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General Papers
Organizations as Universal Computing Machines:
Rule Systems, Computational Equivalence, and Organizational Complexity
Mihnea Moldoveanu (PDF)
Organizations can be—and, have been—modeled as rule-based systems. On a reductive view, the resulting models depict organizations as cellular automata (CA) that carry out computations whose inputs are the initial and boundary conditions of a lattice of elements co-evolving according to deterministic interaction rules and whose outputs are the final states of the CA lattice. We use such models to refine the notion of the complexity of an organizational phenomenon and entertain the notion of an organization as a universal computer that can support a wide variety of CA to suggest ways in which CA-derived insights can inform organizational analysis. We examine the informational and computational properties of CA rules and the implications of the trade-off between their informational and computational complexity to the problem of ‘organizational design’ and show how the discovery of operational rules could proceed in the context of an empirical framework.
Getting Past Conflict Resolution:
A Complexity View of Conflict
Leticia Andrade, Donde Ashmos Plowman & Dennis Duchon (PDF)
The traditional view of conflict, as a problematic condition always requiring reduction or elimination and whose conditions or outcomes can be predicted, is incompatible with a complex adaptive systems view of organizations. Thus, conventional approaches to reducing conflict are often futile because the fundamental properties of complex adaptive systems are the source of much organizational ‘conflict.’ In this paper we offer an alternative view of conflict as pattern fluctuations in complex adaptive systems. Rather than needing reduction or elimination, conflict is the fuel that drives system growth and enables learning and adaptive behaviors, making innovation possible. Instead of focusing on conflict reduction, managers are advised to encourage mindfulness, improvisation, and reconfiguration as responses to conflict that enable learning and effective adaptation.
Design for Social Systems: Change as Conversation
Robert Simpson & Roderic Gill (PDF)
This paper explores the application of new approaches in organizational development and institutional economics to a communicative design process with application in design of social systems. Theory from four authors is investigated and applied to a generalized case study. |
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Complexity and Philosophy
An Epistemology of Learning Through
Aliki Nicolaides & Lyle Yorks (PDF)
The purpose of this paper is to initiate a conversation exploring the epistemological implications of the many forms that learning may take while attending to the demands generated by complexity. This paper offers a look at an emerging epistemology of learning through life that is increasingly complex and intensifying the demands on our thinking, feeling and action. In this paper we examine the interconnections between learning through experience, the construction of meaning, the process of inquiry and complexity. Specifically, the implications of continuity and interactivity as developed in adult learning theory, the construction of meaning as discussed by constructive developmental theory, the process of inquiry as developed by developmental action inquiry, and the relational aspects of interdependence as presented in complexity theory for addressing the challenges confronting contemporary systems.
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Forum
Adjacent opportunities: The Great Depression of the New Millennium
Ron Schultz (PDF)
Empowerment:
Chapter 1 (of 10) - Universal Truths
Michael Shenker (PDF)
Scientist and Entrepreneur:
A Chat with Ernesto Illy on Coffee, Complexity and Prigogine
Pierpaolo Andriani & Alberto De Toni (PDF) |
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Book Reviews (PDF)
A Review of "Niklas Luhmann and Organization Studies"
Robert Simpson
A Review of "Managing Information in Complex Organizations: Semiotics and Signals, Complexity and Chaos"
Ivo P. Janecka
A Review of "The Third Lens: Multi-Ontology Sense-Making and Strategic Decision-Making"
Ray Cooksey
Calling Notices and Announcements |
