5 credits

Students in this course engage in a collaborative study of the nature and methods of transformative change in the complex human systems of contemporary public organizations. Students are taught a pragmatic-action learning process for studying the experience of transformative change in complex systems. The dynamics of complex adaptive systems are studied to gain an understanding of how large-scale and highly interrelated human systems change through self-organization. Appreciative inquiry and other selected methods of transformative change are studied and applied to a positive organizational change situation of special interest to the students. Students also develop professional-action habits for pragmatic-action learning in the practice of public administration.