Couch & Associates Pty Ltd

Management Consultants and Contractors

Feedback & Views

• 1996 comments  (Click to see items and comments)
  • 06 Feb 06 - Recommencing the web site (click to see)
    • After nearly three years absence (mostly spent on work relating to  Central and Southern Asia) thinking has re-commenced about development of the site.
      
      To start the process, the Management and Systems Blog is being established to articulate and develop thinking in three broad areas of interest. They are (a) Management, (b) Complex Adaptive Systems and (c) Current Affairs that have particular relevance to (a) and (b). 
      
• Early comments received (Click to see items and comments)
  • The Website
    • 16 Dec 02 - Kathy (click to see)
      • I've briefly visited the capl site again, and the values section is a most welcome addition. It succeeds in indicating the complexity of the question of values, and it's admirably succint.
        
        I'm happy for my comments to be displayed at your discretion, indeed it's flattering. I hope it will entice other visitors to the capl site to chime in with their views. The site seems to be proceeding towards becoming a weblog or 'blog'. Many academics these days are networking with one another via blogs. I haven't properly explored this mode of interacting -- the last thing I need right at this moment, is another learning curve! 
        
    • 4 Dec 02 - Kathy (click to see)
      • The capl website delivers on its objectives; it's a pleasure to visit and highly informative, also pleasantly free of hype. We could have a long discussion about
        complex adaptive systems. 
      • In listing the range of organisational levels spanned, why is no mention made of the political level? 
        [Admin: this has now been added - thank-you]
      • Systems theory seems somehow to be an art-free zone, as well as a politics-free zone. Is that compartmentalisation beneficial in the long haul? -- I doubt that it is. 
        {Often art is political, which is where it connects with political theory/philosophy (this applies to literature, drama, dance, architecture, music and cinema of course, as well as visual art).}
        [Admin: We have now referred to "appreciation of and participation in beauty, creativity, and art" in the list of "Inner Resources" in the "Our Values" page. While this addresses the matter of art, it is not an adequate response to your comment; our  thoughts are very preliminary here] 
        
  • 16 Dec 02 - Kathy - CAPL Values - Resource use efficiency (click to see)
    • As an aside, on the matter of 'efficient use of resources' (an aspect of 'social health'), I find myself thinking about social systems where surplus or excess is 'wasted' in lavish displays which promote social cohesion. One such system is known as potlatch -- it's a North American Indian system. I suppose ancient Rome's bread and circuses, and their present-day counterparts (eg fireworks displays, Olympic Games), provide other examples. There is a scholarly literature, in sociology, on such systems. 
      
      In a somewhat similar vein, how does one judge efficiency when a wealthy person has a holiday compound in the tropics, say, with the property being maintained in good order, and being used only for a week or so, every second year? Here we have an asset that some people would regard as grossly 'underutilised' ... while others regard the apparent waste as justified in the overall scheme of things. (We have a social system in which people acquire the right to 'waste' all manner of things as a reward for their own or their benefactors' valuable contributions to society.) 
      
      That was an awfully long aside, sorry. The point is that (other) values enter into our manner of using the term 'efficient'. It's just another layer of complexity, and it underlines the desirability of a comprehensive statement of values, such as those proposed. 
      

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