Dissipative structures in educational change: Prigogine and the academy
Abstract
This article is an interpretive study of the theory of irreversible and dissipative systems process transformation of Nobel Prize winning physicist Ilya Prigogine and how it relates to the phenomenological study of leadership and organizational change in educational settings. Background analysis on the works of Prigogine is included as a foundation for human inquiry and metaphor generation for open, dissipative systems in educational settings. International case study research by contemporary systems and leadership theorists on dissipative structures theory has also been included to form the interpretive framework for exploring alternative models of leadership theory in far from equilibrium educational settings. Interpretive analysis explores the metaphorical significance, connectedness, and inference of dissipative systems and helps further our knowledge of human-centred transformations in schools and colleges.
- ... In a similar understanding, Boyce (2003) suggested that sustaining change in higher education organizations depends on sustaining collective learning, which is possible through rigorous inquiry, skillful dialogue, and examination of the organization in the context of its environment. Gilstrap (2007) utilized the dissipative structures theory to explain the human centered self-organization in schools, which suggests human experience and interaction at individual level as the ways of bringing significant change to educational organizations. These arguments mean that the major shift in assumptions about how change occurs in organizations is equally valid for education as well. ...... Although educational researchers articulate the same dissatisfaction with change interventions, they have not proved eagerness to carry similar conceptual alternatives as guides for practice. There are promising understandings built around self-organizing systems (Bain et al., 2011;Gilstrap, 2007) and learning organizations (Louis, 2008;Gallucci, 2008;Honig, 2008) but there is still a need for more investigations on how things and processes change over time in schools. However, the continuous change perspective potentially provides an important empirical area for educational leadership and administration researchers. ...This chapter elaborates on the conceptual and empirical bases of continuous change, a newly developing perspective of organizational change, and brings this new perspective of organizational change to the attention of change scholars and practitioners in educational organizations. Rather than conceptualizing change as a macro-level discrete set of actions, continuous change suggests that change is a micro-level process embedded in daily practices of organizational members. However, continuous change and planned change should not be considered as alternatives to each other in the practice of change, since the former represents the informal, unstructured, and emergent side, and the latter represents the formal, structured, and intentional side of change in organizational context. This chapter argues that the success of change largely depends on the artful interplay between continuous change and planned change rather than focusing on the superiority of one perspective over another.
- The educational doctrine of The Great Didactic as one of the “grand narratives” (J.-F. Lyotard) suffered its complete setback as a result of events that took place in Paris in 1968. Students stopped believing in the correctness of the entrenched education system with its goals and ideals, and from the inside they “blew up” the “walls” of universities, which continued to follow the traditional teaching methods and content of the learning process. According to the author of this study, the ideological explosion inside the society in the form of a revolutionary riot of students of the Parisian universities in May 1968, who protested against the existing education system as a whole and against the current structure of the relationship between the actors of the educational process, served as a symbolic and actual end of the didactic era of John Amos Comenius and as a beginning of a new poststructuralist didactics. It is important to note that the destruction of the boundaries of the traditional educational space, which led to the emergence of a new type of university, was precisely due to the forces within the classroom curriculum. Today pedagogy is unable autonomously, through its own theories and scientific instruments to determine whom to teach because the student from the subject turns into a subject+, virtually migrating in the cyber-educational space through all sorts of gadgets, which form the prosthetic skeleton of the modern learners - schoolchildren, students. The trajectory of child’s education should not be rigidly determined by curricula and programmes. Teaching in the school should be organized by a teacher on the principle of “ad hoc.”
- In case study methods of organizations, researchers are often limited to the aggregation of individual cases within the context of the organizational case. Borrowing from Stake's (1995) use of instrumental and intrinsic case studies, this paper presents a fractal geometry case study method. For the purposes of this article, on site interviews of seventeen librarians who work in a research institution were conducted to learn more about their experiences with organizational change. Instrumental case studies of these individuals, or rather those cases that respond to other phenomena, were performed and analyzed at the micro level. A clustering technique, serving as a fractal seed, was also incorporated to draw out themes that highlighted the interconnections of individuals. These cases were then recursively integrated into an emergent framework of the intrinsic case of the organization. The use of this method suggests that observations of individuals, and the subsequent meaning they generate at the micro level, reflect the complex interconnections of these cases. At the same time, this method suggests that the recursive integration of individual cases contributes to the understanding of the complex organization at the macro level.
