I agree with the previous reviewers - this is a thought provoking and useful book.
I recognised a huge amount from my own experience of working in and with organisations. The examples of consulting engagements ring completely true - for me at least. And I really enjoyed having my natural suspicions of formal planning processes confirmed academically.
I also found the chapter which compares the Shaw/Stacey approach with other better recognised approaches really useful. The simple format of "what is similar" - "what is different" helped clarify their position.
Like Shaw, I am a tiny bit suspicious of many of the approaches she describes (Open Space Technology, Future Search Conferencing etc). And it helped me to think about the reasons why I have that instinctive response.
However, I really missed in that section, and more generally, the sense that she and Stacey are building on the "shoulders of giants". It would have really helped me throughout to have heard even a tiny acknowledgement of the remarkable contribution of others to the practice of OD. At times it really got in my way - I kept getting the sense that the author "doesn't have much time for" Schein, Argyris, Bohm, Bion etc - people who whatever their failings might be have in my view made enormous contributions.
I also wondered whether there is a simple flaw in her thinking. Patricia Shaw is clearly an highly intelligent and articulate woman. There were times when I was worried that her explanations were going to disappear into the realm of 'meta-twaddle' - but she always rescued things, in my view. She is 'clear' herself, despite the difficulty of some of the material.
Personally, I do find the theoretical framework of complexity at the same time useful, and also a little irritating - why can't we just call these conversations "conversations"? Why do we need a fancy name for them?
And I simply find it hard to believe that the people she writes sometimes a little disparagingly about didn't understand the "edge of chaos" instinctively. I think we all do - I think it is human to live in chaos and we all 'get it' intuitively and emotionally. Take her criticism of Argyris' double loop learning. The criticism for me only works from the frame that he is *only* talking about rationality.
What if he and Schein and all the others not only appreciated chaos but lived through it in their work? What if it is only when their work is analysed 'rationally' that these flaws emerge? This for me is the irony - the very thing she tells us not to do - to over-rationalise and believe too much in our own sense of the future or past - she seems to do in relation to these greats.
Nonetheless a very good book.
