Assignment Task
Abstract
[Text begins here. This abstract should not exceed 120 words. Note that abstracts in APA format are not indented. Write the abstract at the END of the project during Week 10 or Week 11. An abstract should present a summary of the key findings in past tense. PLEASE READ the section on abstracts in the APA Manual for guidelines and details. Note: An abstract is not an introduction to the paper.]
Table of Contents
MGMT 8007M Final Project1
Organizational Description (Week 2)1
Organizational Diagram1
Organizational Description2
Systems Theory2
Supporting Research3
Systems Dynamics (Week 3)3
Stocks and Flows3
Feedback Loops4
Recommendations4
Supporting Research5
Systems Disciplines (Week 4)5
Disciplines5
Inform Leadership5
Recommendations6
Supporting Research6
Systems Archetypes (Week 5)6
Archetypes6
Recommendations7
Supporting Research7
Networks (Week 6)7
Networks8
Recommendations8
Supporting Research8
Complexity (Week 8)9
Expanded Organizational Diagram9
Expanded Organizational Description10
Recommendations10
Supporting Research10
Resilience (Week 9)11
Resilience Matrix11
Supporting Research12
Summary and Conclusions (Week 10)13
References14
[To update the TOC, right click somewhere in the TOC, if using Windows, then left click on Update Field or something like that. I don’t use Windows and am not exactly sure what the words are.]
List of Figures
Figure 1. Caption? ………………………………………………………………xx
MGMT 8007M Final Project [Text begins here. Provide a brief introduction to this project and tell the reader what will be covered in this document in about ½ page. That is, an introduction introduces the topic and tells the reader what will be covered. There will be an introduction written for the project as a whole as well as a brief introduction to each week’s assignment.
Organizational Description (Week 2)[Provide a brief introduction here by introducing the topic for the week and telling the reader what will be covered in about one paragraph or three to five sentences. This week’s assignment should require about two or three pages.
Note: Week 2 and 3 assignments are to be posted together as one submittal using this template at the end of Week 3. Do not delete template material for Weeks 4–10; leave this template material as is.
Very critical note: Please read the project explanatory notes at the end of this paper before starting to write.]
Organizational Diagram[Create a 1-slide model of your organization using PowerPoint (see Slide 10 of the myCoffeeShop presentation for reference as well as an example) and insert it as a figure here. See the APA manual to properly format figure captions. Then be sure to update the List of Figures below the Table of Contents. See the APA manual for examples.
Use this model to illustrate the inputs: material, information, and energy, or MIE, the top-level organizational process (just one), the outputs: materials, information, and energy or MIE, and at least one threshold or tipping point beyond which the organization would become unrecognizable. The term, phase transition, is a term from physics that is frequently used in place of threshold or tipping point and can be used in this paper. Examples include the following: a tipping point or threshold for a forest might be becoming a desert; a tipping point for an organization might be bankruptcy, a takeover, or just going out of business; a tipping point for a subset of society might be assimilation or extinction; and a tipping point for a city might be bankruptcy, annexation, or an environmental catastrophe such as a major flood, earthquake, hurricane, volcanic eruption, or landslide. A tipping point or phase transition from physics is water turning to ice at 0 degrees Celsius or steam at 100 degrees Celsius. The idea here is that after a tipping point, threshold, or phase transition, the thing that tipped becomes something else. Note: This organizational diagram section should just contain the diagram. The Organizational Description section provides a narrative description of the diagram.]
Organizational Description [Describe this organization in terms of its mission and goals, its geographical location, its boundary or what is in scope and out of scope, input and output MIEs, primary organizational process, organizational life cycle stage such as start up, growth stage, maturation, or decline, and tipping point(s), as needed to interpret the diagram. Note: This section should be a narrative description of the organizational diagram provided in the Organizational Diagram section.]
Systems Theory[Provide an explanation of how general systems theory and Boulding’s hierarchy of systems may inform your understanding of systems/organizations and leadership thinking.]
Supporting Research[Provide at least two citations/references to support your explanations to executive leadership including a brief discussion of the value or importance to your organization. For example, list two references in this section and follow up with a statement or two such as “the value of this information to my organization is …..” Note: Be sure to list all references in the Reference list at the end of the paper—see the examples at the end of this paper and in the APA manual to properly format them.]
Systems Dynamics (Week 3)[Provide a brief introduction here by introducing the topic for the week and telling the reader what will be covered in about one paragraph or three to five sentences. This week’s assignment should require about two or three pages.
Note: Week 2 and 3 assignments are to be posted together as one submittal using this template at the end of Week 3. Do not delete template material for Weeks 4–10; leave this template material as is.]
