Ezra's Round Table/Systems Engineering Seminar: Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld (Illinois) - Stakeholder Alignment in Complex Systems: First Principles for Robust 21st Century Institutions Friday, November 30, 2012 at 12:00pm Frank H. T. Rhodes Hall, 253 Abstract: Across all core societal infrastructure systems – defense, education, energy, finance, food, health, housing, information, transportation, water, and others – the inherited 20th Century institutional arrangements are incomplete for addressing the two primary functional requirements of systems-level institutions, which are “creating value” and “mitigating harm.” By not fully creating value, opportunities are lost and needed systems transformations are stalled. By not fully mitigating harm, externalities emerge and the risks of catastrophic systems failures increase. Given the accelerating rates of change in technology, markets, and society, a return to first principles for systems-level institutions is needed. Towards this end, new methods for specifying stakeholders and identifying interests at a systems level will be presented. New visualization tools and analytics that build on well-specified stakeholders and well-identified interests will be featured, with illustrative applications in community green energy, biomedicine, regional innovation, and the science of science. Preliminary evidence suggests that making systems-level stakeholder maps visible across stakeholders in a complex system can accelerate the establishment of more robust systems-level institutional arrangements. Bio: Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld is a professor and former dean in the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois. He also holds a courtesy appointment in Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at the University of Illinois. He is an award winning author whose books (co-authored) include Multinational Human Resource Management and the Law (Edward Elgar, forthcoming), the annotated edition of the Douglas McGregor’s 1960 management classic, The Human Side of Enterprise (McGraw-Hill, 2006), Valuable Disconnects in Organizational Learning Systems (Oxford University Press, 2005), Lean Enterprise Value (Palgrave, 2002), Knowledge-Driven Work (Oxford University Press, 1998), and Strategic Negotiations (Harvard Business School Press, 1994), along with over eighty-five articles on engineering systems, high performance work systems, transformation in labor-management relations, negotiations and conflict resolution, economic development, and the science of science. His current research centers on stakeholder alignment in complex systems – the foundation for 21st Century institutions. Joel was the 2009 President of the Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA). Prior to coming to the University of Illinois, he served as a Senior Research Scientist and Executive Director of the Engineering Systems Learning Center, with a joint appointment in MIT’s Sloan School of Management and MIT’s Engineering Systems Division, as well as a Visiting Associate Professor at Babson College, and an Associate Professor at Michigan State University. He has extensive experience leading large-scale systems change initiatives with public and private stakeholders in Australia, Bermuda, Canada, Denmark, England, Iceland, Jamaica, Mexico, New Zealand, Panama, Poland, Spain, South Africa, and the United States. Joel holds a Ph.D. in Industrial Relations from MIT and a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University.