- This article discusses the results of both intrinsic and instrumental case study investigations of team-based leadership and decision-making in an Association of Research Libraries (ARL) institution undergoing dramatic change and restructuring activities. Since team-based models were used extensively within the organization, systems theory is introduced. Chaos theory is next explained as a more robust theoretical framework for analyzing and describing the turbulence and rapid changes encountered by individuals attempting to make sense of these organizational shifts at both the micro and macro levels. Findings of this research suggest that a paradox occurs during periods of restructuring activities in organizations going through significant change: 1) models which are alternatives to traditional hierarchical bureaucracies are necessary for organizations to break from the status quo when confronted with the need for rapid and inclusive decision-making, and 2) organizational structures heavily influenced by self-organizing teams go through recursive phases of expansion, leading to unbounded chaos in leadership and decision-making processes. Employees identified a lack of individual accountability in team-based decisionmaking, the challenges of leadership at the individual level, and the need for defined supervisory roles were all issues to be addressed for the continued, successful evolution of the organization. As a result of these findings, the author then introduces an iterative, phase state model of chaotic cycling in emerging system states. This model focuses on bounded chaotic systems that blend selforganization with structural feedback mechanisms in leadership and decisionmaking processes.
- http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/JOCM-06-2014-0111
- Emergence is present in the V of flying Canadian Geese, in vibrant ecosystems, and in organizations; its study has increased dramatically in the past 20 years. The time is ripe to integrate that work into a discipline of emergence, with a focuses on generative emergence. This study has several benefits. First, understanding emergence extends the literature on organizational change and transformation, by showing that emergence is initiated by different drivers than those in transformation, which generate a range of outcomes. Distinguishing the process from the outcomes of emergence also potentially solves some long-standing debates in entrepreneurship. Generative emergence expands the value of complexity science by focusing on dissipative structures theory, which is highly relevant to human and social interactions. Finally, research underlying generative emergence reveals a five-phase process that integrates a host of previous work into an integrative model.
- This article provides a historiographical analysis of major leadership and organizational development theories that have shaped our thinking about how we lead and administrate academic libraries. Drawing from behavioral, cognitive, systems, and complexity theories, this article discusses major theorists and research studies appearing over the past century. A complex systems framework is then proposed for future research on leadership and organizational development surrounding change in academic libraries and professional responsibilities.
- In the past decade transformation has evolved as an educational orientation through the efforts of adult educators and researchers to incorporate personal and developmental dimensions of learning. Still, transformation continues to have its share of sceptics. However, the new biological and physical sciences and the closely related evolutionary theories are pointing to wider possibilities and new practices in transformative education. The "new science" concepts of chaos, emergence, creativity and transformation challenge educators to reassess the prominence of transformation in regard to educational goals, educational processes and educational planning.
- Navigating major transitions is never easy, but complexity science offers insights into the transformations of three new ventures on the verge of a critical transition. The outcomes of change were unpredictable, but the process of change was extremely similar across the three firms. Moreover, the successful transitions incorporated three qualities: high self-reference, increased capacity, and interdependent organizing. In-depth case studies from an intensive research project on these themes reveal this pattern amid the chaos of entrepreneurial change, offer a new method of control in dynamic systems, and help managers leverage transformation in new ventures.
- Organizational transformation in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe is qualitatively different from that observed in the West because of concomitant upheaval in the institutional context. Drawing on organizational change theory, organizational learning theory, and institutional theory, I suggest an inverted U-shaped relationship between institution-level change and transformative organizational change. By integrating three theoretical perspectives in the conceptual framework of this article, I more fully explain organizational transformation in a variety of institutional contexts.
- Prigogine, I. (1967) Thermodynamics of Irreversible Processes. 3rd Edition, Interscience Publishers, New York.
