The document discusses systems theory and its application to management. It provides background on systems theory and how it originated from biology and was applied to management. Some key points made include:
- Systems theory takes a holistic approach but does not entirely dismiss reductionism. It is important to understand the parts as well as the whole.
- Dynamic capabilities framework can serve as a workable systems theory for management by taking a holistic view of the enterprise and environment, understanding interdependencies, and emphasizing entrepreneurial action and transformation.
- Both systems theory and dynamic capabilities are difficult to apply given deep specialization in education and practice but provide a more comprehensive understanding of complex realities than other approaches.
There was a full house for the latest Charles Cooper memorial lecture, given by Professor Sidney G. Winter, former Chief Economist of the US General Accounting Office. Professor Winter spoke at length about ‘Dynamic Capability — The Concept and How It Helps Us Understand Economic Change’ in a session rounded off by more questions than time allowed. http://www.merit.unu.edu/permalink.php?id=993
There was a full house for the latest Charles Cooper memorial lecture, given by Professor Sidney G. Winter, former Chief Economist of the US General Accounting Office. Professor Winter spoke at length about ‘Dynamic Capability — The Concept and How It Helps Us Understand Economic Change’ in a session rounded off by more questions than time allowed. http://www.merit.unu.edu/permalink.php?id=993
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ing the Conditions for Failure: An Initial Exploration of the Systemic Relat...Janet Fulton
Success and failure in the creative and media industries are not polar opposites. They are intimately connected and both are enabled and constrained by the same entrepreneurial systemic structures. Creative failure and creative success both require equal research attention to help us understand the co-dependent relationship that exists between them. In a predominantly neoliberal world, with its consuming emphasis on winning at all costs, success is not only easy to identify but is valorised above all else, particularly for individuals, while failure is often hidden or perceived as negative. However, we argue that the relationship between failure, risk and success is deeply symbiotic and should be examined from a systemic rather than an individual view.
Creative practice emerges out of a system where an individual is placed in a relationship to the social and cultural context and network of peers that enables and constrains creative opportunities. If, as we argue, creative practice is systemic, it is important to examine how these factors intersect to allow both failure and success to emerge and understand the close relationship between them. There is a need to understand how creative failures and successes are managed by players in the media and creative industries.
This paper provides a brief literature review of creative success and creative failure and an analysis of the current media and creative industries’ landscape. Using a theoretical discussion of the relationship between failure, risk and success and how creative industry entrepreneurial neo-liberal business conditions are forcing individuals to be risk averse, the proposition being presented is that the media industries, operating through SMEs in this neo-liberally dominated market, have become highly constrained and, as such, create conditions that restrict creative opportunities largely through their own outsourcing and sub-contractng behaviour. We conclude that further research is needed about the relationship between creative
failures and successes of media industry sectors and how these are treated by both employers and those seeking to work in the creative industries.
Chapter 05 Ethics and Social ResponsibilityRayman Soe
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Strategic design and the climate crisisRaz Godelnik
The United Nations considers climate change as “the defining issue of our time”. Raz Godelnik, Assistant Professor of Strategic Design and Management hosts a webinar that will focus on the challenges and opportunities for strategic designers working in a business environment shaped and defined by the climate crisis.
Thinking differently about enterprise architecture 2017Mikkel Brahm
The differences between underlying and taken for granted assuptions in an orthodox and a complexity based view on Enterprise Architecture and how these differences impact our practice.
ing the Conditions for Failure: An Initial Exploration of the Systemic Relat...Janet Fulton
Success and failure in the creative and media industries are not polar opposites. They are intimately connected and both are enabled and constrained by the same entrepreneurial systemic structures. Creative failure and creative success both require equal research attention to help us understand the co-dependent relationship that exists between them. In a predominantly neoliberal world, with its consuming emphasis on winning at all costs, success is not only easy to identify but is valorised above all else, particularly for individuals, while failure is often hidden or perceived as negative. However, we argue that the relationship between failure, risk and success is deeply symbiotic and should be examined from a systemic rather than an individual view.
