Acknowledgements

We thank each of the authors of these chapters for their contributions. Academics and practitioners have taken on the important, time-consuming, and difficult task of collaborating to rigorously describe, interpret, and learn from complex change initiatives in which healthcare systems are reconfiguring the ecosystem. We also want to thank Lorelei Oriel Palacpac and the staff at the Center for Effective Organizations for their logistics and manuscript preparation support. Coordinating permissions, getting figures to make sense in black and white, revising manuscripts, orchestrating communications in many different time zones, and doing so with grace under pressure made our task easier.

We would like to acknowledge the support we have received from the many organizations and systems who allowed their cases to be developed and shared. Practice is the essence of our concern, as it is in practice that solutions to the challenges of sustainable effectiveness will emerge. We also acknowledge the support we have received from our own institutions: the Center for Effective Organizations and more broadly the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, the Orfalea College of Business at California Polytechnic State University, and the School of Management at the Politecnico di Milano. Special thanks to the Politecnico for hosting our May, 2012 conference in Como, Italy, and to Arienne McCracken for program managing that conference. We would also like to acknowledge the contributions of our colleagues Svante Lifvergren, M.D., and Andreas Hellström from the Centre for Healthcare Improvement at Chalmers University of Technology, Chris Worley from USC, and Emanuele Lettieri and Raffaella Cagliano from Politecnico di Milano, all of whom are part of our planning team for this series of conferences and book volumes.

Our network reflects our close collaboration at a very personal level and among our institutions–and our mutual passion to contribute to mankind’s quest to create sustainable societies. Through the ongoing dialogue among varied communities of practice, we link many theories, values, and aspirations for the future and aspire to integrate knowledge of theory and practice to address fundamental issues and emerging sustainability challenges. We are grateful to Emerald Group Publishing for providing the opportunity to build a series in which we not only can share learning but more importantly create knowledge to guide practice and theoretical development.

Susan Albers Mohrman

Los Angeles, CA

Abraham B. (Rami) Shani

San Luis Obispo, CA