Download or read book Social Sustainability Past and Future written by Sander van der Leeuw and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-13 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel, integrated approach to understanding long-term human history, viewing it as the long-term evolution of human information-processing. This title is also available as Open Access.
Download or read book Complex Adaptive Systems written by John H. Miller and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-11-28 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides the first clear, comprehensive, and accessible account of complex adaptive social systems, by two of the field's leading authorities. Such systems--whether political parties, stock markets, or ant colonies--present some of the most intriguing theoretical and practical challenges confronting the social sciences. Engagingly written, and balancing technical detail with intuitive explanations, Complex Adaptive Systems focuses on the key tools and ideas that have emerged in the field since the mid-1990s, as well as the techniques needed to investigate such systems. It provides a detailed introduction to concepts such as emergence, self-organized criticality, automata, networks, diversity, adaptation, and feedback. It also demonstrates how complex adaptive systems can be explored using methods ranging from mathematics to computational models of adaptive agents. John Miller and Scott Page show how to combine ideas from economics, political science, biology, physics, and computer science to illuminate topics in organization, adaptation, decentralization, and robustness. They also demonstrate how the usual extremes used in modeling can be fruitfully transcended.
Download or read book Organizational Survival in the New World written by Alex Bennet and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-02-18 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book David and Alex Bennet propose a new model for organizations that enables them to react more quickly and fluidly to today's fast-changing, dynamic business environment: the Intelligent Complex Adaptive System (ICAS). ICAS is a new organic model of the firm based on recent research in complexity and neuroscience, and incorporating networking theory and knowledge management, and turns the living system metaphor into a reality for organizations. This book synthesizes new thinking about organizational structure from the fields listed above into ICAS, a new systems model for the successful organization of the future designed to help leaders and managers of knowledge organizations succeed in a non-linear, complex, fast-changing and turbulent environment. Technology enables connectivity, and the ICAS model takes advantage of that connectivity by fostering the development of dynamic, effective and trusting relationships in a new organizational structure. This book outlines the model in chapter four, and then breaks down the model into its components in the next two chapters. This is a benefit to readers since different components of the model can be implemented at different times, so the book can guide implementation of one or all of the components as a manager sees fit. There are eight characteristics of the ICAS: organizational intelligence, unity and shared purpose, optimum complexity, selectivity, knowledge centricity, flow, permeable boundaries, and multi-dimensionality.
Download or read book Small Groups as Complex Systems written by Holly Arrow and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2000-03-21 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The emphasis on change at many levels of organization is critically important as is the first attempt to integrate sophisticated theory and research in organization psychology (e.g., Gersick, Hackman) with social psychological models of development such as Moreland and Levine." --Reuben M. Baron, Emeritus, University of Connecticut "Arrow, McGrath, and Berdahl′s ′Small Groups as Complex Systems′ will change the way you think about groups, the way you think about research, and even the way you think about science." --Donelson R. Forsyth, Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth U "The book is excellent, one of those very rare works that will have substantial impact on the field. I would use the book without hesitation in any advanced graduate seminar dealing with groups." --Donelson R. Forsyth, Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth U "A conceptually elegant analysis of groups as systems. Although the systems approach has been growing more influential in various fields of social psychology in the last ten years, no one has put forward a definitive analysis that applies with fidelity the general systems approach to group processes. McGrath and his colleagues fill that gap, not by paying lip service to popular scientific concepts such as recursive causality, open systems, attractors, and complexity theory, but by fully integrating these concepts into their no-nonsense analysis of such group level processes as formation, task performance, composition, development, and termination. Empirical work is folded into the theoretical mix along the way, but the focus is unrelentingly conceptual with the result that the authors deliver on their promise of developing a powerful, unified theory of group dynamics." --Donelson R. Forsyth, Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth U "Theirs is an ambitious book. They have profound ramifications for experimental social psychology. It is worth mentioning that AMD (Arrow, McGrarth, and Berdahl) list an ethnographic approach, which often implies the adoption of hermeneutic and semiotic methods (a hallmark of the anti-Enlightenment tradition in psychology), as a possible way forward." --Yoshihisa Kashima, American Journal of Psychology What are groups? How do they behave? Arrow, McGrath, and Berdahl answer these questions by developing a general theory of small groups as complex systems. Basing their theory on concepts distilled from general systems theory, dynamical systems theory, and complexity and chaos theory, they explore groups as adaptive, dynamic systems that are driven by interactions among group members as well as between the group and its embedding contexts. In addition, they consider not only the group′s members and their distribution of attributes, but also the group′s tasks and technology in order to understand how those members, tasks, and tools are intertwined, coordinated, and adjusted. Throughout the book, the authors focus our attention on relationships among people, tools, and tasks that are activated by a combination of individual and collective purposes and goals that change and evolve as the group interacts over time.