- "Exploring Complexity" surveys the wide range of complex phenomena arising in the framework of physico-chemical and biological systems and in the global environment. The book defines the elements of a new scientific vocabulary - the vocabulary of complexity - and elaborates the tools for analyzing these problems efficiently. It breaks disciplinary barriers to consider issues beyond the realm of traditional physical science, including the dynamics of climatic change and the behaviour of social insects and human populations.
- This paper discusses the role of hierarchy in human systems. Two kinds of self-organizing processes are distinguished: conservative and dissipative self-organization. The former leads to rather stable and specialistic systems, whereas the latter leads to continuously changing generalistic systems. When conservative and dissipative self-organization are combined, autonomous self-organization emerges. Autonomous self-organization, characterized by intertemporal stability, appears to be fundamental to human organizations. In the context of autonomous self-organization, the traditional concept of hierarchy as a chain of command is replaced by hierarchy as a vertical sequence based on different degrees of abstraction. Moreover, a simple model shows that autonomous self-organization requires large human systems to use a variety of information processing systems, including administrative hierarchy. The model suggests hierarchy is one instrument for variety reduction among several others.
- In this book, author Ivars Peterson examines a mystery that has fascinated and tormented astronomers and mathematicians for centuries: are the orbits of planets and other bodies stable and predictable or are there elements affecting the dynamics of the solar system that defy calculation? It is one of the most perplexing, unsolved issues in astronomy, with each step toward its resolution-from Newton's clocklike mathematical models to the astonishing work of super computers exposing additional uncertainties and deeper questions about the stability of the solar system. To bring readers up to date with this scientific detective story, Newton's Clock describes the development of celestial mechanics-from the star charts of ancient navigators to the great Renaissance scientists; from the crucial work of Poincare to the startling, sometimes controversial findings and theories made possible by modern mathematics and computer simulations. Equal parts science and history, the book shows how the exploration of the solar system has taken us from clocklike precision into chaos and complexity.
- In today’s schools, turbulence is identified with disorder and disarray. A turbulent classroom would be seen as noisy, disorganized, and undesirable. Only recently in science has it been discovered that turbulence is also a source of order. New theories, based on the construct of “order through fluctuations,” have arisen and lead to new understanding of the emergence of creativity from turbulence both in the universe and in education. We capture this creativity in new metaphors for becoming in education.
- Using phenomenological methods of heuristic inquiry, nine midcareer women col laborated as co-researchers to explore learning in professional developmental rela tionships. Six months' interview and journal data revealed that women's develop mental relationships are created and sustained largely through talk. Furthermore, they experience not only instrumental, performance-based learning, but also what Mezirow (1991) calls "transformative" learning-learning that significantly revises beliefs, attitudes, and values and results in a changed worldview or perspective. These findings suggest that current definitions of managerial communication may be too narrowly construed, neglecting its potentially developmental function. This study has important implications for midcareer women, human resource develop ers, and communication scholars.
- Dissipative self-organization, a theoretical framework with roots in physics and biochemistry, has often been proposed as having relevance to change in social systems. Specifically, the processes and design features associated with dissipative self-organization have been used to describe the dynamics of social groups and organizations, especially in cases where highly turbulent and/or near-chaos conditions are present. A study assessing the usefulness of the self-organization paradigm as applied to the small group is described herein. The study took place within the context of a Tavistock-like group intervention, wherein the necessary condition for self-organization, a situation of turbulence, was induced within experimental groups. Based upon an approach suggested by Ackoff (1981), the general self-organization model served as a hypothetical idealized design of a self-organizing task group. A quasi-experimental design provided a test of whether the presence of self-organizing characteristics made any difference in group effectiveness among experimental groups and in a comparison condition where turbulence was not induced. The study provided preliminary support for the usefulness of the paradigm in understanding small group dynamics within the turbulent or non-equilibrium conditions. Specifically, task effectiveness within the experimental condition was found to correlate significantly with the degree to which groups developed the properties or design features specified by the self-organization paradigm. Consistent with the model, fewer significant relationships were found within the comparison condition between effectiveness and the presence of self-organization design features.
