Holistic Thinking in Management Essay Example

Holistic Thinking in Management Essay Example Holistic Thinking in Management Essay Holistic Thinking in Management Essay Course No. : SMV 795 Systems Thinking Course Coordinator: Prof. Sushil Assignment No. 1 Title of Assignment: Take a sector and map the trends towards holistic thinking in management Date of submission: August 17, 2009 TITLE: Take a sector and map the trends towards holistic thinking in management 1 Introduction Numerous activities and processes must be managed within a company. In order to satisfy the customers and to be commercially successful in the business environment, these activities and processes must be optimally coordinated which involves various kinds of thinking. There are many different ways of thinking, namely, (i) Logical thinking; (ii) Casual thninking; and (iii) Holistic thinking, among others. Although most of these thinking ways can not be applied in isolation with the other thinking patterns, as a much generalized comparison it can be said that the Logic alone is inadequate to deal with complex situations because it deals with simple, timeless cause and effect links between statements. Causal thinking, on the contary, underlies much of science where the tendency is to look at simple cause and effects by isolating components or parts of a whole. However, in the morden management techniques, stress has been laid upon the overall perspective of the problems in order to explore a sytematic and sustainable solution for it. Systems thinking tries to look at the complicated pattern of multiple causes that make up a whole, and to simplify by taking multiple partial views or perspectives. Another method of comparison between the various cognitive style is (i) analytic style; and (ii) holistic styles. While, an analytic thinking involves understanding a system by thinking about its parts and how they work together to produce larger-scale effects; the holistic thinking involves understanding a system by sensing its large-scale patterns and reacting to them. The Holistic thinking is the pattern of thinking in which resources of a particular system are managed in whole units rather than as parts in isolation from their surroundings. Thus, Holistic thinking involves working with and for wholes rather than parts of the system at hand. Consequently, as a process, in order to have a clear description of what is being managed, holistic thinking involves: i) defining of the overall system as a whole, ii) listing of all the decision-makers involved in management and, iii) the resources allocated, or issue Objective of the present case stude is to select a sector and map the trends towards holistic thinking in management of its issues and problems. Methodology adopted In this assignment a sector is selected with a problem in it. The problem is then analysed holistically taking a wholesome view with respect to the problem. Finally, the trends of holistic management thinking are mapped in the sector. The sector selected for the analysis of trends of holistic management in it is the Real Estate construction in modern cities. The holistic view of the concern subject leads to the overall Housing, Construction and Urban plann ing and development which is studied here. Figure 1 presents a post-modern thinking process by emphasizing holistic thinking components that are abstract, in connection with those elements that are in concrete- seen, in the present. The main focus of the pyramid is to explore the Holistic Thinking Pyramid – a five-tier process of integration as a thinking process. [pic] 3 Holistic Management of Housing, Construction and Urban planning and development sector 3. 1 Level 1-Basic Thinking/Background of the Sector Urban planning  and development is the integration of the disciplines of  land use, its planning, and various issues relating to it and the realted ransport activities and explores a very wide range of aspects of the built and social environments of urbanized municipalities and communities. In the modern cities the sustainable development  and  sustainability  have become important concepts for the urban planning, with the recognition that current consumption and living habits may be leading to problems such as the overuse of natural resources,  ecosystem  destruction,  urban heat islands,  pollution, growing  social inequality  and large-scale  climate change. Thus, the holistic management of housing, construction and urban planning and development sector revisits the synergy of the disciplines of urban planning, architecture, ecology, water management, environmental sciences, landscape architecture and sociology forces. 3. 2 Level 2-Critical Thinking/Problems and problem statement The holistic view requires an analysis of the problems associated with the Urban planning and development. The four major issues which impact the most sub important or local issues in urban planning are listed below: 1. Population Growth and migration to large towns. There is an increase in the population density world wide in the twentieth century. A distribution of the world population and its expected growth is shown in Fig. 2. [pic] Figure 2: World Poulation Increase in the Recent decades viz-a-viz previous centuries This led to emergence of the requirement of planned towns, to accommodate large number of people requirements (water, sanitary, movement , social aspects etc. ) , industrial requirements (factories, warehouses, mass goods movement etc. ) most important is these towns are now planned to cater projected growth requirements for future projections. Note that, with the urbanisation, industrialization and the consequent increase in the job opportunities in the cities there is a shift in the population distribution among the cities, villages and sub-urbs. This forms the basis data for the planning of a city wherein the expected population of the city is taken into account. Good planning uses  transit oriented development, which attempts to place higher densities of jobs or residents near high-volume transportation. For example, some cities permit commerce and multi-story apartment buildings only within one block of train stations and ultilane boulevards, and accept single-family dwellings and parks farther away. City authorities may try to encourage lower densities to reduce infrastructure costs, though some observers note that low densities may not accommodate enough population to provide adequate demand or funding for that infrastructure. In the UK, recent years have seen a concerted effort to increase the density of residenti al development in order to better achieve sustainable development. Increasing development density has the advantage of making mass transport systems, district heating and other community facilities (schools, health centres, etc) more viable. However recently, critics of this approach dub the densification of development as town cramming and claim that it lowers quality of life and restricts market-led choice. 