Organizing in the mist: a case study in leadership and complexity

Purpose This paper aims to help develop an understanding of how complexity theory may be applied to an understanding of leadership and organizational dynamics and contributes to the growing body of literature in the same subject. Design/methodology/approach Stacey's theory of complex responsive processes is used to analyse leadership and organizational dynamics in an unusual example of an organizational simulation exercise on an MBA programme. Practical implications This article shows how the theory of complex responsive processes may offer the potential to understand episodes of emergent, and potentially creative, forms of organization and leadership. It demonstrates how to recognise and work with the qualities of participation, conversational life, anxiety, diversity, and with unpredictability and paradox. Originality/value This paper complements previous articles in LODJ that seek to use complexity theories in the analysis of leadership and organizational dynamics. It demonstrates how an analysis from the perspective of complex responsive processes differs from that of complexity theories that focus on systemic rather than process thinking and that do not incorporate insights from psychology and social theory.