Project Overview: Systems Theory With Applications in an Organization's Consultancy Report
Throughout this course, you will be engaged in a Final Project on systems with applications. You will develop a detailed Consultancy Report for an organization of your choice. Your final report will include both systems models and relevant research on systems theory, as well as leadership and management theory. Your Final Project will help evaluate the systems thinking within your selected organization and improve the understanding and decision making within it.
Each week, you will submit your completed Final Project component to your Instructor. Then, make changes to incorporate feedback, as well as new learning and knowledge from readings and discussions with your colleagues.
The Assignment:
The executive leadership of an organization has hired your firm to work with them; largely for your firm's ability to support recommendations made with current research on systems and leadership management and theory. The client would like your firm to model and describe their organization based on recent developments in both systems and leadership management and theory.
For your Final Project, select an organization with which you are familiar. The organization can be a corporation, a small business, a nonprofit, a community organization, a government agency/subagency, a military organization, or other organization involving people, resources, and goals, such as a city, county, state, or country.
Note: The organization you choose does not need to be located in any particular country or countries.
The topics for each section of the Consultancy Report, as well as the weeks each are due, are outlined below:
Organizational Description
Systems Dynamics (Stocks, Flows, and Feedback Loops)
Systems Disciplines
Systems Archetypes
Networks
Complexity
Resilience
Summary and Conclusions
INSTRUCTIONS FOR SECTION ONE / WEEK TWO
Final Project Component: Section 1-Organizational Description
Assignment Length: 2-3 pages
The executive leadership of an organization has hired your firm to work with them; largely for your firm's ability to support recommendations made with current research on systems and leadership management and theory. The client would like your firm to model and describe their organization based on recent developments in both systems and leadership management and theory.
The notion of tipping points is related to systems as that point in which a system changes from one state to another. While there is a mathematical description for a tipping point, it is out of scope for this class. Instead, consider a tipping point as simply a break from the current state of a system to a new state. For example, if a company were to be acquired by another company, it would experience a tipping point. If a company were to radically downscale, then it would experience another tipping point. Tipping points are a common feature of systems, such as ecological systems, climate systems, insect colonies, and human social systems.
For this Final Project component, select an organization with which you are familiar. The organization can be a corporation, a nonprofit, a community organization, a government agency/subagency, a military organization, or other entity involving people, resources, and goals, such as a city, county, state, or country.
This week, you begin your Consultancy Report for the executive leadership of your selected organization. Review the Final Project Template for details about this week's Final Project component.
Please include the following in 2-3 pages:
Using the PowerPoint template, model the following for your organization (this model will be inserted as a figure into your Final Project Template or attached as a separate file, which is likely the best option as the number of slides increases):
Inputs (information, materials, and energy)
Top-level organizational process
Outputs (information, materials, and energy)
Two or more thresholds or tipping points beyond which the organization would become unrecognizable
Explain the organization in detail to interpret your model.
Explain how general systems theory and Boulding's hierarchy of systems might inform the executive leaderships' understanding of its organization's and leadership/management's thinking.
Include at least two citations/references to current literature to support your rationale to the executive leadership.
Attachment:- Template.rar