Positive Deviance: A New Strategy for Improving Hand Hygiene Compliance
Article/Report
A positive defiance strategy yielded significant improvement in hand hygiene, which wa associated with a decrease in overall incidence of healthcare acquired infections. .
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A. Map Drawing Activity
Speech/presentation
This
can
be
done
by
an
individual
but
is
even
more
powerful
when
done
by
a
project
group..
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A. Network Weaver Checklist
Speech/presentation
What kind of Network Weaver are you?.
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A. Smart Networks
Speech/presentation
June Holley's July 9, 2009 presentation on Smart Networks..
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Action Perspective: The Crux of the New Management, An
Article/Report
The search for rational, linear designs is not the point in a non-linear world. The identification and reliance on pragmatic action will suggest the direction of future actions. Designs are a part of action but are not given special privilege. This article compares and contrasts the design and action perspectives..
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Ancient Practice of Chinese Social Networking: Guanxi and Social Network Theory
Article/Report
The Chinese concept of Guanxi is a form of social network theory that defines one's place in the social structure and provides security, trust and a prescribed role. These authors say Eastern Guanxi and Western social network theory overlap in three ways. Both imply that information is essential to maintaining a network, and define behavior that regulates the flow of information and defines insiders and outsiders. Both offer a way to accommodate change and while maintaining stability, and both recognize the inevitability of both randomness and order. .
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And/Both - Order and Disorder
Other audio/visual
A simple diagram to explain the mental model of overlapping order and Disorder. A picture of what the edge of chaos might look like and why it is an interesting place. The creativity of Paradox, Tension and Diversity..
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Antichaos and Adaptation
Article/Report
A very accessible summation of Kauffman's important major ideas, with nary an equation in it. Read this one first..
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Appalachian Center for Economic Networks (ACEnet)
Website
Interested in complexity in action. Learn about the Appalachian Center for Economic Networks (ACEnet),a community economic development organization located in rural southeastern Ohio. The mission of ACEnet is to build the capacity of local communities to network, innovate, and work together to create a strong, sustainable regional economy that has opportunities for all. ACEnet uses a sectoral strategy, currently focusing on the food and technology sectors of the economy. Complexity science and network theory guide the work of the innovative, and very successful, organization..
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Applying Complexity Science to Health and Healthcare
Article/Report
Read an engaging summary of the 2003 Plexus Institute International Summit - Complexity Science in Practice: Understanding and Acting to Improve Health and Healthcare, cosponsored by Mayo Clinic and the Center for the Study of Healthcare Management at the University of Minnesota..
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Architechture of Small Networks: Strong Interactions and Dynamic Organization in Small Networks
Article/Report
A new theoretical model offers understanding of how biological forces constrain social interaction and yeild effects that propagate beyond the infant-caregiver bond into wider social networks. .
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Association for the Spirit at Work
Website
The association is devoted to improving the workplace by creating a sense of community and care, very much in the spirit of Plexus. The site has many resources for linking to other, like-minded organizations..
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At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity
Book
The layperson's version of The Origins of Order - fresh insights into strategy making, system building from nature's viewpoint. Tom Petzinger annotation - "A bit daunting in spots, it goes further than other books in exploring what complexity theory might mean for the future of economics and organizations. And Kauffman's speculations on the origins of life are thrilling."
If you would like to review this text further or purchase it from Amazon.com, please click on the following link for: At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity
..
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Beyond Structural Reductionsim in Biology: Complex Routes to Medical Applications
Article/Report
The authors explore why the promise of structural reductionism in molecular biology has yielded few benefits for patient care and suggest an alternative "integrative paradigm focusing on biocomplexity and systems biology" that may yield more meaningful results. Howard Petty is a leading reseacher in physiologic dynamics..
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Beyond Toxicity: Human Health and the Natural Environment
Article/Report
This landmark review article explores a wide variety of research findings that support the hypothesis that interaction with the natural environment - specifically with animals, plants, landscapes and wilderness has a positive effect on human health. This hypothesis is based on the fact that for the great majority of human existence, human biology has been embedded in the natural environment. The author suggests that the field of environmental health needs to move beyond its present focus on toxicity to explore more deeply health benefits of contact with the nature..
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Bibliography on Complexity, Nursing, Medicine & Healthcare
Article/Report
A helpful bibliography on complexity science related learning material of special interest to nurses, physicians and healthcare managers..
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Bigger Picture, The
Article/Report
In the 11 July 2002 (Vol. 418) issue of Nature, Tamas Vicsek writes an article, appearing in the Concepts page, on the difference in the laws that describe the qualitative behaviors of a complex system versus the units that give rise to that system..
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Biological Oscillators, Circadian Clocks, and Sacred Time: Prayer and Caregiving in Neurosociological Perspective
Article/Report
Research into the biology of caregivinghas has shown that atachment and synchronization between infant and caregiver are governed by innate hormonal mechanisms. These mechanisms have regular cyclic features that are correlated to circadian clocks. The authors say that suggests these mechanisms evolved against a background of the same circadian forces that are associated with oscillatory patterns in many natural systems.
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Birth of the Chaordic Age
Book
Dee Hock, the founder and CEO Emeritus of VISA, tells his engaging and wonderfully written story about the creation of VISA, an international organization based more on biological concepts (he calls them chaordic) than on traditional management thinking. While weaving this story, a parallel one is told. It is about his search for fundamental principles of healthy and more natural human organizations and his personal reflections on VISA's development..
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Boids
Website
In 1986 Craig Reynolds created a computer model of coordinated animal motion such a bird flocks and fish schools. He called the software boids. This simulation has become well-known in complexity for its graphic illustration of the principle that complex behavior emerges from simple rules. Boids is an example of individual-based model, a class of simulation used to capture the global behavior of la large number of interacting autonomous agents..
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Bordering on Chaos
Article/Report
The article tells the story of a Mexican cement company, Cemex, which has put complexity theory in action and has grown over ten years to become the world's third largest cement company, with over 20,000 employees, and 486 plants..
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Bridge Under Water: The Dilemma of the Chinese Petition System
The Chinese petition system has been a way for people to seek redress and air grievances since ancient times. But in modern times, ecnomic reforms have generated tensions and corruption, as well as allowing more personal and political freedom, and an increasing awarenes that individual interests are often separate from and in conflict with the state. Corruption itself has increased the losses and injustices which have inspired increasing numbers of petitions. Dr. Shao, a scholar of ancient and modern Chinese social history, concludes that institutional corruption in China has created a dysfunctinal petition system that leaves government and petitioner frustrated but dependent on each other. .
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Broken Asymmetry of the Human Heartbeat: Loss of Time Irreversibility in Aging and Disease
Article/Report
Time irreversibility, a fundamental property of nonequilibrium systems, should be of importance in assessing the status of physiologicalprocesses that operate over a wide range of scales. But measurement of this property in living systems has been limited. Authors provide a computatinoal method to quantify time asymmetry and apply it to human heartbeat time serries in health and disease..
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Building Smart Communities through Network Weaving
Resource within a website
This paper describes how Smart Networks (networks that support innovation and collaboration) emerge and how Network Weavers can accelerate this shift..
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Case Study Research: The View From Complexity Science
Article/Report
Complexity scholars Ruth Anderson, Benjamin Crabtree, David Steele and Reuben McDaniel merge elements of the case study method and complexity science to suggest new ways of examining health care organizations .
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Catastropic shifts in ecosystems
Article/Report
This fine review article by distinguished ecology scholars from around the world explores the dynamics of ecosystem changes, emphasizing that sudden, unanticipated shifts (bifurcations) in ecosystem states can occur when systems are degraded by gradual changes, resulting in what the authors call a loss of resilience. The article concludes with this advice - "Prevention of perturbations is often a major goal of ecosystem management, not surprisingly. This is unfortunate, not only because disturbance is a natural component of ecosystems that promotes diversity and renewal processes, but also because it distracts attention from the underlying structural problem of resilience.".
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Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences, The
Website
The website for The Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences at Florida atlantic University..
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Center for Self-Organizing Leadership, The
Website
We are a network of individual consultants and practitioners, who adhere to Self-Organizing Leadership Principles in guiding Organizations, Communities and Individuals to achieve extraordinary and sustainable results.
The Center for Self-Organizing Leadership ™ was formed in November 2001 by Richard N. and Claire E. F. Knowles. In January 2002 they invited six other individuals from the USA and Europe to the first Gathering of the Center. Although each of these initial members has their own expertise, they were drawn together by the work of Dr. Richard N. Knowles, in particular by his work on the Process Enneagram© and Sustainability..
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Change: The 10 Laws of Change That Never Change
Article/Report
An article which offers some lessons on organizational change primarily from the perspective of the "change agent." Provides a number of company examples. Many of the 10 laws (i.e., "create tension, there is information in opposition, the informal network is as powerful as the formal chain of command, and you get to design your informal network") are consistent with complexity theory..
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Changing Conversations in Organizations: A complexity approach to change
Book
One can mount a strong case that at its essence an organization is simply many conversations, conversations which produce both stable and novel patterns. Changing an organization then is necessarily dependent upon changing the conversations..
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Chaos
Book
This bestseller hardly needs an introduction. It's a model of science writing, both in form and content. Although a small industry of chaos books has followed its worldwide success, this one is still worth rereading as a delightful way to glimpse the implications of complex systems..
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Chaos and Complexity In A Bioterrorism Future
Article/Report
"Preparing for potential bioterrorism is a difficult task for health care leaders because of the fundamental unpredictability of bioterrorist acts. Complexity science thinking is presented as an approach that can help in this task. Basic concepts from complexity science, especially the role of relationships, are presented. Specific recommendations for action including sensemaking, learning, and improvisation are made" (from abstract).
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Chaos and Complexity: Frontiers of Organization Science
Article/Report
An early call by the author for organizational theorists and practitioners to tap chaos and complexity science to advance understanding of life in organizations. James Begun is Professor of Healthcare Management and Director of the Master of Healthcare Administration Program at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota..
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Chaos and Fractals in Human Physiology
Article/Report
This pioneering work was among the first to suggest how developments in nonlinear dynamics, fractal geometry and chaos theory could lead to advances in understanding of human physiology..
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Chaos and Nonequilibrium: The Flip Side of Strategic Processes
Article/Report
A paper that contrasts the assumptions of equilibrium and nonequilibrium, or chaos theory, and develops the implications of the two world views for strategic management..
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Chaos and the Evolving Ecological Universe
Book
A work that covers the parallel cultural and scientific shift away from a machine like vision of the universe to a view that understands the universe as living and evolving ecological universe, what the author calls the ecological transformation. While covering the changes in science, called the nonlinear revolution, Goerner also explores the human implications of these scientific advancements along four dimensions: power; re-enchantment; reconciliation; and empowerment.
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Chaos and the Limits of Modern Medicine
Article/Report
A provocative short piece which suggests that chaos and complexity theory can contribute to advancing the practice of medicine by viewing people as complex systems and going beyond traditional scientific medicine.
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Chaos Under Control: The Art and Science of Complexity
Book
One of the best introductions to complexity sciences covering the whole gamut of the field including complex, adaptive systems, nonlinear dynamics and chaos, fractals, cellular automata, neural nets, and genetic algorithms. This book is extremely clear and well-written but it does require college level mathematics. Probably has the best description of the logistic map, fractals, and cellular automata in the literature.
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Chaos, Catastrophe, and Human Affairs: Applications of Nonlinear Dynamics to Work, Organizations, and Social Evolution
Book
Stephen Guastello, a professor of psychology internationally known for his pioneering work in the application of nonlinear dynamics to psychological research, offers a very useful review of his major research. Some of the material requires some element of mathematical and research methodology sophistication.
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Clinical Applications of a Systems Approach, The
Article/Report
This article, the second in a series, examines the clinical significance of a systems biology appraoch to clinical medicine and when such an orientation is helpful. This orientation is contrasted with the traditional reductionist approach to medicine.
Muneesh Tewari, one of the coauthors, is a member of the Science Advisory Board of Plexus Institute..
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Clinical evaluation: constructing a new model for post-normal medicine
Article/Report
Science certainly has certainly made some spectacular technical advances. The media and politicians, for example, have all hailed the achievements of many scientific projects: the human genome project is no exception. In this paper, Sweeney and Kernicj argue that "neither reductionism nor linearity is sufficient to explain the nature of a world which is relentlessly non-linear and complex". In particular, the authors take up the idea that science deals in generalities whereas, clinical medicine is about the individual. The authors take up the complexity sciences as a basis for a different explanatory model of medicine, defining the characteristics of such a model and illustrating its applications..
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Clinical Nurse Leader: A Catalyst for Improving Quality and Patient Safety, The
Article/Report
Case studies on the impact of the new role of the CNL on patient care outcome..
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Cognition and Complexity in the Work of Nursing: Implications for Safety and Quality
Speech/presentation
Presentation made by Patricia Ebright, Associate Professor, Indiana University, at Plexus conference, On the Edge: Nursing in the Age of Complexity, July 2009..
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Cognitive Edge, SenseMaker
Article/Report
SenseMaker Software supported by methods and an international network for managing uncertain and complex environments.
Condensed from Dave Snowden's description
The ideas behind the software originated in knowledge management, the work of Cognitive Edge in the use of narrative and in understanding the basic patterns through which human beings make decisions....We will always know more than we can tell and we will always tell more than we can write.
The development has been funded by the US and Singapore governments in the context of risk assessment, horizon scanning and the detection of weak signals. A basic assumption of applications of the software is that there is little difference, from an organizational point of view, between a terrorist, an ordinary citizen, an employee or a customer. They all represent the problem of asymmetry, in which an organization has to understand multiple interactions and decisions from large populations which cannot be predicted or controlled by that organization.
The software and linked methods allow a collection of multiple sense making items, which can be anecdotes, web sites, pictures, or blogs. They can be tagged, or labeled, to provide sophisticated metadata. This data is combined with visualization tools linked with methods and models that permit users to sense complex patterns and anomalies that would not be otherwise visible. It is a 'pre-hypothesis low-cost research tool, a knowledge repository, and a decision support system' in one package.
This is one of the few software systems built on the basis of natural science rather than management science. It is designed to accompany, not replace, human decision making. "it enables serendipitous un-biased encounters with data in the context of need."
This is designed to enable a symbiosis of machine and human decision making.
It enables a quantitative approach to motivations and others issues that have traditionally been handled by qualitative approaches.
It provides for "identity marketing" and "ethical and cultural auditing."
It is base3don complex adaptive systems theory and an understanding of non-causal, unpredictable systems..
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Collaboration: Aligning Resources to Create and Sustain Partnerships
Article/Report
This articles explores a new paradigm for partnerships and collaboration between academic organizations and nurse service organizations based on the scholarship of Ralph Stacey, the prominent organizational scholar..
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Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity In A Complex World, The
Book
A grand and entertaining tour of conventional science and the new sciences of chaos and complexity. The authors – Cohen, internationally respected biologist and Stewart, a leading British mathematician – explore such deep and intriguing questions as: why does simplicity exist; how can simple laws explain complex behavior; and where does complexity come from. They then seek to show how simplicity in nature is generated from chaos and complexity.
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Combating AIDS: Communication Strategies in Action
Book
An important new contribution to our understanding of AIDS by the communication scholars Singhal and Rogers explores the many interacting factors that contribute to both the spread, treatment and prevention of this devasting disease. The authors draw lessons for successful AIDS initiatives from their research in five developing countries..
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Commentary on Sweeney & Kernick (2002), Clinical evaluation: constructing a new model for post-normal medicine
Article/Report
Here is a response piece to Sweeney and Kerwick on constructing a new model for "post-normal" medicine. Andras and Charlton question the author's lack of concreteness in their paper as well as an underdeveloped form of analysis of complex systems theory. Nevertheless, the authors of this piece find complexity science to be appealing in spite of the fact that Sweeney and Kernick's work remains vague, unsupported by practicla guidelines and relevant examples.
Why not read Sweeney and Kernick's work for yourself. You'll be able to find it in our e-library..
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Communities of Practice: The Social Fabric of a Learning Organization
Article/Report
Some fresh ideas about how to foster genuine learning in organizations. Many of the suggestions are consistent with complexity principles..
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Community of the Self, The
Article/Report
You can tell by the title that Tim Buchman is a wonderful writer. By reading the article you'll see that he is also an incredibly insightful physician and scientist.
In the context of the general development of biology, systems theory, and physiology, this review article presents some of the latest thinking about the dynamics of health and disease stemming from systems biology and systems physiology. Emphasis is placed on the importance of scale-free networks, coupling, and variability in the maintenance of health..
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Competing on the Edge: Strategy As Structured Chaos
Book
Explores various strategies for employing complexity concepts in organizations from using time pacing to foster creativity, harnessing synergies across large organizations, to improvising and building strategy through small strategic probes..
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Complementary Nature, The
Book
From time immemorial people have divided the world into seemingly contradictory pairs: mind/body, good/evil, nature/nurture. Neuroscientist Dr. J.A. Scott Kelso, founder of the Center for Brain Sciences and Complex Systems at Florida Atlantic University and co-author Dr. David Engstrom, explore this phenomenon in The Complementary Nature. They explain how the human brain can simultaneously hold apparently incompatible pieces of information and reconcile polar opposites. Analyzing the history of ideas and the latest research, they show how different regions of the human brain--and people, individually and in groups--have the capacity to act in concert. Reviewers call this a ground-breaking book..
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Complex Adaptive Systems Model of Organizational Change, A
Article/Report
A highly readable and informative exploration of how organizational change can be understood in terms of complex, adaptive systems theory. Moreover, the author brings together the essential theories touching on CAS in terms of organizational change including autopoiesis, system dynamics, chaos, and self-organization (dissipative systems). Then, the author presents a model of change based on a complexity framework derived from work in cellular automata..
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Complex Healthcare Systems and Information Technology: The Benefits of Computational Modeling and Simulation in Predicting Performance Outcomes
Book
Thomas R. Clancy, a longtime student of medical informatics and complexity science, has produced rigorous research that suggests use of electronic health records, with embedded clinical guidelines, can improve the use of human and financial resources while achieving quality patient care. This book is directed towards healthcare administrators, informatics specialists, nurses, physicians and other medical professionals.
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Complex Responsive Processes in Organizations: Learning and Knowledge Creation
Book
The second book in the Complexity and Emergence in Organizations series develops the concept of complex responsive processes as an alternative way of understanding knowledge development and learning in organizations. In contrast to systems thinking, Stacey argues that organizational knowledge is in the relationships between people in an organization and related to the qualities of these relationships. Insights from complexity science, sociology and psychology, especially the work of G. H. Mead and N. Elias, are tapped to develop this new and challenging perspective..
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Complex Systems Analysis: A Tool For Shock Research
Article/Report
This clincal article begins by noting that the treatment of shock induced multiple organ system failure continues to challenge physicians and researchers. Despite extensive efforts, little progress has been made in identifying therapies directed at specific mediators, challenging the notion that multiple organ dysnfunction is "due to a malfunction of a specfic regulator, pathway or molecule. This article suggests that the search for understanding and effective therapies to treat shock and multiple organ failure may be found "through the prism of complex systems science.".
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Complexity - The Science of Relationships; Nursing - The Profession of Relationships
Speech/presentation
Presentation on complexity science and its implications for nursing education and leadership given at the 38th Bienniel Convention of Sigma Theta Tua International, November 2005..
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Complexity and Creativity in Organizations
Book
Ralph Stacey, one of the world's pioneering thinkers and scholars on complexity science and management lays out his thinking on complexity, the nature of human networks, creativity in individuals and groups, and the implications for complexity in organizational practice and research. If you want to stay current in this field, keep up with Stacey..
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Complexity and Group Processes: A Radically Social Understanding of Individuals
Book
If you are interested in human organizations and complexity science, you'll want to know what Ralph Stacey is thinking. His new book presents the fullest explication to date of his theory of complex responsive processes, (CRP), a human-centered, complexity inspired perspective on life in groups and organizations. In this new work he deals with three fundamental questions:
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?
