Systems Thinking for a Turbulent World

Systems Thinking for a Turbulent World PDF Author: Anthony Hodgson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429942265
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
Systems Thinking for a Turbulent World will help practitioners in any field of change engage more effectively in transformative innovation. Such innovation addresses the paradigm shift needed to meet the diverse unfolding global challenges facing us today, often summed up as the Anthropocene. Fragmentation of local and global societies is escalating, and this is aggravating vicious cycles. To heal the rifts, we need to reintroduce the human element into our understandings – whether the context is civic or scientific – and strengthen truth-seeking in decision-making. Aided by appropriate concepts and methods, this healing will enable a switch from reaction to anticipation, even in the face of discontinuous change and high uncertainty. The outcome is to privilege the positive human skills for collaborative navigation through uncertainty over the disjointed rationality of mechanism and artificial intelligence, which increasingly alienates us. The reader in search of new ways of thinking will be introduced to concepts new to systems thinking that integrate systems thinking and futures thinking. The concept of anticipatory present moment (APM) serves as a basis for learning the cognitive skills that better enable navigation through turbulent times. A key personal and team practice is participative repatterning, which is the basis for transformative innovation. This practice is aided by new methods of visual facilitation. The reader is guided through the unfolding of the ideas and practices with a narrative based on the metaphor of search portrayed in the tradition of ox herding, found in traditional Far Eastern consciousness practice.

Systems Thinking for a Turbulent World

Systems Thinking for a Turbulent World PDF Author: Anthony Hodgson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429942265
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 140

Get Book Here

Book Description
Systems Thinking for a Turbulent World will help practitioners in any field of change engage more effectively in transformative innovation. Such innovation addresses the paradigm shift needed to meet the diverse unfolding global challenges facing us today, often summed up as the Anthropocene. Fragmentation of local and global societies is escalating, and this is aggravating vicious cycles. To heal the rifts, we need to reintroduce the human element into our understandings – whether the context is civic or scientific – and strengthen truth-seeking in decision-making. Aided by appropriate concepts and methods, this healing will enable a switch from reaction to anticipation, even in the face of discontinuous change and high uncertainty. The outcome is to privilege the positive human skills for collaborative navigation through uncertainty over the disjointed rationality of mechanism and artificial intelligence, which increasingly alienates us. The reader in search of new ways of thinking will be introduced to concepts new to systems thinking that integrate systems thinking and futures thinking. The concept of anticipatory present moment (APM) serves as a basis for learning the cognitive skills that better enable navigation through turbulent times. A key personal and team practice is participative repatterning, which is the basis for transformative innovation. This practice is aided by new methods of visual facilitation. The reader is guided through the unfolding of the ideas and practices with a narrative based on the metaphor of search portrayed in the tradition of ox herding, found in traditional Far Eastern consciousness practice.

Visionary Leadership in a Turbulent World

Visionary Leadership in a Turbulent World PDF Author: Rob Elkington
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 1787149145
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Visionary Leadership in a Turbulent World: Thriving in the New VUCA Context, is the thoughtful analysis of nine expert authors from around the globe who put VUCA under the microscope and take the reader on a journey that looks at VUCA from a number of different leadership perspectives.

Thinking in Systems

Thinking in Systems PDF Author: Donella Meadows
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 1603581480
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
The classic book on systems thinking—with more than half a million copies sold worldwide! "This is a fabulous book... This book opened my mind and reshaped the way I think about investing."—Forbes "Thinking in Systems is required reading for anyone hoping to run a successful company, community, or country. Learning how to think in systems is now part of change-agent literacy. And this is the best book of its kind."—Hunter Lovins In the years following her role as the lead author of the international bestseller, Limits to Growth—the first book to show the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet—Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001. Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life. Some of the biggest problems facing the world—war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation—are essentially system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow thinking. While readers will learn the conceptual tools and methods of systems thinking, the heart of the book is grander than methodology. Donella Meadows was known as much for nurturing positive outcomes as she was for delving into the science behind global dilemmas. She reminds readers to pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable, to stay humble, and to stay a learner. In a world growing ever more complicated, crowded, and interdependent, Thinking in Systems helps readers avoid confusion and helplessness, the first step toward finding proactive and effective solutions.

Action Research for Sustainable Development in a Turbulent World

Action Research for Sustainable Development in a Turbulent World PDF Author: Ortrun Zuber-Skerritt
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 1780525494
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Presents and celebrates Action Learning and Action Research (ALAR) through stories, experiences, reflections and specific works of key proponents and participants in ALAR World Congresses. This title argues for the benefits of action research for sustainable development and problem solving in a turbulent world in the 21st century.

