Intelligent Organizations: Powerful Models for Systemic Management

Intelligent Organizations: Powerful Models for Systemic Management

By Markus Schwaninger

• Publisher:   Springer
• Number Of Pages:   240
• Publication Date:   2006-07-12
• ISBN-10 / ASIN:   3540298762
• ISBN-13 / EAN:   9783540298762

Product Description: 

This book offers an innovative approach to overcome the crisis of management in the face of complexity. The systems approach to management will help to develop the new kind of intelligent organizations so urgently needed. This approach is a powerful tool, grounded in organizational cybernetics and systems dynamics. The approach will allow managers and advanced students of management cope with organizational complexity in an effective way. The book is a source for improvement of any kind of organizations, private or public, non-profit, large or small. The systems approach, on which this book is grounded, makes this book different from many conventional books on organizations. 

Summary: Important concepts for up-to-date management
Rating: 5

This book is a very important book. Besides its solid theoretical foundations it is a very practical book. It will help managers to better understand their role in the complex world where companies and organizations in general have to operate. The role of managers in organizations is basically to design their organizations and to steer them so they are able to cope steadily with the complexity they have to face, in the outside environment as well as inside, in order to achieve their purposes. This means helping their organizations to be more "intelligent".

To show how to do this the author establishes an integrative Framework for the Design and Development of Intelligent Organizations containing five core components which are interrelated: Activities, Structure, Behavior, Basic Parameters (Identity, Ethos and Vision) and Time. Each of them is described in great detail and the implications of its adequate inclusion and design is thoroughly treated.

Three very important theories (The Model of Systemic Control-MSC), The Viable System Model-VSM and the Team Syntegrity model-TSM) are described and coherently incorporated into the framework.

Another very relevant aspect of this book is the great attention dedicated to the implications that three clearly identified necessary types of management (Operative, Strategic and particularly Normative) have on the companies and organizations' long term viability.

In summary I think that this book is a must for managers interested in knowing the very advanced concepts and tools which are today available and ready-to-use for helping them to steer their companies through the actual (and quite probably future) turbulent environments in which they operate.

Summary: For both academics and practitioners

Rating: 5

It is hard to find in management literature books with the right mixture of theoretical rigor, empirical support, and practical advice. This book is one of such a kind. The book presents a novel integrative framework for management, using three well known academic models: The Model of Systemic Control - developed by the author -, the Viable System Model and the Team Sintegrity model. This schema allows to address the whole picture of several organizational issues that usually are treated separately: structure, behavior, functions, human/social conditions and time. What is known as the Systems Approach. As the author says in the first lines: "This is not a book about how to run a company. It is about how to look at the world differently". It is full with real-life examples and occasional exploration of other areas such as computer simulation and complexity theory which underpin the ideas in the book. And besides, the author's style guarantees a very pleasing reading.

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