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The colors of change is an overview of change paradigms, created about two decades ago, that has been intensively used, tested, refined, shared, and elaborated by practitioners and academics alike. Here, the “color theory” is presented as it is now, and is situated within the literature. Its four main applications are described as well as rules of thumb that have been derived from reflective practice. This chapter illustrates that the color theory is clearly not one thing to all people, as it is understood in very different ways, both in terms of its theoretical foundations as well as the complexity of its applications. This probably adds to the versatility of the theory. Bringing together key insights about the color theory for academics and practitioners, this chapter strives both to give a concise overview and to explore its richness.

The purpose of this chapter was to describe the development of an early childhood learning network and to understand that development through the lens of complexity theory and trans-organization development. It explores the unfolding dynamics and emerging meaning that became central to facilitating the design, development, and implementation of the complex multi-stakeholder network.

The chapter identifies 12 implications from complexity theory for practitioners of trans-organization development, and then applies those implications to the process and understanding of development stages of an NP’s early childhood education network.

The use of complexity theory as a framework allowed for identifying five key observations and conclusions, in particular the significant role that meaning-making dialogue holds as a driver of common understanding and engagement among stakeholders. Additionally, the use of building responsive processes, understanding contextual shift, impact of power as an attractor pattern, and capacity of flexibility and adaptability all become essential elements of complex network leadership.

The findings of this chapter will help trans-organization development practitioners and leaders alike. Both the implications and lessons learned will assist in building the capacity of leaders and practitioners as a means of improving effectiveness in dealing with emerging dynamics and leading in unknown contexts and complex contexts environments.

This chapter seeks to elaborate on the concept of complexity theory when applied to destination management, using Mount Rigi (an important recreational and tourism destination in Lucerne, Switzerland) as the focus of the case study. This study supports an alternative view of complexity theory which can help to explain the dynamic, nonlinear, and nondeterministic relationships within the tourism system. It also supports the theory’s applicability toward explaining the nature of tourism as a complex adaptive system, and reveals that Mount Rigi’s development did not occur in isolation, but involved various interdependent tourism components and external factors at both the macro and micro levels.

The purpose of this case study was to increase the knowledge base of how research librarians experience and cope with the turbulence of change within their library system. A library belonging to the Association of Research Libraries was selected for case study investigation. Seventeen librarians participated in on-site interviews, utilizing a protocol composed of a clustering technique and semi-structured interviewing. Instrumental case studies of each individual were then developed through a collective case method. The findings presented in this chapter include: the competing tensions between the physical and virtual environments, the speed of change, the search for professional meaning, and coping with the experiences of professional change. Analysis of the findings suggest: the emergence of a hypercritical state, the limiting nature of negative feedback, a complex systems framework for professional thinking, and coping in the hypercritical organization.

“The unexamined life is not worth living,” said Socrates. That is, without critically inquiring into the knowledge of life, which is well-being and valuable, life is not worth living. Critical thinking questions existing theories and their unexamined and obsessive assumptions and generalizations, constraints, and the so-called “best” practices of the prevailing system of management and tries to replace them with more valid assumptions and generalizations that uphold the dignity, uniqueness, and inalienable rights of every individual and the community. In our diverse and pluralistic cultural environment, the promise of a truly generative dialogue among occidental (western) and oriental (eastern) cultures and civilizations holds great hope for the future. Critical thinking can facilitate this dialogue such that all of us have a meaningful place in this universe. In this chapter, we explore introductory working definitions of critical thinking so that we can early enough understand its demanding domains, moral calls, and ramifications in its current critical applications. Specifically, in Part I, we examine the structured layers of our thinking and reasoning to dismantle them progressively, and in Part II, in support of our claims, we explore complexity and chaos theories as a new resource for critical thinking.

Complexity theorists propose that organizations are made up of complex responsive processes in which people create and recreate organizational forms through dynamic micro-level interactions. Social constructionists add that conversations are the means by which these interactions occur. Our analysis illustrates how the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) engaged a wide range of stakeholders in a successful dialogue process to recreate a new system for monitoring nuclear reactors. The success was due, in large part, to the conversational qualities tacitly and explicitly agreed to by those involved in the process which included a spirit of freedom, inclusion, inquiry, spontaneity, and possibility. Using a grounded theory building process, we show how these qualities produced transformative change by increasing levels of interconnectivity, shared identity, and collective capacity among participants. These findings provide the beginnings of a model for understanding continuous and transformative change and demonstrate the value of engaging the “whole system” in sustained dialogue, even in complex, highly regulated environments.

Higher Education institutions are complex but optimal organizations for innovation and creativity to grow and flourish. To achieve this, teaching staff should stimulate students’ active engagement in their own learning processes leading to transformative student learning. This chapter focuses on an innovative pedagogical approach, which has been consistently implemented for the last three academic years in the 3rd year module “Sport, Leisure and Tourism” within Sports undergraduate degree at the University of Algarve (Portugal). The case study method and reflective portfolio were used to create an authentic, enriching, and transformative learning experience for all students. These teaching, learning, and assessment methods are, within the context of the module, underpinned by experiential learning theory. Meta-reflections of 92 students’ portfolios showed their views about the entire process and their perception of skills they gained: (i) scientific and academic; (ii) professional; and (iii) intrapersonal and interpersonal. The innovative pedagogy presented in this chapter aimed to impact on students’ ability to understand and navigate through complexity – both in a teaching and learning environment and in a real organization.