Thow Yick Liang

Innovative sustainability and highly intelligent human organisations (iCAS): the new management and leadership perspective

Currently, humanity is confronted with several sophisticated sustainability issues that could lead to its own extinction. Ironically, the problems arise because of it own achievements and over dominance of this planet. The negative impacts of intense industrialisation, unethical contamination, over production, extravagant consumption and certain myopic immediate gains have damaged the biosphere irreversibly in numerous aspects. A critical environment transition is approaching. The current mindset, theories and practices in leadership, management and organisation dynamics appear to be ineffective. This study examines and infers sustainability (environmental/general) with respect to complex adaptive dynamics and their association with non-linear intelligence (innovation) using the complexity-intelligence strategy. The significance of nurturing smarter evolvers (beyond natural selection) and highly intelligent human organisations are investigated. The analysis demonstrates that concepts from complexity, evolution and intelligent organisation theories must be better comprehended and exploited so that humanitys presence on this planet can be prolonged with dignity.

Educational institution reform: Insights from the Complexity-Intelligence strategy

This paper attempts to draw some significant insights for educational institution reform from the paradigm of organizing around intelligence. Using the Complexity-Intelligence strategy, human organizations are visualized as intelligent beings possessing an orgmind with high collective intelligence, and other intelligence-related characteristics that are commonly found in highly intelligent biological beings including consciousness, complex adaptive dynamic, autopoiesis, self-organization, learning, adaptation and emergence. Such intelligent human organizations primarily focus on quality connection, optimizing the intrinsic intelligence sources, and nurturing a high level of collective intelligence. It is a living intelligence-centric world. In this study, four insights and their implications from the Complexity-Intelligence strategy that are applicable to education organizations, namely embracing complexity and nonlinearity, enhancing connectivity, developing individual mindfulness and orgmindfulness, and capitalizing on all sources of intense intelligence (human thinking systems) are analyzed. The result of this analysis reveals fresh and significant information and applications for all educational institutions that aspire to enhance their collective intelligence, adaptive capacity and standard of learning in a new intelligence era.

Paper dialogue: a qualitative research tool for complexity management and leadership

Given that many modern problems are complex and even wicked, and that actual variables are hidden underneath dynamics that are socially moderated and ever changing, it is difficult for any research tool to take into account all these factors. However, existing tools can be improved or augmented with a view to encourage open discussions to elicit subtle points, but must be simple and resource efficient enough to be conducted at various stages to take into account emerging dynamics. Due to the culture of the organisation, when sensitive issues need to be researched, most people display an unwillingness to speak their mind - thus, affecting management and leadership. Many elect to keep mum about their true feelings and prefer to say only the politically correct things. This paper presents the Paper Dialogue as a qualitative research tool that can help to address these issues, thus improving the quality of data collected.

Complexity studies and human organizations

Complexity studies/theory has been emerging as a critical domain that provides better explanation and understanding of numerous human associated disciplines (economics, social, environmental, political, education, military) involving human activities, organizational structures and dynamics, leadership and management, self-organization/self-transcending constructs, and emergence that cannot be easily comprehend with the Newtonian mindset. All human organizations/systems are complex adaptive systems. A new mindset and paradigmatic shift appears to be inevitable when dealing (structuring, leading, managing, strategizing) with any systems/organizations comprising human interacting agents. The complexity and nonlinearity of human thinking systems (intelligence, consciousness, knowledge intensity) coupled with the rapid changing external environment introduce rising complexity into all human organizations. This special issue on Complexity Studies and Human Organizations encompasses a fairly wide spread of research areas and researchers. It began with a brief recapture on the historical development of complexity studies by me. I also introduced the sub-domain of relativistic complexity in human organizations, and conceptualized the edge of emergence. My paper also provided an analysis of the new intelligence leadership strategy and relativistic complexity in human organizations. In the next article, Bill (US/France), Meng (China), Haoyue (China), and Richard (Australia) introduced and analyzed the NKF model (a modification of Kauffman’s NK model) covering groupthink, strongtie and weak-tie in human organizations with respect to epistasis, the fitness landscape, and complexity catastrophe. Their findings include biological epistasis equates with strong-tie connection; and all results of NK modeling show movement towards complexity catastrophe as the value of K increases. The third paper by David (Singapore) examined leadership learning through the lens of complexity theory and Popper’s three worlds. The study involved more than 300 participants in a development program (Leaders in Education Program) for potential school principals at the National Institute of Education in Singapore. The fourth paper by Desmond (US) proposed a theoretical model for entrepreneurs that operate in a context of ambiguity under uncertain settings characterized by complexity. The analysis covered several perspectives including complexity as a source of ambiguity, ambiguity aversion and overconfidence, entrepreneurial overconfidence as a response to ambiguity aversion, and complexity and ‘illusion of control’ bias. The study observed that overconfidence is a response to ambiguity aversion, and the latter reflects rewards to an entrepreneur’s judgments for seeing opportunities through a fog of ambiguity. Finally, the last paper by Michelle (Australia), Abel (Australia) and Harry (Australia) examined the complexity posed by contemporary changes, competition, globalization, and technology, and the way their developments have impacted the professional Australian Rugby Union organization. The overall findings indicate the significance of the four characteristics in the organization studied. For leaders and managers in any human organizations/communities/groups to venture into complexity a new complexity mindset and understanding is essential. Currently, most of them do not possess a clear/holistic feel of how complexity theory or concepts/knowledge on complex adaptive systems can be explored and exploited. The recognition of the co-existence of