Ehsan Asnaashari © 2010 All rights reserved

Construction Management Synopsis

One of the managers' concerns is keeping the project in control. In fact, managers are people who are in charge to control the performance of a business, a project or a process. To do so, many tools and techniques can help manger to keep their business affairs in control. However, despite of great development in management concepts and techniques, controlling organizations is a tough job that sometimes cannot be done as it is expected. Usually managers complain about the deadlines that were not met, targets that are slipped, vague strategic visions, and missions that are poorly communicated. These issues may take out organizations control from mangers' hands. It is stressful for managers to be the ones who are in charge but finding that they are not in control. The reason that managers fail to control their organizations is that they persist on predicting unknowable future. However, predicting  behavior of both human and its environment is almost impossible. Although, managers may guess some of up-coming circumstances by analyzing available data and also previous experiences, the future is still recognizable only when it arrives. Hence, managers need to think about a new way that organization can be managed and controlled.

The current dominant notion about managing organizations has a root in Newtonian style of thinking with universal laws of a linear type such as gravity. Newtonian style of thinking explains that a phenomenon consists of discrete and objective elements that can be studied by separating the whole phenomenon into its parts or elements. Newtonian notion also believes that there is a law-like association among elements of a phenomenon that should be identified by finding a linear causal relationship. Based on these laws a mechanistic model will be constructed to predict the future and take control of the phenomenon. Although in many situations of everyday life Newton’s mechanics work well, in organizations and management field it has proved much less successful. The reason is that the world of organizations is different to pure science realms. Newtonian view might work well under conditions of low speed, low change and high predictability. However, in today's fast pace world of organizations with high rate of uncertainty, this traditional approach does not work anymore. This research criticizes the Newtonian style of thinking and introduces complexity mindset that is a new way of thinking about the complex world.  Complexity science explains that intrinsic properties of interaction and relationship among parts of a complex system would be the cause of emergent coherence, which is unpredictable. Because organizations are complex systems, the Newtonian view cannot help us to manage them effectively. Mangers should take a holistic view towards organizations and deal with them as complex systems instead of machines. Managers should attempt to recognize emerging organizational patterns and business trends and adjust organizational strategies to them.

This research is going to provide a theoretical foundation to justify complexity of organizations and introduce new way of thinking about complex world. For the abstract of the paper that is presented in a conference in Nottingham Trent University, please go to “Publication” page.