Making Social Change

by David Flynn, Jim Hay

“MAKING SOCIAL CHANGE” - THE TOOLS TO UNDERSTAND AND CREATE POSITIVE SOCIAL CHANGE!Authors David Flynn, and Jim Hay - reveal their thinking on social behavior and social change based on quantifiable parameters. They propose that the examination of virtual discrete systems on computers can be related to the examination of real-life social changes we have seen historically and around the world today. In the world of computer generated studies we have the ability to analyze and understand changes in social systems. Thanks to the authors, we now have defined parameters that allow us to understand and perhaps control change in the real world!Through their years of interaction, numerous discussions and seminars, involving many individuals from varied academic disciplines, the authors have developed a theory which describes social changes and the major factors causing these changes. Just as matter exists in various states (solid, liquid or gas) that are crucial to its understanding, social systems also exist in various states – Order, Chaos and Complexity - which are key to the understanding of society in the world.Based on studies of computer models the authors propose that any social system must be in one of four possible states. The fact that two of the states are order and chaos is not surprising. However the fact that between the two is the complex state where creative things can emerge is exciting and the fact that there are two types of order is significant. The authors use two ideas from sociology, namely differentiation (inside structure) and centrality (outside impact), proposing that their relative values produce the state, or change of state, of the social system.The very broad application of these ideas is illustrated in this book through studies of the interaction of small groups, in studies of the history of two corporations, in the examination of economic cycles and in a study of changing art styles before, during and after the Renaissance. Thus the ideas of this book will be of interest to business managers, art historians, sociologists studying social change and indeed as Dr. Madeline Lennon, an art historian states “[to anyone] fascinated by how change and positive development occurs even in apparently static systems”. This is a timely book, offering a positive approach to understanding and affecting social change in world.

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Showing books from more then one distinct author by the name David Flynn. So far disambiguated as the following:
David E. Flynn
David C. Flynn aka goodreads author David Connelius Flynn
David M. Flynn