All together now: The circular organization in a university Hospital. Part II. Implementation

The first part of this two-part series described the initial impetus driving a university hospital's planned change project, the planning process itself, and the interventions that were identified to meet our goals. This article describes and discusses the interventions—the implementation of our version of Ackoff's circular organization and issues related to barriers, selected outcomes, the change process, evaluation, and the project's significance to nursing.     

Organization Change in a University Hospital: A Six Year Evaluation Report of the HORIZONS Project

Many health care organizations are currently engaged in changing the design of their health care services delivery system. The issues of cost containment, quality, and access are prominent. This paper reports on the impact of the implementation of a new organization design at one university hospital. The organization change effort (named HORIZONS) was a five year project funded in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts. In a changing health care environment, the project was undertaken with three goals in mind: (1) to maintain and enhance quality of patient care; (2) to improve the quality of working life; and (3) to accomplish this in a budget neutral manner. Initiated as a program to strengthen hospital nursing, the project became a patient-focused redesign effort encompassing both clinical and administrative affairs. The core ideas of the project approach included systems thinking, interactive planning and idealized design. This evaluation reports on the project's progress after six years.     

Soft Systems Methodology in Action: The Example of a Private Hospital

The paper dealt with the issues of communication between physicians and patients, health care needs of patients and appointment and documentation systems leading to sub-optimal medical treatment, disorganised files and congestion and improperly stored medical treatment records of patients Two Strands Model of Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) revealed and handled at a private hospital in Turkey. SSM helped make changes as recommendations to the hospital. However, the SSM-based enquiry also disclosed some difficulties in the processes of cooperation between the practitioner and the client, arranging democratic group discussions, drawing rich pictures, designating, listing and selecting organisational concerns, designing human activity systems, comparing conceptual models with the problem situation and offering and adopting changes. Thus, the paper proposed possible solutions to these methodological problems through synthesising relevant key conceptions of specific soft and other change methodologies into a framework that attempted to bring robust developmental specifications and order for using SSM.     

The 2011 Census: a proposed design for England and Wales

This article sets out the proposed design for a 2011 Census in England and Wales, as part of the ONS's proposed future population statistics system. The design draws on experiences from the 2001 Census and changes in available technology, and takes account of the many comments received from respondents to a Discussion Paper published in October 2003 and of views expressed at a joint ONS/RSS Conference on 11-12 November 2003. The article highlights the statistical and operational strategic aims for the 2011 Census, the major changes proposed from the 2001 approach, and gives an indication of the benefits and risks. It is important to note that this design remains a proposal at present, the elements of which will be subject to further research building on comments received during consultation and a detailed testing programme over the coming years.     

Living arrangements in contemporary Britain: having a partner who usually lives elsewhere and living apart together (LAT)

This article explores the subject of 'living apart together' (LAT). LAT is a relationship in which the two partners regard themselves as a couple but they are not co-residentially cohabiting. The phenomenon of 'living apart together' is difficult to measure but has become increasingly recognised in international sociological and demographic literature. However, in Great Britain there has so far been little research of this subject and no attempt, until now, to estimate its extent.     

The Oblivion of Churchman's Plea for a Systems Approach to World Problems. I. The Inseparability of Systems Thinking and World Issues in the Modern Epoch

Systemic Practice and Action Research - The presentation of a Systems Approach made by Churchman in 1968 starts from a close link between a systems approach and tackling world problems. The link is...     

Place Marketing and Management: A Complex Adaptive Systems View. The Strategic Planning of the City of Avellino,Italy

The objective of this work is to contribute to place management and marketing studies by looking at the territory, as a complex adaptive system aiming to reach a dynamic equilibrium—a steady state. According to this approach, the territorial system emerges as a result of its capacity, its social actors and governance, and the analysis, creation and maintenance of relationships—the dynamics—between the territory components, both tangible and intangible ones, and its many and varied stakeholders. These relational dynamics produce continuous and reciprocal adaptive behaviours among social actors who determine, influence, and adapt the vision of the territory. Through an interdisciplinary approach, we evaluate the recent literature on town planning and geography, aiming to bridge the gap in place management and marketing literature. We propose a framework based on systemic and complexity theory and propose a novel approach that supports decision makers in modelling the future scenario, taking choices regarding place management and place marketing.     