- This note summarizes the argument to be presented in the author's Plenary Address. I What is now known as Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) has been continuously developed and honed in a programme of action research which is now in its thirtieth year at Lancaster University. Development continues, but SSM can fairly be described as 'mature', that maturity stemming from a conscious focus not on systems theory, not on systems practice, but on the relation between the two: how the two continuously create each other. II Initially, the action research was structured by trying to use a hard systems engineering (SE) approach in messy management problem situations. That methodology failed; and rethinking the fundamental basis of SE led to SSM. SE is a systematic appraisal of alternative means to achieve objectives taken as given. The experiences in the research programme required a more holistic systemic approach, and SSM emerged as a learning system.
- This article questions whether we can educate managers according to linear principles based on Newtonian laws and expect them subsequently to operate successfully in a world of increasing change and complexity where non-linear processes dominate. We explore this with the perspective of complexity science and through our experience of and reflections on recent examples which have arisen in our teaching practice. We argue that the increasing focus on outcomes in learning/teaching practice, both as a measure of learning and of quality in teaching, closes valuable areas of the learning/teaching experience to all participants in the process. Managers facing lives of ambiguity and anxiety for themselves and their organizations are let down by the very institutions whose role it is to support and prepare them.
- This paper aims to enable the operations management community to engage with concepts from the field of complexity theory and apply them to the issue of organisational transformation. It begins by reviewing existing work on strategic change, then provides an overview of complexity theory to show how the conditioned emergence model was developed. A brief statement on method follows, which describes our research process in terms of mode 2 knowledge production. An illustrative case study is then presented and is used to highlight aspects of the model and the overlaps and differences between conditioned emergence and other approaches. The paper concludes that organisational transformation can be viewed as an emergent process which can be accessed and influenced through three interacting gateways, i.e. order generating rules, disequilibrium and positive feedback. Finally, an appendix is included which focuses specifically on the issue of the research process. Here, it is argued that calls for managerially-relevant research will be best met through more widespread adoption of mode 2 as an approach.
- This article seeks to identify the economic and social conditions confronting officially designated education leaders and to set out the parameters for how they might respond. Specifically, it suggests that education leaders are currently faced with changing bases of social cohesion, changing instruments of (economic) control and changing forms of organisation. Informed by these changing conditions and by a recognitive view of social justice (Young 1990; Gale and Densmore 2000), the article makes a case for educational leadership that is characterised by distinctly democratic directions and influences. In particular, democratic leaders are seen as those that enable the formation of social, learning and culturally responsive public educational institutions, in part by enabling contextuallyspecific struggles to determine what is needed, and by developing a politically informed commitment to justice for all.
- Modern organizations must transform amidst the internal and external complexity and turbulence they face. Transformation processes are not understandable through the equilibrium models we most often use to describe system dynamics. More applicable system models, recently emerging within the physical sciences, incorporate disorder, uncertainty, and complexity and provide insight into the process of transformation, its characteristics and dynamics. One such model put forth by the Belgian physicist, Ilya Prigogine, is offered here as an explanatory theory of organization transformation. The model postulates that “inherent stabilities” make more probable a system's successful transition through highly unstable conditions. These same stabilities offer a point of convergence of current theories of organizational learning, of self-organizing systems, and of high performance teams. Summary propositions and some directions for future research are discussed.
- The increasing complexity of interdependence between people in modern life makes it more important than ever to understand processes of human relating. In the West we tend to base our understanding of relating on the individual. Complexity and Group Processes suggests an alternative way of understanding human relating. The key questions covered in this book are: who am I and how have I come to be who I am? who are we and how have we come to be who we are? how are we all changing, evolving, and learning? These are fundamental questions in the study of human interaction, and the answers explored in Complexity and Group Processes are highly relevant not only for therapeutic groups but also those who are managing, leading and working in organizations.
- The processes of management development within a change management context have mostly been informed by models which assume that individuals can be developed by planned and purposive intervention to perform effectively within a new, forecast, but essentially stable environment. Alongside such shifts at individual and organisational level, the last decade has seen revolutionary change in national economies as the former state socialist countries transform themselves to participate in the global market economy. This paper, based on an in-depth analysis of interviews with 73 chief executives and senior managers of 61 key companies in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), identifies a model of the individual transition process of managers during the process of state transformation. From this the authors draw lessons for the practice of management development under conditions of transformative change.
