The theme of this title is the development of the quantum organization and how information technology impacts on the organization. A revolutionary change model forms the structure for the discussion.
Today's executives and managers face an unprecedented challenge. They must find innovative ways to meet the demands of the complex and interrelated problems posed by new technology, globalization, rapid change, and intensifying competition. Empowerment, work engagement, training and development, organizational learning, and other change initiatives have attempted to offer practical solutions to this challenge. But what has been lacking is a completely integrated approach for leading, managing, and organizing for the new millennium. QUANTUM ORGANIZATIONS presents a new paradigm that can help today's executives see, think, and act in new ways that enhance organizational success and personal meaning. Management expert and top-selling author Ralph Kilmann brings together more than three decades of research and consulting experience in this groundbreaking book to provide a practical guide to achieving the essential transformational changes the new realities require. Making use of 107 full-color illustrations, he uses both art and science to illuminate the new paradigm for accelerating self-awareness and self-transformation.Writing with a masterful command of the sweep of human evolution and the awesome discoveries of the new sciences, Kilmann shows why the old concepts that served the industrial age must give way to altogether new categories--a new paradigm for the age of global interdependence and self-aware consciousness. He clearly explains how to use this new paradigm to see the increasing interconnections among industries, markets, organizations, and organizational members; radically improve infrastructures, systems, and processes; create new levels of organizational success and economic value; and reach new heights of personal meaning, fulfillment, and enlightenment.
"When Danah Zohar first published the early ideas of her Quantum Management Theory in the late 1990's, she articulated a new paradigm, inspired by quantum physics, and began a major contribution to our search for a new management theory that can replace outdated Taylorism. Now, in ZERO DISTANCE, the most comprehensive account of her project, she outlines how the theory has been implemented through the revolutionary RenDanHeyi business model of China's Haier Group, and subsequently several other large companies. Zohar's suggestion that the Haier model also offers a new social and political model is thought provoking. This book is a significant addition to our continuing conversation about the best way to manage companies and other human social systems. I recommend it highly." - Gary Hamel, London Business School, Author of Humanocracy This open access book offers a new management meta-theory to replace Taylorism. It presents a new paradigm in management thinking and a new, practical organizational model for implementing it in our personal and working lives, in our companies, in our communities and nations, and in a sustainable global order. It will offer an understanding of why and how "thinking-as-usual" is failing both business and political leaders in these new times, and it will advocate new thinking and new management practices that are so radically new that they turn everything we have taken for granted inside out and upside down. This new management model is called "Quantum Management Theory", because it is rooted in the new paradigm bequeathed to us by quantum physics and its younger sibling, complexity science. Danah Zohar is a physicist, philosopher, and management thought leader. She is a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management and a Visiting Professor at the China Academy of Art.
Creating a Quantum Organization presents everything that I have ever created - and integrated - during the past 50 years on those four timeless topics: conflict management, change management, expanding consciousness, and quantum transformation. Essentially, in my "legacy book," I address how managers and members can transform their outdated, sluggish, ineffective, and unfulfilling Newtonian organizations into vibrant, effective, and meaningful quantum organizations. I name this mega challenge: Quantum Transformation.Creating a Quantum Organization is organized into 12 chapters that include a total of 167 elegant illustrations - which take full advantage of the old adage: "A picture is worth a thousand words." At the start, I present several "Big Pictures," also known as the Complex Hologram and the Quantum Wheel, which dramatically reveal all the interrelationships among systems, processes, and people - both inside and outside an organization. The next chapters investigate the essence of conflict management and change management - since conflict and change comprise two sides of the same coin. You can't have one without the other: Change creates conflict and resolving conflict creates change. The material on the Thomas-Kilmann Instrument (TKI) along with the Kilmann Organizational Conflict Instrument (KOCI) allows us to assess the self-defeating conflicts that members have with their surrounding systems and processes. Examining such "systems conflicts" will enable us to pinpoint the barriers to long-term success before attempting to implement a completely integrated program of eight tracks that's intended to transform those Newtonian "barriers to success" into quantum "channels for success."Chapter by chapter, I then present the most relevant and practical material for each of the eight tracks: culture, skills, teams, strategy-structures, reward systems, and the three process improvement tracks. Indeed, any program of change or set of change initiatives that implements these eight tracks out of sequence, or fails to address all eight tracks in their entirety, will inadvertently prevent people and their organizations from realizing their dreams.Lastly, I address the future of organizational development and quantum transformation by exploring how to expand the mind/body/spirit consciousness of all members - and then bring that expanded consciousness into the workplace.
This title gives students a good understanding of how quantum mechanics describes the material world. The text stresses the continuity between the quantum world and the classical world, which is merely an approximation to the quantum world.
This book provides an introduction to the emerging field of quantum thermodynamics, with particular focus on its relation to quantum information and its implications for quantum computers and next generation quantum technologies. The text, aimed at graduate level physics students with a working knowledge of quantum mechanics and statistical physics, provides a brief overview of the development of classical thermodynamics and its quantum formulation in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 then explores typical thermodynamic settings, such as cycles and work extraction protocols, when the working material is genuinely quantum. Finally, Chapter 3 explores the thermodynamics of quantum information processing and introduces the reader to some more state of-the-art topics in this exciting and rapidly developing research field.
