Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assist an organization to restructure as a bi-modal organization in order to achieve sustainability in today's highly complex business world. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is conceptual and is based on relevant literature and the authors' research and practice. Findings: Although fluid…

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to make evident the inadequateness of concepts and language based on industrial knowledge still used in current practices by managers to cope with problems of the post-industrial societies characterised by non-linear process of emergence and acquisition of properties. The purpose is to allow management to…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to expound the view that knowledge of a special kind, which the author terms open knowledge, has a central place in the conduct of human activities at the global level. Design/methodology/approach: The author advances the concept of open knowledge in a global context by examining key constructs in the field,…

Purpose: Systems intelligence (SI) (Saarinen and Hämäläinen, 2004) is a construct defined as a person's ability to act intelligently within complex systems involving interaction and feedback. SI relates to our ability to act in systems and reason about systems to adaptively carry out productive actions within and with respect to systems such as…

Purpose: The aim of this contribution is to describe a new methodology for designing strategic plans and how it was implemented by ATM, a public transportation agency based in Milan, Italy. Design/methodology/approach: This methodology is founded on a new system theory, called "quantum systemics". It is based on models and metaphors both…

Purpose: In the stream of works studying complexity from an organizational viewpoint, literature is focused mainly on describing new organizational forms (holonic organization, circular organization, virtual corporation, ...) and on conceptual works identifying new managerial principles to manage emergence (job enrichment, de-regulation, ...). But…

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to explore core contributions from two different approaches to complexity management in organisations aiming to improve their sustainability,: the Viable Systems Model (VSM), and the Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS). It is proposed to perform this by summarising the main insights each approach offers to…

Purpose: The aim of this contribution is to describe a new complexity-science-based approach for improving safety, quality and efficiency and the way it was implemented by TenarisDalmine. Design/methodology/approach: This methodology is called "a safety-building community". It consists of a safety-behaviour social self-construction…

Purpose: Marks and Spencer's Plan A environmental strategy is an ambitious one which addresses economic, social and environmental considerations. As part of this process it recently used a sustainable learning store strategy to develop, capture and disseminate learning before, during and after construction so that learning could be transferred to…

Purpose: Organizations as complex networks aim to survive. The purpose of this paper is to provide an alternative perspective to current organizational challenges by considering team learning as key factor for surviving this turbulent environment. Design/methodology/approach: The dominating approach in this paper comes from the complexity…

Purpose: Recent advances in the interactive technologies have transformed the way today's organizations and their different stakeholders learn. Now, because of the increasing learning requirements, neither these organizations nor their stakeholders can afford to be too self-focused while learning; instead, they collaborate and learn together.…

Purpose: The paper aims to gain a better understanding of how different disciplines work together to develop new technologies. Design/methodology/approach: The study employs qualitative methods in the form of semi-structured interviews and observations. A socio-cultural approach is taken and the concept of the activity system is used to examine…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to offer an application of a system model for Senge's five disciplines in higher education (HE) institutions. Design/methodology/approach: The paper utilizes a conceptual framework for the analysis of antecedents and outcomes of Senge's five disciplines, focusing on specific factors unique to the HE sector.…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze to which point collective intelligence (CI) concepts and ideas, as applied to organizations, can contribute to enlarge the conceptual basis for business sustainability (BS). Design/methodology/approach: The paper is written from an engineer-minded, systemic and cybernetic perspective. It begins by…

Purpose: The generation of resources is a central issue for the sustainability of companies. The purpose of this paper is to deal with two research questions: "Is decentralized generation of resources a possible way to reach sustainability in modern work life?" and "What prerequisites must be formed by organizations and managers to reach…