- As companies try to keep pace with rapid changes in technology and cope with unstable business environments, their research departments have to do more than simply invent new products. They must design the new technological and organizational architectures that make a continuously innovating company possible. In this 1991 article, John Seely Brown, then director of Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), describes the business logic behind this distinctive vision of research's role and the ways Xerox PARC tried to realize that vision. its researchers developed prototypes of new work practices as well as new technologies and products. They designed new uses for technology to encourage the local innovation that, they found, occurs naturally at all levels of any big company. And they experimented with new techniques for what the author terms "co-producing" technological and organizational innovations with Xerox's customers. Xerox's business is technology, but Seely Brown argues that any company, no matter what its business, must eventually grapple with the issues he raises. The successful company of the future must understand how people really work and must adapt its technology to the work rather than the other way around. It must know how to create an environment that allows for continuous innovation by all employees. It must rethink traditional business assumptions and tap into needs that customers don't even know they have. In essence, he argues, the most important invention that will come out of the corporate research lab in the future will be the corporation itself.
- This paper suggests that present-day curriculum, based on Newtonian thought, has been rendered obsolete by the holistic and interactive "post-modern" world view based on quantum physics, nonlinear mathematics, general systems theory, and Ilya Prigogine's nonequilibrium thermodynamics. The Newtonian world view, which is linear and reductionist, is the theoretical foundation of Madeline Hunter's or Ralph Tyler's notions of an orderly curriculum with ends preset, and of B. F. Skinner's conceptions of expressing learning in discrete, quantifiable, and linear units. These conceptions assume the whole to be no more than the sum of the parts and lead to a curriculum that is cumulative rather than transformative. This paper accordingly focuses on three facets of post-modern thought that have radical implications for curriculum: (1) the nature of open (as opposed to closed) systems; (2) the structure of complexity (as opposed to simplicity); and (3) transformatory (as opposed to cumulative) change. Prigogine's notion of nonequilibrium or dissipative structures in the process of becoming is posited as a more accurate model for a curriculum than Newton's physical, inert, mechanical structures. These developing, open structures have their own properties, distinct from equilibrium structures, and are useful as models for curriculum research and thought. Specifically, it is argued that curricula should be structured as self-regulating "open systems" where internal, autocatalytic transformations are encouraged. To move from a curriculum based on the simple and separate to one based on the complex and cosmological requires us not only to adopt a "new dialogue with nature" but also to adopt a radically new relationship with students and a more integrative approach to subject matter. (TE)
- In looking at the forms language takes, linguists sometimes forget to ask the obvious question about the relationship between the forms language uses (phonology and syntax) and the function language is expected to play as a vehicle of communication. Probably the bulk of our daily communication involves the allocation and use of power, the politics of language. One way to examine the relationship of form and function in the allocation of linguistic power is to look at the tag question, a construction unique to English that in form is somewhere between a question and a declarative but in function is better viewed as a declarative. The tag question functions to establish a political balance in discourse, both in ordinary conversation and in more obviously political situations, as in a courtroom. The syntactic complexity of the tag question can only be understood through its political implications. By extension, we can more fully comprehend our own and others' communicative aims and needs by observing the choice of forms in the actual context in which they are used. (MSE)
- Chaos theory, dissipative structures analysis, and complexity theory have all been used in various branches of the sciences to examine patterns of change in complex systems. This paper considers how educational theory and research can benefit from changes in scientific fields as diverse as quantum mechanics, fluid dynamics, geology, and economics and adapt to meet the needs of students and society in the changing world of the coming century. Special characteristics of learning organizations are presented that relate open systems and shifting world views to complexity theory. The cornerstones of learning organizations include systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, the building of shared vision, and team learning. Suggestions for transforming schools are offered to counter the traditional approaches to understanding the nature of learning and organizational change. These traditional approaches often lack vision and are unable to cope with change. A systems approach considers the transformation of schooling within the dynamic environment that relates schools with other social and political institutions. Contains 16 references. (Author/LMI)
- The Friedrichs-type model of interaction between matter (multilevel system) and radiation including virtual transitions is considered. The canonical Bogolubov transformation diagonalizing the total Hamiltonian is constructed. It is pointed out that the transformation is improper when the discrete part of the spectrum of system is ``dissolved'' in the continuous one. The new vacuum state for the total Hamiltonian is obtained. The time evolution of the bare vacuum and the bare operators is calculated. Using the exact solution, the result of Passante, Petrosky, and Prigogine [Physica A 218, 437 (1995)] that the transition from the bare vacuum state to the true vacuum leads to the emission of real photons is confirmed. The dressing of the bare vacuum at the presence of resonances is an irreversible process. The relation of the result with the idea of ``indirect spectroscopy'' is discussed.