Stocks and Flows[Identify and describe at least three stocks and associated inflows and outflows within your organization. A stock and flow diagram is not required. Note: A stock is an accumulator measured by a number, such as cash on hand, employees, inventory, or other resource. A stock is NOT a financial instrument in this context. Inflows to cash on hand might be deposits, and outflows might be expenses. Inflows to employees might be new hires, and outflows might be resignations, retirements, or outplaced.]
Feedback Loops[Identify one positive-feedback loop and one negative-feedback loop in your organization. Note: an example of a positive feedback loop may not be readily identifiable and if not, explain why not. Feedback loops are used here in the engineering sense of the term. That is, a positive-feedback loop is a reinforcing or amplifying loop and exhibits one of two possibilities: virtuous cycles or vicious cycles, depending on perspective. For example, a savings account earns interest and the more money in savings, the more interest is earned, meaning there is a reinforcing loop, and this is referred to as a virtuous cycle, whereas if a savings account were being depleted in a similar manner, it could be referred to as a vicious cycle. Negative-feedback loops are goal-seeking, maintenance, or regulatory feedback loops. Think of a thermostat as a good example. Other examples of a negative-feedback loop are the maintenance of inventory, staffing, or other resource levels. Inventory is used up and needs to be replenished, and staff retire, leave, or whatever, and staffing levels may need to be maintained at a certain level to perform required tasks. Note: Think of the human body and the number and types of regulatory feedbacks needed to keep it in steady state.]
Recommendations[Provide at least two actionable examples of how an understanding of stocks, flows, and feedback loops would improve decision making within your organization. Note: Using key words in responses are a good way to help clarifications. For example, one recommendation is …. And the second recommendation is ….. ]
Supporting Research[Provide at least two citations/references to support your explanations to executive leadership including a brief discussion of the value or importance to your organization. For example, list two references in this section and follow up with a statement or two such as “the value of this information to my organization is …..” Note: Be sure to list all references in the Reference list at the end of the paper—see the examples at the end of this paper.]
Systems Disciplines (Week 4)[Provide a brief introduction here by introducing the topic for the week and telling the reader what will be covered in about one paragraph or three to five sentences. This week’s assignment should require about two or three pages.
Note: Weeks 4, 5, and 6 assignments are to be posted together as one submittal using this template at the end of Week 6. Do not delete template material for Weeks 7–10; leave this template material as is.]
Disciplines[Summarize the systems disciplines: personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking, and provide examples of at least two of these systems disciplines in your organization.]
Inform Leadership[Explain how at least two of these systems disciplines can inform leadership and decision making in your organization. Note: For example personal mastery helps to inform leadership by ….]
Recommendations[Provide at least two actionable recommendations on how the organization could improve using these systems disciplines.]
Supporting Research[Provide at least two citations/references to support your explanations to executive leadership including a brief discussion of the value or importance to your organization. For example, list two references in this section and follow up with a statement or two such as “the value of this information to my organization is …..” Note: Be sure to list all references in the Reference list at the end of the paper—see the examples at the end of this paper.]
Systems Archetypes (Week 5)[Provide a brief introduction here by introducing the topic for the week and telling the reader what will be covered in about one paragraph or three to five sentences. This week’s assignment should require about two or three pages.
Note: Weeks 4, 5, and 6 assignments are to be posted together as one submittal using this template at the end of Week 6. Keep previously written materials for Weeks 2–3 in this paper. Do not delete template material for Weeks 7–10; leave this template material as is.]
Archetypes[Identify and describe three systems archetypes observed in your organization. Analyze and evaluate problems indicated by these archetypes (e.g., limits to success, tragedy of the commons, escalation, success to the successful, shifting the burden, growth and underinvestment, fixes that fail, or eroding goals) and develop potential solutions or interventions for your client. For example, if product sales have been slowing after years of growth, it may be because that the market has reached its limit with everyone having this product that wants one. This is called the product life cycle in sales and marketing, while it is called the limits to growth in systems theory. A potential solution is to launch a new and improved version of the product.]
Recommendations[Provide at least two actionable rcommendations how the organization could improve by identifying these systems archetypes or patterns to help understand your organization and aid in decision making.]
Supporting Research[Provide at least two citations/references to support your explanations to executive leadership including a brief discussion of the value or importance to your organization. For example, list two references in this section and follow up with a statement or two such as “the value of this information to my organization is …..” Note: Be sure to list all references in the Reference list at the end of the paper—see the examples at the end of this paper.]
Networks (Week 6)[Provide a brief introduction here by introducing the topic for the week and telling the reader what will be covered in about one paragraph or three to five sentences. This week’s assignment should require about two or three pages.
Note: Weeks 4, 5, and 6 assignments are to be posted together as one submittal using this template at the end of Week 6. Keep previously written materials for Weeks 2–3 in this paper. Do not delete template material for Weeks 7–10; leave this template material as is.]