While Stacey examines these questions from a group psychotherapy viewpoint, readers interested in the therapeutic process and managing organizations also will find much of value. The more scholarly inclined reader will appreciate the effort Stacey makes to place the development of complex responsive processes in historical perspectives of contrasting streams of Western thought..
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Complexity and Management Centre, The
Website
The Complexity and Management Centre of the Business School of the University of Hertfordshire was set up in 1995 to create links between academic work and organizational practice using a complexity perspective, in which the inevitable paradoxes and ambiguities of organizational life are not finally resolved but held in creative tension. This perspective draws on insights into evolutionary theory emerging in the natural sciences, strands of social constructionist thought in the social sciences and various psychological understandings of the dynamics at work in networks of human relationship. The Complexity and Management Centre seeks new ways of working with these ideas, emphasizing the self-organizing potential of ordinary conversation in which people reflect together on their personal experiences..
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Complexity and Management: Fad or Radical Challenge To Systems Thinking
Book
The authors challenge the simple importation of complexity concepts into the human realm of conventional management and systems thinking. The alternative they argue is to tap complexity as a source of analogies and relationship psychology to build a new understanding of organizations as complex responsive processes of relating. You'll want to keep up with Stacey as he is provoking and stimulating, in a healthy manner, advancements in the young field of complexity-based management. This work is the first in a series..
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Complexity and Nursing Learning Network Membership Description
Membership information and registration form on Plexus Institute Complexity and Nursing Learning Network. .
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Complexity and Organisational Learning Research
Website
The Complexity and Organisational Learning Research Programme at the London School of Economics, UK, focuses on organizations as complex social systems. The program works with industrial and academic partners on several research projects, runs seminars for the business..
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Complexity and the Experience of Leading Organizations
Book
One of the first works in the new series, Complexity as the Experience of Organizing, this work explores the implications of the theory of complex responsive processes for leadership and details experiences of leaders who are working to make sense of their organizational experiences using this theory..
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Complexity as a Management Tool
Article/Report
In the September 1, 2004 issue of the online journal Hospitals and Health Networks, long-standing Plexus members John Tobin and James Taylor explore their insights into nonlinear dynamics in organizations and how these insights inform their management views and practices..
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Complexity Digest
Website
A free online complexity digest, available online and via email. The mission of Complexity Digest is to collect and disseminate online complexity science related information to anybody interested in the topic.
Use the nature of connections about complexity to:
Speed up its evolutionary development;
Extend its interactions crossing over disciplines, levels of knowledge and geography to find new research and new applications.
Complexity Digest is edited by Dr. Gottfried Mayer, a member of the complexity community since his residence at the Santa Fe Institute fifteen years ago. The sponsor and publisher is Dean LeBaron, trustee of SFI and investment commentator. Contributors are welcome to send submissions to editor@comdig.de
For individual free e-mail subscriptions send requests to: subscriptions@comdig.org..
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Complexity for Clinicians
Book
This book sets the principles of nonlinear dynamics and complexity theory into the context of clinical healthcare, covering areas such as cardiology, diabetes, mental health, consultation dynamics, decision making and health informatics..
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Complexity in Primary Care Group
Website
The Complexity in Primary Care Group is an informal association of UK-based practitioners and researchers from a wide range of disciplines related to primary care. Group members share an interest in exploring the use of complexity and related theories to increase our understanding of primary healthcare..
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Complexity Perspective on Researching Organizations, A
Book
One of the first works in the new series, Complexity as the Experience of Organizing, this book explores the implications of the theory of complex responsive processes for researching organizations..
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Complexity Science & Health Care Research
Speech/presentation
As the final plenary speaker at the First Annual Plexus Institute Summit Conference, Reuben McDaniel takes center stage with his own unusual mix of storytelling, humor and some more serious insights in using and applying complexity science prinicples in research..
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Complexity Science and Chronic Disease
Article/Report
A reflective report written by prominent science journalist on the Plexus conference held in December 2004 "Improving Health of the Chronically Ill: Insights From Complexity Science"..
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Complexity Science and Health Care Management
Article/Report
This article provides a comprehensive overview of complexity science and its implications for leadership in healthcare organizations. A terrific primer for healthcare professionals interested in new ways of understanding dynamics in healthcare organizations and new approaches to management of these complex organizations..
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Complexity Science Primer, A
Article/Report
A good first step in a painting project is to lay down a coat of primer. This prepares the surface, so the paint will go on better. The same is true in learning. This introductory paper prepares your mind with a context and a base-level understanding of complexity science and its relevance to human organizations. Later, the more challenging concepts are much more likely to stick..
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Complexity Science Series
Article/Report
Plsek P.E. and Greenhalgh T., The challenge of complexity in health care, pp. 625-628. Online at http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7313/625
Wilson T., Holt T, and Greenhalgh T., Complexity and clinical care, pp. 685-688. online at http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7314/685
Plsek P.E. and Wilson T., Complexity, leadership, and management in healthcare organizations., pp, 746-749. Online at http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7315/746
Fraser S.W. and Greenhalgh T., Coping with complexity: educating for capability, pp. 799-803. Online at http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7316/799
A thoughtful, timely series from the prestigious British Medical Journal that introduces health care leaders and practitioners to complexity science and it's widespread implications for clinical care improvement, leadership, and education..
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Complexity, Chaos & Nonlinear Dynamics in Health and Disease: Homeostasis Revisited
Speech/presentation
Take a look at the presentation material used by Ary L. Goldberger, MD, at the December 2004 Plexus Conference - Improving Health of the Chronically Ill: Insights from Complexity Science..
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Complexity, Chaos and Creativity
Website
This Masters Program introduces you to the powerful and exciting approaches of Complexity and Chaos that are indispensable for understanding the complex and dynamic world of the 21st Century..
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Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos
Book
(A wonderful introduction to complexity told by one of the best science writers around. This work chronicles the author's search for deeper understanding of this developing field through fascinating conversations with leading scientists in many fields - biology, computer science, psychology, ecology, physics. Don't miss it.).
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Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos
Book
(This one of the best introductions to complexity. Told through the stories of some of the leading contributors to this new science-engineer and psychologist John Holland, economist Brian Arthur, biologist Stuart Kauffman, and computer scientist Chris Langton. These contributors come from a variety of disciplines and have come together through the Santa Fe Institute.).
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Complicated and Complex Systems: What Would Successful Reform of Medicare Look Like?
Article/Report
Authors Glouberman and Zimmerman have written a discussion paper on health care reform in Canada in response to the Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada. The paper presents a history of the Canadian health system, and suggests how an alternative theoretical frame is needed for viewing and understanding the complexities of health care. They take a look at some of the "intractable choices" or opposing views appearing in the health care debates, and present a few case studies to highlight governmental approaches to health care concerns: first, through a study of France's ranking in WHO health care systems; the second, is a look at Brazil's attempts to address HIV/AIDS. The final section of the paper addresses how complexity might be taken up in reforming Canada's health care system..
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Conditions for Self-Organizing in Human Systems
Book
This study introduces and investigates a model, The CDE Model, which integrates the diverse theoretical and practical approaches to self-organizing human systems..
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Consilience: Unity of Knowledge
Book
Another groundbreaking endeavor by one of the most respected and broadest thinking scientists of our time. This Pulitzer Prize winning author and world famous biologist showcases his argument for what he calls consilience - proof that everything in our world is governed by a small number of fundamental natural laws..
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Coordination Dynamics of the Horse~Rider System
Article/Report
Authors studied interaction between horse and rider measuring ensemble motions during a trot sequence. An expert rider's motions were continuously phase matched with the motions of the horse, while a novice rider's motions were not. Diffrences observed between the expert and novice rider indicate that phase synchrony in this case is not spontanerous but requires estensive learning and practice. .
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Coping with Chaos: Seven Simple Tools
Article/Report
A complexity-science pioneer since the late-1980s, Glenda Eoyang has been applying principles from chaos and complexity to her work in a number of different areas, including organizational development and management practices. This book represents her efforts to show people in places and positions of management, among others, what these principles are and how they might be taken up to transform the working organization..
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Courageous Follower: standing up to and for our leaders, The
Book
This is a great book with practical information for followers. It explains and gives advise for working with leaders to achieve a common goal..
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Creating Healthcare Environments Where Nurses Thrive
Article/Report
On Sepember 30 and October 1, 2004 Plexus Institute sponsored a workshop that explored what complexity science and the experiences of nursing leaders and scholars can contribute to the creation of better working envrionments for nurses and hence, improvement in the quality of patient care.
Proceedings from this workshop attended by nursing leaders, nursing researchers, nursing school faculty, complexity scientists, PhD students in nursing, and organizational leaders were prepared by Susan Hull and are presented below as an associated document. Also shown for those interested in more backgroud is the conference brochure.
The workshop was hosted by Hunterdon Medical Center, Flemington, New Jersey and cosponsored by The College of New Jersey School of Nursing..
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Creativity, Innovation, and Quality
Book
Though not written explicitly from a complexity perspective, you will find complexity concepts throughout. The book introduces DirectedCreativity, taking the reader all the way from first principles to application..
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Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century
Book
An important report from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences that suggests the US health care system can be better understood from a complex adaptive system perspective. Included in the recommendations are a series of new simple rules for guiding improvements in the health care system..
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Currents of Change: Exploring relationships between teaching, learning and development
Book
Read about insights that emerged on learning, teaching, and transformation from a workshop hosted by the Institute of
Development Studies at the University of Sussex..
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Da Vinci Code: A Book, A Movie, A Controversy, Extraordinary Diffusion, The
Speech/presentation
Dan Brown's blockbuster novel, The DaVinci Code, is breaking all sales records, and the movie draws continual crowds despite mixed reviews.Our guests will explore the reasons..
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Death and Life of Great American Cities, The
Book
This classic study had a profound impact on how cities are understood and appreciated and, hence, led to a rethinking of urban planning – away from grand plans, large housing projects, distant analysis to an appreciation for what makes neighborhoods lively, interesting, and safe – short blocks, diversity of use, variety in buildings, everyday interactions. Like the naturalist Aldo Leopold, Jane Jacobs is a keen observer of life and had a deep, and very early sense for many principles of complex systems..
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Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity
Book
An engaging book on complexity by the astrophysicist and well-known science writer John Gribbin. Serves as a fine introduction to complexity science.
From the book jacket - "Why do traffic jams seem to happen for no apparent reason? Can major earthquakes be predicted? Why does the stock market have its ups and downs? How do species evolve? Where do galaxies come from? What is the origin of life on Earth? What if all these questions had a single answer?.
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Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, The
Book
Daniel Seigel, a psychiatrist and researcher,has written lucid explanations of how the brain works, and why theprinciples of cmplexity science can help us understand it. He probes fascinating mysteries of neurobiology, btain chemistry,brain architecture as well as the vital importance of erly human attachments and their life-long implications. .
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Diabetes Control: A Complexity Perspective
Speech/presentation
Take a look at a presentation given by Tim Holt on complexity and diabetes given at the December 2004 Plexus Conference - Improving Health of the Chronicially Ill: Insights From Complexity Science..
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Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools and Societies, The
Book
Scott Page, a professor of complex systems at University of Michigan and external faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute, explores the importance of working with others with diverse viewpoints and experience in tackling challenging issues..
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Diffusion of Innovations
Book
Everett Rogers and his classic book literally established a new field - the study of how new ideas and technologies spread (or don't) through social networks. Now in its 5th edition, this landmark work is the second most highly cited book in the social sciences. You've undoubtedly been exposed to some of the concepts Rogers has developed - early adopters, the diffusion curve, critical mass, the role of social networks, etc. If you don't have this book, your library is awaiting its arrival..
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Diversity as a Management Strategy: A View Through the Lenses of Chaos and Quantum Theories
Article/Report
The authors demonstrate the inherent value of a diverse workforce as a source of strategic advantage and organizational health. They state, "diverse organizations are better able to cope with complexity in the relationships they face because diverse organizations are better able to learn in ways that will enable them to cope with the unknowablility of the world." McDaniel and Walls contrast this approach with that of traditional, Newtonian-based management thinking which views prediction and control as essential and diversity as a barrier to organizational success..
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Diversity of Life, The
Book
This world famous biologist and Pulitzer Prize winner explores the fundamental role played by diversity in earth's living systems..
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Do What You Can, With What You Have, Where You Are: A Quest to Eliminate MRSA at the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System
Article/Report
Hospital acquired infections are a serious and growing threat to patients. Read about the successful efforts of one hospital, VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System, to stem the tide of infections using a social change process called Positive Deviance. This process fosters engagement of staff at all levels and builds on what is working.
The authors of this story, one in a new series of Plexus publications called Deeper Learning, are the distinguished communications scholar Arvind Singhal, PhD, Samuel Shirley and Edna Holt Marston Professor, University of Texas El Paso, Karen Greiner, a PhD student at Ohio University, and Prucia Buscell, Plexus Publications Editor. .
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Dynamic Patterns: The Self-Organization of Brain and Behavior
Book
While contemporary neurophysiology and molecular biology tends to look at brain activity as the action of individual neurons and chemical neurotransmitters, Dr. Kelso's book looks at brain activity as the coordinated behavior and interactions of all components that make up the brain. The renowned scientist Hermann Haken calls the book a fascinating work filled with Dr. Kelso's ingeniously designed experiments and the application of the concepts of synergetics, a field of interdisciplinary research that Haken himself founded and developed. .
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Dynamical" Vs. "Genetic" Disease: What Do Complex Rhythms Reveal About Pathophysiology
Other audio/visual
A Powerpoint presentation prepared by Leon Glass for use in conjunction with his PlexusCalls..
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Dynamics and correlates of microscopic changes in affect
Article/Report
How are momentary microscopic assessments of behavioral dynamics related to traditional macroscopic, static measures? Emotion is generally measured with paper and pencil self-report instruments; affect dynamics have been studied over weeks or months, usually sampling daily, or at 30- or 15-minute intervals. The present study uses Vallacher's (1994) computerized "mouse paradigm" to assess near-instantaneous changes in affect over a short time. Dynamic indices are computed from approximately 1400 measurements from the last 2.5 minutes of a 3-minute assessment.
Subjects monitored and reported emotional states by moving a cursor along a dimension from "Sadder" to "Happier." They also completed self-report measures: Scales 2 (Depression) and 9 (Mania) of the MMPI-2, the Positive and Negative Affect Scale, and the Wisconsin scales of Physical Anhedonia and Hypomanic traits. The instantaneous data yield a summary measure of mean affect, as well as indices of variability. Complexity indices are derived and examined.
Mean affect ratings correlated in expected directions with the paper and pencil measures. Measures of variability such as Standard Deviation are generally unrelated to traditional self-report. There is evidence for low-dimensional chaos in short-term affect dynamics. Importantly and as hypothesized, greater complexity is associated with Pleasant Affect and Hypomania, but negatively correlated with Anhedonia..
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Edgeplace
Website
Edgeplace.com is a site designed to acquaint healthcare leaders with complexity concepts and leadership principles, resources, and examples of the ideas in practice. Much of the content of Edgeplace.com is contained in the book Edgeware: Insights From Complexity Science for Health Care Leaders written by Brenda Zimmerman, Curt Lindberg and Paul Plsek. Copies of the book can be ordered by going to this URL click here
Volume discounts and orders by bookstores can be secured by contacting Curt Lindberg at Curt@PlexusInstitute.org..
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Edgeware: Lessons From Complexity Science for Health Care Leaders
Book
Annotation by Tom Petzinger – "At last. Authors who reveal the clarity in complexity. As a journalist and business author myself, I've read virtually every book seeking to apply complexity science to strategy, work, and economics. None, I assure you, comes close to EDGEWARE in terms of sheer clarity and utility. Though solid on the theory of complexity, this book's real breakthrough in its tremendous practicality for leaders. The pages are brimming with case after case--episodes of complexity in action that inspire as well as inform. For leaders (in hospitals and anywhere else) who ask, 'What do I do on Monday morning?' EDGEWARE provides literally dozens of suggestions. Don't get me wrong. Applying complexity is hard work. No book will ever make it easy to abandon command-and-control leadership or to let organizations 'play' their way into the future. But with EDGEWARE as your guide, the work will be joyous.".
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Emergence: A Journal of Complexity Issues in Organizations and Management
Website
Emergence publishes articles of a qualitative nature relating complex systems, sensemaking, psychology, philosophy, semiotics, and cognitive science to the management of organizations both public and private.
The readers of Emergence are managers, academics, consultants, and others interested in the possibility of applying the insights of the science of complex systems to day-to-day management and leadership problems.
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Emergence: From Chaos to Order
Book
The latest book by one of the founders of complexity science demonstrates how a small number of rules can generate systems of great complexity and novelty. In understanding the patterns generated, like in board games such as chess, Holland shows how we can gain deeper understanding of complex systems in life.
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Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
Book
An engaging new book by a skilled science writer that explores, through engaging and understandable examples ranging from ant colonies to cities, the concepts of self-organization and emergence and how they are being more consciously used to shape our world. Esther Dyson says "Emergence will make understanding "emerge in your own head.".
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Emotionally Intelligent Workplace, The
Book
This is a book on emotional intelligence in the workplace. It examines EI at individual, group, and organizational levels of analysis. See especially the chapter "Group emotional competence and its influence on group effectiveness." Insights and research findings presented here are very consistent with complexity concepts..
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Ending the End-of-Life Communication Impasse: A Dialogic Intervention
Article/Report
Provocative book chapter designed to help healthcare providers stimulate a shift in the pattern of conversation with patients near the end of life from a curative to a palliative, care-giving orientation..
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Engaging Minds: Learning and Teaching in a Complex World
Book
Structured by recent insights from theory, practice and personal experience, Davis and his colleagues consider what it might mean to think about teaching and learning in a complex world - where schools are complex learning organizations. Their work considers and questions some of the more prominent views of past and current thinking on many topics covering cognition, culture and complexity. Drawing from recent educational and scientific research, the book is an accessible work for those interested in educational issues writ large addressing both theoretical and practical aims for educationists, teacher educators, and teachers..
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Enhancing the Informal Curriculum of a Medical School: A Case Study in Organizational Change-For Baltimore Conference Attendees
Article/Report
The Indiana University School of Medicine initiated a school-wide culture change project usingan alternative, participatory approach built oninterets, strengths, and values of individuals and microsystems. Student satisfaction with their educational experience rose sharply a nd reflective narratives describe changes in their work and learning environment..
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Essay on Understanding the Mind, An
Article/Report
Dr. Kelso, a neuroscientist who founded the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences at Florida Atlantic University, is a pioneer in the field of coordination dynamics. In this essay he talks about meta stability and a complementary science of the body,brain, mind, thinking, and behavior. .
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Essence of Chaos, The
Book
Written by the meteorologist Edward Lorenz who first discovered what later was termed "chaos." Looking at chaotic systems from a unique and creative perspective, Lorenz draws out the meaning of such characteristics of chaotic systems as sensitive dependence on initial conditions, strange attractors, aperiodicity, and stability/instability. Although, this book is written for a non-mathematical audience, it does require careful reading and thought. Highly recommended as a work from the original "chaologist" as well as for the creative and original way Lorenz describes chaos.
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Evolution of Cooperation, The
Book
This classic work was the first to suggest a guided mix of cooperative and competitive behavior as a strategy for fostering cooperative behavior. Puts forth the Tit For Tat strategy and establishes robust reciprocity as a key to long-term organizational viability.
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Evolving Mind, The
Book
Written by a mathematician and computer scientist, this book presents some highly original interpretations of complex systems cutting across several disciplines but winding-up in a complexity theory of cognitive processes and brain functioning. Highly technical mathematical constructs are put at the end of each chapter in a special appendix, thereby, making the book accessible to the non-mathematician. Recommended not only for its discussion of many areas of complexity science, but also for its capacity in inspiring the reader to see complex and nonlinear systems in a new way.
