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Accommodating Complexity and Sensemaking

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Leadership in Islam

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Abstract

This chapter explores the processual nature of leadership (the study of processes and not just discrete events), and highlights the emergence of ‘accommodating complexity’ and ‘sense-making.’ Accommodating complexity is a higher-level concept that integrates and explains the variations that ‘reconciling problems’ cannot explain. Understanding leadership as a sense-making process helps explain what happens in the daily activities of leading. Accommodating complexity requires a genuine willingness to understand other cultures and people, appropriate their distinctive principles, and create a plural organization cognizant of difference. Sense-making requires an organization and its leaders to be grounded in identity construction, retrospective and prospective, social and processual, and driven by plausible images. Leaders can establish a more effective way of communicating their message through storytelling, open discussions, and honest dialogue.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

    Nezar Faris & Mohamad Abdalla

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  1. Nezar Faris
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  2. Mohamad Abdalla
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Faris, N., Abdalla, M. (2018). Accommodating Complexity and Sensemaking. In: Leadership in Islam. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66441-5_8

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