Networks[Identify and describe three different networks (not necessarily three different topologies) found in your organization; a diagram is not required. Recall that a network is a set of nodes and links where nodes may be people, computers, documents, databases, and such, while links are relationships. For example in a human network relationships include reports to, collaborates with, manages, leads, works with, supplies to, purchases from, and so on. Materials, information, and energy flow across networks. Explain how each of these three networks might inform decision making in leadership. Examples of network typologies include: tree, ring, line, bus, mesh, fully connected, or star. Human networks may be formal (well defined roles and functions), informal (few set roles and functions), or family. One example of a network is an organization chart with nodes being people and relationships being reports to, manage, or some such terminology and is an example of a tree (hierarchical topology). Another example of a network is a manager with several direct reports and this network is a star topology.]
Recommendations[Provide at least two actionable recommendations how the organization could improve with a better understanding of the networks or network structures in your organization.]
Supporting Research[Provide at least two citations/references to support your explanations to executive leadership including a brief discussion of the value or importance to your organization. For example, list two references in this section and follow up with a statement or two such as “the value of this information to my organization is …..” Note: Be sure to list all references in the Reference list at the end of the paper—see the examples at the end of this paper.]
[Note: there is no specific project assignment work for Week 7; rather, this week may be used to catch up, reflect, revisit, or just push forward.]
Complexity (Week 8)[Provide a brief introduction here by introducing the topic for the week and telling the reader what will be covered in about one paragraph or three to five sentences. This week’s assignment should require about two or three pages.
Note: Weeks 8 and 9 assignments are to be posted together as one submittal using this template at the end of Week 9. Keep previously written materials for Weeks 2–6 in this paper. A reminder, there is no Week 7 project assignment. Be sure to go back and make any needed revisions to previous work.]
Expanded Organizational Diagram[Expand the model created in Week 2 to include several more elements: detectors, effectors, and networks (agents + relationships). Detectors and effectors are roles. For example, a grocery store checkout person detects a shopper is ready to check out and begins the process of chcking out the groceries by tabulating the costs and bagging the groceris, and the effecting them to the shopper. Aggregated agents such as a number of people on a delivery dock may qualify as a detector. Note: There may be several different organizational networks depending on the topic of interest. Space within the model is limited; thus, illustrate at high level in one diagram. See the myCoffeeShop for some examples. Be sure just to provide the diagram(s)-more than one is acceptable, but not more than two in this section. Note: Be sure to reference this diagram in the List of Figures.]
Expanded Organizational Description[Expand on the description of the organization by describing the agents (Note: each agent includes a detector, a processor, and an effector role); their relationships with other agents; the flow of material, information, and energy across these networks; tags (labels such as manager, engineer, support staff, and so on); how agents are aggregated (e.g., hierarchy, alphabetical, chronological, size, type, geography, or other); one or two nonlinear (positive or negative) feedback loops; and three or four subordinate or sublevel organizational processes. For example, if the top level or primary process is educating students in the case of a university, then four subprocesses might be recruiting students, teaching students, assessing students, and graduating students. Each of these subprocesses (parts) could be further decomposed, thus creating more of a complete picture of the organization, especially when MIE is added to each subprocess. Taking this approach one step further, suppliers and customers could be added to each MIE input and output respectively. Note: This is not a requirement for this paper, but an approach that may be considered in real life. This approach creates a SIPOC or supplier, input, process, output, customer model of a system or organization.]
Recommendations[Provide at least two actionable recommendations how the organization could improve with a better understanding of the various structures and processes in the organization.]
Supporting Research[Provide at least two citations/references to support your explanations to executive leadership including a brief discussion of the value or importance to your organization. For example, list two references in this section and follow up with a statement or two such as “the value of this information to my organization is …..” Note: Be sure to list all references in the Reference list at the end of the paper—see the examples at the end of this paper.]
Resilience (Week 9)[Provide a brief introduction here by introducing the topic for the week and telling the reader what will be covered in about one paragraph or three to five sentences. This week’s assignment should require about three or four pages.
Note: Week 8 and 9 assignments are to be posted together as one submittal using this template at the end of Week 9. Keep previously written materials for Weeks 2–6 in this paper.]
Resilience Matrix[Use the World Economic Forum matrix in the Learning Resources to explore resilience in your selected organization. This matrix contains 25 cells made up of the intersections of the X axis and the Y axis. The X axis elements are: economic, environmental, governance, infrastructure, and social. The Y axis elements are: robustness, redundancy, resourcefulness, response, and recovery. Describe any eight of these cells in narrative format (please do not use a Word or Excel table to insert this discussion). For example, describe how robust your organizational economics are in the economic/robustness cell. Continue to describe these eight cells in this manner. Now provide an overall assessment or evaluation of how resilient your organization is based on your analysis. Explain how leadership might use this information to improve decision making.