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Experiencing Emergence in Organizations: Local interaction and the emergence of global pattern
Book
One of the first works in the new series, Complexity as the Experience of Organizing, this book explores the implications of the theory of complex responsive processes for understanding how widespread patterns, such as policies and practices, emerge through local everyday interactions between people..
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Facilitating Organization Change: Lessons From Complexity Science
Book
Looking for a highly effective alternative to traditional change models?
Finally, an alternative to traditional change models-the science of complex adaptive systems (CAS). The authors explain how, rather than focusing on the macro "strategioc" level of the organization system, complexity theory suggests that the most powerful change processes occur at the micro level where relationship, interaction and simple rules shape emerging patterns.
* Details how the emerging paradigm of a CAS affects the role of change agents
* Tells how you can build the requisite skills to function in a CAS
* Provides tips for thriving in that new paradigm
"Olson and Eoyang do a superb job of using complexity science to develop numerous methods and tools that practitioners can immediately use to make their organizations more effective."
--Kevin Dooley, Professor of Management and Industrial Engineering, Arizona State University .
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Familiarity breeds content: The impact of the exposure to change on employee openness and well-being
Article/Report
This article describes a longitudinal study of how openness to change, job satisfaction, anxiety and depression are affected by exposure to a change situation - in this case, the implementation of new technology and work practices. Measures were taken before the change was fully implemented and again several months later. Employees fell into two groups: those with high exposure to the change and those with low exposure. Longitudinal analysis revealed that greater exposure was directly related to subsequent improvements in openness to change for operational employees, but not for managers and engineers. Exposure was associated with improvements in job satisfaction and depression, irrespective of job type. The effect on job satisfaction, however, could be accounted for by the increased job complexity experienced on the new technology rather than exposure to change per se. Although the impact of exposure on depression became non-significant after controlling for job complexity, the result was marginal. Implications of the role of exposure in the management of change are discussed..
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Family Interventions for Physical Disorders
Article/Report
Dr. Campbell has written numerous articles, books and book chapters, including Family Intervention for Physical Disorders, and is coauthor of Family Oriented Primary Care, a medical textbook now in its second edition on the need for doctors to involve families in care. He also co-edits, with Susan McDaniel, PhD, Families, Systems and Health: The Journal of Collaborative Family Healthcare. He is a recognized authority on the biopsychosocial model of medical care, and therole of families in health..
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Fifth Wave: Psychotherapy and Complexity, The
Article/Report
If you are interested in the link between complexity science and recent developments in psychotherapy, check out this article by psychologist Barrie Evans..
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Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Book
Tom Petzinger annotation - "A wondrous examination of consciousness and happiness as emergent phenomena, based on research by the University of Chicago psychologist. The only self-help book I recommend.".
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Fractal Geometry of Nature, The
Book
Like the book by Lorenz on chaos, this is a classic publication, the first to introduce the concept of fractals to the world and the well-known Mandelbrot, or M, Set. Mandelbrot's work has helped us see nature's creations and patterns more clearly. Other books on fractals, especially by Peitigen and Briggs, are more readable and approachable..
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Fractal Geometry: A Design Principle For Living Organisms
Article/Report
A fascinating article that explores the possibility that fractal geometry is a design principle in biological systems. It calls into question the current view that biological structure is "precisely determined by the genetic program of an organism".
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Fractal Physiology
Book
One of the first books to explore the implications of fractal patterns and dynamics for understanding human physiology. Written by pioneers in the field of nonlinear dynamics and complexity science..
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Fractal Response of Physiological Signals to Stress Conditions, Environmental Changes, and Neurodegenerative Diseases
Article/Report
In the last two decades, the biomedical community has witnessed the development of nonlinear and fractal physiology. The application of nonlinear system theory to the analysis of biomedical time series and the development of nonlinear dynamic model have been useful in understanding how biological systems respond to peculiar altered conditions caused by internal; stress, environmental stress and disease. .
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Fractal Variability Versus Pathologic Periodicity: Complexity Loss and Stereotypy In Disease
Article/Report
This comprehensive article proffers new complexity-based definitions of health and disease. Goldberger develops the case that healthy physiologic systems are characterized by fractal complexity, while unhealthy systems are marked by highly periodic (regular) dynamics and a concomitant loss of adaptability. A must read for anyone interested in complexity and human health..
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Fractal Walk on Wall Street, A
Article/Report
Benoit Mandelbrot, the famous mathematician and the first to "see" and name fractals, examines stock market behavior through a fractal perspective and contrasts this orientation with more traditional views.
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Fractals: The Colors of Infinity
Video
This delightful video introduces the concept of fractals by exploring the Mandelbrot set, which someone has called the thumbprint of God. This set, named after the mathematician, Benoit Mandelbrot, who first "saw" fractals is one of the most beautiful and remarkable discoveries in the entire history of mathematics..
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Fractals: The Patterns of Chaos
Book
This beautiful book is the visual way into chaos theory and nonlinear dynamics. It tells the story with wonderful fractal images from artists, computers, nature, space, and physiology. The matching prose covers basic concepts of the science in an engaging, elegant manner. You will definitely be glad you added this to your collection..
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From Control to Participation via a Science of Qualities
Article/Report
Brian Goodwin is a very prominent complexity scientist, with a strong background in biology and mathematics and a deep interest in health. This sweeping article explores the development of science, the emergent properties of living systems, and cautions against efforts to control and manipulate nature. He augers for a science of qualities and the cultivation of our intuition "as a vehicle of understanding and participating in emergent creativity of natural processes.".
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From Invisible to Visible: Learning to See and Stop MRSA at Billings Clinic
Article/Report
In two and a half years, Billings Clinic, a 272-bed hospital in Billings, Montana, was able to reduce healthcare associated MRSA infections by 84 percent. This story tells how the whole Billings Clinic community collaborated in fighting infection. It’s also an inspiring example of how the behavioral change process Positive Deviance helped dedicated healthcare providers transform their culture.
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From Life Cycle to Ecocycle: A New Perspective on the Growth, Maturity, Destruction, and Renewal of Complex Systems
Article/Report
A fresh view of cycles of development and decline of organizations that goes beyond the S curve concept. The authors, using the complexity framework, explore strategies for helping organizations adapt and remain relevant in light of the ecocycle metaphor..
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From the Science of Complexity To Leading In Uncertain Times
Article/Report
An article that introduces the science of complexity to managers and explores the implications of the science for leadership and the role of the executive..
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Front Lines (column), various short pieces, The
Article/Report
Short pieces include: "How Creativity Can Take Wing At Edge of Chaos," "This Company Uses Sound Business Rules From Mother Nature," "At Deere They Know A Mad Scientist May Be A Firm's Biggest Asset," "Self-Organization Will Free Employees To Act Like Bosses," "How Lynn Mercer Manages a Factory That Manages Itself," "June Holley Brings a Touch of Italy to Appalachian Effort,""The Rise Of The Small, And Other Trends To Watch This Year".
This fine journalist who worked for The Wall Street Journal for many years is closely followed the business implications of complexity and reported on them in his "Front Lines" column; and we're lucky he is because he uncovered many useful examples and stories of complexity at work. See his book The New Pioneers..
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Future of Life, The
Book
The latest book by Edward Wilson, the prominent and respected Harvard biologist, is an impassioned and well-reasoned call for adoption by humankind of a conservation and land ethic. Wilson argues convincingly that the principal challenge to be overcome in the 21st century is "to raise the poor to a decent standard of living worldwide while preserving as much of the rest of life as possible." And by life he means the earth's biodiversity. He warns that if current trajectories, driven essentially by America consumption and effort by the Third World to keep up, are not altered half the world's flora and fauna will be lost by the middle of this century.
Wilson's passion for nature, and his eloquence, come alive in the opening chapter, In a "conversation" with Thoreau at Walden Pond. He writes that he has come "to explain to you, and in reality to others and not least to myself, what has happened to the world we both have loved."
Wilson serves on the Advisory Board of Plexus Institute..
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Garden Patch: An Organic Approach To Planning for the Voluntary Sector, The
Book
Drawing on resources such as Fitjof Capra and Margaret Wheatley, the author approaches the topic of planning models for voluntary sector agencies from an organic perspective. "The design principles of our future social institutions must be consistent with the principles of organization that nature has evolved to sustain the web of life" Capra, The Hidden Connections.
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Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed
Book
A book filled with stories of social and organizational and insights from complexity science by three notable scholars in the field - Francis Westley, Brenda Zimmerman and Michael Quinn Patton.
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Harvest Associates
Website
This organization brings complexity principles to enhancing the efficacy of organizations. Its approach is very relationship oriented. The web site has many resources, including articles on complexity and the human-oriented approach to management and leadership..
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Health Care Organizations as Complex Adaptive Systems
Article/Report
The authors introduce complexity science concepts and suggest its value in understanding and leading healthcare organizations. .
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Healthcare and Open Space Technology
Article/Report
OST inspires creative self-organization and new solutions in healthcare organizations. .
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Heart-Rate Recovery After Exercise as a Predictor of Mortality
Article/Report
This article documents the importance of physiologic variability and adaptability, specifically recovery after exercise, as a predictor of mortality..
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Heart-rate turbulence after ventricular premature beats as a predictor of mortality after acute myocardial infarction
Article/Report
A new risk factor, heart rate turbulence (defined as the acceleration and subsequent deceleration of sinus rhythm after a single ventricular premature beat) has been found to be a better predictor of post-MI mortality as compared to traditional predictive factors. This is an important advance since accurate prediction of risk for repeat infarction is critical in determining which individuals are appropriate for prophylactic intervention. Patients showing an acceleration/deceleration pattern in heart rate after ventricular premature beats are more likely to survive than patients with no such adaptive response. See related articles by Dardik and Goldberger.
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Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity
Book
Tom Petzinger annotation - "This book is pure science - no history, no flag-waving - but it is startlingly clear and thoughtfully concise at 172 pages. John Holland is the father of genetic algorithms....you'll find much here that explains how systems adapt in both nature and the man-made world.".
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High-performing and low-performing nursing homes: A view from complexity science
Article/Report
This article examines performance of two low-performing and two high-performing nursing homes, using complexity science principles to add "richness" to the analysis. It provides a well-devloped overview of the complexity science framework used in the research and focuses on the degree of connectivity, information flow and cognitive diversity found in the nursing home. Thoughtful implications for practice are then explored..
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How Complexity Science Can Inform a Reflective Process for Improvement in Primary Care Practices
Article/Report
An article, based on a string of ongoing research, that proposes a complexity science informed process for fostering improvement in primary care practices..
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How Improving Practice Relationships Among Clinicians and Nonclinicians Can Improve Quality in Primary Care
Article/Report
Quality is explored as an emergent property arising from relationships within healthcare organiztions. .
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How the Leopard Changed Its Spots: The Evolution of Complexity
Book
Tom Petzinger annotation - "A layman's guide to how complexity science may explain the forms and structures of life.".
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How to Invest in Social Capital
Article/Report
A worthwhile introduction to the concept of social capital, first introduced to the social sciences through the writings of Robert Putnam. Social capital, the nature of the relationships in a human organization, the authors suggest is being undermined in today's virtual and volatile business environment. And relationships are taken for granted by many managers. To counter these trends, they suggest a number of strategies to build social capital – foster personal conversations and durable networks, promote from within, build trust by showing trust yourself, foster cooperation and authenticity..
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Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First, The
Book
This Stanford Business School professor lays out extensive research demonstrating that long-term organizational success (including profits) is tied to management concern for employees. He cites troubling evidence that conventional management wisdom is often misguided (excessive organizational focus on costs and rewarding short-term financial results rather than people management) and inconsistent with this research. Pfeffer emphasizes the courage required for corporate leaders to abandon conventional wisdom and design strategies centered on employees..
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Human Moment at Work, The
Article/Report
The author, a psychiatrist, cautions that while e-mail and voice mail may be efficient, the most meaningful human communication is when people are together and emotionally and intellectually attentive. He also cites research and practice evidence that suggests that such interactions, he calls them human moments, are essential to health and well-being..
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Human Systems Dynamics Institute
Website
We are a non-profit, membership organization that is commited to providing a number of opportunities for interactions between and among researchers and practitioners in the field of human systems dynamics. We believe that this emerging field of study holds potential to help us move toward greater understanding of our relationships at home, at work, and in our communities..
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Hyperstructures and the Biology of Interpersonal Dependence
Article/Report
This articles explores brain activity associated with attachment and separation behaviors, and thus patterns of interdependency among people. As such, Smith and Stevens explore connections between behavior at several levels - the neurological, the psychological and the sociological..
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Images of Organization
Book
The newly revised edition of this classic work in the management literature demonstrates through metaphors the multiple ways, realities and dimensions of organizations. The new edition contains expanded chapters, "Unfolding Logics of Change - Organization as Flux and Transformation" and "Learning and Self-Organization: Organizations as Brains" which deal with chaos and complexity theory in organizations..
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Images of Simplicity on the Other Side of Complexity
Other audio/visual
A visually attractive Powerpoint slide show filled with fractal images from nature and thought-provoking quotations on life and complexity..
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Implementation of a Novel Cyclic Exercise Protocol in Healthy Women
Article/Report
Read about the encouraging results of the first clinical trials of HeartWaves, a novel approach to physical activity designed to increase physiologic variability and health invented by Irving Dardik. These trials were led by Rochelle Goldsmith (division of circulatory physiology and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons) and Ary Goldberger (Rey Institute for Nonlinear Dynamics in Physiology and Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School).
The trials involved a test of the efficacy of a cyclic exercise protocol designed to generate a series of parabolic-like waves of cardioacceleration (lasting one minute or less) followed by recovery to a steady state..
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In Nature, Animals that Stop and Start Win the Race
Article/Report
New research shows that animals in the wild move in cycles-short bursts of movement followed by rest (intermittent locomotion). This article explores the benefits of such a variable approach to movement. This has led physiologists to speculate about the value of intermittent locomotion for humans with compromised physiological functioning. The consonance of these findings with the HeartWaves Program of Dr. Irving Dardik is noteworthy. See Dardik's "The Origin of Disease and Health, Heart Waves: The Single Solution to Heart Rate Variability and Ischemic Preconditioning").
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Increasing Returns and the Two Worlds of Business
Article/Report
There are two worlds of business: the decreasing returns world is the processing of bulk goods (the "Halls of Production") and products with little incorporated knowledge; the increasing returns business has to do with knowledge based-industry (the "Casino of Technology") and interlinked webs of technologies. This award-winning author argues that different organizational orientations, skills, and approaches to planning are required for these two worlds..
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Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms To Fail, The
Book
In this highly regarded work Christensen distinguishes between two types of innovations – sustaining and disruptive- and the different mindsets and approaches needed to foster both. He argues successful, lasting organizations must be good at these two types of innovations. Many of his insights and suggested strategies – multiple actions, simple rules, the significance of the supplier, company, customer relationships - are consistent with complexity concepts..
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Insights from Complexity Science for the Practice of Medicine
Speech/presentation
An introduction for clinicians to complexity science and its relevance to medicine and understanding of human physiology. Explores heart rate variability in some depth, referencing the extensive medical literature and demonstrating its value as a powerful diagnostic marker and connection to morbidity and mortality..
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Integrating Complexity Science Into an Existing MSN Curriculum
Speech/presentation
A presentation about integration of complexity science concepts into graduate nursing curriculum made at a February 2005 meeting of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing..
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Intelligence Advantage: Organizing for Complexity, The
Book
"Intelligence is the source of an organization's capacity for survival." The book combines complexity theory and postmodern thought to describe a new era of leadership as we move away from the "iron cage" of Newtonian thinking..
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Intervention: Confronting the Real Risks of Genetic Engineering and Life on a Biotech Planet
Book
Denise Caruso, an experienced science and technology writer and founder of the Hybrid Vigor Institute, an organization devoted to facilitating interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches to scientific problem solving, says we should all be concerned about the unintended consequences of contemporary biotechnological industrial research. The problem, she writes, is that even among the most sophisticated scientists, there are daunting unknowns in the genetic complexities of life. .
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Introduction to Complex Responsive Process: Theory and Implications for Organizational Change Initiatives, An
Article/Report
Over the past 5 years, Ralph Stacey and his colleagues at the University of Hertfordshire's Complexity and Management Centre have been developing a new way to make sense of human interaction. Drawing on sources in sociology, psychoanalysis and group analysis, the theory of Complex Responsive Process (CRP) is the first complexity theory written specifically about human thought and communication (in contrast to other complexity theories which are based on natural or biological sciences and applied to humans by means of analogy or metaphor). It offers a powerful new account of how patterns form in the thinking, feeling and behavior of both individuals and groups, and how both continuity and novelty emerge spontaneously in those patterns as a result of self-organizing processes (that is, without anyone's intentional design or control). In this paper, I briefly describe the theory of CRP, discuss its implications for organizations, and derive from this theory a set of questions for reflecting on organizational change initiatives.
Feedback on this reading draft is welcomed and appreciated! Note: this is and Adobe Acrobat (TM) file and requires a free reader that can be downloaded from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html.
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Introduction to Complexity, An
Speech/presentation
Looking for a short audio clip on an introduction to complexity science? At a recent conference put on by the University of Liverpool Complexity Network, Professor Peter Allen from Cranfield University presented this introduction. It's a great presentation that illustrates well principles of complexity..
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Introduction to Leveraging the Principles of Complexity Science in Organizational Management
complexity science in management of organiztions .
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Invitation to Social Construction, An
Book
Sure to become a classic in the literature on social construction..
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It's a Jungle Out There
Article/Report
A view of businesses, markets and economics as ecosystems and complex systems presented by a well-known science writer. This perspective, supported by examples from the business world, helps us see differently.
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Jazz and the Art of Medicine: Improvisation in the Medical Encounter
Article/Report
Dr.Paul Haidet, an internist, educator and researcher at the Michael DeBakey VA Medical Center and an assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX, has reseaerched cross cultural communication in the medical encounter, the culture of medical education, and active learnign strategies in medical education. An avid jazz fan,former disc jocket and amateur jazz historian, he applies his understanding of jazz improv to the esdsentials of the doctor-patient encounter. .
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John Stelling Presentation on Antimicrobial Resistance
Article/Report
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Latest Advances in Complexity Science
Speech/presentation
Presentation made by Bruce West, Chief Scientist Mathematics, US Army Research Office, at Plexus conference, On the Edge: Nursing in the Age of Complexity, July 2009.
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Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World
Book
An examination of science and the ways it affects what we know about the world and organizations; helped usher in a much greater appreciation for what nature and modern science can teach us about management. Work is a bit dated now and a little weak in the science, but nevertheless a very important and well-written book..
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Lesson of the Slimemold, The
Article/Report
"What do slime mold and health care organizations have in common....both can be categorized as "complex adaptive systems."" So begins the cover story in the March/April 2002 issue of Health Forum Journal. The article examines some implications of complexity science for leadership, pointing to the central role of everyday interaction, exploring diversity and self-organization, noting the coexistence of stability and instability in healthy systems, and the paradoxical nature of leadership. The work of Plexus Institute and insights from several of its members - Henri Lipmanowicz (chair), James Taylor (treasurer), Paul Plsek (member) and Curt Lindberg (president) - are highlighted..
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Lessons From the Field: How to Successfully Coach a Positive Deviance Initiative
Speech/presentation
These authors, who are familiar with the social change process Positive Deviance and have worked with PD in a successful initiative to engage hospital communitites in the effort to prevent healthcare-associated MRSA infections, describe how to help people use PD to discover how infection control can be practiced consistently by everyone. .
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Let's Talk
Other audio/visual
Check out this beautiful show!.
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Letting Go, Gaining Control: Positive Deviance and MRSA Prevention
Article/Report
This article, from the December 2009 of the journal Clinical Leader, reports on the first significant application of positive deviance in healthcare, notably on the issue of MRSA prevention..
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Leveraging Collective Knowledge for Extraordinary Performance
Speech/presentation
In this thought provoking webcast, Rod Collins outlines the workings of another example of liberating structures: the Work-Thru. .
