Sandra's discussion of the LO is fine as far as it goes. Like many such
discussions, it is wrapped in a cultural cocoon of the web spun by Senge's
books and those who read only business school, engineering school, or
educational literature regarding it.
I won't belabor this point, but here are some verifiable facts:
Ford Motor Company has run over 30 INTERACTIVE MANAGEMENT workshops in the
past 4 years, on practically every subject of major long-term significance
to this company. Over 400 company employees and managers have taken part
in this learning experiences. One manager said that this work has "saved
the company".
None of the participants has been fired.
You won't find this written up in Fortune, where Peter Senge was given a
nice tribute, a photo, and a statement about getting $40,000 for one day
of consulting.
You can find it written up in the following paper:
Scott M. Staley, "Complexity Measurements of Systems Design", Proceedings
of the First World Conference on Integrated Design and Process Technology,
1995, 153-161.
Table 2 gives an overview of 12 projects, and measures of their
complexity.
If you want a copy of this paper, send me an email at my address below,
along with your snail mail address. I will forward the requests to Dr.
Staley.
-- John N. Warfield Johnwfield@aol.com