Applying Interactive Planning at DuPont: The Case of Transforming a Safety,Health, and Environmental Function to Deliver Business Value

Organizational transformation is a dynamic process that astounds those who attempt to create better work environments. Corporations often use transformations to downsize and/or outsource functions. Although the Safety, Health, and Environmental (SHE) function has experienced little change in the past 25 years, pressure is increasing to reduce costs and deliver business value. Often, cost reduction means downsizing and memory loss. Delivering business value means moving the SHE function into the business, with modest attention given to integrating the work. Four major findings resulted in the transformation of a SHE function in DuPont using Interactive Planning: (1) SHE professionals transformed from independent to interdependent knowledge workers, (2) SHE performance improved by almost 50%, (3) enabling factors were participation and personal commitment and disabling factors were organizational turbulence and lack of recognition, and (4) organizational learning flourished among SHE professionals and tacit SHE knowledge became explicit on the factory floor.     

Management of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment in Brazilian Public Education Institutions: Implementation Through Action Research on a University Campus

One of the problems facing public education institutions in Brazil is the question of the correct handling and treatment of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE). Being that these institutions are part of the public sector, they should adhere to Decree no. 99,658/1990 for the disposal of their goods. However, this decree is not completely in accordance with the Brazilian National Solid Waste Policy (PNRS), especially when considering the regulations for disposal of public goods. Thus, these institutions have no WEEE management model which encompasses not only the Decree but also the PNRS. An example of this situation can be found at the Federal University of Itajubá (UNIFEI) in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Due to the lack of such a management model, the university warehouse is at full capacity and unable to receive additional electronic equipment. Therefore, the objective of this study is to create a management model for WEEE to be used at public education institutions using the guidelines set forth in both the Decree and the PNRS. An action research investigation was performed at UNIFEI which relied upon two improvement and learning cycles to deal with all the WEEE found at the university. The first was undertaken at the university warehouse and the second at other sectors within the institution. In addition to the practical results obtained by properly disposing of 474 WEEE products, this study showed that action research is an adequate management tool for public institutions looking to deal with problems of this nature, being that these institutions are almost always subject to bureaucratic controls with respect to their public property, and expected to follow rigorous legislation that is often times controversial.     

系统方法与科技史:一种新的探索--《山西科技史》(上部)的方法论思考

尽管人们已经越来越多地注意到科技史的系统特征 ,但将系统方法引入和应用到科技史的研究中 ,目前在国内外都还是一项没有广泛开展起来的工作。由温泽先、郭贵春主编的《山西科技史》(上部 ) ,则从要素结构与整体功能 (山西科技史的特征与其地位 )、科技子系统在山西历史系统中的位置和作用 (主要支撑与核心动力 )以及科学与艺术———文化的两大子系统的交融 (艺术中的科学 )等方面 ,对科技史研究中系统方法的引入与应用进行了一种新的探索。     

Book Reviews: Behavior Change in the Human Services: An Introduction to Principles and Applications by Martin Sundel and Sandra S. Sundel. Exploring Personality: An Intellectual Odyssey by Russell L. Ackoff. The Ecologist: The Cosmic Covenant.

Systemic Practice and Action Research -     

人力资本动态投资均衡理论及其启示

以新古典竞争理念为基础的人力资本投资均衡理论,集中研究了人力资本动态投资过程中的自动“收敛”特征,并且提供了一种分析人力资本动态投资行为的公理化方法,本文旨在对这一理论进行一个概览。作者认为,该理论有助于解释中国目前所推行的教育政策。     

The age difference at marriage in England and Wales: a century of patterns and trends

In the last 100 years the mean age difference at marriage in England and Wales has fluctuated in the range 2-3 years, but without exhibiting any long-run trend. Nevertheless, an age gap of 2-3 years is not typical. A 1-year gap is the most common in recent years and there is a good deal of variation between couples. Marriage partners are closer in age than would be predicted if men and women were matched at random by age. There is little evidence that the age difference is governed by strong social norms. Some explanations for diversity and change in the age difference are discussed.     

The Role of Action Research (AR) in Environmental Research: Learning from a Local Organic Food and Farming Research Project

We expand on the FMA model of inquiry elucidated by Checkland and Holwell (Syst Pract Act Res 11:9, 1998) and identify three kinds of research: interactive Action Research (AR), extractive participatory research, and traditional science, that were integrated into an interdisciplinary agro-environmental research project involving researchers from eight countries around the Baltic Sea. The research project held the goal of creating scientific understanding of the ecological, economic and social effects of the sustainable development of local food systems, while also having the explicit goal of implementing change in the studied systems. Based on our experience working as action researchers in the project, we highlight the role that normative goals and facilitation process competence play in complex interdisciplinary research projects. Our reflections focus on project design, including the relation between AR and other kinds of research when employed in a single project, and includes reflections on preconditions for stakeholder participation in AR projects.