Abstract
Businesses, governmental agencies and other large organizations face an intense challenge in today’s world. As these organizations become larger and more complex they often loose the focal point of their work—their center of gravity. Leaders, managers and administrators are unable to control the operations of the organization because specialization and diversification have created an abandoned center at the heart of their system. The challenge is to find a strategic approach for replacing the abandoned center with a whole center. In this paper we present three strategies for doing this, two of which are primarily based on reductionistic science and one of which is based on an approach integrating both design and systems science. The focus of this paper is on the later approach which focuses primarily on enabling creativity and innovation in organizational systems
Citation
Nelson, H., and Stolterman, E. (2004) The Abandoned Center: The Impact of Complexity and Scale on Organizational Systems; Making the Case for a Design Approach., in Redmond, J., Durling, D. and de Bono, A (eds.), Futureground - DRS International Conference 2004, 17-21 November, Melbourne, Australia. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2004/researchpapers/86
The Abandoned Center: The Impact of Complexity and Scale on Organizational Systems; Making the Case for a Design Approach.
Businesses, governmental agencies and other large organizations face an intense challenge in today’s world. As these organizations become larger and more complex they often loose the focal point of their work—their center of gravity. Leaders, managers and administrators are unable to control the operations of the organization because specialization and diversification have created an abandoned center at the heart of their system. The challenge is to find a strategic approach for replacing the abandoned center with a whole center. In this paper we present three strategies for doing this, two of which are primarily based on reductionistic science and one of which is based on an approach integrating both design and systems science. The focus of this paper is on the later approach which focuses primarily on enabling creativity and innovation in organizational systems