Creative practice emerges out of a system where an individual is placed in a relationship to the social and cultural context and network of peers that enables and constrains creative opportunities. If, as we argue, creative practice is systemic, it is important to examine how these factors intersect to allow both failure and success to emerge and understand the close relationship between them. There is a need to understand how creative failures and successes are managed by players in the media and creative industries.
This paper provides a brief literature review of creative success and creative failure and an analysis of the current media and creative industries’ landscape. Using a theoretical discussion of the relationship between failure, risk and success and how creative industry entrepreneurial neo-liberal business conditions are forcing individuals to be risk averse, the proposition being presented is that the media industries, operating through SMEs in this neo-liberally dominated market, have become highly constrained and, as such, create conditions that restrict creative opportunities largely through their own outsourcing and sub-contractng behaviour. We conclude that further research is needed about the relationship between creative
failures and successes of media industry sectors and how these are treated by both employers and those seeking to work in the creative industries.
Chapter 05 Ethics and Social ResponsibilityRayman Soe
Richard L. Daft addresses themes and issues directly relevant to both the everyday demands and significant challenges facing businesses today. Comprehensive coverage helps develop managers able to look beyond traditional techniques and ideas to tap into a full breadth of management skills. With the best in proven management and new competencies that harness creativity, D.A.F.T. is Management!
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Running head COMPLEXITY THEORY1COMPLEXITY THEORY4.docxjoellemurphey
Running head: COMPLEXITY THEORY
1
COMPLEXITY THEORY
4
Complexity Theory and Organization Science
Author
Institution
Organizations are mostly viewed as units that have a purpose, possess a structural form, and exhibit a given level of determinism and order. Complexity theory, in this instance is a pool of ideas revolving around the top bottom analysis approach used in understanding systems such as organizations, in fields such as strategic management. Its application areas comprise understanding how firms adapt to operational environments and how they handle uncertainty conditions. The theory treats firms and organizations as a collection of structures and strategies. The structure being complex that is, they are dynamic interaction networks, and they are adaptive meaning the collective behaviour change and organize themselves to fit the changes initiated by collection of events (Marion, 1999).
A theory of complex systems is important in unraveling the basic principles common to all systems. Presently there lacks a single integrated theory of complexity, but rather their exists theories that explain the common behaviors of a complex system such as:
Unification of themes, of a complex adaptive system (CAS), this is a system exhibiting behaviours such as learning, emergence, self organization, or co-evolution, which are popular across systems like human settlements or ant colonies. Appreciating these unification themes of CAS, helps to develop descriptions that relate to a case of an organization. The concept of self-organization is the ability of a system to instinctively self organizes itself into superior complex states, by interacting locally. This leads to renewal and reshaping of a whole system to adapt to external environment changes. Learning and adaptive behaviour is the capacity to learn and adapt to a complex system. The idea of an organization being complex and an adaptive system was derived in relation to the high levels of interconnectivity and technological advancements. Social systems, like organizations that are subsets exhibit a heap of complexity in their feature and form, by representing a complex interconnectivity web amid human beings who are capable of self-organization in order to respond to changes. However there is adaptation and learning involved at individual levels, system levels leading to development of direction and order, to empower groups into better handling of changes within its environment (Richardson, 2005).
In summary the notion of organizations being complex systems, capable of logically evolving strategies, processes, structures and self adjustment to changes in environment, imply novel roles and learning for managers as facilitators and guides for successful and transformative organizations.
References
Marion, R. (1999). The edge of organization: Chaos and complexity theories of formal social systems. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publ.
Richardson, K. A. (2005). Managing organizationa ...
Employment PracticesRegulation and Multinational CorporationsRoopaTemkar
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Specific ServPoints should be tailored for restaurants in all food service segments. Your ServPoints should be the centerpiece of brand delivery training (guest service) and align with your brand position and marketing initiatives, especially in high-labor-cost conditions.