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Liberating Structures FAQ and Presentation
Article/Report
25 Frequently Asked Questions and Liberating Structures Presentation..
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Life at the Edge of Chaos - Health Care Applications of Complexity Science
Article/Report
This article seeks to introduce health care practitioners tot he science of complexity and show how it can be helpful in dealing with both medical and health care organizational issues.
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Limits of Reductionism in Medicine: Could Systems Biology Offer an Alternative?, The
Article/Report
A thoughtful article which compares alternative approaches to medicine - reductionism and systems biology. It contrasts current practices in medical science - focus on a singular dominant factor, emphasize homeostasis, inexact risk modification, and additive treatments - with the orientation of systems biology - robustness, dynamic stability, and variability.
Munessh Tewari, one of the coauthors, is a member of the Science Advisory Board of Plexus Institute..
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Linearity, Complexity and Well-being
Article/Report
Excessive and inappropriate use of linear thinking contributes to an enormous amount of anxiety and suffering for healthcare professionals. A non-linear perspective helps us embrace paradox and unpredictability; as we let go of expectations of control, there's room for more spontanetity, curious observation, discovery and delight. Complexity reminds us to pay attention to our surroundings and our relationships. It helps us set realistic expectations for ourselves, reducing shame and fear, thus improving well-being..
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Linked: The New Science of Networks
Book
Information, disease, knowledge and just about everything else is disseminated through a complex series of networks made up of interconnected hubs, argues University of Notre Dame physics professor Barabasi. These networks are replicated in every facet of human life: "There is a path between any two neurons in our brain, between any two companies in the world, between any two chemicals in our body. Nothing is excluded from this highly interconnected web of life.".
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Little Hope: How Common Sense Thinking Can Lead to a Mess
Speech/presentation
Read the well-received Plenary Address by Paul Plsek at the Institute for Healthcare's 12th Annual Forum. It is an engaging and informative introduction to complexity science and complexity-based strategies for leadership and health care improvement..
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Living Company, The
Book
Has the makings of classic. Arie de Geus explores what nature can teach executives about narrowing the large gap "between the average and maximum life expectancies of the corporate species." Argues for supporting ideas at the margins, giving people space and freedom to explore, building communities within organizations, fostering collaborative learning..
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Loss of 'Complexity' and Aging: Potential Applications of Fractals and Chaos Theory to Senescence
Article/Report
New views of the aging by two leading researchers suggest that it is related to the loss of complex patterns in physiologic systems..
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Low Heart Rate Variability in a 2-Minute Rhythm Strip Predicts Risk of Coronary Heart Disease and Mortality From Several Causes
Article/Report
The authors hypothesize from the results of this large study that low heart rate variability (HRV) is a marker of ill health and suggest that low HRV "precedes manifest disease". Such findings suggest that HRV may be a general marker of the vitality of human physiology..
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Managing Emergent Phenomena: Nonlinear Dynamics in Work Organizations
Book
Organizational science has been transformed by concepts from nonlinear dynamical systems theory, especially where self-organization processes are involved. This book integrates nonlinear theory with empirical studies on work motivation, personnel selection, creative problem solving, organizational change, the formation of networks, group coordination, leadership emergence, behavior in hierarchies, the management and forecasting of dynamical systems, and emergency management. MEP also contains chapters on basic dynamics and empirical analysis with nonlinear regression and related statistics..
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Managing for Success in Health Care Delivery
Speech/presentation
Take a look at powerpoint slides used by Ruth Anderson in her presentation at the December 2004 Plexus Conference, Improving Health of the Chronically Ill: Insights From Complexity Science. Her remarks focused on complexity science informed management practices in health care and their impact on patient outcomes..
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Managing Health Care Organizations: Where Professionalism Meets Complexity Science
Article/Report
This araticle provides an introduction to complexity science, suggests some management implications of the science, and recommends that healthcare organizations be viewed as complex adaptive systems. .
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Managing the Unexpected: Assuring High Performance in an Age of Complexity
Book
"One of the great challenges any...organization can face is how to deal the with unexpected. While traditional managerial practices such as planning are designed to managed unexpected events, they often makes things worse." (book jacket)
Learn about the mindsets and practices developed by two prominent organizational researchers about managing the unexpected..
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Managing the Unknowable: Strategic Boundaries Between Order and Chaos in Organizations
Book
This is one of the first books, perhaps the first, to introduce managers to complexity-inspired leadership thinking and practice. Stacey maintains that the old maps are no good because we are sailing through uncharted waters. It is impossible to predict long term changes in the future of a system. Answers and direction emerge..
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Mergers versus Emergers: Structural Change in Health Care Systems
Resource within a website
Structural changes are commonplace in modern health care systems. Mergers, alliances, networks and other forms of structural change are being undertaken to reduce costs, improve utilization and service breadth, and reduce variation in demand. While some of these changes have provided benefits to both the health care provider and consumers, many have failed to reach their full potential, or worse. In this paper we propose that mergers and other structural changes are a rational response to market pressures, under the assumptions of the currently dominant, mechanistic business model of health care. Most mergers are primarily aimed at exploiting existing knowledge and capability. Synergy is thought of only as a deterministic phenomenon, something that can be created and managed. We next present a biologically based model using complexity science that illustrates the broader, explorative role that mergers based on the principles of self-organization could have. First, these self-organizing mergers-we call them emergers-could focus on much broader objectives than merely reducing costs. Second, emergers could be used to innovate radically different configurations of our health care system. Building on the first two roles, we see a third role that challenges the fundamental assumptions of what health care is, what it could be and how it could be delivered..
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Merging, De-merging, and Emerging at Deaconess Billings Clinic
Article/Report
This is an encouraging story about an emergent approach to health care system creation, involving the merger of the Deaconess Medical Center and the Billings Clinic. From the abstract: "By squarely surfacing the distinct cultures of the organizations through abundant interaction, relationship building and information flow, differences can be creatively transformed, resulting in deep-seated change and the emergence of a genuine, shared health care system culture.".
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Metapatterns: Across Space, Time, and Mind
Book
Not specifically arising out of complexity science per se, this book offers a remarkable journey through "metapatterns" of nature and society that are in many ways congruent with similar patterns being revealed in complexity theory. A very exciting and inspiring read!.
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Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) in the School Setting
Resource within a website
Resources for parents, students, teachers and schools for the prevention of community associated MRSA.
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Microbes.info
Website
A microbiology information portal containing a vast collection of resources including articles, news, frequently asked questions, and links pertaining to the field of microbiology..
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Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution
Book
A gem of a book by one of the country's leading scientists Lynn Margulis, Distinguished University Professor, University of Massachusetts. From the Foreward by Dr. Lewis Thomas –"Microcosmos is nothing less than the saga of life of the planet. Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan have put it all together, literally, in this extraordinary book, which is unlike any treatment of evolution for a general readership that I have encountered before. A fascinating account that we humans should be studying now for clues to our own survival.".
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Model of Nursing As A Complex Adaptive System, A
Article/Report
An article that presents a basic overview of complex adaptive system, key principles of such systems, and a proposed model framework of nursing as a complex adaptive system..
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Monetary Policy under Uncertainty
Speech/presentation
In August 2003 Alan Greenspan spoke about uncertainty and monetary policy at a symposium sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas.
The speech seems to mark a bit of a shift in Greenspan's thinking about on economic planning and forecasting in a world that is inherently uncertain. He explicity deals with nonlinearity..
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More We Than Me: How the Fight Against MRSA Led to a New Way of Collaborating at Albert Einstein Medical Center
Article/Report
Hundreds of people at the Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia are using the social change process Positive Deviance to fight Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA). Their work has forged new relationships, expanded adherance to infection control ptorocol, and encouraging results in declining infection rates.
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MRSA Issue of emerging
Article/Report
Every year, two million patients acquire infections while being treated in US hospitals, and a growing number of the infection-causing microbes are resistant to antibiotics. In this special issue of emerging read about MRSA, the cause of 126,000 hospitalizations and thousands of deaths every year, and what a pioneering group of hospitals is doing, using the social change process Positive Deviance, to prevent the spread of MRSA..
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Multifractality in human heartbeat dynamics
Article/Report
The article by a world-wide team of scientists in the internationally respected science journal presents evidence of the fractal nature of healthy human heart rate dynamics. This is contrasted with the discovery of the loss of fractality in the life-threatening condition, congestive heart failure. The following statement is presented in the closing paragraph of the article - "the detection of robust multi-fractal scaling in the heart-rate dynamics is of interest because it indicates that the control mechanisms regulating the heartbeat might interact as part of a coupled cascade of feedback loops in a system operating far from equilibrium.".
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Multiple organ dysfunction syndrome: Exploring the paradigm of complex nonlinear systems
Article/Report
This article proposes that the paradigm of complex nonlinear systems be used in critical care research regarding the systemic host response and multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS). It is suggested that "understanding the host response as a complex nonlinear system offers innovative means of studying critical care patients, specifically by suggesting a greater focus on systemic properties. We hypothesize that analysis of variability and connectivity of individual variables offer a novel means of evaluating and differentiating the systemic properties of complex nonlinear systems.".
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Multiscale Entropy Analysis of Biological Signals
Article/Report
Traditionl approaches to measuring the complexity of biological signals fail to account for the multiple time scales inherent in such time series. These algorithms have yielded contradictory findings when applied to real-world datasets obtained in health and disease states. Authors details the basis and implemenetation of themultiscale entropy (MSE) method used. The method consistently indicates a loss of complexity with aging, and a results support a general "complexity-loss" theory of agng and disease..
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Multiscale Entropy Analysis of Complex Physiologic Time Series
Article/Report
Ary Goldberger, MD, a member of the Science Advisory Board of Plexus Institute, published, with colleagues, an important article on the dynamics of health, disease and aging in the internationally respected physics journal, Physical Review Letters.
They developed a measure, multiscale entropy, which consistently differentiates healthy people from those with a variety of diseases. (Entropy is a measure of the degree of disorder and variability in a system.) This finding provides additional evidence that "physiologic complexity is fundamentally related to the adaptive capacity of the organism" and that sustained loss of complexity is a generic feature of disease and aging.
Their research was guided by the far from equilibrium principle of complexity – "complex physical and biologic systems exhibit dynamics that are far from the extrema of perfect regularity and complete randomness."
The prestigious journal Nature covered this research in its news and views section (Volume 419, September 19, 2002) in a feature called "Unhealthy Surprises." The author, Dante R. Chialvo, reports that "A measurement, based on entropy, of how "surprising" the [heart] beat irregularity is, distinguishes healthy hearts from those suffering common forms of illness..
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Naturalist
Book
Edward Wilson tells the story of his life and his many path-breaking scientific discoveries, a number of which (i.e. self-organization, simple rules, biodiversity) were central to the development of the science of complexity..
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New England Complex Systems Institute, The
Website
The New England Complex Systems Institute was established as a joint effort of faculty of New England academic institutions for the advancement of communication and collaboration outside of institutional and departmental boundaries. It is an independent educational and research institution dedicated to advancing the study of complex systems. They also offer a web guide to complex systems, at http://necsi.org/guide/, that provides an introduction to complex systems thinking and its applications, originating from efforts to understand physical, biological and social systems. It explains basic concepts and describes a variety of examples and applications, including health care.
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New Hope for Prevention and Control of Healthcare-Associated MRSA Infections
Speech/presentation
John A. Jernigan, MD, MS, Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shared this background presentation on MRSA during kick-off meetings for the Plexus initiative led PD/MRSA Prevention Partnership..
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New Kind of Science, A
Book
"A New Kind of Science is a book that simply cannot be ignored. It makes spectacular claims right from its title page onward. Whether the book's arguments convince you or not, it will force you to reconsider your notions of what constitutes the practice and content of science. Such a book appears only once every few decades." (from review by John Casti in Nature, May 23, 2002, pp. 381-382).
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New Pioneers: The Men and Women Who Are Transforming The Workplace and Marketplace, The
Book
If you learn from great stories and care about improving human organizations of all types, you will find The New Pioneers by Tom Petzinger a remarkable treasure chest. From the intellectual curiosity, probing eye, and extensive travels of this noted Wall Street Journal columnist comes an exploration of such fundamental issues as how enlightened companies bring out the best in human nature, behaviors driving creative and adaptable organizations, and basic motivating forces in human institutions. The exploration does stop here however as Petzinger delves into recent, far-reaching scientific discoveries about living systems, thus providing us with a deeper, more encompassing framework for understanding human systems..
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New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World
Book
Kelly, executive editor of Wired, offers his thoughts on making your way in an economy increasingly driven by networks, providing 10 rules. Here are a few of them: No Harmony, All Flux; Seeking Sustainable Disequilibrium; Let Go at the Top; Embrace the Swarm; The Power of Decentralization. As in his previous book, Out of Control, Kelly shows a remarkable ability to capture, synthesize and present in memorable ways the essence of important new trends and developments in science, technology, economics, and communications..
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New Theoretical Foundation for Relationship-centered Care, A
Article/Report
Read about the new theory of complex responsive processes of relating written by a Anthony Suchman, a leader in the clinical philosophy of relationship-centered (health) care..
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New York: A Documentary Film, Episode Seven: 1945 to Present
Video
A significant portion of the epidsode seven of this series, directed by the famous documentary film-maker, Ric Burns, deals with the tremendously positive impact Jane Jacobs had on city planning in New York City. Through her insights and activism she successfully fought the large scale plans of Robert Moses, helped people appreciate the dynamics of healthy neighborhoods, and in so doing revolutionized the field of urban planning. See her classic book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, for more on her work and thinking..
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Nexsus
Website
NEXSUS is dedicated to developing a collaborative network of research projects working around the common theme of sustainability. The research is concerned with the application of complex systems thinking and approaches to increase understanding of sustainability in socio-economic systems.
The network is being coordinated by the
Complex Systems Management Centre,
Cranfield School of Management, UK..
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Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks
Book
As Chaos explained the science of disorder, Nexus reveals the new science of connection and the odd logic of six degrees of separation. How can geometry explain the puzzles of human behavior? In this incisive, insightful work Mark Buchanan presents the fundamental principles of the emerging field of "small worlds" theory-the idea that a hidden pattern is the key to how networks interact and exchange information, whether that network is the information highway or the firing of neurons in the brain. (Book Description.
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Nine Emerging and Connected Organizational and Leadership Principles
Article/Report
"Theory is fine. But what am I supposed to do?" Good question. That's where this article comes in. Here you will find summaries of nine specific, action-oriented heuistics (or rules of thumb) for leading in a complex environment. Each principle is accompanied by insights from some of th eleading thinkers in complexity science..
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Nonlinear Conversations
Article/Report
Complex interactions through nonlinear conversations. The author, a physician, proposes an alternative to the traditional medical interview..
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Non-linear dynamics for clinicians: chaos theory, fractals, and complexity at the bedside
Article/Report
A wonderful introductory article for medical personnel by a physician who has delved deeply into human health and physiology from the complexity and chaos perspectives. Suggests new definitions for health and ill-health, and new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. Contains comprehensive reference list of other medically related articles.
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Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences
Research/study
This is a refereed journal of original research on all areas of nonlinear dynamics (attractors, bifurcations, fractals, chaos, self-organization, complexity, evolutionary computations) and their applications ranging from microbiology to macroeconomics, with psychology topics as the central focus. NDPLS is abstracted in PsycINFO, MEDLINE, and JEL/Econlit. A sample issue is available through the SCTPLS web site. Potential authors are encouraged to submit manuscripts; see web site for further instructions. Individual subscriptions are available with membership in the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology & Life Sciences. Institutional subscriptions are available in both hard copy and on-line form through the publisher, Human Sciences Press/Kluwer Academic Publishers..
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Nonprofit Governance: The Next Generation – Evolution of Structure and Function
Article/Report
This paper recognizes that governance has been an important aspect of our nonprofit organizations for over a century. In the recent past as the environment has changed dramatically and governance has become a focus of study, an evolution is occurring.
There is no agreement in the field on the best way to structure a board for effectiveness. There is instead an evolution of diversity of thinking about governance models, structures and functions.
Four governance models are described within a framework and analyzed to suggest that choosing a hybrid model to suit an organization's specific characteristics has merit.
Whatever hybrid model is chosen, structural forms such as committees, information, agendas and board meetings must be in alignment with the board's function, culture and strategy. A discussion of these structural forms suggests a variety of options to consider..
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Notes & Reflections on Positive Deviance Informed Prevention Effort at Hospital El Tunal, Bogota, Colombia
Article/Report
Physicians, nurses, and other staff members work together on infection prevention, remind each other to wash their hands, and sanitary hand gel is called "holy water". .
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Notes & Reflections on Positive Deviance Informed Prevention Effort at Hospital El Tunal, Bogota, Colombia
Article/Report
Physicians, nurses, and other staff members work together on infection prevention, remind each other to wash their hands, and sanitary hand gel is called "holy water". .
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Nursing Homes as Complex Adaptive Systems
Article/Report
Improving quality is an important challenge in nursing homes. This article reports on the results of a study designed to test the hypothesis that management practices consistent with complexity science (open communication, participation in decision-making, relationship-oriented leadership...) improve resident outcomes. The hypothesis was supported, suggesting that traditional nursing home leadership pracitces need rethinking and that complexity-inspired practices should be adopted as a key strategy for enhancing the care of patients..
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On the Edge: Nursing in the Age of Complexity
Book
This book, the first to address complexity science and nursing, is a product of the Plexus Institute science and nursing communities. It addresses the broad implications of the science for nursing practice, research, policy making and leadership. .
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Optimal Health and Well-being for Women: Definitions and Strategies Derived from Focus Groups of Women
Article/Report
This fascinating qualitative research study explored how women defined health and well-being and strategies they suggested for improving health. Definitions of optimal health were described in terms of "connection with interpersonal and social environments", resilience and adaptability. "Nearly all strategies offered by the women to improve their health could be considered relational, on either personal or social levels."
Such findings are consistent with insights from complexity science on the dynamics of healthy living systems..
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Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature
Book
Tom Petzinger annotation - "A compelling historical account of the limitations of Newtonian science and the dynamics of complexity by a Nobel laureate in chemistry, with an emphasis on thermodynamics and dissipative structures." For the scientists in the crowd, this is one of the works that triggered the development of the science of complexity. A must read for those interested in the phenomena of self-organizing systems.
If you would like to review this text further or purchase it from Amazon.com, please click on the following link for: Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature..
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Organizational Change and Redesign: Ideas and Insights for Improving Performance
Book
Sound ideas for improving managerial performance under conditions of accelerating change. Weick's chapter "Organization Redesign as Improvisation" is a classic. "Downsizing and Redesigning Organizations" chapter by Cameron, Freeman and Mishra presents some of the first research results on downsizing and redesign. A number of the findings are consistent with complexity principles. This work should be on your ready reference shelf..
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Organizations as Machines, Organizations as Conversations: Two Core Metaphors and their Consequences
Article/Report
The way an organization is envisioned, as machine or conversation, has powerful impact on what happens. .
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Origin of Disease and Health, Heart Waves: The Single Solution to Heart Rate Variability and Ischemic PreconditioningThe Origin of Disease and Health, Heart Waves: The Single Solution to Heart Rate Variability and Ischemic Preconditioning, The
Article/Report
This provocative article explores the concepts of the heart waves and heart rate variability as indicators of health and disease and proposes a route to increase the fractal complexity, and hence health, of human physiologic systems through a novel approach to physical activity and exercise. Don't miss this one..
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Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity and the Radical Remaking of Economics, The
Book
Eric D. Beinhocker, a senior fellow at the McKinley Global Institute, McKinley's economic research arm, argues that the economy is a highly dynamic and constantly evolving system that is virtually impossible to predict. He says we need to scrap the traditional view that economics is a static, equilibrium-balanced system, and understand it as a complex adaptive system akin to the brain or an evolutionary ecosystem. Adam Smith inspired economists in the 20th Century, he observes, but Darwin will inspire them in the 21st..
