Joint FREE event from the Centre for Systems Studies, Hull in partnership with the Systems Thinking Special Intererst Group at the The OR Society

LinkedIn post from Matt Lloyd:

Join us for a Special Interest Group: Change in organisations is inevitable, especially in challenging economic and technological times. Enabling the entire workforce to engage in change initiatives not only facilitates buy in, but also ensures that their specific knowledge and insights create and embed organisational transformation which will enhance long term viability.

Dr Ann Mulhaney – Associate Professor for Change Management at the Centre for Sustainable Innovation, University of Salford will be presenting/speaking on this informative subject.

Change in organisations is inevitable, especially in challenging economic and technological times. Enabling the entire workforce to engage in change initiatives not only facilitates buy in, but also ensures that their specific knowledge and insights create and embed organisational transformation which will enhance long term viability.

There is a plethora of change management literature, with numerous models and theories of change, but few explain how to create and embed the conditions for change that enable stakeholder engagement, coordination of initiatives and sustainability of both the change and the management of change within organisations. Managerial cybernetics is the science of effective organisation, but little work had been undertaken to utilise managerial cybernetics in the design of change intervention which both engages those affected and embraces creativity techniques as part of the change framework.

Using action research, this presentation describes a framework for cybernetic participatory intervention that engages stakeholders both in the evolving design and the implementation of change. The framework was developed, refined and applied in a series of situations with increasing levels of complexity involving multiple change initiatives, multi companies and cross industry programmes. The framework embeds creativity tools to both engage stakeholders and enhance understanding of the situational context, allowing for new and enhanced opportunities for change to emerge.

When

26/09/2025 12:30 – 14:00
GMT Daylight Time

Where

Centre for Systems Studies University of Hull Cottingham Road Hybrid HU6 7RX

Systems Thinking – Creating the conditions for change: a participatory cybernetic framework

Systems Thinking – Creating the conditions for change: a participatory cybernetic framework | ORS