Friday, December 28, 2012

Complexity theory perspective - Part 2


A complexity theory perspective can be beneficial in studying the packet of strategies and activities for sustainable development of LTH as well. Such a perspective can enable us to:

·  Design different strategies and activities for development of education, research, employees, and infrastructure at the faculty.  

·  Analyze and learn from the dynamic economic, social, and [natural] environmental changes influenced by/influencing the strategies and activities. The changes can be considered from local and regional to national, continental, and global levels.

·  Acknowledge enough diversity of strategies and activities. Diversity can be traced in our education (first, second, and third cycles; commissionary; philanthropic), research (projects, competencies, excellence centers, scholarships), and employees (gender equality irrespective of racial or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, personal believes, disability, and age).
In addition, diversity can be considered in our communication and collaboration. It is important to communicate our strategies and activities through different channels like scientific journals, books, conferences, seminars, workshops, fairs and exhibitions, meetings, and media. We should also develop our capacity to collaborate with different stakeholders from academia, research and education organizations, industries, businesses, consultants, authorities, and so on.

·  Analyze the antagonistic effects of strategies and activities on each other as well as conflicts of a paradoxical character. Some examples of conflicts of a paradoxical character (i.e. existing at the same time) are: coopetition or horizontal collaboration (cooperation and competition at the same time), investment during recession, freedom/creativity and control/setting rules and restrictions, developing core competency and being multi- as well as inter disciplinary/holistic, centralization and decentralization of decision-making, internationalization and preserving the cultural heritage like the Swedish language.

·  Acknowledge enough freedom and decentralization of power at different departments as well as interactions among them. Although common values and strategies can be defined for whole of the faculty, each department should have enough freedom and power to design/re-design the most fitted strategies.

· Acknowledge the latest scientific methods of management of changes in complex systems. Such methods propose that for example: changes can be both bottom-up and top-down, the effects of changes may be nonlinear, the values emerge by interactions among the agents without direct control, everything cannot be completely regulatory (we cannot set a rule for every activity), reality is anti-positivistic (do not expect that all agents behave rationally, deterministically, and stably in a same way), reality is subjective (do not prejudge; wait until a pattern of behavior be identified).
A complex system functions better when it is non-hierarchical/flat (minimum bureaucratic processes, informal and trustful relations among the motivated agents, decentralized power of decision making) and avoids reductionism (taking responsibility for development of all its agents, solving the problems and tackling the challenges instead of erasing/ignoring/simplifying them).