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Out of Control: The Rise of Neo-Biological Civilization
Book
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(This popular, insightful, and wide-ranging work pulls important new pattern-building findings from fields as diverse as computer science, biology, physics, and economics, relates them to the new worlds of complexity, chaos theory, and post-Darwin evolution, and lays out the implications for creating complex organizations and systems of all types. Many of his findings are contrary to management traditions and practices..
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Paradox Of Control In Organizations, The
Book
From his own experience as a manager, Philip Streatfield writes about his struggle to make sense of his organizational life. He examines both dominant management theories and new, more participative perspectives informed by complexity sciences, sociology, and psychology. For him, and for me, these new perspectives better explain the mess of organizational existence. Streatfield's most important contribution, I believe, is describing the paradox of control that is a manager's organizational life. It is through living with "being in charge, but not in control" that Streatfield finds the courage to continue to act to co-create the very future that he can not control, being then at once in control and not in control..
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Paradoxes of Accountability for Nursing Managers
Speech/presentation
A conversation on paradoxes in healthcare with Deborah Tregunno, one of the authors of the chapter "A Mobius Band: Paradoxes of Accountability for Nurse Managers" in the Plexus Press On the Edge- Nursing in the Age of Complexity..
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Pat Ebright- Nursing Network Monthly Call October 2008
Other audio/visual
Pat Ebright is the guest of Plexus Complexity and Nursing Network call for October 2008. In this call she discusses the research around RN Stacking, defines as workload management strategy for dealing with task complexities and how nurses can use this to help prevent error and minimize bad outcomes given their complex workload..
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Patching: Restitching Business Portfolios in Dynamic Markets
Article/Report
Another in a series of HBR articles based on the book Competing on the Edge explores the concept of patches, building blocks of services, capabilities that can be linked in different and changing ways to maintain flexibility and responsiveness to markets..
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Pathways to Prevention
Article/Report
Certain patterns of human relationship emerge in tandem with successful infection control. .
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Patient-Centered Care, the Sine Qua Non of Collaborative Medicine
Article/Report
Ultimately, the two simplest rules needed to guide health care are a) the best interest of patients comes first, and b) we must collaborate to make sure that patients' best interests stay first.
Proponents of complexity theory often point to the fractals seen in nature as recurrent patterns of success that have been used over and over. Patient-centered care and collaboration can similarly produce repetitive patterns of success over and over at different levels and in varied settings in collaborative medicine and in the larger context of health care.
While considering the importance of minimum specifications or simple rules that drive behavior in complex adaptive systems we would be remiss to ignore the simple rules expressed by Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Just as we acknowledge the relevance of Maslow's hierarchy of needs in providing comprehensive, personalized, patient-centered care, we must also recognize that this same hierarchy of needs drives the behavior of the independent agents (providers) delivering healthcare services. Complexity theory proponents would refer to Maslow's hierarchy as an example of behavioral attractors. If a healthcare organization can link (through incentives and reinforcement mechanisms) the behavioral attractors of personal success for healthcare providers to delivering patient-centered, collaborative care (the minimum specifications for successful delivery of health care) the result will be a self-organizing, self-perpetuating success loop. Aligning the simple rules of personal success for healthcare providers with the rules of success for the healthcare system lets the successes of the microcosm breed success for the macrocosm.
While providing a reasonable wage and safe working environment will satisfy the survival (lower order) needs of employees it will not meet the actualization (higher order) needs. Any employer can attest to the difference between behaviors motivated by survival and behaviors motivated by actualization. By attending to both the lower and higher order Maslow hierarchical needs of internal customers (providers), employers (healthcare organizations) can change from lower order "survival engines" to higher order "actualization engines."
The minimum specifications of success for collaborative medicine are patient-centered care and collaboration. All other principles and strategies are dependent on, and derived from, these two simple rules. Maslow's hierarchy identifies the behavioral attractors (simple rules of success) for individual healthcare providers. Aligning the rules of success for individuals with those of the system they are a part of can create self-organizing, repetitive patterns (fractals) of individual and system success. If what complexity theory teaches is correct then this approach should be equally effective in the microcosm of collaborative medicine and the macrocosm of the healthcare system..
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Patterns in Nature
Article/Report
The natural world abounds in eye-catching patterns. Consider the synchronized movements of a school of fish gliding through deep ocean waters; or the coordinated turns and swoops of a flock of starlings whirling among tall trees before coming to rest on a telephone wire. How do all the individuals in the school or the flock avoid collisions with their neighbors? How do they orchestrate their graceful movements?
The living world is filled with striped and mottled patterns of contrasting colors; with sculptural equivalents of those patterns realized as surface crests and troughs; with patterns of organization and behavior even among individual organisms. People have long been tempted to find some obscure "intelligence" behind all these biological patterns.
For access to the article click on associated document below..
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Physicians and Decisions: A Simple Rule for Increasing Connections in Hospitals
Article/Report
A gem of an article, which explores a simple rule for hospitals: let doctors and nurses help decide key strategic issues. It documents the benefits of increased connections among key stakeholders - improved financial performance and more adaptable strategies..
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Physionet
Website
Physionet is a public service of the Research Resource for Complex Physiologic Signals, funded by the National Center for Research Resources of the National Institutes of Health. It offers free access via the web to large collections of recorded physiologic signals and related open-source software..
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PlexusCalls: A Community Tackles Youth Violence & Drug Use
Speech/presentation
Join this provocative discussion to learn how members of a community can combine their differing knowledge and resources to change the conditions that perpetuate youth violence.
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PlexusCalls: Alzheimer's, Dementia, Complexity
Speech/presentation
Susan D. Gilster, PhD, is founder and executive director of the Alois Alzheimer Center, a pioneering free-standing facility dedicated exclusively to individuals with Alzheimer's disease and dementia..
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PlexusCalls: Another Way of Thinking About Complexity in Human Organizations and Reframing the Role of Leaders.
Speech/presentation
All three of the featured guests on this call have been active learners and leaders in the complexity and organizational management field. Some evidence: all recently completed the Doctorate in Management Programme developed by Ralph Stacey at the Complexity and Management Centre, University of Hertfordshire. As many of you undoubtedly know, Ralph Stacey is one of the most thoughtful scholars and organizational theorists in the complexity and management field. He, along with colleagues, has been developing a human oriented perspective on complexity and organizations called complex responsive processes.
Jim, Steve and John will explore how their thinking about organizations and their practice of management have been shaped by their immersion in complexity science, their doctoral work, and their interactions with Ralph Stacey.
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PlexusCalls: Appreciative Inquiry
Speech/presentation
How does Appreciative Inquiry differ from other approaches to change? For one thing, it focuses on hopes, dreams and core values. Instead of finding problems and assigning causes, appreciative inquiry looks for the best, and asks participants to find ways to make the best happen more often. Many who have studied and practiced the process say it opens new possibilities for change and transformation..
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PlexusCalls: Appreciative Leadership & Network Weaving
Speech/presentation
Guests: Jack Ricchiuto, Lisa Kimball and June Holley discuss Appreciative Leadership and Network Weaving..
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PlexusCalls: Biotechnology and Risk Assessment
Speech/presentation
Denise Caruso is co-founder and executive director of The Hybrid Vigor Institute, www.hybridvigor.org, a nonprofit research and consulting practice. The Institute's work has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation as well as public and private foundations and individuals.
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PlexusCalls: Communication, Medicine, Jazz
Speech/presentation
"Man you don't have to play a whole lot of notes. You just have to play the pretty notes". Trumpeter Miles Davis.
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PlexusCalls: Community approach to preventing AIDS
Speech/presentation
Helen Epstein is the author of The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West and the Fight Against AIDS. This groundbreaking new book argues that the very institutions designed to lead the global response to HIV/AIDS may in fact be undermining community responses to the epidemic..
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PlexusCalls: Complexity and Conflict Resolution
Speech/presentation
Sharon Burde, a leader of the Women's Strategy Group and a mediator who also teaches at New York University's Wagner School of Public Affairs will discuss conflict resolution with Dr. Barry Dorn, Associate Director of the Program for Health Care Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at the Harvard School of Public Health..
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PlexusCalls: Complexity and Leadership
Speech/presentation
What happens when business leaders shift their focus from efficiency and control and begin to understand and examine self-organization and emergence? Some theoreticians and practitioners say the result is creativity and adaptability. But how do we define leadership, and does our conventional language impose a constraint on our learning? Guests with diverse experiences explore these questions..
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PlexusCalls: Complexity and Organizational Leadership
Speech/presentation
Complexity and Organizational Leadership: Special guests for this PlexusCalls will be Henri Lipmanowicz and Grey Warner..
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PlexusCalls: Complexity and Social Services
Speech/presentation
Guests will be William Waldman, former Director of Human Services in New Jersey and now a professor at Rutgers University; Rita Saenz, former Director of Social Services in California and now chief executive officer of the Academy for Coaching Excellence; and Liz Rykert, president of MetaStrategies, a Canadian consulting firm devoted to helping charities, nonprofit and public organizations use the Internet and develop web-based capabilities..
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PlexusCalls: Complexity in Medicine
Speech/presentation
Complexity and the Body:
Froniters in Medical Research.
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PlexusCalls: Complexity Scholars on Action and Change
Speech/presentation
Do you feel an individual is too helpless to even think about big and difficult social issues? Read Getting to Maybe, and listen to the authors, who have thought deeply about this theoretical and practical issue. They bring knowledge, experience, responsibility and soul-searching to one of the most pressing challenges of the hectic, crowded and often overwhelming society in which so many people live today..
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PlexusCalls: Complexity View of Quality, Value and the Human Factor
Speech/presentation
What do we mean when we talk about quality and value? How do we define quality, and where do values originate? Does value arise at the point where economics and ethics intersect? Can ideas about quality and value apply across different professions and environments? And how can complexity science help us get a better understand of what quality means? The guests on this call, who come from different fields, have given serious thought to such questions..
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PlexusCalls: Conversations
Speech/presentation
Two people in a conversation amount to four people talking. The four are what one person says, what he really wanted to say, what his listener heard, and what he thought he heard.
William Jennings Bryant.
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PlexusCalls: Corporate Team Learning
Speech/presentation
Rod Collins recently retired after 33 years with the Blue Cross Blue Shield Federal Employee Program (FEP)where he held several executive Positions. Since 2001, he had served as FEP's Chief Operating Executive with accountability for providing health insurance for over 4.5 million federal employees and family members nationwide. FEP is a business alliance of 39 independent Blue Cross Blue Shield Plans with annual revenues over $19 billion, and is widely regarded as one of the best run health insurance arrangement in the country today. In this most recent role, Rod implemented a Learning Organization management discipline that emphasizes team learning and cross-boundary collaboration. He also pioneered the use of an original large group meeting format known as "Work-Throughs." Rod will discuss the theory and the practice of Work-Throughs and as a valuable tool for effectively and quickly managing complexity to achieve on-time and on-budget quality results.
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PlexusCalls: Dr. John Holland and Dr. Scott Camazine discuss complexity science, innovative problem solving and future trends in complexity
Speech/presentation
Dr. John Holland is known worldwide as the father of genetic algorithms and one of the most visionary thinkers in complexity science. He is an author an a professor of electrical engineering, computer science and psychology at the University of Michigan. He earned his BS in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and earned a master's degree in math and a doctorate in communications from the University of Michigan. Dr. Scott Camazine is a biologist, physician and photographer with a life-long interest in the natural world, and he has spent much of his career studying honeybee behavior. He is author of The Naturalist's Year and Velvet Mites and Silken Webs, and co-author of Self Organization in Biological Systems..
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PlexusCalls: Electronic Communication
Speech/presentation
Jane Patterson is director of e-NC, an innovative pubic program designed to get all residents of North Carolina using communication technology, especially the Internet, to improve lives and economic conditions. Donna Sullivan is senior program director. Liz Rykert is presidentof Metastrategies, a Canadian firm devoted to helping public and nonprofit organizations develop web-based capabilities. .
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PlexusCalls: Habitat for Humanity Egypt
Speech/presentation
Habitat for Humanity Egypt has become one of the most successful Habitat programs in the world. The program, founded in 1989, is trying to serve ten percent of the 20 million Egyptians living in poverty while at the same time developing the local nongovernmental organization capacity to serve the rest..
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PlexusCalls: How Complexity Principles Align With Management
Speech/presentation
Marc Narkus-Kramer began his career in the fields of energy and the environment, and has spent the last 20 years working on air traffic control modernization with the MITRE Corporation's Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD), based in MacLean, Virginia. MITRE is a non-profit corporation working in the public interest in partnership with government clients. It addresses issues of critical national importance, combining systems engineering and information technology to develop innovative solutions..
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PlexusCalls: How Hospitals Heal Themselves
Speech/presentation
Join journalist, TV producer and author Clare Crawford-Mason and Lisa Kimball, Plexus Trustee and owner of Group Jazz, in conversation about Ms. Crawford-Mason's latest project: a PBS documentary Good News: How Hospitals Heal Themselves. .
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PlexusCalls: How to halt hospital infections
Speech/presentation
Dr. Betsy McCaughey is a health policy expert and former Lieutenant Governor in New York. She is the founder and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths (RID), a non-profit organization committed to encouraging hospitals to make infection prevention a top priority, to educating patients on how to protect themselves, and to educating future doctors and nurses on how to prevent the spread of infection in healthcare environments.Dr. Jerry Zuckerman is Medical Director of Infection Control and physician champion for Quality Management's Infection Initiatives at Albert Einstein Medical Center, Philadelphia, PA. He is attending physician in infectious diseases at Albert Einstein, and an assistant professor of medicine at Thomas Jefferson School of Medicine. These two experts will discuss ways to stop the spread of hospital associated infections. A Plexus Institute initiative to halt the spread of Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) infections is being funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It involves a partnership among Plexus Institute, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Positive Deviance Initiative at Tufts University, and a nationwide network of 40 hospitals..
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PlexusCalls: Hurricanes, Storms, and Weather as a Complex System
Speech/presentation
Dr. Greg Holland, director of Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology (MMM) at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Bolder, Colorado has spent much of his career with Australia's Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre, where he focused on tropical meteorology and severe weather and established programs to study the coastal impact of tropical cyclones. Dr. Bruce J. West, the Chief Scientist of the Mathematical and Information Science Directorate at the US Army Research Office, has also studied weather systems. Dr. Holland comes to NCAR from Aerosonde, a manufacturer of lightweight and long-range robotic aircraft, where he played a key role in developing small unmanned vehicles. Under Dr. Holland's leadership, MMM plans to nest weather research forecasting within a global climate model as part of a substantial program to investigate the way large-scale processes translate into local impacts, and vice-versa..
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PlexusCalls: Leadership and Communication
Speech/presentation
Do leaders tend to have a distinctive style of communicating, and do their choices matter? What elements create the messages they send, about their decisions, their ideals and their goals? How do the action and narratives used and observed in organization impact interaction, collaboration and success?.
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PlexusCalls: Lessons from Hurricane Katrina
Speech/presentation
Lessons from Hurricane Katrina and its Aftermath: A Complexity View.
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PlexusCalls: Marine Mammals and the Health of the Oceans
Speech/presentation
Earth's Final Frontier: the Oceans.
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PlexusCalls: Nature as a Design Partner
Speech/presentation
Eugene Tsui, PhD, is a visionary international architect who is considered a pioneer in implementing ecological technologies and biological processes as a basis for imaginative form and extraordinary function. He has written four books, which the Royal Institute of British Architects and the American Institute of Building Design have designated as "recommended reading." His book The Urgency of Change and Evolutionary Architecture: Nature as the Basis for Design explains how natural forms offer beauty and stability. He has projects China, Europe and through out the US. As he explains on the web site for, Tsui Design and Research, Inc, his rigorous studies of nature inspire innovative forms that use nontoxic materials and are designed to resist fires, floods, earthquakes and termites..
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PlexusCalls: New book, The Complementary Nature
Speech/presentation
Dr. J.A. Scott Kelso, the neuroscientist and author, founded the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences at Florida Atlantic University in 1985 to assemble scholars and researchers from diverse fields to work together on complex issues. His new book, The Complementary Nature, co-authored with David A. Engstrom, is in bookstores now..
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PlexusCalls: Scoles & Liebovitch discuss trends in scientific research
Speech/presentation
Dr. Giacinto Scoles, a Princeton University professor who received the 2006 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics, and Dr. Larry Liebovitch, Interim Director of the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences at Florida Atlantic University, discuss trends in scientific reseach. Dr. Scoles was awarded the physics medal for developing a new technique for studying molecules by embedding them in ultra-cold droplets of helium..
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PlexusCalls: Smart Networks: What They Are, How They Work
Speech/presentation
Dr. Kevin Dooley, professor of supply chain management at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University and Dr. Lisa Kimball, executive producer of Group Jazz, an organization devoted to supporting teams, task forces, communities and organizations,will discuss networks and communications. Dr. Dooley is trustee and past president of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences. Both guests have deep understanding of the applications of complexity inspired principles..
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PlexusCalls: Social Networking and Social Capital
Speech/presentation
Duncan Work is an independent consultant with the Social Capital Consulting Group. From 2004 through 2006, he was Chief Scientist and Social Responsibility Officer for LinkedIn Corporation..
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PlexusCalls: Social Networks
Speech/presentation
Social capital and social networks can be put to work to help parents, children, and their organizations and institutions to build better, stronger communities..
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PlexusCalls: Stories, Meaning and Software
Speech/presentation
Dave Snowden is the Founder of Cognitive Edge, an organisation focused on the creation of an open-source approach to the development and propagation of methods, emergent and distributed forms of research..
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PlexusCalls: Storytelling & Archetypes
Speech/presentation
Author and storyteller Kelly M. Cresap, Ph.D., uses the art of storytelling to bring human possibilities into focus. In workshops and seminars he equips participants with a comprehensive four-archetype system, composed of the Sovereign, the Warrior, the Magician, and the Lover. These finite archetypal embodiments have an infinite number of applications. The system is simple enough to remember, light enough to carry, and profound enough to address the most complex of challenges.Sharon Benjamin, PhD, is the principal of Alchemy, a Washington, DC based management consulting practice. She is an experienced executive who has served as a CEO, Vice President of Marketing, Vice President of Institutional Development and Finance, Deputy Director for Planning and as a grant-maker..
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PlexusCalls: Storytelling for Social Change
Speech/presentation
Kate Randolph has worked world wide with teams to design social content soap operas that promote discussion and debate through educational stories. James Palmer researches internationally on human interaction and collaboration as emergent patterns of practice. Virginia Lacayo was co-creator and producer of the first Nicaraguan soap opera designed to reach young audiences with informational stories on sexual and human rights issues. .
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PlexusCalls: The Bee Genome
Speech/presentation
Bees and humans have been closely associated for a millennia. We have been fascinated by bees ever since our ancient ancestors tasted honey. Scientists have a wealth of knowledge about bees, their behavior and their extraordinary social organization, but mysteries remain..
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PlexusCalls: The Starfish and the Spider
Speech/presentation
It would be easy to miss the metaphysical connection between Napster, the pioneer of electronic file sharing, and the Apache Indians of the American West..
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PlexusCalls: Transitional Times, Uncertainty, & the Future
Speech/presentation
Managing Uncertainty in Transitional Times
Guest: Eamonn Kelly
Eamonn Kelly is the CEO of the Global Business Network, the renowned futures network and scenario strategy consultancy. He is also an author and speaker who has spent more than a decade studying the emergence of a new economic, social and geopolitical order and analyzing the impact those changes will ring for individuals, communities and organizations. In his book Powerful Times, Kelly presents persuasive arguments that we are on the brink of the most profound change in human history since the Enlightenment. A student of history and an astute observer of today's world, Kelly believes the interplay of the dynamic tensions of our current social, economic and cultural lives will fundamentally reshape human life in coming decades..
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PlexusCalls: Voluntary Computing
Speech/presentation
What Do Climate Change, Extraterrestrial Life, Spinning Neutron Stars and Malaria Have in Common? Grassroots Supercomputing May Shed New Light On All of Them.