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Senior Project and Engineering Leader Jim Smith.pdfJim Smith
I am a Project and Engineering Leader with extensive experience as a Business Operations Leader, Technical Project Manager, Engineering Manager and Operations Experience for Domestic and International companies such as Electrolux, Carrier, and Deutz. I have developed new products using Stage Gate development/MS Project/JIRA, for the pro-duction of Medical Equipment, Large Commercial Refrigeration Systems, Appliances, HVAC, and Diesel engines.
My experience includes:
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Over 15 years of experience managing and developing cost improvement projects with key Stakeholders, site Manufacturing Engineers, Mechanical Engineers, Maintenance, and facility support personnel to optimize pro-duction operations, safety, EHS, and new product development. (BioLab, Deutz, Caire)
Experience working as a Technical Manager developing new products with chemical engineers and packaging engineers to enhance and reduce the cost of retail products. I have led the activities of multiple engineering groups with diverse backgrounds.
Great experience managing the product development of products which utilize complex electrical controls, high voltage power panels, product testing, and commissioning.
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Great knowledge of ISO9001, NFPA, OSHA regulations.
User level knowledge of MRP/SAP, MS Project, Powerpoint, Visio, Mastercontrol, JIRA, Power BI and Tableau.
I appreciate your consideration, and look forward to discussing this role with you, and how I can lead your company’s growth and profitability. I can be contacted via LinkedIn via phone or E Mail.
Jim Smith
678-993-7195
jimsmith30024@gmail.com
Public Speaking Tips to Help You Be A Strong Leader.pdfPinta Partners
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Org Design is a core skill to be mastered by management for any successful org change.
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Copy of the presentation given at XP2024 based on a research paper.
In this paper we explain wat overwork is and the physical and mental health risks associated with it.
We then explore how overwork relates to system stability and inventory.
Finally there is a call to action for Team Leads / Scrum Masters / Managers to measure and monitor excess work for individual teams.
The Team Member and Guest Experience - Lead and Take Care of your restaurant team. They are the people closest to and delivering Hospitality to your paying Guests!
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3. BACKGROUND
Systems theory is a framework with which we can investigate phenomena from a
holistic approach.
Knowledge is derived from the understanding of the whole and not that of the single
parts (Aristotle's Holism)
The relationships between the parts themselves and the events they produce through
their interaction are the essence of system theory
Interactive/Complementarities in systems makes the whole larger (or smaller) than the
sum of its parts.
General systems theory found its way from biology (Ludwig von Bertalanffy) into
management and economics via Ross Ashby, Chester Bartnard, Kenneth Boulding, &
others and was popular in management in the 1960’s & 1970’s!.
For example, Burns and Stalker (1961) made substantial use of systems views in setting
forth their concepts of mechanistic and organic managerial systems
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4. HERBERT SIMON DESCRIBESTHE
CHALLENGE FORTHE SYSTEMS
APPROACH:
“In both science and engineering, the study of "systems" is an increasingly
popular activity. Its popularity is more a response to a pressing need for synthesizing
and analyzing complexity than it is to any large development of a body of knowledge
and technique for dealing with complexity. If this popularity is to be more than a fad,
necessity will have to be the mother of invention and provide substance to go with
the name”
Source: "The Architecture of Complexity," in Joseph A. Litterer,Organizations: Systems, Control and Adaptation,Vol. 2
(NewYork: John Wiley, 1969)
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5. SYSTEMSVIEW DOESN’T ENTIRELY
VITIATE REDUCTIONISM
Without at least a rudimentary understanding of the parts, a systems approach is
doomed to fail
Systems thinking can never be divorced from a reductionist approach. We need both
analysis and synthesis
The dynamic complexity of the system itself stands in the way of easy answers.
