Leadership

Leadership & Innovation, In complex Systems 03/02/2011

Professor: Goldstein, J

Off Campus Team Assignment

1.What’s complex about an ecology?

Complexity in ecology is of at least six distinct types: spatial, temporal, structural, process, behavioral, and geometric. Also it takes many years for ecological processes to mature. The small scale of patterns do not necessarily explain large scale of phenomena, otherwise captured in the expression 'the sum is greater than the parts. Thus, “complex” has to do with the interactions in the system, through which something new emerges. A complex ecology, focus on the mutual influence, even a small number of people, working well together and interacting with each other and the environment can make a major difference that goes beyond any one of their capabilities and empower individuals. By through its own internal process, can actually change itself so as to generate better outcomes.

2. Describe the main features of an organizational ecology.

There are seven main features of an organizational ecology.

(1) Ecologies are systems of difference

Research found out that the reason for population growth and death shifts was a lack of diversity in the ecosystem. Thus, the complexity of an ecosystem become measured in terms of diversity of species, the varied relations among them, and the changing strength if these various interactions.

(2) Diversity is the source of adaptability

The greater the diversity in a system, especially at the micro-levels of individual differences and group-level heterogeneity, the higher the potential these differences can be amplified into emergent innovations.

(3) An ecology is a nexus of interacting ecosystems

An ecology is nothing but a web of relationships, in which individual nodes are subsystems that are the intersections of the various strands of the web. Each subsystem of an ecology can survive only through the...