A daring new vision of the quantum universe, and the scandals controversies, and questions that may illuminate our future--from Canada's leading mind on contemporary physics. Quantum physics is the golden child of modern science. It is the basis of our understanding of atoms, radiation, and so much else, from elementary particles and basic forces to the behaviour of materials. But for a century it has also been the problem child of science, plagued by intense disagreements between its intellectual giants, from Albert Einstein to Stephen Hawking, over the strange paradoxes and implications that seem like the stuff of fantasy. Whether it's Schrödinger's cat--a creature that is simultaneously dead and alive--or a belief that the world does not exist independently of our observations of it, quantum theory is what challenges our fundamental assumptions about our reality. In Einstein's Unfinished Revolution, globally renowned theoretical physicist Lee Smolin provocatively argues that the problems which have bedeviled quantum physics since its inception are unsolved for the simple reason that the theory is incomplete. There is more, waiting to be discovered. Our task--if we are to have simple answers to our simple questions about the universe we live in--must be to go beyond it to a description of the world on an atomic scale that makes sense. In this vibrant and accessible book, Smolin takes us on a journey through the basics of quantum physics, introducing the stories of the experiments and figures that have transformed the field, before wrestling with the puzzles and conundrums that they present. Along the way, he illuminates the existing theories about the quantum world that might solve these problems, guiding us toward his own vision that embraces common sense realism. If we are to have any hope of completing the revolution that Einstein began nearly a century ago, we must go beyond quantum mechanics as we know it to find a theory that will give us a complete description of nature. In Einstein's Unfinished Revolution, Lee Smolin brings us a step closer to resolving one of the greatest scientific controversies of our age.
How to Understand Quantum Mechanics presents an accessible introduction to understanding quantum mechanics in a natural and intuitive way, which was advocated by Erwin Schroedinger and Albert Einstein. A theoretical physicist reveals dozens of easy tricks that avoid long calculations, makes complicated things simple, and bypasses the worthless anguish of famous scientists who died in angst. The author's approach is light-hearted, and the book is written to be read without equations, however all relevant equations still appear with explanations as to what they mean. The book entertainingly rejects quantum disinformation, the MKS unit system (obsolete), pompous non-explanations, pompous people, the hoax of the 'uncertainty principle' (it is just a math relation), and the accumulated junk-DNA that got into the quantum operating system by misreporting it. The order of presentation is new and also unique by warning about traps to be avoided, while separating topics such as quantum probability to let the Schroedinger equation be appreciated in the simplest way on its own terms. This is also the first book on quantum theory that is not based on arbitrary and confusing axioms or foundation principles. The author is so unprincipled he shows where obsolete principles duplicated basic math facts, became redundant, and sometimes were just pawns in academic turf wars. The book has many original topics not found elsewhere, and completely researched references to original historical sources and anecdotes concerting the unrecognized scientists who actually did discover things, did not all get Nobel prizes, and yet had interesting productive lives.
The pressure on CEOs and other leaders to create results, while balancing an increasing diversity of opposing demands, is reaching oppressive levels. Leaders sense a breakdown to our existing approaches to business. The framework that was used to guide their efforts and create successful outcomes no longer produce the same results. The Living Organization® delivers a new model that transforms the best of what worked before and expands it to deliver new life and growth for organizations. First and foremost, The Living Organization deepens our understanding of how any living organization creates the results it desires. Norman Wolfe draws on decades of experience both leading and consulting with organizations, large and small, to unravel the mystery of creating results Based on scientific, philosophical and spiritual truths, The Living Organization model explores how three distinct yet highly interdependent fields of energy influence and determine what results will and will not be created. Beyond just a new theory, Norman Wolfe provides practical tools for aligning and focusing the organization on strategy execution. Building on decades of learning about organization effectiveness and execution management, The Living Organization expands our frameworks for allocating resources and making decisions that will reap the desired results. Most organizations fail because they focus only on activities and reduce organizations to simple machines of production. But machines are, by their very nature, soulless and everything the machine paradigm touches turns soulless and lifeless. By contrast, The Living Organization brings life to an organization's activity. It is energized by relationships and brings meaning and purpose to activities. The Living Organization is a creative force and is in harmony with its environment,growing and developing as it contributes to and enhances all members of its ecosystem. "Like all living systems, organizations create by transforming energy. The magic of companies like Apple, Whole Foods, Harley Davidson, Nordstrom," Wolfe writes,"lies in their ability to harness the three energy fields of manifestation whether done consciously or unconsciously." The Living Organization presents the foundation of a new business model that provides a more detailed map to navigate the complex business world of this century. This evolutionary perspective is afresh way to understand how organizations develop, grow and evolve. It will challenge the way you think and interact. The guiding principles and theories can direct the largest of corporations or the entrepreneurial startup in getting the results they want. Deeply personal, brimming with compelling stories from real-life challenges, and packed with powerful insights, tools, and practices, this book is a potent resource for aspiring, emerging, and seasoned business leaders alike. Or anyone interested in creating the results they desire.