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PlexusCalls:"Too Beautiful" – Our Father's Last Days
Speech/presentation
In this conversation we will recount how members of one family used concepts inspired by complexity science to inform how they worked together to make the last days of their father comfortable, free of pain, and full with dignity, meaning, and love. The title of the PlexusCalls is "Too Beautiful" – Our Father's Last Days. Participating in this conversation will be Robert Lindberg, MD, Curt Lindberg, and David Introcaso, PhD..
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Positive Deviance Initiative
Website
The Positive Deviance Initiative (PDI) was formed in 2001 under the direction of Jerry Sternin. Located at Tufts University School of Nutrition Science and Policy, the PDI is supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation. The objectives of the PDI are to document and share information on current global positive deviance (PD) projects, to explore new PD applications, and to expand the cadre PD practitioners and trainers..
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Positive Deviance, Complexity Science and Management Learning Material
Article/Report
Interested in learning more about positive deviance, complexity science and management, check out this bibliography..
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Positive Deviance: Useful Methodology to Prevent Hospital Acquired Infections
Speech/presentation
Hospital El Tunal, Bogota, Colombia, has been employing Positive Deviance (PD) process to stem the transmission of MRSA. The hospital shared their experience with the process with other hospitals in Colombia and staff from El Tunal during a May 2009 workshop..
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Positive Deviant - Jerry Sternin
Article/Report
An inside approach to change, called Positive Deviance, pioneered by scholar Jerry Sternin, is covered in the article from Fast Company.
The question of how organizations can change or deal with change is sometimes dealt with the assistance of various kinds of "change artists" – consultants, professors, business types. However, it doesn't always work. But sometimes it does, and the approach garners just a bit more attention.
Jerry Sternin might say, "You can't bring permanent solutions in from outside." That is, change involving the actions of a group of people cannot be "imposed" upon them from someone outside the group. In other words, maybe the problem is with the whole model for how change can actually happen. Sternin suggests that you have to find small, successful but "deviant" practices that are already working in the organization and amplify them. The answer to the problem or issue, therefore, is already alive in the organization..
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Power of Positive Deviance, The
Article/Report
This issue of emerging explores positive deviance, a new approach to social and behavioral change pioneered by Jerry and Monique Sternin. The process was created by the Sternins in their work in developing countries on such intractable issues as childhood malnutrtion in Vietnam, neonatal mortablity in the mountainous regions of Pakistan, and female genital cutting in Egypt. .
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Power of Relationships for High-Quality Long-Term Care, The
Article/Report
Ruth Anderson and her colleagues examine quality and complexity science in long term care. .
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Practice of Medicine is in the Interactions- A Day with Robert A. Lindberg, MD, The
Article/Report
Dr. Arvind Singhal, the noted communications scholar and member of the Plexus Institute Science Board explores how Robert Lindberg, MD, has used insights from complexity science in his internal medicine practice. Read this issue of Deeper Learning to learn how ths science has affected how he interacts with patients, understands human physiology, and thinks about the operation of his medical practice..
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Primary Care Practice: Uncertainty & Surprise
Speech/presentation
Take a peak at some fascinating material on primary care practices as complex systems shared by Dr. Benjamin Crabtree at a recent conference..
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Promise of Dynamic Systems Approaches for an Integrated Account of Human Development, The
Article/Report
Marc Lewis, a professor at University of Toronto, suggests that dynamic systems approaches and principles of self-organization may provide a unifying framework for human psychological development..
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Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and Complex, The
Book
The story of complexity from one of its founders, a Nobel Prize winner in physics and member of the Santa Fe Institute faculty.
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Random Walk Through Fractal Dimensions, A
Book
Probably the best introduction to the fascinating world of fractals, moreover, it doesn't demand a mathematical background at all. Wittily written, Kaye sprinkles his book with fascinating tidbits of word etymology that spur creative ideas in the reader.
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Reclaiming a Life of Quality
Article/Report
This is a short, but elegantly written synopsis of Goodwin's "science of qualities". It's a must read!.
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Reflective Practitioner, The
Book
In this classic text, adult learning and change expert Donald Schon lays out his basic theories about how professionals develop new skills through purposeful reflection..
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Reflexive Writing and the Social Life of Documents
Book
During a three year collaboration with the UK charity Macmillan Cancer Support, Dr. Donaldson worked with colleagues to use narrative writing to produce an account of converations among doctors, patients and others connected with the organization and its work. Her research indicates that documents do have a social life, and her work delves into the importance of "striking moments" , the usefulness of multi-person narratives, and the presence and value of risk and iteration in writing that is useful to organizations. .
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Reflexive Writing and the Social Life of Documents
During a three year collaboration with the UK charity Macmillan Cancer Support, Dr. Donaldson worked with colleagues to use narrative writing to produce an account of converations among doctors, patients and others connected with the organization and its work. Her research indicates that documents do have a social life, and her work delves into the importance of "striking moments" , the usefulness of multi-person narratives, and the presence and value of risk and iteration in writing that is useful to organizations. .
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Reinventing the Sacred-A New View of Science, Reason and Religion
Book
In his new book legendary complexity scholar Stuart Kauffman argues passionately for an emergence-based world view that honors spirituality and the sacred as well as the the discovery and application of scientific fact and the insights of modern physics. In his view, the "ceaseless creativity" of the universe is "God" and humans need to define and revere what is sacred. .
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Relationship-Centered Care Initiative Newsletter, The
Article/Report
Read about the effort by Indiana University School of Medicine to become the first relationship-centered medical school in the US..
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Responses of human frontal cortex to surprising events are predicted by formal associative learning theory
Article/Report
I just noticed the wonderful little phrase of "surprising events are predicted" as I glanced down at the article in front me. How strange! Nevertheless, I came across this article in my "travels" as I am working on understanding the phenomenon of surprise as a complex phenomenon.
Here's a clip from the beginning of the article:
"Learning depends on surprise and is not engendered by predictable occurences. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of causal associative learning, we show that dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is associated specifically with the adjustment of inferential learning on the basis of unprediactability. At the outset, when all associations were unpredictable, DLPFC activation was maximal. This response attentuated with learning but, subsequently, activation here was evoked by surprise violations of the learned associations."
The article goes one, and it may be a bit too technical for some readers. I know that I didn't understand half of the text. I was reading it with my dictionary at my side! Nevertheless, for those of you who may be interested in the phenomenon of surprise as an emergent phenomenon at the neurological level, check this atricle out..
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Rethinking the System
Article/Report
This article, published by the NHS Confederation, explores organizations as complex systems, lessons for performance management, and problems which stem from viewing an organization, in this case the National Health Service in the UK, as machines.
To access the full article, click on related document below..
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Revolutionary Change Theory: A Multilevel Exploration of the Punctuated Equilibrium Paradigm
Article/Report
The idea that a deep structure enhances system stability over time gives a novel approach to understanding resistance to change. Packaging periods of major change into compact revolutions allows for isolation of events for research and intervention. These paradigm changes are being observed in several different areas..
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Rey Laboratory for Nonlinear Dynamics in Medicine
Website
Rey Laboratory for Nonlinear Dynamics in Medicine is the only laboratory in the world devoted to exploring complex, nonlinear behavior in human physiological systems. It is led by Ary Goldberger, M.D., a cardiologist at Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center and Havard Medical School, who has devoted his career to seeking to new understandings of the nonlinear mechanisms and patterns of health and disease..
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Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life, The
Book
In the late 1990's, Florida met with Gary Gates at Carnegie Mellon who was working on the location of gay people across the US. Florida and Gates realized that their respective datasets strongly suggested that high-tech hotspots were found in places where high concentrations of gay people lived. But other measures were used: measures of artists and writers were constructed. And what Florida came up with was this: "...economic growth was occurring in places that were tolerant, diverse and open to creativity – because these were places where creative people of all types wanted to live.".
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RN Participation in Organizational Decision Making and Improvements in Resident Outcomes
Article/Report
Results from a research study reported in this article show that nursing homes that had higher levels of RN participation in decision making had greater improvements in outcomes for patients.
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Robust Adaptive Strategies
Article/Report
This illuminating article explores the need for multiple, parallel organizational strategies in times of uncertainty and the application of the fitness landscape concept from evolutionary biology and complexity for organizational planning. The presentation of these concepts is articulate and helpful examples bring the key ideas to life. This fine piece of thinking, writing, and pragmatic advice by the coleader of McKinsey & Company's Strategic Theory Initiative is well worth your attention if you are involved in planning in any way..
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Robustness and Evolvability in Living Systems
Book
Andreas Wagner, a computational and evolutionary biologist, explores robustness at all levels of biological organization, and suggests it may be an intrinsic property of living systems.A system is robust if it continues over time in the face of genetic change and non-genetic perturtbation such as climate upheaval.Byzantine genetic networks and interactions may be necessary to ensure survival and reproduction. If so, they may have much in common with engineered systems. Modern aircraft, Wagner notes, have 100,000 subsystems and 1,000 central processing units.A provocative, scholarly additionto the Princton Studies in Complexity..
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Role of conversation in health care interventions, The: enabling sensemaking and learning
Book
The authors argue that some unanticipated variation in healthcare interventions arise because unexpected conversations emerge during the intervention attempts. The role of conversation ininterventionis discusse, drawing upon literaeture from sociolinguistics and complex adaptive system theory to create an interpretive framework. .
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Role of conversation in health care interventions, The: enabling sensemaking and learning
Article/Report
The authors argue that some unanticipated variation in healthcare interventions arise because unexpected conversations emerge during the intervention attempts. The role of conversation ininterventionis discusse, drawing upon literaeture from sociolinguistics and complex adaptive system theory to create an interpretive framework. .
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RWJF Final Report on PD MRSA Prevention Partnership
Article/Report
This report was submitted to The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and presents a summary of the accomplishments and lessons from the PD MRSA Prevention Partnership. This partnership was dedicated to pilot testing the social change process Positive Deviance in hospital efforts to reduce MRSA infections..
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Sand County Almanac And Sketches Here and There, A
Book
View this beautiful work as a gift from one of the first ecologists and the acknowledged father of wildlife conservation to all those seeking a deeper understanding of nature's complex living systems, our biota. Leopold's perceptive insights foretold many of the essential principles of complex adaptive systems..
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Santa Fe Institute, The
Website
This is the site maintained by The Santa Fe Institute, a widely respected center for research on complex systems. You can access the scientific work, educational offerings, and background on SFI, its faculty and Business Network..
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School-Based Community Family Therapy for Adolescents at Risk
Article/Report
Read about the pioneering work of two family therapists who are bringing a complexity and relational orientation to family therpay and community work..
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Science, Uncertainty and Risk: The Problem of Complex Phenomena
Article/Report
A scientist from Los Alamos National Laboratory calls for scientists to develop new methods to foster understanding of the uncertainties inherent in complex phenomena, like climate change, and to more effectively communicate their findings with the public and policy makers. Such advances the author suggests will contribute to more informed debate about such critical issues as the health of the ecosphere.
The author points out that currently scientists have a difficult time portraying uncertainty in complex phenomena. This in turn hinders public decision-making.
Wagner ends his article with the following statement: "Developing during the next decades, something like an extension of the scientific method that deal with confidence and uncertainty when definitive experiments cannot be done is a crucially important task for the scientific community to attempt."
Richard L. Wagner, Jr., is a senior staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
This article appears in a publication of the American Physical Society.
See additional reading for online link to the full article..
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Seeing Systems: unlocking the mysteries of organizational life
Book
This is one of the best books I have ever read. It illuminates the dynamics of organizational systems based on decades of research in the Power Lab..
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Self-Organization and Emergence: A Complexity Science Foundation for the Saint Luke's Hospital Stroke Center
Speech/presentation
Take a look at the powerpoint presentation used by Marilyn Rymer, MD, at the December 2004 Plexus Conference - Improving Health of the Chronically Ill: Insights from Complexity Science..
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Self-Organization in Biological Systems
Book
Here's a fine publication from the Princeton Studies in Complexity series. This work contains an excellent introduction to key concepts in biological self-organization, covering such topics as how self-organization works, characteristics of self-organizing systems, why self-organization. After this introductory material, a series of case studies of presented; fish schooling, ant swarming, termite mound building, thermoregulation by honey bees are among the case examples.
Also note the website associated with this text. It contains many simulations. Go to self-organization.
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Self-organized complexity in the physical, biological and social sciences
Article/Report
A special supplement to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Self-organized complexity in the physical, biological and social sciences was published on February 19 2002. It is filled with articles on a variety of subjects, such complexity and physiology, economics, climate forecasting, and social networks. The lead article - "Fractal dynamics in physiology: Alterations with disease and aging" - is by Ary Goldberger, a member of Plexus Institute's Science Advisory Board.
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Self-Organizing Leadership
Article/Report
This paper is an introduction to Self-Organizing Leadership which compliments Strategic and Operational Leadership. In using the metaphor of a tree, Strategic leadership relates to the leaves and little branches. Operational Leadership relates to the trunk and main support branches. Self-Organizing Leadership relates to the roots that are hidden and often abused and ignored. Self-Organizing Leadership brings the theories of chaos and complexity to life as we work in the transformation of organizations..
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Simplicity on the Other Side of Complexity: An Introduction to Complexity Science and Management
Speech/presentation
If you're interested in a basic introduction to complexity science and what it suggests for understanding life in organizations and for new management practices, check out this powerpoint presentation..
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Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age
Book
Ducan Watts, a sociologist at Columbia University and the Santa Fe Institute, is highly regarded for his work on small world networks, In his latest book he explores general rules for the behavior and growth of networks of all kinds. The chapter on Innovation, Adaptation, and Recovery will be of special interest to those interested in organizations and management..
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Slow Lane, The
Article/Report
Can anyone solve the problem of traffic? Seabrook explores the differences between traditional traffic models and agent-based models. In considering traffic jams in a variety of places including New York, Atlanta, and Los Angeles..
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Small groups as complex systems : formation, coordination, development and adaptation
Book
This book uses complexity theory as a framework for understanding groups. Authors draw on previous research on group behavior and tap complex adaptive system insights to develop their framework.
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Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and the Life Sciences, The
Website
This site offers educational material, information on Society and other conferences, membership details, and links to other sites. The Society has wide interest in complexity, nonlinear dynamics, self-organization, chaos theory and has membership from many disciplines, including management, biology, psychology, philosophy..
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Soul at Work, The
Book
Roger Lewin, a prize-winning author of seventeen science books, and Birute Regine, a Harvard-educated developmental psychologist and therapist, tap complexity science to show us a better way to live and work. These dynamic story-tellers uncover the complexity principles at work in a diverse range of companies, drawing out important insights into the organizational dynamics of healthy, innovative, and successful organizations. Roger and Birute explore people-centered, relationship-focused working environments and the commitment and respect that these settings foster. You can visit http://www.thesoulatwork.com for additional information..
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Staff-Driven Cultural Transformation Diminishes MRSA
Article/Report
This article tells the story of the work being done in six hospitals across the country to pioneer the use of Positive Deviance, a process that fosters behavioral and social change, on the prevention of MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus), a deadly healthcare acquired infection..
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Strategic Leadership: A View from Quantum and Chaos Theories
Article/Report
This is one of the fine, early articles introducing important developments in science - quantum, chaos and complexity theories - to health care managers. McDaniel, a leading organizational theorist with a deep interest in health care, suggests some new concepts of leadership stemming from these new scientifid theories: enhance the quality of connections between workers; give up planning and control; decrease emphasis on competition and increase emphasis on cooperation; think about organizational design as an ongoing process....
He offers these "prescriptions" in light of a renewed appreciation for the need to develop skills for leading in uncertain times, an uncertainty and fundamental unknowability that emerges natural from the dynamics of the world around us. .
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Strategic Management: The Challenge of Complexity
Book
Stacey has signficantly revised this latest version of his management text book. It covers the scientific, psychological and philosophical bases of major streams of management thinking and details a complexity science informed theory of management called complex responsive processes..
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Strategies to Address Antimicrobial Resistance (STAR Act)
Congress established an antimicrobial task force in 1999, which expired in 2006. a new antimicrobial advisory board has been established to review data on antinmicrobial resistance and make recommendations. The Act would call for several measures to help fight antimicrobial resistance. .
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Strategy as Simple Rules
Article/Report
One is a series of articles based on the book Competing on the Edge explains various types of simples rules as guides for processes and strategies in organizations during uncertain times. Numerous instructive examples are provided..
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Strategy under Complexity: Fostering Generative Relationships
Article/Report
Strategy in the face of complex foresight horizons is an ongoing web of practices that interpret and construct the relationships that comprise the world in which the organization acts. Strategy and the future are discovered through generative relationships - those that produce unforeseen value and new possibilities. Authors provide guidance on where to look and how to foster productive generative relationships. Hunch is that this article will become a classic in the management literature..
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Striking Moments and Reflexive Writing
Article/Report
During a two day meeting, people working together for the first time were asked to write, share and read aloud their thoughts on what "struck" them things that that took place on the first day. Dr. Donaldson argues that this exercise can promote learning and change in organizations, and that iodentifying the "striking moments", the arresting or thought-provoking events or conversations, furthers the colaboration and the process. .
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Striking Moments and Reflexive Writing
Book
During a two day meeting, people working together for the first time were asked to write, share and read aloud their thoughts on what "struck" them things that that took place on the first day. Dr. Donaldson argues that this exercise can promote learning and change in organizations, and that iodentifying the "striking moments", the arresting or thought-provoking events or conversations, furthers the colaboration and the process. .
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Successful Patient Safety Initiatives: Driven from Within
Article/Report
Read about the wisdom of internally dirven, local efforts, including the the use of positive deviance approaches, to improve healthcare quality at Cleveland Clinic..
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Suggesting Simple Rules
Article/Report
The author's new perspectives on the patient-clinician relationship in the primary care setting, inspired by insights from Complexity Science..
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Surfing the Edge of Chaos: The Laws of Nature and the New Laws of Business
Book
A book full of stories about complexity in business by folks who have been following and writing about this field for some time..
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Survivor's Guide for Primary Care Physicians, A
Book
Building Office Relationships and interacting with the local landscape are keys to resiliency. This article explores the ways to do both..
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Survivor's Guide for Primary Care Physicians, A
Article/Report
Building Office Relationships and interacting with the local landscape are keys to resiliency. This article explores the ways to do both..
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Swarm Intelligence
Article/Report
Swarm intelligence is the term given to collective, self-organizing behavior that emerges through interactions, governed by simple rules, among social insects. The authors show how complex scheduling issues in business are being addressed using such concepts and how executives are beginning to use simple rules to replace traditional management control techniques and provide employees with both some direction and autonomy..
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Synergetics: Is Self-Organization Governed by Universal Principles
Book
This is an excellent book that explores the universal principles of self-organization across various types of system, e.g, physical, ecological, biological, etc. One of the original works in this field..
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Synergies: Atoms of Brain and Behavior
Article/Report
Neuroscientist Dr. A. J. Scott Kelso proposes that the fundamental units of the behavior of complex living things-all the way from cells to societies--are structural~functional organizations called synergies. He says synergies are the unique expression of two fundamental mechanisms that have traditionally been viewed as being independent, self-organization and natural selection. .
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The Way Life Works: The Science Lover's Illustrated Guide to How Life Grows, Develops, Reproduces and Gets Along
Book
An authors' note sums it up the well: "When we-biologists and artists-first met in 1988, we discovered that we all shared a fascination with the unity of life - how deep down, all living creatures from bacteria to humans, use the same materials and ways of doing things. We began exploring ways we might share our wonder with others, and came to believe we could achieve our purpose through an intimate merging of science and art. In the process, we hoped to persuade our audience that a deeper understanding of nature would enhance their appreciation of its beauty-and thereby enrich their lives.".
