Complex Thought and Systems Thinking Connecting Group Process and Team Management: New Lenses for Social Transformation in the Workplace

Abstract

This paper addresses group process and team management strategies. Recognizing the trajectory in both groups and teams, as living systems in our postmodern society, it challenges why teams are assessed as having better performance or development. Groups have been used for social transformation in many ways, and teams thrive in our zeitgeist, affecting almost the entire active working population. This paper discusses a new way to understand group process and teams using three bodies of knowledge: (1) complexity theory including dialogic, organizational recursion, and holographic principles and the knowledge through comprehension and explanation, (2) systems thinking properties applied to living systems, including interaction, interdependence, autonomy and dependency, organization and self-production, and (3) rhizomic structures as a mode of knowledge that is non-hierarchical and possibly provides a useful means of understanding society as interconnected alliances in movement. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.