneman D (2011) Thinking, fast and slow. Macmillan, New York
Kahneman D, Lovallo D, Sibony O (2011) Before you make that big decision. Harv Bus Rev 89(6):50–60
Kail EG (2010a) Leading in a VUCA environment: V is for volatility. http://blogs.hbr.org/2010/11/leading-in-a-vuca-environment/
Kail EG (2010b) Leading in a VUCA environment: U is for uncertainty. http://blogs.hbr.org/2010/11/leading-in-a-vuca-environment-1/
Kail EG (2010c) Leading in a VUCA environment: C is for complexity. http://blogs.hbr.org/2010/12/leading-effectively-in-a-vuca/
Kail EG (2011) Leading in a VUCA environment: A is for ambiguity. http://blogs.hbr.org/2011/01/leading-effectively-in-a-vuca-1/
Kingsinger P, Walch K (2012) Living and leading in a VUCA world. Thunderbird University. http://knowledgenetwork.thunderbird.edu/research/2012/07/09/kinsinger-walch-vuca/
Kurzweil R (2000) The age of spiritual machines: when computers exceed human intelligence. Penguin Group, New York
Lazer D, Pentland AS, Adamic L, Aral S, Barabasi AL, Brewer D et al (2009) Life in the network: the coming age of computational social science. Science 323(5915):721
Lindemann U, Maurer M, Braun T (2009) Structural complexity management: an approach for the field of product design. Springer, Berlin
Luhmann N (1984) Soziale Systeme: Grundriss einer allgemeinen Theorie. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M
Mainzer K (2008) Komplexität (Vol. 3012). utb
Maturana HR (1980) Autopoiesis and cognition: the realization of the living (no. 42). Springer, Dordrecht
McMillan E (2004) Complexity, organizations and change. Routledge, London
Meinhart RM (2009) Leadership and strategic thinking. Strategic Thinking, 36–37
Mitchell M (2009) Complexity: a guided tour. Oxford University Press, New York
Moore GE (1965) Cramming more components onto integrated circuits. Electronics 38(8):114–117
Nandakumar MK, Jharkharia S, Nair A (2012) Environmental uncertainty and flexibility. Glob J Flexible Syst Manage 13(3):121–122
Pentland A (2014) Social physics: how good ideas spread-the lessons from a new science. Penguin, New York
Reynolds CW (1987) Flocks, herds and schools: a distributed behavioral model. ACM SIGGRAPH Comput Graph 21(4):25–34
Ritholtz B (2012) There’s nothing new about uncertainty. The Washington Post online. http://www.washingtonpost.com/theres-nothing-new-about-uncertainty/2012/07/06/gJQA5hnmUW_story_1.html
Roderick RM (ed) (1998) Strategic leadership primer. U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks
Senge PM, Suzuki J (1994) The fifth discipline: the art and practice of the learning organization. Currency Doubleday, New York, p 14
Sennet A (2011) Ambiguity. In: Zalta EN (ed) The stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition). http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/ambiguity/
Simon H (1965). The architecture of complexity. In: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol 106, no. 6, pp 467–482, 12 Dec 1962
Simon FB (2013) Wenn rechts links ist und links rechts: Paradoxiemanagement in Familie, Wirtschaft und Politik. Philosophie, Systemtheorie, Gesellschaft. Carl-Auer Verlag, Heidelberg
Snowden DJ (2012) Keynote speech: combining complexity theory with narrative research. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHjeFFGug1Y
Snowden DJ, Boone ME (2007) A leader’s framework for decision making. Harv Bus Rev 85(11):68
Stacey RD (2007) Strategic management and organisational dynamics: the challenge of complexity to ways of thinking about organisations. Pearson Education, London
Straub R (2013) Managing in the next society. http://www.druckersociety.at/index.php/peterdruckerhome/commentaries/dr-richard-straub
Vagueness (2014) Vagueness. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagueness
Volatility (2014) Volatility (finance). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volatility_(finance)
Volatility (n.d.) Volatility. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/volatility.asp
Weick KE (1989) Mental models of high reliability systems. Organ Environ 3(2):127–142
Yarger HR (2006) Strategic theory for the 21st century: the little book on big strategy. DIANE, Darby
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mack, O., Khare, A. (2016). Perspectives on a VUCA World. In: Mack, O., Khare, A., Krämer, A., Burgartz, T. (eds) Managing in a VUCA World. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16889-0_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16889-0_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16888-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16889-0
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)