Benedictine University
Ph.D. Program in Organization Development

Global OD:
The Human and Organization Dimensions of Global Change
Summer, 2000

Instructor:
James D. Ludema, Benedictine University

Distinguished Scholars:
David L. Cooperrider, Case Western Reserve University
Rami Shani, California Polytechnic State University

This doctoral seminar is designed to explore, across disciplines and national boundaries, an emergent dialogue within the social sciences which many believe signals the birth of a new, soon to proliferate, domain of concern: The Human and Organization Dimensions of Global Change. Included among its participants are interdisciplinary fields of organization and management science, policy studies, international relations, development studies, earth systems science, as well as the disciplines of sociology, economics, anthropology, political science, and psychology. The course is created out of concern for the future of humanity and the earth, and recognizes that how humanity responds today to the consequences of ecological and economic global change will reverberate well into the future and across generations. The interpenetration of ecology and economy has become a profound sociocultural force and necessitates the development of widespread growth of global consciousness and re-thinking of interhuman and human-earth relations. Moreover both globalization and the increasingly sophisticated analyses of global level problems will, undoubtedly, call for transformation in the identity of social theory including its priorities, metatheoretical commitments, methods, and agendas. This seminar affords a vehicle for exploring this new call, the opportunities raised, and the implications for the field of Organization Development (OD) and society.

To date the terms human and organization dimensions of global change have been used, implicitly and explicitly, in largely diagnostic ways. The concern: How are human beings and their cultural creations altering the earth systems in destructive ways? The professional vocabularies of understanding have been precisely pictorial, attempting to accurately represent and explain, and emphatically aligned toward dysfunction. In the professions and in the culture at large this has led to a growing vocabulary of human deficit and a contentious and debilitating problem-oriented view of global issues. A recent and comprehensive encyclopedia of world problems lists, for example, over 15,233 global concerns including:

• The propensity of the humanly created world system to create scarcity of fresh air and water, arable land, and spirit renewing wilderness; environmental deterioration, mass extinction of plant and animal species; toxic substance concentrations; and man-made climate change.

• The propensity of humanly constructed world system to create marginal people and marginal cultures; chronic poverty, maldevelopment, and hunger in large parts of the world; and debt-ridden economies whose instabilities are intensified by growing gaps between rich and poor.

The human and organization dimension inquiries and vocabularies of this seminar can, by contrast, be called constructive or appreciative. It is the affirmative thesis of the human and organization dimensions of global change that virtually every item on the global agenda for change can be addressed, given the creation of new organizational arrangements that are inspired by planetary concern and vision, commensurate with the complexities in question, and schooled in the dynamics of planned change. For while there may be "limits to growth" as far as the world’s physical systems are concerned, there are no necessary limits to cooperation as human beings seek to link with one another and the world around them to constructively respond. The good news for the next century as we enter the last days of the 20^th is that the Age of Cooperation has already begun.

The purpose of the human and organization dimensions of global change seminar is to interpret basic new trends in humanity’s cooperative capacity, to anticipate new possibilities in cooperative forms and processes, and to study the new relational practices which can contribute to a deeper understanding of the interrelation between humanity and world ecosystems, cooperative organizational forms and global society, and the most profound hopes and positive images of the future shared by all people. Recent developments in may exciting new subfields of research - studies in environmental sociology, development ethics, socially responsible business, social constructionism, global learning, and international non-profit organization studies - have opened unexpectedly promising inquiries into the human and organization dimensions of global change. All help point to a future call - for an OD of vital significance to the global agenda for change.

Friday, June 9, 2000, 6:30 - 9:30 pm -- Jim Ludema
Overview of the Course

Saturday, June 10, 9:00 am - 4:30 pm -- Dave Cooperrider
The Human and Organization Dimensions of Global Change

Sunday, June 11, 9:00 am - 4:30 pm -- Rami Shani
Global OD

Readings for the June 9-11 session

Books

• David Cooperrider and Jane Dutton, Organizational Dimensions of Global Change.
• David Cooperrider, et al, Appreciative Inquiry.
• Lester Brown, State of the World 2000.

• Grant, Shani, and Krishana, "TQM’s Challenge to Management Theory and Practice.
• Shani & Mitki, "Reengineering, TQM, STS, and Approaches to Organization Change.
• Stebbins & Shani, "Organization Design and the Knowledge Worker."
• Lilrank, Shani, Kolodny, Stymne, Figuera, and Liu, "Learning from the Success of Continuous Improvement.".
• Mitki, Shani, and Stjernberg, "A Typology of Change Programs."
• Shani and Mitki, "Creating the Learning Organization: Beyond Mechanisms."

Second Weekend, July 14-16

Friday, July 14, 6:30-9:30 pm – Jim Ludema
State of the World: Who's responsibility is it?

Saturday, July 15, 9:00 am-4:30 pm – Jim Ludema
Visions of a Better World: Images of the Organization of the Future

Sunday, July 16, 9:00 am-4:30 pm – Jim Ludema
Toward a Positive Revolution in Change

Readings for the July 14-16 session

Books

• David Korten, The Post-Corporate World.
• Willis Harman, Global Mind Change.
• Review David Cooperrider, et al, Appreciative Inquiry.
• Review Lester Brown, State of the World 2000.

Articles

• Jim Ludema et al., "Organizational Hope."
• Mike Mantel and Jim Ludema, "From Local Conversations to Global Change."

1. Group Paper/Presentation: "The 21^st Century Global Organization" (due July 14).
2. "Autobiography of an Emerging Global Citizen" (due August 11).