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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.