Maurice Yolles
Centre for the Creation of Coherent Change and Knowledge (C4K: http://www.staff.ljmu.ac.uk/APSMYOLL/c4k/Web/default.htm)
C4K has been set up to assist the understanding of social and organisational processes in a complex world through academic and people related activities. It has a track record of more than a score years of extensive international experience in assisting organisations to embrace change, develop and improve themelves, and this is especially with respect to the more difficult transformational change. It has operated in a number of international locations including the Countries of Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union, and in Asia - particularly in China as it joined the World Trade Organisation.
Social, political and business organisations face the management of change and the development of knowledge and practice. Critical to the change process is the involvement of learning for both management and staff of organisations. C4K operates as a partner for learning with organisations to facilitate change and improvement.
Social and business organisations pursue their own purposes and interests, and over time they take actions that interactively define where they are going in the complex world in which they exist. Their future pathways are often influenced by change that may either come from within the organisation, or externally. It is in such conditions that there is an imperative to manage the change process that deriving from competitive and other change influences.
Sometimes change is incremental, but a continuing process of incremental change can mean that it loses its tracking and coherence. It may also be radical, so that the organisation needs to determine new purposes that can address the change that an organisation is experiencing. This needs new structures, processes, and the creation of coherent organisational behaviour, and there are often implications for its culture. Sometimes change is transformation, normally involving a culture shift for the organisation. This can occur for instance when it moves from the public to the private sector, when it moves from one sphere of activity to another either across sectors or public cultures as our economy globalises. It can also occur in the creation of joint alliances, over which a half of those intended fail.
C4K believes that the management and staff of social and business organisations contain the knowledge through which coherent change programmes and can evolve collectively within them. An effective way to leverage this knowledge is through action learning where multiple perspectives are combined to create greater coherence in future aims and objectives. It is through action research that management and staff can clarify the nature of both the present and the future. Action learning and research workshops are key component of C4K formulations of the change and development process.
C4K has been set up to assist the understanding of social and organisational processes in a complex world through academic and people related activities. It has a track record of more than a score years of extensive international experience in assisting organisations to embrace change, develop and improve themelves, and this is especially with respect to the more difficult transformational change. It has operated in a number of international locations including the Countries of Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union, and in Asia - particularly in China as it joined the World Trade Organisation.
Social, political and business organisations face the management of change and the development of knowledge and practice. Critical to the change process is the involvement of learning for both management and staff of organisations. C4K operates as a partner for learning with organisations to facilitate change and improvement.
Social and business organisations pursue their own purposes and interests, and over time they take actions that interactively define where they are going in the complex world in which they exist. Their future pathways are often influenced by change that may either come from within the organisation, or externally. It is in such conditions that there is an imperative to manage the change process that deriving from competitive and other change influences.
Sometimes change is incremental, but a continuing process of incremental change can mean that it loses its tracking and coherence. It may also be radical, so that the organisation needs to determine new purposes that can address the change that an organisation is experiencing. This needs new structures, processes, and the creation of coherent organisational behaviour, and there are often implications for its culture. Sometimes change is transformation, normally involving a culture shift for the organisation. This can occur for instance when it moves from the public to the private sector, when it moves from one sphere of activity to another either across sectors or public cultures as our economy globalises. It can also occur in the creation of joint alliances, over which a half of those intended fail.
C4K believes that the management and staff of social and business organisations contain the knowledge through which coherent change programmes and can evolve collectively within them. An effective way to leverage this knowledge is through action learning where multiple perspectives are combined to create greater coherence in future aims and objectives. It is through action research that management and staff can clarify the nature of both the present and the future. Action learning and research workshops are key component of C4K formulations of the change and development process.
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Books by Maurice Yolles
transformational change, enabling them to respond successfully to the tremendous
challenges that they face? The stress here is on respond, because
even where there is an appreciation of what an adequate response is, the
ability to create a response (let alone a successful one) may be limited.
Another way of putting this question is, How fit are countries and their
organizations to undertake such transformational change? This leads to a
consequential question: Can we find a way of measuring such fitness?
The book is about managing complexity, and within it a management systems approach to situations is adopted that relates to the uncertain and complex, and that involve what many might refer to in the abstract as purposeful adaptive activity systems.
Management systems is the use of systems thinking to pursue management activities. It can provide an important way to showing managers and other leaders how they may be able to satisfactorily deal with complexity. Some aspects of management systems provide ways by which complex situations can be described, while others give guidelines that enable us to explain such situations. Interest here will, in addition to this, be to explore the nature of systemic inquiry into complex situations through methods that enable managers to formulate dynamic strategic plans.
My cybernetic interest lies in viable systems, and my concerns here are with the management of autonomous human activity systems. While following the constructivist approach in systems (sometimes referred to as soft systems) I will take the system as a metaphor for the phenomenal dimension of the social collective. However, there is more to the social collective than its phenomena, suggesting that this terminology is inadequate. After Koestler in his book The Ghost in the Machine published in 1967, I will use the term holon to represent metaphorically other dimensions that are relevant to the study of social collectives. My study of autonomous human activity holons, then, is the place where sociology converges at least with social psychology, organisational theory and business studies. Another concern here is with practice, important to all social communities, because it is through practice (a pseudonym for behaviour) that autonomous organisations behave and survive. Connected with this is the way that collectives control their own behaviours, which is ultimately a function of their cognitive processes and their intelligence. I am also substantively interested here with knowledge and knowledge processes, because if autonomous social collectives are to be seen as intelligent, then they must maintain an awareness of their own knowledge and the use of that knowledge to direct themselves and maintain their viability.
Papers by Maurice Yolles
transformational change, enabling them to respond successfully to the tremendous
challenges that they face? The stress here is on respond, because
even where there is an appreciation of what an adequate response is, the
ability to create a response (let alone a successful one) may be limited.
Another way of putting this question is, How fit are countries and their
organizations to undertake such transformational change? This leads to a
consequential question: Can we find a way of measuring such fitness?
The book is about managing complexity, and within it a management systems approach to situations is adopted that relates to the uncertain and complex, and that involve what many might refer to in the abstract as purposeful adaptive activity systems.
Management systems is the use of systems thinking to pursue management activities. It can provide an important way to showing managers and other leaders how they may be able to satisfactorily deal with complexity. Some aspects of management systems provide ways by which complex situations can be described, while others give guidelines that enable us to explain such situations. Interest here will, in addition to this, be to explore the nature of systemic inquiry into complex situations through methods that enable managers to formulate dynamic strategic plans.
My cybernetic interest lies in viable systems, and my concerns here are with the management of autonomous human activity systems. While following the constructivist approach in systems (sometimes referred to as soft systems) I will take the system as a metaphor for the phenomenal dimension of the social collective. However, there is more to the social collective than its phenomena, suggesting that this terminology is inadequate. After Koestler in his book The Ghost in the Machine published in 1967, I will use the term holon to represent metaphorically other dimensions that are relevant to the study of social collectives. My study of autonomous human activity holons, then, is the place where sociology converges at least with social psychology, organisational theory and business studies. Another concern here is with practice, important to all social communities, because it is through practice (a pseudonym for behaviour) that autonomous organisations behave and survive. Connected with this is the way that collectives control their own behaviours, which is ultimately a function of their cognitive processes and their intelligence. I am also substantively interested here with knowledge and knowledge processes, because if autonomous social collectives are to be seen as intelligent, then they must maintain an awareness of their own knowledge and the use of that knowledge to direct themselves and maintain their viability.