Buddhist and Taoist Systems Thinking

Buddhist and Taoist Systems Thinking PDF Author: Josep M. Coll
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000401812
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
Buddhist and Taoist Systems Thinking explores a radical new conception of business and management. It is grounded on the reconnection of humans with nature as the new competitive advantage for living organizations and entrepreneurs that aspire to regenerate the economy and drive a positive impact on the planet, in the context of the Anthropocene. Organizations today struggle in finding a balance between maximizing profits and generating value for their stakeholders, the environment and the society at large. This happens in a paradigm shift characterized by unprecedented levels of exponential change and the emergence of disruptive technologies. Adaptability, thus, is becoming the new business imperative. How can, then, entrepreneurs and organizations constantly adapt and, at the same time, design the sustainable futures they’d like? This book uniquely explores the benefits of applying Buddhist and Taoist Systems Thinking to sustainable management. Grounded in Taoist and Zen Buddhist philosophies, it offers a modern scientific perspective fundamentally based on the concepts of bio-logical adaptability and lifefulness amidst complexity and constant change. The book introduces the new concept of the Gaia organization as a living organism that consciously helps perpetuate the conditions for life on the planet. It is subject to the natural laws of transformation and the principles of oneness, emptiness, impermanence, balance, self-regulation and harmonization. Readers will find applied Eastern systems theories such as the Yin-Yang and the Five Elements operationalized through practical methodologies and tools such as T-Qualia and the Zen Business model. They are aimed at guiding Gaia organizations and entrepreneurs in leading sustainable transformations and qualifying economic growth. The book offers a vital toolkit for purpose-driven practitioners, management researchers, students, social entrepreneurs, evaluators and change-makers to reinvent, create and mindfully manage sustainable and agile organizations that drive systemic transformation.

Designing Regenerative Cultures

Designing Regenerative Cultures PDF Author: Daniel Christian Wahl
Publisher: Triarchy Press
ISBN: 1909470791
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
This is a ‘Whole Earth Catalog’ for the 21st century: an impressive and wide-ranging analysis of what’s wrong with our societies, organizations, ideologies, worldviews and cultures – and how to put them right. The book covers the finance system, agriculture, design, ecology, economy, sustainability, organizations and society at large.

Engineering a Safer World

Engineering a Safer World PDF Author: Nancy G. Leveson
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262297302
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 555

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Book Description
A new approach to safety, based on systems thinking, that is more effective, less costly, and easier to use than current techniques. Engineering has experienced a technological revolution, but the basic engineering techniques applied in safety and reliability engineering, created in a simpler, analog world, have changed very little over the years. In this groundbreaking book, Nancy Leveson proposes a new approach to safety—more suited to today's complex, sociotechnical, software-intensive world—based on modern systems thinking and systems theory. Revisiting and updating ideas pioneered by 1950s aerospace engineers in their System Safety concept, and testing her new model extensively on real-world examples, Leveson has created a new approach to safety that is more effective, less expensive, and easier to use than current techniques. Arguing that traditional models of causality are inadequate, Leveson presents a new, extended model of causation (Systems-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes, or STAMP), then shows how the new model can be used to create techniques for system safety engineering, including accident analysis, hazard analysis, system design, safety in operations, and management of safety-critical systems. She applies the new techniques to real-world events including the friendly-fire loss of a U.S. Blackhawk helicopter in the first Gulf War; the Vioxx recall; the U.S. Navy SUBSAFE program; and the bacterial contamination of a public water supply in a Canadian town. Leveson's approach is relevant even beyond safety engineering, offering techniques for “reengineering” any large sociotechnical system to improve safety and manage risk.

Choices for America in a Turbulent World

Choices for America in a Turbulent World PDF Author: James Dobbins
Publisher: Rand Corporation
ISBN: 0833091131
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
The first in a series exploring the elements of a national strategy for U.S. foreign policy, this book examines the most critical decisions likely to face the next president. The book covers global and regional issues and spotlights the long-term policy issues and organizational, financial, and diplomatic challenges that will confront senior U.S. officials in 2017 and beyond.

Utilization-Focused Evaluation

Utilization-Focused Evaluation PDF Author: Michael Quinn Patton
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1544379471
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
The Fifth Edition of the bestselling Utilization-Focused Evaluation provides expert, detailed advice on conducting evaluations that promote effective use of the findings. Chock full of useful pedagogy, this book presents Michael Quinn Patton′s distinctive opinions based on more than forty years of experience, and also the expertise of new co-author Charmagne E. Campbell-Patton. The authors begin by describing the essence of utilization-focused evaluation, and then outline 10 operating principles. They conclude with chapters focused on how evaluation can be used to promote a more thoughtful, equitable, and sustainable world. Richly illustrated with examples, figures, and cartoons, this engaging text shows readers how to design and conduct evaluations that provide useful findings, and which contribute to a more equitable society. A companion website is available to accompany this book.

Making Sense of Turbulent Contexts

Making Sense of Turbulent Contexts PDF Author: Michelle Garred
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0918261511
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
Local voices matter. World Vision offers this book, "Making Sense of Turbulent Contexts", to address a problematic gap within the field of conflict analysis: local knowledge. Analysing large-scale conflict in an inclusive, participatory way will increase the effectiveness of aid in turbulent settings. "Making Sense of Turbulent Contexts" identifies the current participation gap and presents the alternative concepts on which the participatory Making Sense of Turbulent Contexts (MSTC) framework is grounded. Included are concrete, step-by-step tools and seven case studies demonstrating specific MSTC results. The book concludes with a clear vision for the future of participatory macro-level conflict analysis.