2. Energy consumption A qualitative and quantitative study of the enegy consumption required for the construction and development is also eseential. The distribution of fuel and energy is one of the deciding parameters for the land usage and city construction. 3. Environmental issues and pollution: In the last a few decades the Environmental protection  and conservation have become the issues of utmost importance to many planning systems across the world. Not only are the specific effects of development to be mitigated, but attempts are made to minimize the overall effect of development on the local and global environment. This is commonly done through the assessment of  Sustainable urban infrastructure. More recently, the trend is that an urban planner uses a number of quantitative tools to forecast impacts of development on the environmental, including  roadway air dispersion models  to predict air quality impacts of urban highways and  roadway noise  models to predict  noise pollution  effects of urban highways. As early as the 1960s, noise pollution was addressed in the design of urban highways as well as  noise barriers. 4. Social and health issues Heavy urbanisation has put forth the problem of social and health issues because in the recent years basic infrastructure like power, water and sewerage are often severely compromised in urban planning and need to be evaluated to determine what can be salvaged for re-incorporation. The availability of freash water is fundamental decision making parameter for the urban planning. More recently, the trend is that an urban planner uses a number of quantitative tools to forecast impacts of development depending on the following: i. Water shortage related issues. ii. Global warming related issues. iii. Un-equality and human redundancy. 5. Transportation Transport within urbanized areas presents unique problems. The density of an urban environment can create significant levels of road traffic, which can impact businesses and increase pollution. Parking space is another concern, requiring the construction of large parking garages in high density areas which could be better used for other development. Problems can often occur at residential densities between about two and five. [citation needed]  These densities can cause traffic jams for  automobiles, yet are too low to be commercially served by  trains  or  light rail  systems. The conventional solution is to use  buses, but these and light rail systems may fail where automobiles and excess road network capacity are both available, achieving less than 1% ridership The problem statement The Urban planning is the process of analysis of various parameters, like, population density, demographic distribution, energy requirements, ecology and environmental issues, pollution constraints, transporatation and other related social and geographical factors, for the purpose of proper, sustainable and appropriate housing for a population in the area. 3. 3 Level 3-Reflective Thinking Housing, construction, urban planning and development as a field of applied study is composed of a set of ten axioms intended to guide the formulation of city plans and urban designs. They are intended to reconcile and integrate diverse urban planning and management concerns. These axioms include environmental sustainability, heritage conservation, appropriate technology, infrastructure efficiency, placemaking, Social Access, transit oriented development, regional integration, human scale, and institutional integrity. Thus, for example, the rapid expansion following the pattern of rural exodus has resulted in considerable rebuilding in the city centre and mushrooming suburban development elsewhere. . 4 Level 4 and 5-Creative Thinking and Interpretive Thinking The synergy of the various issues required in the Urban planning and development is done here varying upon from the strategic positioning. Since the literature on overall interpretive thinking on the building and housing dvelopment is massive, here a small example of the interpretive thinking on the energy requirements of a house based on the above procedure and listed problem statement are given in detail. Thus, to reduce the energy emissions from buildings, it is necessary to look at a building’s overall qualities, properties and functionality in terms of energy efficiency, healthy indoor climate and renewable energy. Together, these three key areas constitute the core of what is refered in literature as Sustainable Living – the ability to continue improving the quality of our homes and maintaining high living standards while reducing or eliminating energy emissions. Maximum energy efficiency and minimum wastage takes a holistic view of a building and produce a design that incorporates energy efficiency and, i. trategic placing of windows to make the most of heat from the sun’s rays, natural ventilation and daylight; ii. active use of intelligent building components that interact with their surroundings (externally and internally) and thus optimise the building’s overall energy-efficiency; iii. Visionary architecture combined with improved health, more huma n well-being and indoor comfort; iv. visionary architecture that takes into account both materials and surroundings in order to create healthy and comfortable conditions; v. aximum daylight and ventilation to ensure optimal indoor climate that will meet future standards; vi. fresh air and natural ventilation to ensure a healthy indoor climate and minimise the risk of allergies; vii. Sustainable energy sources, especially solar thermal energy; viii. sustainable energy should be an integral part of a building to ensure a future with less dependence on fossil fuels; ix. solar thermal energy for heating and cooling of the building; x. solar thermal energy for heating domestic hot water; 4 Conclusions A systematic and holistic approach to the sector of Housing, construction, urban planning and development is presented. First, the levels of critical and holistic approach are identified. Then the various levels of thinking in the holistic management approach are applied on the Urban development sector. The problems are identified and listed and from them a problem statement is formulated. Finally, through the various levels of holistic approach the interpretive thinking is applied to the problem atatement and as a small example a particular concern area of energy saving in housing development is presented. The advantages of the Holistic thinking are that it has as its focus to integrate those things that are abstract (unseen-past and/or future events) with those things that are in concrete (seen-in the present). Hence, the holistic thinking serves to carefully and expertly examine cultural and societal misunderstandings through introspection and verification. Figure 1: Levels in Holistic Thinking of a system