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Theoretical contributions of complex systems to positive psychology and health: A Somewhat-complicated affair
Article/Report
Health has historically eluded consistent definition and baffled people's attempts at self-improvement. This paper argues for the central role of "Somewhat-complicated" nonlinear dynamical systems in modeling both positive psychology and physical health. Whether personal attributes or behaviors are salutogenic or harmful is dependent on context and intensity. In addition, people simultaneously and relatively independently seek sometimes-contradictory outcomes. This establishes the place of intrapsychic conflict in health. The paper proposes that the good life emerges from systems composed of coupled modular components, potentially capable of chaotic behavior. Positive psychology and healthy physiology derive from linked regulative systems that are relatively loosely-coupled, distributed, and that rely on heuristic processes rather than algorithms guaranteeing solution to pursue well-being. The adoption of these "Somewhat-complicated" models does not require theories of health to be intricate, nor to employ mechanisms with fractal structure; complex function can emerge from simple systems. Potentially healthy systems attributes are addressed, including current interest in "healthy chaos," and an illustrative model is developed..
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Thomas Petzinger Interviews Jane Jacobs
Speech/presentation
The highlight of the Plexus Institute Conference – Learning with Jane Jacobs & Each Other, held October 28 & 29, 2001 was Tom Petzinger's interview with Jane. Everyone gathered around Jane and Tom and listened very carefully. You can enjoy Jane's wisdom by listening in on this transcript.
Jane's most famous book, The Life and Death of Great American Cities, first published in 1961, is one of the most influential books in the history of city planning. She really saw complexity in human organization before the science was born.
Her book vividly discusses all that was wrong about the urban renewal and the garden-city movements at the time of her writing, forcing urban planners to rethink their practice in the first half century of their young profession. She was critical of a planning style that destroyed communities, separated land uses, and rebuilt sterile areas. She argued and fought for an alternative view in which planners aimed to protect neighborhoods, mixed land uses, and paid attention to design details that matter to people. As a result of Jane's civic engagement and activism in Greenwich Village against urban renewal in the 1960's, citizen participation in vision-making and comprehensive planning became a standard component of urban planners' work. Her insights and engagement have helped make Toronto, her current home, one of the most delightful cities in the world..
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Thursday Complexity Post (April 22, 2004)
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"Wearable Computers" Bring Unique Opportunity to Santa Fe
Computer modeling and simulation are changing the nature of scientific investigation by enabling researchers to pose new kinds of questions and explore phenomena in ways that were not possible just a short time ago. Just as the technological revolution continues to influence the practice of scientific research, it also presents opportunities to change the way that science is taught in the classroom. Projects like The Adventures in Modeling Project at MIT (in collaboration with the Santa Fe Institute) are introducing students and teachers to the process of designing, creating, and analyzing their own models of complex, dynamic systems using StarLogo.
Their aims are to educate and motivate teachers to transform the way that they teach science and to engage students in authentic science practice by giving them the tools and the ability to pose, investigate, and answer their own questions. Through model creation, and participation in a variety of off-computer activities, teachers and students are learning the science of modeling and they are developing a deeper understanding of patterns and processes in the world.
The MIT Media Lab is busy at work on a number of rather playful possibilities for transforming the way people learn, share information and interact. It might seem like "child's play," but you should check out the possibilities. StarLogo is but one of the many interesting and exciting products to emerge from this group..
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Thursday Complexity Post (April 29, 2004)
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Marvin Minsky on People and Computers
Marvin Minsky has made many contributions to the fields of AI, cognitive psychology, mathematics, computational linguistics, robotics, and optics. He is a member of the MIT Media Lab and MIT AI Lab and is the Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences and Professor of EE and CS at MIT. In recent years he has worked chiefly on imparting to machines the human capacity for commonsense reasoning. His conception of human intellectual structure and function is presented in The Society of Mind which is also the title of the course he teaches at MIT.
He received the BA and PhD in mathematics at Harvard and Princeton. In 1951, he built the SNARC - the first neural network simulator. His other inventions include mechanical hands and other robotic devices, the confocal scanning microscope, the "Muse" synthesizer for musical variations (with E. Fredkin), and the first LOGO "turtle" (with S. Papert).
In this week's TCP, we feature an article, which Minsky wrote over 2 decades ago, entitled "Why People Think Computers Can't." The piece will undoubtedly seem a bit outdated. Nevertheless, paying attention to figures like Minsky and the historical unfoldings that have placed us "here" are important reminders that nothing seems to happen without a reason. Marvin Minsky's name might be new to you. You might even recognize him and his work. Still, "Why People Think Computers Can't" remains one of a number of Minsky's works worth reading..
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Thursday Complexity Post (April 8, 2004)
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Group Genius
In 1979, Gail Taylor started a new business (MG Taylor) with her husband, Matt Taylor, based on a unique way of working with one another. The focus of this venture was on creativity, the environment that stimulates it, and why individuals and organizations were not using-to greater individual and social advantage-the many alternatives that were available to them. As pioneers in the emerging Network Economy, MG Taylor has created an entirely new approach to collaborative work and the practice of releasing Group Genius™. This patented invention includes a language and functional-architecture based on principles of iteration, recursion and feedback among agents acting in an environment of agents that result in novelty and emergence.
As a teaser to tomorrow's PlexusCalls with Gail Taylor, we present a 1997 article from Fast Company on MG Taylor's Group Genius invention as this week's TCP..
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Thursday Complexity Post (Aug 5, 2004)
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Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another - A Book Review
It is an infrequent thing that the TCP presents a book review. This week, however, must be that time with a review of Philip Ball's book Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another.
Steven Strogatz, author of the well-known book (i)Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order, reviews Ball's book in a recent issue of Nature. In the review, we learn from Strogatz that "Critical Mass is full of historical tidbits .... Ball particularly enjoys setting the record straight on matters of nomenclature, priority and the like." Although we have not yet read through Ball's book yet, perhaps there might be a Plexus member who might be interested in providing a review of this text? Let Prucia Buscell, our editor for our newsletter emerging know that you would like to do such a thing. She can be reached at Prucia@plexusinstitute.org..
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Thursday Complexity Post (Feb 12, 2004)
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Curriculum and the "Running of the Course"
Sometimes people refer to the events of everyday life as a "rat race" - as in doing a lot of running around and seemingly getting no where. Schools, indeed, might be thought of or experience in similar ways. At least conceptually, "curriculum" is a kind of running around as its etymological roots point to the Latin stem currere – "to run". Curriculum, then, is an act of running, a course, a track.
Conventional wisdom suggests that curriculum is a course to be run like the running track fixed in place at a sports facility. To think of curriculum as an act of running, however, shifts the focus away from a pre-scribed, already planned approach to learning and teaching. It is caught up in a set of complex relations always and already in a specific place and time.
Place and time can be quite different from one learning context to another. As this week's TCP shows, learning can and (always) does take place in schools like the Tutorial School in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Tutorial School, founded by Moe Zimmerberg and Richard Testa in 1992, is a curriculum-free democratic school. They believe that people inherently want to learn and do not and should not be coerced into learning particular things at particular times as suggested by traditional views of curriculum.
Tutorial School might seem a bit unusual. There are, however, many other schools around the world operating from a similar point of view – Summerhill in the UK, Sudbury Valley in the US, and Windsor House in Canada, and three other examples.
How would you describe your own learning experiences in school and/or college or university? My guess is that many of you would have had rather traditional schooling experiences, but maybe there might be some of you who have had rather different experiences. Why not share some of your learning experiences with us on line – send in your observations to USPlexus@PlexusInstitute.org..
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Thursday Complexity Post (Feb 19, 2004)
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On Some Differences between Leadership and Management
In a paper presented at the 2002 Administrative Sciences Association of Canada, Richard H.G. Fields addressed some striking differences between the notions of "leadership" and "management" through an examination of images in the media and on the web of leaders and managers.
His paper presents his findings along conceptual and practical lines which distinguishes leaders from managers. Simply put, he writes: "Leadership is related to complexity and management to simplicity."
This paper was intended originally for an academic audience. You'll find a number of references throughout the introduction of the paper shown here in this week's TCP. If you wish to read further and check out some of Fields' references, you can click on the link below for the full piece..
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Thursday Complexity Post (Feb 26, 2004)
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Stories and Human Action
This week on the Plexus Institute US listserv, there was some discussion on schools and programs where course offerings were available for complexity studies. One of those programs is located in Australia – Social Ecology, Faculty of Social Inquiry at the University of Western Sydney. In fact, there have been a few Plexus Institute members who have completed this program, and one of those graduates was Frank Smits, a frequent participant at Plexus conferences, the UK fractal and our listserv communities.
As part of the Western Sydney program, students are required to write a number of papers on topics of interest that are related to complexity: Frank has addressed and written a number of pieces on topics ranging from complexity science applications of knowledge, semiotics and business analysis, consumerism, management, and organizational integrity. Frank is also one of the founders of the UK-based consulting company Symphoenix which works to help organizations implement complex change initiatives and organizational renewal.
One of Frank's papers, "How stories affect human action in organizations," is this week's TCP feature. In this paper, written in 2001, he explores how stories affect human action, and in particular, explores how this happens in business and other similar organisations. Frank's paper is a little longer than most pieces that appear in the TCP. The introduction to his paper is shown here, and you are invited to read the rest of the paper (which includes diagrams and pictures). Frank would want us all to know that his own ideas about human interaction, stories and organizations have evolved and changed since then, but would welcome your comments nevertheless..
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Thursday Complexity Post (Jan 15, 2004)
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Local Networks and the Diner
Oddly enough, I have quite a number of possibilities to share with our readers this week. I was hard to choose from the varied topics that I have at hand. Special thanks to Bruce Waltuck and Susan Boland for sharing a number of rather fascinating pieces and ideas – you both found some real gems. I am going to try to get your suggestions out over the next couple of weeks to share with others on this listserv.
As an aside, sometimes we also post pieces to our website, including items in the news, various events that Plexus is holding or knows about, and reading and resource possibilities. You will be able to check out things like Tom Mandel's piece on the Ralph Stacey conference back in December, the latest in Fractal meetings in Washington, DC and the UK, our own 2nd Annual Plexus Institute Summit, past PlexusCalls, and much more. Take a look some time!
Since I don't get a physical copy of the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, I sometimes miss out on some of their very interesting pieces that – sometimes – have an interesting complexity-related connection. This past weekend, Curt Lindberg shared with me a rather fascinating piece on local networks in the context of a short-order diner in Barre, Vermont. Talking about a diner in the context of complexity might seem a bit eclectic, but that's my job – to be eclectic. And, sometimes to be eccentric.
We suspect that you will find this piece of great interest for a number of reasons. It's a great success story to begin with. It addresses and focuses on relationships and the value of local interactions in one's network or community – economies of scale. In contrast to last week's TCP contrasting life in urban versus suburban life, this week's posting gives us a chance to look at how things might work in and with the economic challenges of a rural setting. Concerns about one's environment, our ecological footprint and the use of (genetically) modified foods are very much at the heart of his piece as well. It's a slightly longer read than most TCPs, but it's worth it..
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Thursday Complexity Post (Jan 29, 2004)
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Swarm Intelligence: Enterprising Management Solutions
This week, I am pleased to be able to pass on to you an article which showed up last summer on the on-line electronic magazine Darwin Magazine. Special thanks to Bruce Waltuck for flagging this piece for us this week.
Swarm intelligence is showing up in a variety of different and interesting technologies, and this approach to problem solving can almost seem quite unbelievable. In this piece, Stowe Boyd points to a number of different examples, including the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company, IcoSystems. Eric Bonabeau, a researcher in swarm intelligence, is the founder and CTO of Icosystems. On the topic of the apparent reluctance of business management to accept the notion of bottom-up, emergent solutions to problems, Bonabeau suggested that "managers would rather live with a problem they can't solve than with a solution they don't fully understand or control."
Read a bit more about some of the other technologies that Boyd covered in this article for Darwin Magazine. If you want to take a bit more time to go surfing the web in search of some of the very interesting and exciting swarming technologies mentioned in this article, you will probably find a wealth of new possibilities and applications that are out there..
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Thursday Complexity Post (Jan 8, 2004)
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Suburban and urban life: A living dilemma
For some people, trying to decide where to live can be a big dilemma. Does one choose the monster suburban home with plenty of space and room to park the cars or the modestness of a plot of land in the city with the coffee shop around the corner?
It would appear that there are a variety of different reasons for living in the places that we choose to set up home. In fact, there are a number of paradoxes that arise. Even more so, trying to generalize the experience of living in a suburban or urban space doesn't work quite so neatly.
Questions about space, commuting, anonymity, interactions, neighbors, cost of living, families, and so on, tend to be the big and constant ones. Suburban sprawl continues, but people also keep moving back to the big city.
This week in the National Post, a number of pieces have been written on living in suburban and urban spaces. Why do people live in the places that they do? What is it about the place where you live that draws you there?.
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Thursday Complexity Post (July 1, 2004)
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US Must Invest In Science of Dot-Connecting
We want to thank Lucille Jaesson for sharing with us a recent article that appeared in the June 17, 2004 issue of The Christian Science Monitor. The piece is written by Irene Sanders, the Executive Founder and Director of the Washington Center for Complexity and Public Policy. For those of you who participate in our PlexusCalls, you may recall that we feature Ms. Sanders early in the 2004 year when she spoke with us on the work of the center and what she has learned about a variety of different institutions that are applying complexity science ideas.
Ms. Sanders is the author of Strategic Thinking and the New Science: Planning in the Midst of Chaos, Complexity and Change (Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 1998) and has pioneered the application of chaos theory and complexity to the much-needed skill of strategic thinking. She created the FutureScape® planning process now being used to enhance strategic thinking/planning and scenario-building exercises for major corporations, nonprofit organizations and governments worldwide.
Her most recent contribution to The Christian Monitor examines how complexity science ideas are being used in the wake of 9/11 and current approaches to combating terrorism. As "an essential 21st century skill," complexity involves understanding the notion of change across the broadest of scales, Sanders suggests to us. 9/11, by all accounts, Sanders writes, was a systems failure. How does one remedy such a troubling problem?.
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Thursday Complexity Post (July 15, 2004)
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Hacktivism, Technology and Social Change
Today, for some reason, I have found myself reading through a number of articles on "safety," "terrorism," "hacking," and so on. Those terms alone conjure up a variety of different feelings and emotions, depending, I would suppose, on which side of the proverbial fence one might sit on. Needless to say, these are matter of some significance these days for many of us as individuals, members of various organizations and society broadly speaking.
Specifically, the various articles examined the use of different technologies in light of various issues related to safety and security. This week's TCP is an article which comes from Wired News and looks at the activities of hackers and the use of technology for social change.
To be sure, it might be hard to paint a nice picture of your "traditional hacker." Usually associated with young, computer geeks operating out of basements, many of today's hackers instead are using currently available technologies and creating new approaches through software, emerging technology and the internet from a grassroots orientation to changing or otherwise affecting matters of social importance.
Hacktivism is addressing some very important issues like how we communicate with one another and its limitations and constraints, but is proving to be a very useful tool for many people and organizations who are addressing important political and social issues. I don't imagine that it will go away. But is there something that we might learn about ourselves, the people that we work with and the organizations that abound around us?.
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Thursday Complexity Post (July 22, 2004)
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Engineers and Complex Systems
This week's TCP is an interesting essay from an early 2004 issue of Nature with some thoughts on the relationship between complex systems and engineering. The article was written by Julio Ottino from Northwestern University who has been thinking about his work in and profession of engineering. His work has focussed on granular materials, but it has also come to include some attention to a university-wide institute for complexity science studies.
Ottino suggests that there's an opportunity for engineering to be the center of the study of complex systems. Like any other emergent system, however, he argues that it can have no true center. The center is purely a function of your vantage point, and whatever level of recursion one might be operating on.
Ottino addresses the usually-taken-for-granted distinctions made between "complex" and "complicated" systems, but then continues on with some further thoughts on "purpose" (engineering) and "adaptation" (complexity) and the relationship between the two that, when brought together, creates a very different sensibility for engineers and the possibilities for engineering to be at the forefront of complexity studies..
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Thursday Complexity Post (July 29, 2004)
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Taking Back the Highways: Reclaiming the Concrete Corridors
Cities, and in particular the roads and highways that connect and go through them, make for a tremendous amount of concrete that envelope us at all levels around us, including beneath our feet. This week's TCP raises a question that comes from a piece in Orion Online on transforming highways (in LA) into more liveable communities. Like one of the interviewees in the article says: "What if we cut the fence?"
In particular, the article examines the historic Arroyo Seco Parkway, known locally as the Pasadena or 110 Freeway. Since the early years of the Parkway, things have changed in ways that have created havoc and unhealthy conditions for the people who live in the area and the shadows of the concrete corridor. This piece from Orion examines some of the history of the area and the actions and activities of some people who have been trying to change the area to make it a more liveable place for all of those people who live around the Parkway.
In this week's TCP, we explore what can happen when a concrete corridor is suddenly changed and used for different purposes...like walking, hiking and cycling. It happened on the Arroyo Seco Parkway, and this article provides a glimpse into what people noticed on the occasion when the concrete corridor was transformed into a people corridor..
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Thursday Complexity Post (July 8, 2004)
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Changing Career Patterns
The TCP heading – Changing Career Patterns – suggests a certain ambiguity with at least a couple different meanings. Patterns involving the changing of careers. And, career patterns that are themselves changing. Perhaps a pattern and a meta-pattern?
This week's TCP, a short report which appeared in ERIC Digest in 2000, touches on both aspects, although primarily it offers some stories of individuals who acted in very deliberate ways to change their careers. Although this phenomena of career change might not be particularly new to some who may be aware of such changes, the Digest article looks at ways in which career mobility might be enhances and the kinds of conditions that might prompt changes in one's career.
ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) Digests are short reports (1,000 - 1,500 words) on topics of prime current interest in education and are targeted specifically for teachers, administrators, policymakers, and other practitioners, but generally useful to the broad educational community. This is not to say that this article or others may not be of interest to you. In fact, you may find a number of the digests to be quite insightful for thinking about learning organizations. Be sure to check them out..
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Thursday Complexity Post (June 3, 2004)
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Science Cafés: A Global Phenomenon for Everyone
Many people who have attended Plexus gatherings, as well as readers of the TCP, will be familiar with the use of conversation cafés. As a deliberate structure to bring people into deep conversation, conversation cafes have emerged in a variety of places across the US, parts of Canada and around the world. Recently, my friend, Jeff Johnston, sent around a posting on "science cafés" which caught my eye. I thought that I would share it with you for this week's TCP.
Science cafés bear a similar feel to conversation cafés. The gatherings themselves take place in a variety of settings and touch upon topics in science. They are very informal structures for deep, probing conversation, inquiry and even debates. One doesn't even have to be a "science geek" to go and enjoy the stimulating conversations which take place over a pint of beer or a cup of java.
This week's TCP is a recent posting from The Scientist, and presents some thoughts from a number of individuals around the world who are setting up these very interesting conversational structures for deep and playful inquiry..
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Thursday Complexity Post (Mar 4, 2004)
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Fractals and Chaos
In a "technical" sense, the notions of fractals and chaos have some very specific meanings, although some might say that those technical meanings are not necessarily shared in an identical sense. To be certain, chaos has many different senses that have emerged over time from the ancient Greek notion of the source of cosmological origin to the 20th century mathematical framings of particular structures governed by deterministic equations which show a certain sensitivity to initial conditions.
Mathematicians and scientists have used and presented to others many concepts from the bad of "complexity tricks." One individual who has spent considerable time working with others, in a pedagogical sense to help others understand these concepts, has been Larry Liebovitch from Florida Atlantic University.
Larry S. Liebovitch earned a B.S. in physics, a Ph.D. in Astronomy, worked for 15 years in Ophthalmology Departments, and is now a Professor at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida with appointments there in the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences, Center for Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Department of Psychology, and Department of Biomedical Science. He has applied nonlinear methods to analyze molecular, cellular, physiological, and psychological systems. He is author of 75 articles and book chapters and presented 130 lectures throughout the world. He is the author of Fractals and Chaos Simplified for the Life Sciences (1998) and coauthor of Fractal Physiology (1994), both published by Oxford University Press.
This week, we present an opportunity for you to read a piece which he co-authored with Daniela Scheurle called "Two Lessons from Fractals and Chaos.".
