Search results

This study examines the impact of outdoor environments in public rental housing complexes on residents’ psychological restoration, taking into account the interconnectedness of physical and psychological factors in human health. Drawing on Kaplan and Kaplan’s Attention Restoration Theory and Ulrich’s Supportive Design Theory, the research investigates the factors influencing residents’ psychological restoration within these outdoor spaces.

The Perceived Restorativeness Scale (PRS), which is based on the Attention Restoration Theory and the Zuckerman Inventory of Personal Reactions (ZIPERS) are used to assess residents’ restorative experiences. Field research was conducted to collect data on the outdoor environments, and surveys were administered to the residents. The study analyzes the data using SPSS, including both factor and correlation analyses, to explore the relationship between the restorative effect and emotional factors.

The study verified a significant influence of positive emotions in ZIPERS on PRS’ overall restorative effect, thus supporting the utilization of both PRS and ZIPERS factors together to assess comprehensively the impact of outdoor environments on residents’ psychological restoration.

By employing a multidimensional approach involving residents’ experiences and emotions, this study quantified emotional and psychological data, which were hard to quantify. These results provide a basis for developing more objective restoration environment design guidelines and programs in the future.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a conceptual foundation and empirical basis for exploring issues related to the design framework for modeling coordination in complex and dynamic enqvironments.

Previous research suggests that interactions among actors in a complex and dynamic environment tend to be more elastic, offering a higher degree of adaptability. Actions of actors in such an environment need to be coordinated to achieve the desired goal. With that purpose, the authors suggest a social network‐based (SN‐based) framework to model coordination in complex and dynamic environments.

The authors successfully applied the proposed SN‐based framework to model coordination in the context of soft‐target organization and emergency response preparedness.

It is apparent that much work has been done in existing studies on modeling coordination considering the specific domain situation in a complex and dynamic environment. In this paper, the authors propose a unique framework to model coordination in a complex and dynamic environment.

The paper considers model‐based management and, based on it, proposes a heuristic‐based management. This paper aims to assert that heuristic‐based management, for complex systems, a process of free variation, of pairs of models and actions – called organisational strategies, maximizes the chances of improving the system's performance in open environments.

A conception of complex systems are introduced and characterized as open and self‐organising systems. Then, the proposal to heuristically use pairs of models and actions, called organisational strategies, to manage social systems based on evolutionary thought is supported. Subsequently, a computational experiment is proposed to show that, even in a simple framework, variation processes are required.

The paper shows that two processes may be required to preserve self‐organising systems. This finding indicates that variation and selection processes, related to evolutionary thought, are necessary for managers to deal with complex systems interacting with complex environments. Finally, it is shown that, even in simple computational environments, variation may be required.

The paper is the first part of an ongoing research agenda on the subject of heuristic‐based management and only refers to variation processes.

The paper links complex systems theories to evolutionary thought. It also relates principles of cybernetics to those of game theory. The proposal has been formalized based on these relations, and has been called heuristic‐based management. Principles first developed in information theory, organisational cybernetics, and evolutionary thought are used so that a complex system can be effective when interacting with a complex environment.

This paper sets out to report on research by the authors into the development and application of four extensions to Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety (LoRV) that increase its utility in the arena of unplanned changes in hegemonic control of designed complex socio‐technical systems/digital eco‐systems in the built environment that are structurally dynamic or emergent.

Research on which the paper is based focused on exploration of classical systems approaches to the design of complex socio‐technical systems in which ownership, power, control and management of structure and benefit generation and distribution are distributed, dynamic and multi‐constituent. Support for development of these four extensions to Ashby's Law comes from observation of four decades of socio‐technical systems development along with critical thinking that combined systems analysis theories with theories and findings from fields of hegemonic analysis, design research, management, management information systems, behaviour in organisations and sociology.

The paper outlines application of four new extensions to LoRV in relation to unplanned changes in distributions of power, ownership, control, benefit generation and benefit distribution in complex socio‐technical systems/digital eco‐systems in the built environment that are emergent or have changing structures. Three of these extensions have been outlined earlier in relation to the design of learning object‐based e‐learning systems. The fourth extension builds on these via application of Coasian analysis. The paper also describes a suite of five guidelines to assist with the design of complex socio‐technical systems derived from the four extensions to Ashby.

The four extensions of Ashby's Law that underpin the design guidelines in this paper are deduced from observation and critical analysis rather than being “proven” empirically. They are derived from observation of the behaviour of real‐world complex systems together with critical analytical thinking that integrated theory and research findings from a range of disciplines where each informs understanding of hegemonic aspects of emergent complex socio‐technical systems involving multiple, changing constituencies, and evolving system structures.

A design method is derived comprising five design guidelines for use in pre‐design and design of complex socio‐technical systems/digital eco‐systems in the built environment.

The paper describes the application of four new extensions to LoRV that extend the analytical role of Ashby's Law in diagnosis of changes in power relations and unintended design outcomes from changes in the generation and control of variety in complex, multi‐layered and hierarchical socio‐technical systems that have multiple stakeholders and constituencies. From these, a suite of five new design guidelines is proposed.

This paper seeks to investigate the influence of the external environment on the choice of strategic management activities, from a chaos and complexity perspective, since a business environment is a complex adaptive system.

The study in this paper was of an exploratory nature, using the qualitative techniques of case study, depth interviews and document analysis to collect data from two companies each in the IT and packaging industries, namely, more successful/less successful companies.

