Insights from complexity theories for healthcare leadership

Jo Maybin, Kiran Chauhan and Simon Newitt

Chapter 15 in Research Handbook on Leadership in Healthcare, 2023, pp 268-287 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: What is ‘complexity’? And how can it help leaders in healthcare understand their work? This chapter starts by outlining characteristics of complex systems as they are described by the complexity sciences and provides a brief overview of how this perspective has informed thinking about health and healthcare. The chapter then focuses on exploring how ideas about complexity have been taken up in leadership and organisational theory in the foundational texts of three groups of seminal scholar-practitioners: Margaret Wheatley and Myron-Kellner Rogers; Mary Uhl-Bien, Russ Marion and Michael Arena; and Ralph Stacey and Chris Mowles. Conscious that a complexity mindset invites us to resist the pull to the kinds of recommendations and action so dominant in health and care management, we instead go on to identify some common themes emerging from these theories, which leaders could pay attention to if they want to take up their roles in a complexity-informed way.

Keywords: Business and Management; Economics and Finance; Sociology and Social Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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