Here is some additional information:
Use the WEF Global Risks Report 2013 for these assignments
See Figure 23: National Resilience Beta Framework on p. 38. Replace Country with your organization and explore just eight (8) of the cells of the matrix
Economic
1 Environmental
2 Governance
3 Infrastructure
4 Social
5
Robustness
1 Cell 1,1 Cell 1,2 Cell 1,3 Cell 1,4 Cell 1,5
Redundancy
2 Cell 2,1 Cell 2,2 Cell 2,3 Cell 2,4 Cell 2,5
Resourcefulness
3 Cell 3,1 Cell 3,2 Cell 3,3 Cell 3,4 Cell 3,5
Response
4 Cell 4,1 Cell 4,2 Cell 4,3 Cell 4,4 Cell 4,5
Recovery
5 Cell 5,1 Cell 5,2 Cell 5,3 Cell 5,4 Cell 5,5
For example, take Cell 1,1 as defined by Economic / Robustness. A question we might ask is, how robust is your organization’s economy / financial situation?
Or take Cell 2,5, how redundant is your organization’s society (management team, employee’s, …..)? Any backup management? Any succession plans in case a key manager retires suddenly or …?
Or Cell 4,2 how fast could your organization respond to an environmental problem?
And so on.]
Supporting Research[Provide at least two citations/references to support your explanations to executive leadership including a brief discussion of the value or importance to your organization. For example, list two references in this section and follow up with a statement or two such as “the value of this information to my organization is …..” Note: Be sure to list all references in the Reference list at the end of the paper—see the examples at the end of this paper.]
Summary and Conclusions (Week 10)[Summarize your Final Project in one or two paragraphs and provide any concluding remarks.
Note: For Week 10, complete the abstract, initial introduction, summary and conclusions, any corrections or changes to previous week’s work, and of course be sure to update the table of contents. Then, post the entire paper as one submittal at the end of Week 10.]
References[Note: The following references are examples with most of the books are available in Kindle format from Amazon.com. Please delete this note and the following references, replacing them with your specific identified references cited in this project. Be sure to provide either the doi# or the URL of the journal homepage for journal articles. When providing a URL, right click on it and select Remove Hyperlink to keep the URL without the link. Private or University Libraries should not be referenced as the reader may not have access to them. Also, Wikipedia, encyclopedias, magazine articles, and newspaper articles are NOT acceptable references in academic papers. The reference list should be alphabetized. For rules and examples of formatting references, see the APA manual.]
Arthur, W. B. (2009). The nature of technology: What it is and how it evolves. Free Press.
Ball, P. (2012). Why society is a complex matter: Meeting twenty-first century challenges with a new kind of science. Springer.
Beinhocker, E. D. (2005). The origin of wealth: Evolution, complexity, and the radical remaking of economics. Harvard Business School.
Clemens, W. C. (2013). Complexity science and world affairs. State University of New York.
Freeman, I., & Hasnaoui, A. (2011). The meaning of corporate social responsibility: The vision of four nations. Journal of Business Ethics, 100(3), 419–443. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-010-0688-6
Gharajedaghi, J. (2011). Systems thinking: Managing chaos and complexity (3rd ed.). Elsevier.
Holland, J. H. (1995). Hidden order: How adaptation builds complexity. Basic Books.
Mesoudi, A. (2011). Cultural evolution: How Darwinian theory can explain human culture & synthesize the social science. University of Chicago.
Miller, J. H., & Page, S. E. (2007). Complex adaptive systems: An introduction to computational models of social life. Princeton University.
Mitchell, M. (2009). Complexity: A guided tour. Oxford University.
Morecroft, J. (2007). Strategic modeling and business dynamics: A feedback systems perspective. Wiley.
Mobus, G. E., & Kalton, M. C. (2015). Principles of systems science. Springer.
Newman, M. E. J. (2010). Networks. Oxford University.
Norberg, J., & Cumming, G. S. (2008). Complexity theory for a sustainable future. Columbia University.
Packalén, S. (2010). Culture and sustainability. Corporate Social Responsibility & Environmental Management, 17(2), 118–121. http://doi.org/10.1002/csr.236
Padgett, J. F., & Powell, W. W. (2012). The emergence of organizations and markets. Princeton University.
Reynolds, P. D. (2007). A primer in theory construction. Pearson.
Sawyer, R. K. (2005). Social emergence: Societies as complex systems. Cambridge University.
Stacey, R. D. (2007). Strategic management and organisational dynamics: The challenge of complexity (5th ed.). FT Prentice-Hall.
Sterman, J. D. (2000). Business dynamics: Systems thinking and modeling for a complex world. McGraw-Hill.
Walker, B., & Salt, D. (2006). Resilience thinking: Sustaining ecosystems and people in a changing world. Island Press.
Williams, B., & Hummelbrunner, R. (2009). Systems concepts in action: A practitioner’s toolkit. Stanford Business Books.
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