|
Showing 1 - 5 of
5 matches in All Departments
It's well known that human beings are allergic to change. This is
nowhere more true than of human beings in organizations.
Organization Development initiatives, Leadership Development
programs, and Business Transformation plans all founder too often
on our resistance and reluctance, on the tendency of people and
things to slip back to how they were before. For a long time,
Systems Thinkers in general (and Power+Systems pioneer Barry Oshry
in particular) have understood that the problem lies with our
failure to look at the surrounding organizational structures and
dynamics, at the wider picture, at the context. Barry Oshry draws
on a lifetime's experience to explain the nature of the problem
with our organizational structures, and the ways in which we can
dissolve the problem. This book is written in play-form: a simple
briefing conversation between a recently hired team member and the
Chief Contextual Thinker for a Business Consultancy firm. They
discuss the change initiative they are running for a key client.
The conversational format allows Oshry to introduce the relevant
theory clearly and in sequence, while addressing questions and
misunderstandings as they arise. The result is a guide to Systems
Thinking for Organizations that's as short, clever, engaging,
bright, and helpful as any business book you have ever picked up.
This is a story with the potential to transform any organization
and it is written for anyone interested in the workings and
structures of human organizations: from Board Directors and Chief
Executives, through Middle Managers to interested workers. ***
"Exceptionally well written, organized and presented, 'Context,
Context, Context' is unreservedly recommended for personal,
professional, corporate, community, and academic library Systems
Thinking, Organization Development, Sociology, and Business
Management collections and supplemental studies reading lists."
--The Midwest Book Review, Library Bookwatch, The Sociology Shelf,
January 2018 [Subject: Systems Thinking, Organization Development,
Sociology, Business]
Barry Oshry has a lifetime's experience of working with social and
organizational systems. Here he explains how we can understand -
and avoid - the "catastrophes" that continue to occur when one
culture meets another - when demagogues sell us messages of
superiority or purity in the face of cultural difference. Algeria
Armenia Bosnia Cambodia Congo Darfur East Timor The Holdomor The
Holocaust Myanmar Palestine Rwanda... He explains how the two
conventional solutions to encountering the "other" - Purity and
Tolerance - both exact a terrible cost on the oppressed while
diminishing the humanity of the oppressors. And he offers us a
third possibility, one that requires a fundamental transformation
in how we see and experience one another. This transformation
requires us to understand that the interaction patterns we fall
into shape the way we see and experience one another. Change the
pattern of interaction and our experiences of one another will
change... The possibility of "Power and Love", working together and
tempering one another, will emerge.
This book is about seeing systems. It is about overcoming system
blindness. It is about seeing our part in the context of the whole
in ways that enable us to avoid misunderstandings and to interact
more productively across organizational lines (Act One). It is
about seeing the present in the context of the past, such that we
can get a more accurate picture of our current condition (Act One).
It is about seeing ourselves in relationship with others and
creating satisfying and productive partnerships in these
relationships (Act TwoIt is about seeing our systems' processes in
ways that enable us to create systems with extraordinary capacities
for surviving and developing (Act Three). It is about seeing the
uncertainties in our system conditions in ways that enable us to
move past the destructive battles of righteous position versus
righteous position (Act IV).
In this persuasively argued booklet, Barry Oshry establishes that,
despite frequent references to paradigms in management and
organization literature, there are no scientific paradigms in this
field (as defined by Thomas Kuhn in his landmark essay on the
subject – The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). He goes on to
make the case for the Organic System Framework (OSF) being a
legitimate candidate for paradigm status. The OSF describes
patterns of systemic relationship that exist at all levels and in
all types of social systems – family, sports team, work unit,
etc. Regardless of our designated roles or positions, we are
constantly moving in and out of these relationships. He concludes
by setting out three core reasons for proposing OSF as a prime
paradigm candidate and outlines five broad avenues for future
research.
|
You may like...
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R383
R318
Discovery Miles 3 180
Hoe Ek Dit Onthou
Francois Van Coke, Annie Klopper
Paperback
R300
R219
Discovery Miles 2 190
|