CHAPTER 8: Complexity, Learning, and Innovation
MULTIPLE CHOICE
1. For managers, one the most perplexing feature of health care organizations is that they frequently
exhibit ____ behavior.
a.
counter-intuitive
c.
variable
b.
predictable
d.
costly
2. ____ is the tendency for interventions to be delayed, diluted, or defeated by the response of the system
to the intervention itself.
a.
Regulation resistance
c.
Regulation refusal
b.
Policy resistance
d.
Policy refusal
3. ____ feedback loops counteract or oppose whatever is happening in a system.
a.
Reinforcing
c.
Task-oriented
b.
Balancing
d.
Combative
4. ____ dynamics are a set of concepts and tools developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in
the 1950s to help corporate managers improve executive decision-making about industrial processes.
a.
Structural
c.
Organizational
b.
Systems
d.
Contemporary
5. Managers can use “____,” as described by Sterman, to help them understand dynamic complexity and
gain insight into sources of policy resistance.
a.
corporate models
c.
management models
b.
corporate simulators
d.
management simulators
6. ____ learning is when problem solvers adjust their behavior and work processes in response to
changing events or trends.
a.
Adaptive
c.
Organizational
b.
Creative
d.
Generative
7. The ____ effect is the tendency to infer specific characteristics of a person or organization from our
overall impressions or feelings about that person or organization.
a.
abstraction
c.
perception
b.
illusory
d.
halo
8. Through ____, innovators learn about possible action alternatives, outcome preferences, and
contextual factors.
a.
guessing
c.
discovery
b.
actions
d.
production
9. According to Plesk and Wilson the four key conditions or parameters required for space for novel
ideas, creative solutions, and the emergence of new relationships are ____.
a.
discretion, boundaries, permission, and requirements
b.
direction, brainstorming, permission, and resources
c.
discretion, brainstorming, permission, and resources
d.
direction, boundaries, permission, and resources
10. Three common myths or misconceptions about innovation are that (1) innovation is good; (2) there is a
formula, and (3) innovation is ____.
a.
infinite
c.
linear
b.
finite
d.
circular
COMPLETION
1. Management theories reflect the “____________________” of their time.
2. ____________________ are arrangements of interacting, interdependent parts that produce emergent
behavior.
3. When organizations operate at the edge of chaos, new ideas, products, practices, and relationships can
spontaneously emerge that are neither predicted nor anticipated by participants or observers. This is
known as the phenomenon of ____________________.
4. ____________________ involves the acquisition of knowledge or skills through study, instruction, or
experience.
5. Peter Senge’s 1990 book, The Fifth Discipline, described ____________________ as places where
“people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and
expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people
are continually learning to learn together.”
6. The noun ____________________ refers to an “idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by an
individual or other unit adopting it.”
7. Through ____________________, innovators learn about action-outcome relationships; in particular,
they learn through successive experimentation which actions reliably produce desired outcomes.
8. Investors and top managers who are frequently involved throughout the process of innovation
development and often serve a variety of changing and conflicting roles are referred to as
____________________.
9. Innovation efforts within establish organizations require a constant flow of internal
“____________________” in the form of human resources, managerial support, and budgetary
allocation.
10. Healthcare organizations exhibit three characteristics of complex systems: interdependence,
nonlinearity, and ____________________.
MATCHING
Match each item with a statement below:
a.
dynamic complexity
b.
systems thinking
c.
bounded instability
d.
double-loop learning
e.
team learning
f.
combinatorial complexity
g.
shared vision
h.
personal mastery
i.
mental models
j.
single-loop learning
1. Discipline of constantly surfacing, testing, and improving our assumptions about how the world works
2. Discipline of generating a common answer to the question, “What do we want to create?”
3. Discipline of seeing wholes, perceiving the structures that underlie dynamically complex systems, and
identifying high-leverage change opportunities
4. Discipline of creating alignment such that team members think insightfully about complex problems,
synergize their knowledge and skills, and produce coordinated action
5. Arises from the number of constituent elements of a system or the number of interrelationships that
might exist among them
6. Situation where a complex system’s behavior follows an inherently unpredictable path, but it does so
within limits
7. Arises from the operation of feedback loops
8. Simple error-and-correction process whereby problem-solvers look for solutions within an
organization’s policies, plans, values, and rules
9. Discipline of individual learning, without which organizational learning cannot occur
10. Where problem-solvers attempt to close the gap between desired and actual states of affairs by
questioning and modifying the organization’s policies, plans, values, and rules