- With inspiration from the educational paradox: how can actors, as external influences, enable human beings to act independently of external leadership? This article will discuss an organizational paradox: how can staff be lead in ways that enable them to become autonomous followers? The educational paradox was originally phrased in the beginning of the Enlightenment epoch and it therefore links education with democracy: ‘Bildung’ was seen as a way to facilitate people in being emancipated, action competent citizens of democratic societies. The organizational paradox is also phrased as a vision of a democratic education in a democratic setting. The article discusses this leadership vision in the light of contemporary trends in society, politics, governance and culture: globalization, decentralization, contingency, neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism, new public management and the efforts to promote and stress the managerial aspects of school leadership.
- The following case study (Stake, 200058. Stake RE (2000) Case studies In N. K. Denzin & Y. K. Lincoln (Eds) Handbook of qualitative research (2nd edn) (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage) 435 454 View all references) explores the collective properties of the group of leaders working together to enact instructional change in an urban high school (Spillane, et al., 200157. Spillane , JP , Halverson , R and Diamond , JB . (2001) . Investigating school leadership practice: A distributed perspective . Educational Researcher , 30 (3) : 23 – 28 . [CrossRef]View all references). It documents how an urban public high continues to work toward developing and enacting a model of leadership that is transformational, distributed, and democratic and the challenges and successes it has encountered as it struggles to establish such leadership in the context of educational reform which by nature is transactional. The subsequent discussion applies the characteristics of transactional leadership to educational reform, identifies several characteristics of effective urban school leadership, documents the evolution of collective leadership in one urban high school, and asserts that the transactional framework of systemic leadership necessitates school leadership that is collective, democratic, and comprehensive in its breadth of interdependence (Gronn, 200321. Gronn P (2003) The new work of educational leaders: Changing leadership practice in an era of school reform (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage) View all references) if instructional transformation is to occur.
- Scitation is the online home of leading journals and conference proceedings from AIP Publishing and AIP Member Societies
- The motion of a charged particle, including the effect of its self field is treated in the frame of classical mechanics by the Liouville method, developed recently by the author and his co-workers mainly for statistical mechanical problems. The author summarizes the results which he and Leaf has obtained in this way for the following cases: free particle in vacuum free particle in a black body harmonic oscillator. In every case the partial differential equation giving the evolution of the particle phase distribution function is established.
- Administrative policies and practices may evolve and change slowly and incrementally or they may be transformed intentionally. Intentional efforts to change administrative policy by transforming the structure, processes, or personnel of public sector organizations define an active administrative policy. Ideally, an active administrative policy takes as given that the organizational form to be used is open to choice, that administrative goals are clear, that a tight coupling exists between ends and means, that different organizational forms have different effects, and that there are criteria that may be used to assess those effects. This article focuses on the fulfilment of these preconditions in the three national contexts – Norway, Sweden and the United States of America – in order to determine the relevance of a transformative perspective for understanding the process of administrative change. We examine what impact constraints like polity features, historical-institutional traditions and external pressure, particularly through popular international administrative doctrines like New Public Management ideas and financial crises, have on the possibilities to enhance an active national administrative policy.
- This study investigated the value of the West Alabama Learning Coalition, a multiinstitutional organization in rural Alabama, as perceived by its members, a diverse group of professionals in schools, universities, community colleges, businesses, and social service agencies. Documents, observations, and interviews were the data collection tools in this qualitative research study. Factors that motivated members to join and remain involved in the network are reported. The analysis resulted in a view of the coalition as a dynamic and organic creative entity that fosters synergy, empowered and shared leadership, and personal and organizational transformation.
