From Social Simulation to Integrative System Design

As the recent financial crisis showed, today there is a strong need to gain "ecological perspective" of all relevant interactions in socio-economic-techno-environmental systems. For this, we suggested to set-up a network of Centers for integrative systems design, which shall be able to run all potentially relevant scenarios, identify causality chains, explore feedback and cascading effects for a number of model variants, and determine the reliability of their implications (given the validity of the underlying models). They will be able to detect possible negative side effect of policy decisions, before they occur. The Centers belonging to this network of Integrative Systems Design Centers would be focused on a particular field, but they would be part of an attempt to eventually cover all relevant areas of society and economy and integrate them within a "Living Earth Simulator". The results of all research activities of such Centers would be turned into informative input for political Decision Arenas. For example, Crisis Observatories (for financial instabilities, shortages of resources, environmental change, conflict, spreading of diseases, etc.) would be connected with such Decision Arenas for the purpose of visualization, in order to make complex interdependencies understandable to scientists, decision-makers, and the general public.Comment: 34 pages, Visioneer White Paper, see http://www.visioneer.ethz.c

Implementing e-Services in Lagos State, Nigeria: the interplay of Cultural Perceptions and Working Practices during an automation initiative : Nigeria e-government culture and working practices

Accepted for publication in a forthcoming issue of Government Information Quarterly.The public sector’s adoption of Information and Communication Technologies is often seen as a way of increasing efficiency. However, developing public e-Services involves a series of organisational and social complexities. In this paper, we examine the organisational issues of implementing an ERP system, which was designed and developed within the context of Lagos State’s e-Services project. By doing so, we showcase the impact of organisational cultural perceptions and working practices of individuals. Our findings illustrate the strong role of cultural dimensions, particularly those pertaining to religion and multi-ethnicity. Our study provides insights to international organisations and governments alike toward project policy formulation within the context of ICT-based initiatives and reforms that aim to bring forward developmental progress.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Climate change policy, conflict and transformative governance

Climate change is the behemoth of our age. It defies description, is too large to comprehend, and what we do understand about it is often terrifying. This is for many, a good reason to stop thinking about it or, like Scarlett O’Hara, decide to “think about it tomorrow”. Thinking about the role of conflict in climate change policy is an even more challenging exercise, but one that this paper tries to address. Briefly I propose that climate change governance could productively utilise conflict as a transformative agent for decision making, rather than try and avoid it, or ‘solve it’ by embedding conflict resolution mechanisms within those governance frameworks.There are many points at which governance and climate change intersect, there are multiple entry and exit points, and policies need embedding from local to international levels to work. At the heart of the problem however is conflict: between states and territories, between cultures, between the ideas of rights and responsibility and between the environment and economics. But as with Scarlett O’Hara, our society is fundamentally incapable of dealing with conflict. We seek answers based on win-win solutions, and ways of engaging with each other that are diplomatic, and politically correct.Conflict as such, is feared as the blunt stone that will bludgeon and ruin negotiations and damage already fragile egos, societies and potential environmental outcomes. When societies cannot or will not change, or when the changes required necessitate unacceptable cultural compromise, disjuncture between them can develop into forums of conflict. Conflicts arising are partly explained by the fact that worldviews, perceptions of the problem, and ideas about solutions differ.I argue for the transformative potential of conflict to facilitate adaptive governance and policy around climate change and climate change adaptation.Key Points:Climate change governance could productively utilise conflict as a transformative agent for decision making, rather than try and avoid it, or ‘solve it’ by embedding conflict resolution mechanisms within governance frameworks.Climate governance frameworks should enable the conflict to become the conflict resolution process itself. This means identifying likely conflicts up front and then using them as the basis on which decisions about the most appropriate policies and planning are made, ensuring that such decisions are cognisant of and provide forums for effective ways around conflict in implementation.This process might take longer to negotiate, but will mean less likelihood of climate related policies stalling in implementation due to intractable conflict.One way of operationalising this model is to employ a three-dimensional local adaptive conflict governance framework comprising: (i) adaptive management (which includes anticipatory adaptation/foresight), (ii) communications, and (iii) reflexive practice

Contract Formation through Preemptive Normative Conflict Resolution

Publisher PD

Civil Society Legitimacy and Accountability: Issues and Challenges

University education rarely focuses its attention and imagination on teaching students how to turn a vision into reality; how to design, develop, and lead social change organizations. The author co-created the Social Entrepreneurship Collaboratory (SE Lab) at Stanford University and then Harvard University as a model educational program designed to achieve this goal. The SE Lab is a Silicon Valley influenced incubator where student teams create and develop innovative pilot projects for US and international social sector initiatives. The lab combines academic theory, frameworks, and traditional research with intensive field work, action research, peer support and learning, and participation of domain experts and social entrepreneurship practitioners. It also provides students an opportunity to collaborate on teams to develop business plans for their initiatives and to compete for awards and recognition in the marketplace of ideas. Students in the SE Lab have created innovative organizations serving many different social causes, including fighting AIDS in Africa, promoting literacy in Mexico, combating the conditions for terrorism using micro-finance in the Palestinian territories, and confronting gender inequality using social venture capital to empower women in Afghanistan

Managing in conflict: How actors distribute conflict in an industrial network

IMP researchers have examined conflict as a threat to established business relationships and commercial exchanges, drawing on theories and concepts developed in organization studies. We examine cases of conflict in relationships from the oil and gas industry's service sector, focusing on conflicts of interest and resources, and conflict as experienced by actors. Through a comparative case study design, we propose an explanation of how actors manage conflict and manage in conflict given that they tend to value and maintain relationships beyond episodes of exchange. We consider conflicts in relationships from a network perspective, showing that actors experienced these while adapting to changes in their business setting, modifying their roles in that network. By identifying conflict with the organizing forms of relationship and network, we show how actors formulate conflict through pursuing and combining a number of strategies, distributing the conflict across an enlarged network