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Thursday Complexity Post (March 18, 2004)
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Complexity Group at the London School of Economics
The Complexity Group at the London School of Economics has been working since 1995 on the theory of complex social systems and its application to practical problems with several business partners. They include BT, Citibank (New York), GlaxoSmithKline, the Humberside TEC (Training & Enterprise Council), Legal & General, Mondragon Cooperative Corporation (Basque Country), Norwich Union, Rolls-Royce (Aerospace & Marine), Shell (International and Shell Internet Works), the World Bank (Washington DC), AstraZeneca and several companies in the Aerospace industry. Their business partners have taken an active role in research projects and helped fund the Complexity Research Programme.
The group is an academic network that includes the following disciplines: anthropology, biology, economics, information systems, mathematics, physics, psychology, sociology and philosophy. The Group has strong links with the Santa Fe Institute, NECSI and Plexus in the USA and with several universities and research institutions world-wide.
The Group Director, Eve Mitleton-Kelly, is also Coordinator of Links with Industry and Government for the New European Network of Excellence Exystence, funded by the EU, which started in April 2002. She is also a Director of the Complexity Society, a UK-based Network of Networks on complex systems. Her interests include the dvelopment and application of Complexity theory to organisations; the implications of the theories of complexity for organisations and specifically on strategy, IT legacy systems, organisational learning and the emergence of organisational forms; co-evolution of information systems development and the changing business process; environments that facilitate trust and creativity and reduce risk in Integrated Project Teams (IPT) in the Aerospace industry; socio-cultural and technical conditions that facilitate the emergence of new organisational forms after a merger or acquisition, restructuring or spinning off a new business.
This week, the TCP presents the introduction to a chapter which she has written for her book Complex Systems And Evolutionary Perspectives Of Organisations: The Application Of Complexity Theory To Organisations. The chapter, "Ten Principles of Complexity & Enabling Infrastructures," lays the groundwork for a view of complexity and organizations..
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Thursday Complexity Post (May 13, 2004)
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Creativity, Engineering and ‘TRIZ'
Almost a year ago, as I recall, I was sitting at a table over a lunch time gathering with this gentleman who was trying to tell about this thing called "TRIZ." It sounded rather interested. Unfortunately, before I could really learn more about what it was all about, our lunch had ended and we were whisked away for the afternoon's activities.
This week, however, my friend Jeff Johnston shared with the Weak Signals listserv group an article on TRIZ, the Russian-invented approach originally used by engineers for creative problem-solving. Perhaps there might some readers of the TCP who know a little bit about TRIZ and would care to tell us more about it?
TRIZ also touches upon the notion of creativity. What is creativity? Why does it seem so important? Can it be taught, and doesn't the notion of creativity and engineering seem like an oxymoron?
Read on a bit further in this week's TCP to learn some more about TRIZ, creativity and engineering. Enjoy!.
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Thursday Complexity Post (May 20, 2004)
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Fractals in the History of Painting
Here's something a little different from the usual science- or health-oriented TCP. This week's TCP presents a part of an on-line piece on art elements in fractal constructions. The section, which is some thoughts on historical methods for creating "messy objects," is part of a larger on-line piece by Ljubisa Kocic who is an "electrical engineer." [NB: My guess is that Dr. Kocic makes his home in a faculty which American universities might refer to as "Computer Science," but I could be wrong.]
Kocic goes back to ancient Greece for some of the earliest signs of comments on beautiful complex visual effects like clouds. From there he moves on to a series of other brief examples of individuals throughout history who have employed a variety of techniques that were used to create similar complex figures. He suggests that it was Salvador Dali who created the first artistic fractal that resembles what is called Cantor's Dust. The image is shown below for those of you with browser capable of viewing the image in this posting. The full, unedited piece is also available on-line at: http://members.tripod.com/vismath9/ljkocic/artel2.htm
Complexity may very much be a way of thinking largely associated with science, but a number of individuals and leading scholars have also tackled questions about art and aesthetics in relation to the "formal" discipline of complexity. Although Kocic makes only a passing comment on the Chinese, it does occur to me that fractals as a "natural" phenomenon crops up in a significant way in Chinese art. In a more modern light, Kocic misses out on the analyses of Jackson Pollock's splatter paintings and their fractality. Undoubtedly, there are many other individuals who also deserve some attention.
In another section of Kocic's paper, a question is raised about whether or not computer-generated art in the form of fractals is art. Some of it is quite beautiful, and the WWW is replete with thousands of JPGs and GIFs of fractals. But let's echo Kocic's question: Is it art?.
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Thursday Complexity Post (May 27, 2004)
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Positive Deviants/Positive Deviance
The question of how organizations can change or deal with change is sometimes dealt with the assistance of various kinds of "change artists" – consultants, professors, business types. However, it doesn't always work. But sometimes it does, and the approach garners just a bit more attention.
Jerry Sternin might say, "You can't bring permanent solutions in from outside." That is, change involving the actions of a group of people cannot be "imposed" upon them from someone outside the group. In other words, maybe the problem is with the whole model for how change can actually happen. Sternin suggests that you have to find small, successful but "deviant" practices that are already working in the organization and amplify them. The answer to the problem or issue, therefore, is already alive in the organization.
Jerry Sternin, a lecturer at Tuft's University, seems to have had some success at amplifying the "deviant practices" that are already at work in places like Save the Children in Vietnam. The whole notion is summed up in the terms "positive deviants" or "positive deviance".
In this week's TCP (thanks to Keith McCandless for the lead), we feature an article from Fast Company on Sternin and the notion of "positive deviants." The piece includes part of an interview with Sternin on steps to amplifying change through the "deviant" ideas that he has been working on over the past decade..
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Thursday Complexity Post (May 6, 2004)
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AIDS, India and the Gates Foundation
India ranks second in the list of countries affected by HIV/AIDS – behind the number one ranked South Africa. And, even though less than 1% of India's population is infected, that amounts to 5-million people. There probably isn't a corner of the planet where HIV/AIDS has not touched.
In this week's Wall Street Journal, an article by Marilyn Chase addresses how the Gates Foundation is helping out some of the world's "oldest profession" in India to end the spread of HIV. The Gates Foundation's is attempting to woo prostitutes with a $200-million push to bring AIDS prevention in India. Their approach is a bit unusual as it will be a chain of clinics in the country's hardest-hit states to pitch safe sex to prostitutes and the truckers who are their primary clients. Chase describes the project like "burger franchises." The Foundation will be helping to set up 50 clinics, set up at highway truck stops, to be run by local partners, including trucking and oil companies.
A few other pieces about HIV/AIDS have appeared in the press this week. Special thanks to Kate Randolph for pointing out this article to us..
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Tom Mandel On Ralph Stacey
Article/Report
In December 2003 at the Agency for Health and Quaity Research, Plexus Institute held a two-part conference with Ralph Stacey and Everett Rogers.
In the second session, writer, Tom Mandel took in the wonderful discussions and conversations with the conference participants and Ralph Stacey. After the conference, Tom put down into words some of the highlights from that conference. Check out some of his reflections from the conference..
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Tom Petzinger's Website
Website
This website contains Tom's Complexity Reading List, a link to The Petzinger Report ("An irregular and irreverant free newsletter on economics, entrepreneurs, and management"), and a wonderful "cache" of the day. Tom's essay on the collapse of the mechanical metaphor and information on his latest book, The New Pioneers, are also posted here..
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Too Beautiful: Insights for the End-of-Life Process
Article/Report
This article recounts the story of how family members used insights from the science of complexity to guide their efforts to plan and provide end of life care for a dying parent. This science highlights the inherent unpredictability of complex systems and offers new understanding of how patterns of behavior emerge from interactions within systems. The principles of complexity science helped family members let go of the unrealistic expectations that one can, if wise enough, predict how the dying process would unfold and provided guidance for acting in the face of this uncertainty. The parent, near the end, told the family, "I am leaving under the circumstances everyone wishes for....".
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Top 20 Liberating Structures-Join the December 14, 2007 PlexusCall to Learn How and WhyThey Work
Website
Liberating structures are the processes and methods that make it teasy for groupsof people to liberate their energy, tap into their collective intelligence, be creative build on each other's ideas, and get results..
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TQM, Chaos and Complexity
Article/Report
A superb article which explores what chaos and complexity theory offer to traditional thinking about quality improvement. Includes a comprehensive set of references..
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Trillion-Dollar Vision of Dee Hock, The
Article/Report
Fascinating article about Dee Hock and how he used the principles of distributed control, a mix of collaboration and competition, simple rules, and diversity in the organization of VISA and his current drive to help social, environmental and community organizations use the concepts from complexity and chaos theory..
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Trust is the Lubricant of Organizational Life
Article/Report
Learn how Henri Lipmanowicz thinks about leadership and complexity science. His approach to leadership and his understanding of organizations are illuminated in stories from his career at Merck and his work with Plexus Institute, where he is Board Chair. Communications Scholar Arvind Singhal, PhD, Samuel Shirley and Edna Holt Marston Professor, Department of Communications, University of Texas El Paso, is the eauthor..
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Ubiquity: The Science of History...or Why the World Is Simpler Than We Think. New York
Book
Science writer and theoretical physicist Mark Buchanan tells the story of how scientists have connected seemingly unrelated disasters such as earthquakes, wars, catastrophic fires, and stock market crashes and shown how our natural world organizes itself into "critical states" or what the author calls the "knife-edge of instability.".
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Uncertainty and Surprise
Speech/presentation
Reuben McDaniel and Dean Driebe edited the new book Uncertainty and Surprise in Complex Systems: Questions on Working with the Unexpected, a volume in the Springer Complexity Program Series Understanding Complex Systems..
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Uncoupling biological oscillators: A complementary hypothesis concerning multiple organ dysfunction syndrome
Article/Report
A number of researchers are studying multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) from a complexity perspective. MODS is the most common cause of death in intensive care units, and is a poorly understood process. The authors suggest that studying interconnections and biological oscillations among organ systems could shed light on this syndrome..
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Understanding Change in Primary Care Practice Using Complexity Theory
Article/Report
From a significant study – The Direct Observation of Primary Care – the authors suggest that practices can be better understood by viewing them as complex adaptive systems. Such a view opens up new approaches to promoting and adapting to change.
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Understanding Complexity: Thought and Behavior
Book
This reference work and text summarizes Warfield's work since 1970 on how to resolve complex problems such as peace-building, industrial developement, gender issues, and disarmament. In his time at Battelle Memorial Institute and George Mason University, he developed a complexity resolution process to be used with multi-disciplinary groups, an interactive management system and an interpretive structural model.
Highlights of the book include: 20 laws of complexity, the four part curriculm of complexity, the history of thought and the situational complexity index. In working with groups he urges the use of computer assisted inquiry. He is concerned about the inappropriate application of complexity science to policy and management affairs..
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Understanding Healing Relationships in Primary Care
Article/Report
Clinicians often have an intuitive understanding of how their relationships with patients foster healing.Recent research shows clinicians practice three processes foster healing relationships: valuing thepatient, and beingnonjudgmental; using power in ways that benefit the patient, and being committed to the patient over time..
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Understanding Social and Economic Systems as Evolutionary Complex Systems
Speech/presentation
Take a peak at some fascinating material shared by Peter Allen at a recent conference..
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Unshackled Organization: Facing the Challenge of Unpredictability Through Spontaneous Reorganization, The
Book
This is one of the few management books on the implications of complexity and nonlinear systems theory for the management of organizations. It is well done and offers up the self-organization approach to major change in contrast to more conventional approaches..
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Valeo Initiative - Living Dialogue and Starter Kit - For Baltimore Conference Attendees
Article/Report
In Latin, Valeo means "to be able, to have power, to be well, fit and healthy:". In 1999, a group of people and organizations gathered to find answers to questions about their visions of health and health care. What are the best aspects we have of health, and care, and what do we want to keep as we move into the future? The idea was "starting an epidemic of health" through dialogue. Central to the vision was the notion of the individual as the driver of change..
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Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems, The
Book
Tom Petzinger annotation - "Excellent layman's overview, with much less anti-industrial ideology than in Capra's earlier The Turning Point.".
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What a Mess! Participation as a Simple Managerial Rule to "Complexify" Organization
Article/Report
The authors of this paper view organizations as complex adaptive systems and suggest a straightforward way of making organizations more complex internally - embrace participative decision making. They state that "participation in decision making enhances connectiviity in organizations, which in turn, gives the organization the opportunity to self-organize and co-evolve in more effective ways than when there is minimal connectivity (ie. autocracy).
Here is how Herb Kelleher, from Southwest Airlines, makes the point. "A financial analyst once asked me if I was afraid of losing control of our organization. I told him, "I've never had control and never wanted it. If you create an environment where the people truly participate, you don't control.""
A convincing article about a vital simple rule - adopt participative decision making throughout your organization..
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What CEOS Could Learn From the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
Article/Report
A wonderfully engaging article explores how this world-renowned chamber orchestra operates, producing beautiful music, without a conductor. Rotating leadership, fractal groups, practiced interaction, experimentation, diversity, tension and difference all go into the mix. If Orpheus comes to town, don't pass up the opportunity. You'll revel in the music-making and togetherness..
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When the Task is Accomplished, Can We Say We Did It Ourselves? A Quest to Eliminate MRSA at the Veterans Health Administration's Hopsitals in Pittsburgh
Article/Report
This story is about the quest at the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System (VAPHS)to eliminate the transmission of deadly healthcare associated infections, specifically Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus or MRSA. Using the social and behavioral change process Positive Deviance, the facility was able to engage the innovativeness and energy of hundreds of hospital staff members - from environmental services staff to nurses, physical therapists, recreational therapists, unit secretaries, physicians, residents - and patients to uncover and create practices to prevent transmission of MRSA and to spread these practices to their colleagues. In so doing, a culture of engagement, participation and local action emerged.
VAPHS is a Beta Site in the Plexus Institute PD MRSA Prevention Partnership supported by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This Partnership involves 6 Beta Sites and 40 Partner hospitals dedicated to pioneering the use Positive Deviance in MRSA prevention. The partnership is a collaboration involving Plexus Institute, Positive Deviance Initiative, CDC, Delmarva Foundation/Maryland Patient Safety Center, and the Southwestern PA MRSA Prevention Collaborative.
This story was written by noted communications scholar Arvind Singhal and Karen Greiner, a PhD student at Ohio University.
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Where Medicine Went Wrong: Rediscovering the Path to Complexity
Book
Bruce West, a highly regarded complexity scientist who introduced fractals and nonlinear dynamics to our understanding of human physiology, suggests in this book manuscript that many traditional measures of health - blood pressure, temperature, respiratory rate - are not good measures of how the body functions. New measures, which capture dynamics and the complexity of the human body and replace traditional understanding of human physiology, are needed he argues. The field of fractal physiology provides a path to such new indicators.
Trace the development of science and how it shapes our understanding of health and the practice of medicine. For a sense of this work, consider some of the chapter headings: Chance and Variation; Even Uncertainty has Laws; Fractal Physiology; and Disease as Complexity Loss..
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Where Medicine Went Wrong-Rediscovering the Path to Complexity
Book
This is the 11th volume in the series Studies on Nonlinear Phenomena in Life Sciencecs, published by World Scientific Pubishing, London, 2006. Bruce West says medical theorists and practitioners need to focus on fractal physiology..
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Where Sociability Comes From: Neurosociological Foundations of Socical Interaction
Dr. Smith believes the roots of sociability are innate, which means that the core properties of social behavior will be discovered not in social science reasoning, but in evolutionary biology. With that understanding, Dr. Sith focuses on the "proximate mechanisms by which sociability is embodied ically....or neurosociologically."
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Which Nursing Home Would You Put Your Mother In?
Article/Report
Research suggests that the highest quality care in a long-term care institution is most dependent on the quality of the relationships among nursing home staff members. Quality of care outcomes in a nursing home need open, free-flowing, and meaningful conversations that occur between and among staff members. If the staff believes that their work and presence
matters, that their voices are important and are heard, it usually translates into better care for
patients. The two scholars who have led the charge in studying quality-of-care outcomes in U.S. nursing homes, and who - for over a decade - have questioned the use of conventional
management practices to manage health care organizations, are Reuben McDaniel, Jr. of the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas, Austin, and Ruth Anderson of Duke University's School of Nursing..
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WHO Global Strategy for Containment of Antimicrobial Resistance
Executive summary: Deaths from accute respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, measles, AIDS nmalaria, the TB account for more than 85% of the deaths frominfetionworkd wide. Resitance to the first-line drugs inmotofthepathogens that cause these diseases ranges from sero to nearly 100%. in someinstances resistance to second and third choice drugs is compromising treatment. Added to this problem is the growing incidence of hospital acquried infections, the emerging problems of antiviral resistance,and the increasing problem of drug resistance in parasitic diseases of poor and marginalized populations. .
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Wholeness and the Implicate Order
Book
Tom Petzinger annotation - "The great quantum physicist delves into the holistic structure of everything. A powerful, if mathematically daunting, in parts, book.".
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WHONET Survey of Laboratories and Publications - 2006
Article/Report
Laboratory figures represent the number of centers with data in WHONET, either at the local or national level. Publications include journal articles and reports. Several countries have not yet forwarded their publication list, and thus are not yet included in the below tallies..
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Why Six Sigma Science is Oxymoronic
Article/Report
U.S. Army Research Scientist Bruce West says it's time to re-examine the management of science and engineering of human resources. .
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Will clinicians' challenges be solved by another theoretical model? Commentary on Sweeney & Kernick (2002), Clinical evaluation: constructing a new model for post-normal medicine
Article/Report
Feinstein raises the question if another theoretical model for clinicians is useful. In particular, Feinstein suggests that regarding medicine as a scientific model is quite appropriate for treating patients; it is, on the other hand, quite inappropriate if the goal of medicine is "understand mechanisms of biology, disease and therapy". that is, complexity science is a "goal-neglecting approach" in medical research where "hard data" is sought..
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Will Disruptive Innovation Cure Health Care?
Article/Report
The disruptive innovation concepts as applied to the particular dynamics of health care. The authors expose the grip of the regulator-industry relationship on the status quo and call for uncovering, and protecting needed disruptive innovations..
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Wilson Speaks on Complexity
Article/Report
Interested in what Edward O. Wilson thinks about complexity science? Read the notes from a November 2001 conversation he had with several members of Plexus Institute.
Wilson, considered to be one of the world's greatest living scientists, has made important contributions to the fields of population genetics, evolutionary biology, entomology, and ethology over his distinguished career. He has written or contributed to over a dozen books, and was awarded Pulitzer Prizes for On Human Nature, and The Ants. For these many scientific contributions and his unique ability to bridge disciplines he has received many awards, including biology's two highest honors. Wilson is professor emeritus at Harvard University and serves as a member of Advisory Board of Plexus..
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Women's Health and Complexity Science
Article/Report
This article explores how complexity science informs the development of an academic discipline in women's health. While obstetrics/gynecology was consistent with the prevailing scientific theory of the late 19th century, women's health can no longer be reduced to reproduction. A dynamic interaction between all disciplines will grow a new field. This new perspective will enable all types of clinicians to deliver care to the woman as a whole, based on the dynamic interaction of all her parts as she intereacts within the diverse contexts of her life..
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Work of Leadership
Article/Report
Suggestions from the authors – like look for patterns, regulate stress, give work back to the people, protect voices of leadership from below – mesh well with complexity-based leadership approaches..
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Wrinkles in Time
Book
A story by perhaps the greatest living cosmologist of his discovery, which Stephen Hawking called the "most important of the century, if not of all time," confirming the big bang theory and leading to an understanding that matter is not distributed uniformly throughout the universe. As he traces the development of the universe from the moment of creation until the present, he outlines some of the most basic principles of life, such as phase transitions and the increasing complexity of life's systems. Would be surprised if some of life's basics did not show up in organizations..
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Your Company's Secret Change Agents
Article/Report
A fine article on positive deviance, an effective approach to organizational and behavioral change..
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