1 Successful organizational transformation: The perspective of bifurcation and self-organization

In a complex organizational context impacted by many unpredictable external and internal factors, running a business is no longer easy. Ideal management procedures of strategies formulation, goals deployment, implementation, evaluation, and corrective actions may not go as smoothly as expected. In contrast to the existing management science emphasizing control and predictability, complexity theory focus on understanding the interaction between the environment and the organization. Yet no matter how complex, nonlinear, or chaotic the system is, the order emerges in systems. Chaos theory, complexity theory, self-organization and bifurcation are the most selected characteristics in describing the complex systems. To explore the complex organizational phenomena, this author personally interviewed three overseas Chinese entrepreneurs in USA who had failed at least once, then rose up like phoenix stronger than before. All three entrepreneurs were interviewed twice, about one month apart between the two interviews. The duration of interview ranges from 3 hours to 5 hours for each entrepreneur. Total six bifurcation incidents were identified. Based on a framework of external environment (economic, social, political, technological, and physical), working environment (customer, supplier, competitor, and labor market), and internal environment (strategy, structure, system, shared value, style, skill, and staff), each bifurcation incident was examined. As a result, six propositions are propose