Download or read book Society a Complex Adaptive System written by Walter Frederick Buckley and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 1998 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Adaptive Action written by Glenda H. Eoyang and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rooted in the study of chaos and complexity, Adaptive Action introduces a simple, common sense process that will guide you and your organization into reflective action. This elegant method prompts readers to engage with three deceptively simple questions: What? So what? Now what? The first leads to careful observation. The second invites you to thoughtfully consider options and implications. The third ignites effective action. Together, these questions and the tools that support them produce a dynamic and creative dance with uncertainty. The road-tested steps of adaptive action can be used to devise solutions and improve performance across multiple challenges, and they have proven to be scalable from individuals to work groups, from organizations to communities. In addition to laying out the adaptive action framework and clear protocols to support it, Glenda H. Eoyang and Royce J. Holladay introduce best practices from exemplary professionals who have used adaptive action to meet personal, professional, and political challenges in leadership, consulting, Alzheimer's treatment, evaluation, education reform, political advocacy, and cultural engagement—readying readers to employ this new toolkit to meet their own goals with a sense of ingenuity and flexibility.
Download or read book Complex Adaptive Systems written by Ted Carmichael and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-06-14 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book emerged out of international conferences organized as part of the AAAI Fall Symposia series, and the Swarmfest 2017 conference. It brings together researchers from diverse fields studying these complex systems using CAS and agent-based modeling tools and techniques. In the past, the knowledge gained in each domain has largely remained exclusive to that domain. By bringing together scholars who study these phenomena, the book takes knowledge from one domain to provide insight into others. Most interesting phenomena in natural and social systems include constant transitions and oscillations among their various phases – wars, companies, societies, markets, and humans rarely stay in a stable, predictable state for long. Randomness, power laws, and human behavior ensure that the future is both unknown and challenging. How do events unfold? When do they take hold? Why do some initial events cause an avalanche while others do not? What characterizes these events? What are the thresholds that differentiate a sea change from a non-event? Complex adaptive systems (CAS) have proven to be a powerful tool for exploring these and other related phenomena. The authors characterize a general CAS model as having a large number of self-similar agents that: 1) utilize one or more levels of feedback; 2) exhibit emergent properties and self-organization; and 3) produce non-linear dynamic behavior. Advances in modeling and computing technology have led not only to a deeper understanding of complex systems in many areas, but they have also raised the possibility that similar fundamental principles may be at work across these systems, even though the underlying principles may manifest themselves differently.
Download or read book Signals and Boundaries written by John H. Holland and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-07-13 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An overarching framework for comparing and steering complex adaptive systems is developed through understanding the mechanisms that generate their intricate signal/boundary hierarchies.
Download or read book Thriving at the Edge of Chaos written by Jonathan Sapir and published by Productivity Press. This book was released on 2019-11-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book exposes the assumptions underlying the accepted paradigm of project management, describes the common practices that are based on those assumptions, analyzes why these practices are unhelpful and even harmful, and proposes an alternative, sometimes seemingly counter intuitive approach to project management based on CAS thinking.
Download or read book Foundations of Clinical Nurse Specialist Practice written by Janet S. Fulton and published by Springer Publishing Company. This book was released on 2010 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Print+CourseSmart
Download or read book The Mind The Brain And Complex Adaptive Systems written by Harold J. Morowitz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-03-08 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based upon a conference held in May 1993, this book discusses the intersection of neurobiology, cognitive psychology and computational approaches to cognition.
Download or read book Complex Adaptive Leadership written by Nick Obolensky and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-11-01 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since its publication, Complex Adaptive Leadership has become a Gower bestseller that has been taught in corporate leadership programmes, business schools and universities around the world to high acclaim. In this updated paperback edition, Nick Obolensky argues that leadership should not be something only exercised by nominated leaders. It is a complex dynamic process involving all those engaged in a particular enterprise. The theoretical background to this lies in complexity science and chaos theory - spoken and written about in the context of leadership for the last 20 years, but still little understood. We all seem intuitively to know leadership 'isn't what it used to be' but we still cling to old assumptions which look anachronistic in changing and challenging times. Nick Obolensky has practised, researched and taught leadership in the public, private and voluntary sectors. In this exciting book he brings together his knowledge of theory, his own experience, and the results of 19 years of research involving 2,500 executives in 40 countries around the world. The main conclusion from that research is that the more complex things become, the less traditional directive leadership is needed. Those operating in the real world, nonetheless, need ways of coping. The book is focused on helping practitioners struggling to interpret and react to increasingly VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) times. The book will particularly appeal to practitioners wishing to improve their leadership effectiveness as well as for students and researchers in the field of leadership.
