INSTRUCTOR

Seminar in Organizational Leadership:
Complex Adaptive Systems
and Leadership

INSTRUCTOR

Ronald F. White, Ph.D.

Professor of Philosophy

College of Mount St. Joseph

Office Phone: 513-244-4405

Home Phone: 513-661-1770

E-Mail: ron_white@mail.msj.edu

Homepage: http://inside.msj.edu/academics/faculty/whiter

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course will explore complex adaptive systems theory and its real world applications.

TEXTBOOK

Duncan Watts, Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age (Norton: 2002)

SUGGESTED READING

John Henry Clippinger III, The Biology of Business: Decoding the Natural Laws of Enterprise (Jossey-Bass: 1999)

Christopher Meyer and Stan Davis, It’s Alive: The Coming Convergence of Information, Biology, and Business (Crown Business: 2003)

Peter Corning, Nature’s Magic: Synergy in Evolution and the Fate of Humankind (Cambridge: 2003)

INTERNET RESOURCES

ORGANIZATIONS

CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS (UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN))

NEW ENGLAND COMPLEX SYSTEMS INSTITUTE

SANTA FE INSTITUTE

IINSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS

REFERENCES

PRINCIPIA CYBERNETICA WEB

CLASS MEETINGS

This class will meet twice during the semester: once at the beginning of the class and once at the end of the class. Date and location of these meetings will be decided between Christmas and New Years via WebCt e-mail. The first meeting will be sometime in January, the other in late April.

GRADES

Grades will be based on three components worth 33.33% of the final grade: participation in bulletin board discussion (3 student led discussion sessions), a five-page essay, (Due during week 3), and a 20 minute PowerPoint presentation (Presented on the last day of class).

Bulletin Board

The MOL 675 Bulletin Board is on MSJ’s WebCt site. Each week, designated leaders will be responsible for posting questions, leading and participating in group discussion. The questions posted by leaders will be based on the reading assignments. Each session will be 2 weeks in length. Non-leaders may also post questions. However, it is up to the leader to manage the discussion. (Hence, leaders will decide when to move on to another question.) There must be at least one question for each reading assignment. At the end of each 2 week session, the leader will post a 250 word summary of what transpired in the discussion. The other discussion members will then respond to that summary in 250 words or less. Ron will grade each session based on the quality of the summaries and responses and post his remarks. In short, Ron will grade the class and not individual leaders or participants. Therefore a good class participation grade will require both effective leadership and cooperation. (Note: If the group decides that the discussion was not very good, and if they can explain why it was not very good in the summaries, you can still get an A in the discussion. So be honest.)

Five-Page Mid-Term Essay

About halfway through the semester, students will turn in a five page (double-spaced) critical review of our textbook (Duncan Watts, Six Degrees). Do not summarize the whole book. Explain the underlying theory and focus on one particular issue raised in the book that you find especially interesting. All of the essays will be posted on WebCt. Ron will grade the exams, but will not post grades.

PowerPoint Presentation

PowerPoint Presentations will focus on applying the theories discussed in the class to leadership in your life. Applications can include: leadership in the workplace, leadership in outside activities (coaching, clubs, bands etc). Use the terminology and theories learned in the class. Be critical, you may decide that Complex Adaptive Systems Theory is irrelevant to the real world, but you must support that view with cogent arguments. Presentations will be exactly 20 minutes in length, followed by 10-20 minutes of questions and answers.

PREASSIGNMENT

Visit each of the “Internet Sources” cited above and be prepared to discuss them at the first class meeting. Read: 1. WATTS Chapters 1-5, and 2. TOWARDS A THEORY OF EVERYTHING and be prepared to discuss both assignments.