Johannes Rüegg-Stürm - Managing in a Complex World

utb 5299

A cooperation of following publishers

Böhlau Verlag · Wien · Köln · Weimar

Verlag Barbara Budrich · Opladen · Toronto

facultas · Wien

Wilhelm Fink · Paderborn

Narr Francke Attempto Verlag · Tübingen

Haupt Verlag · Bern

Verlag Julius Klinkhardt · Bad Heilbrunn

Mohr Siebeck · Tübingen

Ernst Reinhardt Verlag · München

Ferdinand Schöningh · Paderborn

Eugen Ulmer Verlag · Stuttgart

UVK Verlag · München

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht · Göttingen

Waxmann · Münster · New York

wbv Publikation · Bielefeld

Johannes Rüegg-Stürm

Simon Grand

The St. Gallen Management Model

Haupt Verlag

Johannes Rüegg-Stürm is Professor of Organization Studies and Director of the Institute for Systemic Management and Public Governance at the University of St. Gallen (HSG), where he heads the Organization Studies Research Center. He has long-standing experience as a process facilitator, consultant, coach, member and president of boards of directors, speaker, and academic leader of entrepreneurial training initiatives for systemic management development.

Simon Grand is Associate Professor of Strategic Management and Management Innovation, Academic Director of the RISE Management Innovation Lab at the University of St. Gallen (HSG), and Research Fellow at the Zurich Center for Creative Economies of Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). As a management researcher, strategy designer and member of several boards of directors, he works with entrepreneurs and executives to develop entrepreneurial strategies and effective corporate governance and management practice.

This book was translated by Dr. Mark Kyburz & by Jay Binneweg, M.A. HSG.

1st edition : 2019

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche

Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de

Copyright © 2019 Haupt, Bern

This book, including all of its parts, is protected by copyright. Every kind of use beyond the limits of the narrow restrictions of the law of copyright is not allowed without the explicit consent of the editor. Noncompliance to this restrictions are inadmissible and criminal. This applies equally for the duplication, translation, microfilming as well as for digital storage and subsequent of the book or any of its parts.

Layout: Alltag Agentur, St. Gallen

Translation: Mark Kyburz & Jay Binneweg

Cover design: Atelier Reichert, Stuttgart

eBook distribution: Brockhaus Commission, Kornwestheim

www.haupt.ch

UTB number: 5299

ISBN 978-3-8252-5299-1(Book)

ISBN 978-3-8463-5299-1(eBook)

Managing in a Complex World is based on “The St. Gallen Management Model” (SGMM). The SGMM follows a long and rich tradition of presenting in didactic form a theoretically and empirically sound examination of management abreast with current management practice and the latest research developments and findings. This book is a translation of the German original (published in September 2019).

At the end of the 1960s, it was a pioneering achievement to explore management – as the challenge of coping with complexity – from a systems theory perspective, which was quite unusual at the time (Ulrich, 1968). The resulting insights were made accessible to teaching and practice by Hans Ulrich and Walter Krieg (Ulrich & Krieg, 1972), two pioneering scholars at the University of St. Gallen (HSG), as the St. Gallen Management Model.

The SGMM has always intended to contribute to the holistic understanding and integrative treatment of complex management challenges in their unique and differentiated contexts. To this day, this concern has lost none of its relevance.

The present version of the SGMM draws on a long scientific tradition. In particular, it includes ideas and thoughts from several earlier publications: J. Rüegg-Stürm, The New St. Gallen Management Model (2004) and J. Rüegg-Stürm & S. Grand, Das St. Galler Management-Modell. Wissenschaftliche Grundlagen und Praxisbeispiele (2017). At the same time, it consolidates the fundamental insights of our empirical research in recent years and harnesses the scientific potential of practice theory and autopoietic social systems theory. In addition to outlining the scientific basis of the SGMM (Rüegg-Stürm & Grand, 2017), we have conceived this current edition as a working tool along stringent didactic lines. It also serves critical self-reflection for an in-depth examination of management.

The SGMM is available as a printed book and as an eBook. It supports both educational purposes and entrepreneurial practice in further developing organizational value creation. The SGMM also includes a number of didactic visualizations, which have been specially designed to facilitate working with the model. The visualizations can be downloaded from www.sgmm.ch. [5] The latest version of the SGMM distinguishes a task perspective from a practice perspective. Both perspectives are informed by current research in the social and cultural sciences. Both perspectives highlight key aspects of management practice and complement each other.

Our research partnerships with enterprises and organizations from highly diverse contexts (e.g., industrial groups, technology companies, design agencies, research organizations, hospitals, and public utilities) have time and again highlighted the importance of self-critically examining both one’s own understanding of management and management practice as lived and experienced every day. This examination of management provides unfamiliar perspectives on the interplay of environment, organization, and management practice. These perspectives enable those responsible for an organization to discover new possibilities for development and action.

In this sense, the SGMM cannot be “introduced” in an organization, but instead may serve as a tool to tackle specific tasks. The SGMM may help structure constructive debates about important entrepreneurial issues. And it may also serve as a source of inspiration for developing an organization-specific management model.

We have only been able to further develop the SGMM, presented between these covers, thanks to our inspiring cooperation with many colleagues from the scientific community, in particular the University of St. Gallen, and from business practice. On behalf of many colleagues, we would like to thank our team colleagues Simone von Wittken, Christian Erk, Marc Krautzberger, Matthias Mitterlechner, Torsten Schmid, Thomas Schumacher, and Harald Tuckermann. We also thank our colleagues Kuno Schedler, Thomas Bieger, Pietro Beritelli, Dirk Schäfer, Florian Hohmann, Mathias Müller, Thomas Friedli, Urs Fueglistaller, Thomas Zellweger, Alexander Fust, and Frank Halter. They are all personally committed to anchoring the tradition of the SGMM at the University of St. Gallen and play a key role in its further development through their work. Particularly inspiring and enriching was our intense exchange of ideas with Hansjörg Siegenthaler and Elisabeth Michel-Alder, as well as with Martha Feldman, Ann Langley, Ann Cunliffe, Robert Chia, Alfred Kieser, Henry Mintzberg, Davide Nicolini, and Rudolf Wimmer, in the context of our “Distinguished Management Scholar Series.” [6] While developing, realizing, and finalizing this text, we have received tireless support from our committed, professional, and patient project team. Special thanks go to Naomi Kink and Andreas Schwendener. They have supported us not only with excellent project management but also with many inspiring ideas, which have considerably enriched this book. We thank our translators, Jay Binneweg and Mark Kyburz, for their tireless commitment and painstaking attention to detail. We also wish to thank Victoria Hotz and Flavio Tschopp, who have provided valuable advice on making this book more accessible. Our very special thanks go to Monika Steiger for providing the conditions under which we are able to tackle our daily work at the Organization Studies Research Center of the Institute for Systemic Management and Public Governance (IMP-HSG).