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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 provides a rich and thick description of a collaborative, place-based, interorganizational process in the domain of social, ecological, and economic sustainability. Governmental agencies, businesses, philanthropic organizations, NGOs, consulting firms, and private citizens tried to move from an underorganized and tacit set of ineffective relationships toward a structural collaboration in service of a “place” known as the Cuyahoga River Valley. While the process built momentum and expectations among its participants and other stakeholders, an important outcome of the collaboration did not materialize as planned. The leading actors struggled with scaling a “negotiated order” and leveraging the high levels of commitment among the participants. Despite the setback, many of the aims of the collaboration continue to be achieved, albeit at a slower pace and without a high regional priority. The chapter explores whether the trans-organization development (Cummings, 1984) perspective is a useful model for intentionally intervening in a multi-stakeholder collaboration and the roles that negotiated order (Nathan & Mitroff, 1991) and referent organizations (Trist, 1983) play.

This chapter explores the potential roles and contributions of “marginal stakeholders” in sustainability collaborations. A group of smaller and less powerful NGOs engaged in a three-year collaboration to build capacity and drive action to address the severe water situation in Beijing, China. That the NGOs were the primary driver of the collaboration provides a unique opportunity to explore and understand whether and how the less powerful constituents of a network can organize to influence such broad, complex, and challenging issues.

The case study is the result of a participant action research effort. The author served as researcher, observer, participant, and consultant during different phases of the collaboration.

Individual members and the network as a whole demonstrated increased capacity and capability, but mostly failed to drive action. By themselves, small and marginal stakeholders have limited capacity or capability to effect large-scale sustainability efforts. With coaching, development, and a shared agenda, they may emerge as a force for change, but there are significant hurdles to overcome.

The successes and failures of a steering committee formed early in the collaboration provide concrete guidelines for anyone who wants to help marginal stakeholders play change agent roles in complex networks.

Very little is known about the role of “marginal” or “fringe” stakeholders in network collaborations. This case demonstrates the potential contribution of these stakeholders but also identifies the hazards associated with their participation.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.

The chapters in this first volume of the book series “Organizing for Sustainable Effectiveness” captured a rich set of cases in which sustainable effectiveness was the central focus. Each chapter illuminated the development of a distinct sustainable system, and had a special focus on reporting theoretically informed and rigorously explored knowledge to guide purposeful design and learning approaches. Collectively the chapters highlighted the processes, organization and design, system regulation, and continuous learning approaches in complex organizational and multiorganizational systems that enabled simultaneous focus on and advancing of economic, social, and ecological outcomes. In this concluding chapter, we capture, via a comparative investigation, some of the learning from the cases about the development of new capabilities, design orientations, and learning mechanisms, and we chart directions for further research and managerial actions.

We argue that in order to address the contemporary challenges that organizations and societies are facing, the field of organization development (OD) requires frameworks and skills to focus on the eco-system as the level of analysis. In a world that has become economically, socially, and technologically highly connected, approaches that foster the optimization of specific actors in the eco-system, such as individual corporations, result in sub-optimization of the sustainability of the natural and social system because there is insufficient offset to the ego-centric purposes of the focal organization. We discuss the need for OD to broaden focus to deal with technological advances that enable new ways of organizing at the eco-system level, and to deal with the challenges to sustainable development. Case examples from healthcare and the agri-foods industry illustrate the kinds of development approaches that are required for the development of healthy eco-systems. We do not suggest fundamental changes in the identity of the field of organizational development. In fact, we demonstrate the need to dig deeply into the open systems and socio-technical roots of the field, and to translate the traditional values and approaches of OD to continue to be relevant in today’s dynamic interdependent world.

In this information era, innovation is among the most important factors for an organization to increase its performance. In this chapter, it is explored how to improve the business innovation in organizations effectively by using suitable management strategies in an emerging economy selected as Turkey. Among many strategies set and implemented for the ease of innovation, in this chapter, it is revealed that some have more direct and efficient effects. Among these strategies and practices there exist, strategic and innovative human resource management, goal setting for innovation, supporting employee creativity, empowering employees for innovation, developing effective organizational communication, leading for innovation, building an innovative organizational culture and establishing teams for innovation. These practices are derived from the selected Borsa Istanbul (BIST) Companies in Turkey. Strategies of five companies which are indexed in BIST30 and BIST Sustainability Index, and additionally, which are all candidates of innovation leader in their sector, were taken as examples reflecting the innovative atmosphere in Turkey.

The purpose of this paper is to set out the role Communities of Practice (CoPs) can play in empowering and enabling practitioners and managers to lead on improvements to the delivery of interventions to children and young people leaving custody.

This paper is based on a review of the relevant theories in the field and how these may be practically applied to the field of youth resettlement.

CoPs are a helpful way to engage, enable and, most importantly, empower, practitioners and managers, thus unlocking the wealth of knowledge and experience that exists across the workforce.

The originality of the piece is in its exploration of the theory and its application to the practice of youth resettlement and associated practices.

Through scholarly personal narrative (Nash, 2004), this chapter outlines a multifaceted approach to creating safer brave spaces for queer and trans students within a predominantly Hispanic-serving, public research university with a mainly commuter student population in South Florida. All spaces require courageous acts of authenticity on the part of its occupants. Thus, the creation of safer brave spaces is acknowledged as a practice since safety is an ideal to be worked toward especially for those with less power and privilege, such as queer and trans people as opposed to straight and cisgender people. Experiences of heterosexism and cisgenderism are positively associated with psychological distress among queer and trans college students (Goldberg, Kuvalanka, & Black, 2019; Sue, 2010; Woodford, Kulick, Sinco, & Hong, 2014). Research suggests empowerment and the acquisition of power is a positive coping mechanism for resisting and overcoming experiences of heterosexism and cisgenderism (Mizock, 2017; Nadal, Davidoff, Davis, & Wong, 2014; Todoroff, 1995). Administrators are called upon to mindfully create spaces that empower queer and trans students. Quick tips throughout the chapter highlight that queer and trans students should be given opportunities to determine their own risks, choose their own mentors, create their own spaces, have their own voices centered, realize their own solutions, fail and learn from setbacks, and deconstruct systems of power. At the University level, administrators should work to educate and change policies that further support students' opportunities to courageously exist and persist authentically in spaces across the university as a whole and not just in designated centers.