The paper finds that first, it was proposed that more successful companies in turbulent environments would use radical, fast and disruptive strategies. Furthermore, strategy making should be a democratic, bottom‐up process and should be organic, self‐organising, adaptive and emergent. The results confirmed these propositions. Second, it was proposed that more successful companies in stable environments would use more traditional management and strategies and more formal strategy planning activities. The findings did not confirm this proposition, probably due to the fact that in reality a truly stable environment does not exist in South Africa.

This paper is of benefit to managers and strategists by emphasising a new way to consider the future management and strategies of their companies. Since businesses and markets are complex adaptive systems, using complexity theory to increase understanding of how to cope in complex and turbulent environments is necessary, but has not been widely researched.

A systems theoretical reconceptualisation of certain parts of alienation theory is considered. Two opposed forms of alienation are distinguished, interpersonal alienation and societal alienation. Political alienation is described as a subform of societal alienation which does not necessarily correlate with the different forms of interpersonal alienation, as is often assumed. Alienation is viewed as a generic term for information processing problems of individuals.

This paper proposes an integrated value stream mapping (VSM) for a complex assembly line to improve the leanness of a complex automotive component manufacturing organization.

This study depicts the application of VSM at the case organization, where top management is concerned about the challenges of higher cycle time and lower productivity. Gemba walks were conducted to establish the concept of “walk the flow, create the flow” along the assembly line. The multi-hierarchical cross-functional team developed the current value stream map to know the “as-is” state. Then, the team analysed the current VSM and proposed the future VSM for the “to-be” state.

The integrated VSM shows different processes and work cells, various wastes, non-value-added activities, cycle time, uptime and the material and information flows for both products of the assembly line on the same map. The integrated VSM reduced cycle time, non-value-added activities, work in process inventory and improved line efficiency and production per labour hour for both the products, simultaneously.

The limitation of the study is that the study focussed only on the application of VSM for one complex assembly only. Future research may be conducted using the developed integrated VSM approach in other complex production environments.

Managers can identify and reduce system waste by incorporating the concept of integrated VSM in a complex production or assembly environment where two or more products are being manufactured/assembled with low similarity.

The application of VSM for assembly lines is highly challenging because of merging flows, a large number of child parts in the lines and assembly of more than one product on the same line.

Public organizations often need to implement organizational change. Several authors have argued that the specific characteristics of public organizations make the implementation of organizational change in public organizations distinct or even more difficult. However, this issue has received little empirical investigation in both public management and change management research. Public organizations typically operate in an environment characterized by checks and balances, shared power, divergent interests and the political primate. The purpose of this paper is to advance knowledge about how the implementation of change and its leadership is affected by the complex environment in which public organizations operate.

A case study approach is adopted. A merger of three government departments in a Dutch city is selected as a case. This merger took place in an environment that became increasingly complex as the implementation process advanced. The main method of data collection was interviewing the managers that were involved in the organizational change. In all, 23 interviews were conducted and fully transcribed. The interviews were then coded using Atlas.ti software.

The analysis indicates that a high degree of environmental complexity forces public organizations to adopt a planned, top-down approach to change, while the effectiveness of such an approach to change is simultaneously limited by a complex environment. In addition, typical change leadership activities, such as defining the need for change, role modeling and motivating employees to implement the change, are not sufficient to implement change in a complex environment. In order to overcome environmental dependencies and maintain momentum in the change process, public managers must engage in more externally oriented leadership activities.

The paper provides empirical evidence about the relevant and rapidly growing research topic of organizational change in public organizations. The paper concludes with hypotheses that can be tested in follow-up research, and as such provides a starting point for future research concerning change management in public organizations.

Alienation will be viewed as a generic term for different kinds of information‐processing problems in human individuals, viewed as autopoietic, variable‐boundary systems. Applying general systems theory (GST), especially second‐order cybernetics, to alienation theory not only results in a reconceptualisation and increased mutual comparability of existing (e.g. Marxist and psychoanalytic) theories of alienation, but also presents a rationale for subsuming several typical, modern, “information‐overload” problems in Western societies under the rubric of alienation theory. Such problems include those of selection and scanning, assimilation, flexibility, overchoice, and self‐realisation or self‐actualisation — problems which typically occur in complex and fast‐changing environments.

The adoption of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) has some peculiarities that may depend on the combined effect of size and the competitive environment. The purpose of this paper is to use a contingency approach to explore how SMEs develop organizational capabilities through ICT investments in response to environmental conditions.

A survey on 284 SMEs in Italy was conducted and data were analyzed with regression models for testing seven hypotheses on the environmental influence on the development of ICT-based capabilities and the role played by firm size.

The results show that the environment influences the development of such capabilities in a different way, depending on size. Within munificent environments, ICT-based capabilities are more diffused among larger SMEs, whereas under environmental complexity, this pattern is inverted, with larger SMEs exhibiting a more limited deployment of ICT in support of both their internally and externally oriented processes. Under environmental dynamism medium-sized firms tend to develop more internally oriented ICT capabilities, but fail in reporting superior capabilities for managing external relationships.

This paper contributes to understand the relationship between the environment and ICT investments in SMEs. Since the combined effect of size and the competitive environment may influence considerably the ICT investments in SMEs, this study investigates the organizational responses with respect to how SMEs use ICT to address their external environment. This focus provides a contribution to understand the challenges that SMEs are facing in the current technological and market environment, where changes in the ICT paradigm raise the level of complexity and dynamism and bring changes in competition levels that leave few resources for growth to SMEs.