Browsing Research publications by Author "Mowles, Christopher"
Now showing items 1-17 of 17
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Audit as political struggle: the doxa of managerialism clashing with the uncertainty of real life
Crewe, Emma; Mowles, Christopher (2020-11-19)Auditing firms tend to promote rule-bound orthodoxies about management based on the fiction that the world is more predictable than it is. Managers in INGOs find that long-term planning requires endless readjustment. We ... -
Complex, but not quite complex enough : The turn to the complexity sciences in evaluation scholarship
Mowles, Christopher (2014-04-01)This article offers a critical review of the way in which some scholars have taken up the complexity sciences in evaluation scholarship. I argue that there is a tendency either to over-claim or under-claim their importance ... -
A complexity approach to leadership development : developing practical judgement
Flinn, Kevin; Mowles, Christopher (Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, 2014-01)Over recent years, complexity perspectives have been taken up more broadly in scholarship and teaching about leadership with leadership development providers such as Ashridge Business School, Roffey Park, Harvard Business ... -
Consultancy as Temporary Leadership : Negotiating Power in Everyday Practice
Mowles, Christopher (2009)Orthodox theories of consultancy address power relations between the consultant and their contractors. However, they can suggest that either the consultant should manipulate those they work with 'for the good', or they ... -
Experiencing uncertainty – on the potential of groups and a group analytic approach for making management education more critical.
Mowles, Christopher (2017-11-01)This article points to the potential of methods derived from group analytic practice for making management education more critical. It draws on the experience of running a professional doctorate for more experienced managers ... -
Finding room for values in required ways of working : values, power, conflict and compromise in aid agencies
Mowles, Christopher (Routledge, 2008) -
Group analytic methods beyond the clinical setting – working with researcher-managers.
Mowles, Christopher (2017-06-01)Group analytic scholars have a long history of thinking about organizations and taking up group analytic concepts in organizational contexts. Many still aspire to being more of a resource to organizations given widespread ... -
Keeping means and ends in view-linking practical judgement, ethics and emergence.
Mowles, Christopher (2012-07)In this article I argue that the means and ends of development are constitutive of each other. If means appear to have become separated from the espoused ends of international nongovernment organisations (INGOs), then it ... -
Managing Amid Paradoxes: Perspectives of Non-Profit Management Education
Mowles, Christopher; Herzka, Michael (Springer Nature, 2017-03-01) -
Managing in Uncertainty : Complexity and the paradoxes of everyday organizational life
Mowles, Christopher (Routledge, 2015-04-02)The reality of everyday organizational life is that it is filled with uncertainty, contradictions and paradoxes. Yet leaders and managers are expected to act as though they can predict the future and bring about the ... -
The Paradox of Stability and Change : Elias’ Processual Sociology
Mowles, Christopher (Oxford University Press (OUP), 2015-03)The chapter explores the contribution of the process sociologist Norbert Elias to processual organisational scholarship -
Ralph Stacey: Taking experience seriously
Mowles, Christopher (Palgrave Macmillan Ltd., 2017-10-21)Ralph Stacey is one of the pioneers in taking up insights from the complexity sciences in organizational theory. Trained in South Africa and the London School of Economics as a macroeconomist, and latterly as a group ... -
Rethinking Management : Radical Insights from the Complexity Sciences
Mowles, Christopher (Gower Publishing, 2011)In Rethinking Management, Chris Mowles argues that management courses may cause as many crises as they alleviate. Taking examples of managing and leading in contemporary organisations, his book treats uncertainty as central ... -
Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics : The challenge of complexity to ways of thinking about organisations
Stacey, Ralph; Mowles, Christopher (Pearson Education, 2016-01-30)Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics remains unique amongst strategic management textbooks by taking a refreshingly alternative look at the subject. Drawing on the sciences of complexity as well as a broad range ... -
Successful or not? Evidence, emergence, and development management
Mowles, Christopher (2010)This article offers a critique of the dominant ways of conceiving of, managing, and evaluating development. It argues that these management methods constrain the exploration of novelty and difference. By drawing on insights ... -
Transformational Change in the Higher Education Sector: an inquiry into leadership practice
Mowles, Christopher; Filosof, Jana; Flinn, Kevin; Mason, Phillip; Culkin, Nigel; Andrews, Rachelle; James, Dawn (Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, 2019-05-15)This is a report which inquires into the practice of the members of leadership teams in six UK universities undertaking projects of transformation in their institutions. The researchers interviewed senior managers bilaterally ... -
What we talk about when we talk about leadership in South Sudan.
Masua, David; Mowles, Christopher; Sarra, Nicholas (2019-09-19)It is important to think critically about how we develop leaders, particularly in highly unpredictable countries like South Sudan. This article gives an account of a yearlong reflective and experiential programme in Juba ...