Behavioral science最新文献

Catastrophe theory provided a framework to consider the centralization or decentralization of organizational decision-making. The specific concern was the relationship of centralization to the growth or decline in organizational size. Three bodies of literature contributed to the development of hypotheses. First, catastrophe theory suggested a general framework for studying organizational processes. Second, previous theoretical and empirical evidence regarding the relationships between centralization and size suggested the applicability of a cusp catastrophe model. Third, further implications for centralization were drawn from the literature dealing with evolutionary and revolutionary changes in organizational structure. Based on these reviews, catastrophe theory hypotheses were developed concerning the relationship of changes in size to evolutionary and revolutionary changes in the centralization or decentralization of organizational decision-making.

In the early stages of the product realization process, if the functional requirements of a system to be designed can be partitioned and represented, concepts can be quickly explored to meet these functions. If methods and tools for partitioning and representing functional requirements can be developed, it becomes possible to arrange functional components rapidly to represent specific concepts, allowing designers to explore different system configurations at a high level of abstraction. Likewise, if component or component assemblies performing certain functions are known to exist, a designer can determine the feasibility of realizing the product specific functions for each feasible system configuration using available parts. It is also possible that a product may often be realized through partial use of available assets while part of the system is designed and manufactured.

Mental health treatment teams are living systems at the group level and comprise key productive subsystems of organizations providing mental health care. Effective treatment teams, like effective organizations, are anticipatory systems that contain subsystems that model and predict future system and environmental conditions and enable responses that increase system viability.

A systems analysis of treatment teams highlights their potential instability due to their tendencies to regress toward dysfunctional partial systems and their active maintenance in nonequilibrium steady states with their organizational and external environments. Team subsystems are analyzed from the viewpoints of system processes and also with regard to individuals and their roles. Boundary processes are central to effective team functioning, assure constancy of team membership, and regulate the team's interfaces with its parent agency and with the external environment. Various causes and forms of disturbed information processing within hierarchical organizations are examined, and their effects at the treatment team level are discussed. The conclusion of the discussion focuses on team leadership and how leadership expands upon the concept of the decider subsystem to include role and personal factors of the team's leaders, and functions that are anticipatory and integrative in nature. Effective leaders must set appropriate thresholds for feedback regulation processes, and balance several pairs of seemingly opposing forces, including homeostasis and development, role differentiation and role overlap, and personal accountability and empowerment of others.