Download or read book Dynamic Patterns written by J. A. Scott Kelso and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: foreword by Hermann Haken For the past twenty years Scott Kelso's research has focused on extending the physical concepts of self- organization and the mathematical tools of nonlinear dynamics to understand how human beings (and human brains) perceive, intend, learn, control, and coordinate complex behaviors. In this book Kelso proposes a new, general framework within which to connect brain, mind, and behavior.Kelso's prescription for mental life breaks dramatically with the classical computational approach that is still the operative framework for many newer psychological and neurophysiological studies. His core thesis is that the creation and evolution of patterned behavior at all levels--from neurons to mind--is governed by the generic processes of self-organization. Both human brain and behavior are shown to exhibit features of pattern-forming dynamical systems, including multistability, abrupt phase transitions, crises, and intermittency. Dynamic Patterns brings together different aspects of this approach to the study of human behavior, using simple experimental examples and illustrations to convey essential concepts, strategies, and methods, with a minimum of mathematics. Kelso begins with a general account of dynamic pattern formation. He then takes up behavior, focusing initially on identifying pattern-forming instabilities in human sensorimotor coordination. Moving back and forth between theory and experiment, he establishes the notion that the same pattern-forming mechanisms apply regardless of the component parts involved (parts of the body, parts of the nervous system, parts of society) and the medium through which the parts are coupled. Finally, employing the latest techniques to observe spatiotemporal patterns of brain activity, Kelso shows that the human brain is fundamentally a pattern forming dynamical system, poised on the brink of instability. Self-organization thus underlies the cooperative action of neurons that produces human behavior in all its forms.
Download or read book Language as a Complex Adaptive System written by Nick C. Ellis and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2009-12-30 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores a new approach to studying language as a complex adaptive system, illustrating its commonalities across many areas of language research Brings together a team of leading researchers in linguistics, psychology, and complex systems to discuss the groundbreaking significance of this perspective for their work Illustrates its application across a variety of subfields, including languages usage, language evolution, language structure, and first and second language acquisition "What a breath of fresh air! As interesting a collection of papers as you are likely to find on the evolution, learning, and use of language from the point of view of both cognitive underpinnings and communicative functions." Michael Tomasello, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Download or read book Complexity and Creativity in Organizations written by Ralph D. Stacey and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining insights from the new science of complexity with insights from psychoanalysis, Stacey posits that repressing the anxiety caused by the unstable, ever-changing nature of today's business world also represses the creative impulses - the "spaces for novelty" - that allow members of a workforce to produce their best work. Using the science of complexity as a starting point, he pulls together many insights into behavior and organizational functioning that currently lie at the edges of research and practice. This book invites people to explore what the new science might mean for understanding life in organizations, and shows how it can be used as a framework for understanding the processes that produce emergence rather than intentional strategies. Stacey presents an entirely new perspective on what it means for an organization to learn.
Download or read book Wiley Encyclopedia of Management written by Cary Cooper and published by Wiley. This book was released on 2014-11-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Die 3. aktualisierte Auflage der Wiley Encyclopedia of Management umfasst nun 13 Bände und einen eigenen Index-Band. Dieses erste internationale Nachschlagewerk bietet neben Kurzeinträgen zu Schlüsselbegriffen auch übersichtliche Essays zu bahnbrechenden Entwicklungen und aktuellen Diskussionen sowie ausgeklügelte Querverweise. Mit über 30 % mehr Einträgen von über 1500 Autoren weltweit ist diese mehrbändige Enzyklopädie ein wichtiges Referenzwerk für Wissenschaftler, Studenten und Fachexperten.
Download or read book A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2015-06-17 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How we produce and consume food has a bigger impact on Americans' well-being than any other human activity. The food industry is the largest sector of our economy; food touches everything from our health to the environment, climate change, economic inequality, and the federal budget. From the earliest developments of agriculture, a major goal has been to attain sufficient foods that provide the energy and the nutrients needed for a healthy, active life. Over time, food production, processing, marketing, and consumption have evolved and become highly complex. The challenges of improving the food system in the 21st century will require systemic approaches that take full account of social, economic, ecological, and evolutionary factors. Policy or business interventions involving a segment of the food system often have consequences beyond the original issue the intervention was meant to address. A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System develops an analytical framework for assessing effects associated with the ways in which food is grown, processed, distributed, marketed, retailed, and consumed in the United States. The framework will allow users to recognize effects across the full food system, consider all domains and dimensions of effects, account for systems dynamics and complexities, and choose appropriate methods for analysis. This report provides example applications of the framework based on complex questions that are currently under debate: consumption of a healthy and safe diet, food security, animal welfare, and preserving the environment and its resources. A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System describes the U.S. food system and provides a brief history of its evolution into the current system. This report identifies some of the real and potential implications of the current system in terms of its health, environmental, and socioeconomic effects along with a sense for the complexities of the system, potential metrics, and some of the data needs that are required to assess the effects. The overview of the food system and the framework described in this report will be an essential resource for decision makers, researchers, and others to examine the possible impacts of alternative policies or agricultural or food processing practices.