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6. LEARNING IS CENTRALTOTHE
(SMART) SYSTEMSVIEW
Systems Theory Applications in Management imply a learning system. Firms have skills
and competences that enable the production of new knowledge. (Nonaka and
Tacheucki, 1995)
The concept of learning is central to smart systems. Systems are smart when they react
through technology and seek the wise and intelligent use of resources.
"Learning is a feedback process in which our decisions alter the real world, and receive
information feedback about the work and revise the decisions we make and mental
models that motivate those decisions.” (Stermann, 1994, p.291).
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7. SYSTEMSTHEORY ISN’T PRESCRIPTIVE &
ENTREPRENEURSHIP IS MISSING
Does not specify the nature of interactions and interdependencies
Is not a prescriptive management theory
a) Rather abstract
b) No tools and technologies
c) Feedback and adaption present but pro-active entrepreneurial action is missing
(biological legacy)
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8. PHYSICAL/BIOLOGICAL ROOTS OF
SYSTEMTHEORY SUFFOCATE HUMAN
DESIGN/ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTION
Organisms, the foundation stone of general systems theory, do not contain purposeful
(design) elements which exercise their own will.
Concern is primarily with the way in which the organism responds to environmentally
generated inputs. Feedback concepts and the maintenance of a steady state are based
on internal adaptations to environmental forces.
In one sense, reductionism (a system is the sum of its parts) is the enemy of the systems
approach and vice versa
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9. THE MULTIDISCIPLINARY
REQUIREMENTS OF SYSTEMSTHEORY
ARE CONSIDERABLE
Builds on the knowledge and concepts developed within other disciplines.
Academics are hampered because each of the academic disciplines has taken a narrow
"partial systems view" many scholars and practitioners find comfort in the relative
certainty which this creates.
Academic’s & Practitioners alike do an admirable job of delineating and discussing
accounting, marketing, operations, manufacturing, & strategy as separate activities.
However, they are often unable to discuss them as integrated and interrelated activities.
Even though manager’s sometimes preach a general systems approach, they often
practice subsystems thinking.
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11. DYNAMIC CAPABILITIES AS A
WORKABLE SOLUTION
Managers following dynamic capabilities precepts:
See the enterprise and the extended environment (market and technological and
regulatory developments) as a whole
Avoid analyzing problems in isolation, follow integrated approaches, and know how and
when to prioritize ordinary and dynamic capabilities
Understand the internal and external ramifications
Are entrepreneurial and good communicators/networkers inside and outside the
enterprise.
Understand functional interdependencies of units/activities inside and outside the
enterprise
Diagnosis competitive predicaments through good sensing & sense making
Award decision traps & anti-cannibalization instincts
Figure out when & how to transform.
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12. THE DYNAMIC CAPABILITIES FRAMEWORK IS
HARDTO MASTER GIVENTHAT OUR EDUCATION
SYSTEM FAVORS DEEP SPECIALIZATION
As with general systems theory, no simple cookbook or 5 Forces distillation
Competing approaches/models ignore innovation, don’t recognize interdependencies,
eschew entrepreneurship
Dynamic capabilities is more difficult to comprehend and apply but can be the
foundation to a more thorough understanding of complex reality
Good (SiliconValley type) managers have an intuitive dynamic capabilities/systems view
of the world. By making elements and inter-relationships more explicit, the dynamic
capabilities can galvanize managers and management to action
The dynamic capabilities framework must be applied, further clarified, further
elaborated, and made more precise.