- This paper proposes that `lean' organizations, which many observers believe constitute an entirely new `paradigm' of management and organization, are successful because their fundamental structure embodies many of the characteristics of `self-organizing' dynamic systems, such as `dissipative structures', which balance `chaos' with `order'. It employs concepts from modern information theory, cybernetics, and the comparatively new field of self-organizing systems. These concepts suggest that lean organizations are extremely flexible and highly adaptable to rapidly changing competitive conditions, and are characterized by continual reorganization, rapid new product development, and constant search for increased efficiency, all of which are the results of self-organizational processes.
- This paper presents a novel framework for the management of organisational transformation, defined here as a relatively rapid transition from one archetype to another. The concept of dissipative structures, from the field of complexity theory, is used to develop and explain a specific sequence of activities which underpin effective transformation. This sequence integrates selected concepts from the literatures on strategic change, organisational learning and business processes; in so doing, it introduces a degree of prescriptiveness which differentiates it from other managerial interpretations of complexity theory. Specifically, it proposes a three-stage process: first, the organisation conditions the outcome of the transformation process by articulating and reconfiguring the rules which underpin its deep structure; second, it takes steps to move from its current equilibrium and, finally, it moves into a period where positive and negative feedback loops become the focus of managerial attention. The paper argues that by managing at the level of deep structure in social systems, organisations can gain some influence over self-organising processes which are typically regarded as unpredictable in the natural sciences. However, the paper further argues that this influence is limited to archetypal features and that detailed forms and behaviours are emergent properties of the system. Two illustrative case-vignettes are presented to give an insight into the practical application of the model before conclusions are reached which speculate on the implications of this approach for strategy research.
- 381 p., ref. bib. : 2 p.1/2 In a rented convent in Santa Fe, a revolution has been brewing. The activists are not anarchists, but rather Nobel Laureates in physics and economics such as Murray Gell-Mann and Kenneth Arrow, and pony-tailed graduate students, mathematicians, and computer scientists down from Los Alamos. They've formed an iconoclastic think tank called the Santa Fe Institute, and their radical idea is to create a new science called complexity. These mavericks from academe share a deep impatience with the kind of linear, reductionist thinking that has dominated science since the time of Newton. Instead, they are gathering novel ideas about interconnectedness, coevolution, chaos, structure, and order―and they're forging them into an entirely new, unified way of thinking about nature, human social behavior, life, and the universe itself. They want to know how a primordial soup of simple molecules managed to turn itself into the first living cell-and what the origin of life some four billion years ago can tell us about the process of technological innovation today. They want to know why ancient ecosystems often remained stable for millions of years, only to vanish in a geological instant―and what such events have to do with the sudden collapse of Soviet communism in the late 1980s. They want to know why the economy can behave in unpredictable ways that economists can't explain-and how the random process of Darwinian natural selection managed to produce such wonderfully intricate structures as the eye and the kidney. Above all, they want to know how the universe manages to bring forth complex structures such as galaxies, stars, planets, bacteria, plants, animals, and brains. There are common threads in all of these queries, and these Santa Fe scientists seek to understand them. Complexity is their story: the messy, funny, human story of how science really happens. Here is the tale of Brian Arthur, the Belfast-born economist who stubbornly pushed his theories of economic change in the face of hostile orthodoxy. Here, too, are the stories of Stuart Kauffman, the physician-turned-theorist whose most passionate desire has been to find the principles of evolutionary order and organization that Darwin never knew about; John Holland, the affable computer scientist who developed profoundly original theories of evolution and learning as he labored in obscurity for thirty years; Chris Langton, the one-time hippie whose close brush with death in a hang-glider accident inspired him to create the new field of artificial life; and Santa Fe Institute founder George Cowan, who worked a lifetime in the Los Alamos bomb laboratory, until-at age sixty―three―he set out to start a scientific revolution. Most of all, however, Complexity is the story of how these scientists and their colleagues have tried to forge what they like to call "the sciences of the twenty-first century.".