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13. GENERAL SYSTEMSTHEORY AND
MANAGEMENT
Foundations Biological and physical
systems
Dynamic Capabilities,
evolutionary economics,
and entrepreneurial
systems
Intellectual lineage in
management/economics
R. Ashby
Emory &Trist
Burns & Stalker
C.West Chanker
K. Boulding
Talcott parsons
Vilfredo Pareto
Schumpeter
Nelson &Winter
Penrose
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14. • Strategic “fit” over the long
run (evolutionary fitness)
• Sensing, seizing, shaping
and transforming
• Difficult; inimitable
• Technical efficiency in
basic business functions
• Operational,
administrative, and
governance
• Relatively easy; imitable
Ordinary
Capabilities
Dynamic
Capabilities
Doing things “right” Doing the “right” things
DYNAMIC VS. ORDINARY CAPABILITIES
Purpose
Tripartite
schema
Imitability
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16. APPENDIX
Key Concepts of General Systems Theory:
Subsystems or Components: A system by definition is composed of interrelated parts
Holism, Synergism, Organicisrn, and Gestalt:The whole is not just the sum of the parts;
Open Systems View: Systems can be considered in two ways: (1) closed or (2) open.
Biological and social systems are inherently open systems. Open-closed is a continuance;
that is, systems are relatively open or relatively closed.
Input-Output Model: It receives various inputs, transforms these inputs in some way, and
exports outputs.
Feedback: Feedback can be both positive and negative, although the field of cybernetics is
based on negative feedback.
Hierarchy: A system is composed of subsystems of a lower order and is also part of a
supra-system.Thus, there is a hierarchy of the components of the system.
Equifinality of Open Systems: Equifinality suggests that certain results may be achieved
with different initial conditions and in different ways.This view suggests that social
organizations can accomplish their objectives with diverse inputs and with varying internal
activities (conversion processes).
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17. APPENDIX:WHY SYSTEMSTHEORY
DOESN’T INFORM MANAGEMENT
Social organizations do not occur naturally in nature; they are contrived by man.
General SystemsTheory would have us accept this sanalogy berween organism and
social organization.Yet, we have a hard time swallowing it whole. Katz and Kahn warn
us of the danger-
There has been no more pervasive, persistent, and futile fallacy handicapping the social
sciences than the use of the physical model for the understanding of social structures.
The biological metaphor, with its crude comparisons of the physical parts of the body to
the parts of the social system, has been replaced by more subtle but equally misleading
analogies between biological and social functioning. This figurative type of thinking
ignores the essential difference between the socially contrived nature of social systems
and physical structure of the machine or the human organism. So long as writers are
committed to a theoretical framework based upon the physical model, they will miss
the essential social-psychlogical facts of the highly variable, loosely articulated
character of social systems.”
[19, p. 31]
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18. APPENDIX
There is a need to apply the systems approach but to make disciplined
generalizations and rigorous deductions
Unfortunately, there seems to be a widely held view (often more implicit than
explicit) that open-system thinking is good and closed-system thinking is bad.
Both are appropriate under certain conditions.
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19. APPENDIX:WE NEED A FRAMEWORK
THAT RECOGNIZES BOTH EVOLUTION
WITH DESIGN (ENTREPRENEURSHIP)
General systems theory with its biological orientation would appear to have
evolutionary view of system effectiveness.
While survival may be the only criterion of effectiveness in nature, it is not in the
economy system. Survival is probably an essential but not all-inclusive measure of
effectiveness.
The practical need to deal with comprehensive systems of relationships is overrunning
our ability to fully understand and predict these relationships. Management scholars are
very much the systems paradigm but we are not sufficiently multidisciplinary to use it
appropriately.This is the dilemma.
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20. APPENDIX
Kuhn says:
New paradigms frequently are rejected by the scientific community.
(At first they seem crude and limited
They lack the apparent sophistication of the older paradigms which
they ultimately replace.
They do not display the clarity and certainty of older paradigms which
have been refined through years of research and writing.
But, a new paradigm does provide for a "new start" and opens up new
directions which were not possible under the old.
Paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than
their competitors in solving a few problems that the group of
practitioners has come to recognize as acute.
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21. “THE PRACTICE OF MANAGEMENT”
Drucker wrote “The Practice of
Management” as he claims there
was nothing to show us how to
connect all the pieces
Peter Drucker, “The Practice of Management”, Wall Street Journal, p.R2, (Dec. 6, 2017).
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