News and Events

Lunchtime Webinar Series: Complexity Theory for better Child Protection & Welfare and Public Services

UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre     

In Association with the     

Institute for Lifecourse and Society   

University of Galway     

Lunchtime Webinar Series     

Title: Complexity Theory for better Public Services  

Complexity is a feature of modern public service provision. Rather than fear and seek to simplify it, we need to harness complexity. This webinar series explores complexity theory and related aspects for public service and child protection and welfare work. We aim to increase insights into how complexity theory frameworks and approaches can help practitioners, managers, leaders and academics to better understand and engage with complexity at practice, service and system levels.   

Webinar 4: Complexity and Leadership  

With growing complexity, it is recognised that managerial control is both less possible, and less useful in dealing with the increasing adaptive challenges that face public policy in the information age.  Complexity theory has come to the fore in public sector management and leadership, challenging traditional linear hierarchical approaches.  A complexity focus to management/leadership requires Managers/Leaders to balance the administrative practices needed for efficient management of routine challenges with enabling and adaptive practices required to respond to dynamic circumstances. 

Date and Time: Wednesday 6^th March 2024, 1:00-200pm (GMT)    

Speaker: 

Professor Mary Uhl-Bien:   Mary Uhl-Bien is BNSF Endowed Professor of Leadership at the TCU Neeley School of Business in Texas. Previously she held the Howard Hawks Chair in Business Ethics and Leadership at the University of Nebraska. She has also been a Visiting Scholar in Sweden, Spain, Canada, Portugal, Denmark, and Australia. Prof. Uhl-Bien’s research on complexity leadership, relational leadership, and followership has appeared in leading journals, and her papers on complexity leadership theory and followership theory have been recognized with best paper awards. She has conducted research in partnership with Lockheed Martin, Bank of America, Disney, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Stryker, and the U.S. Air Force Academy. She is a founder of the Network of Leadership Scholars (NLS) in the Academy of Management, and holds an Honorary Doctorate from Copenhagen Business School and an Eminent Leadership Scholar Award from NLS. She was ranked the #6 Most Influential Leadership Scholar from 1990-2017 and is recognized by Poets and Quants as a Top 50 Undergraduate Business Professor. She is active in executive education nationally and internationally, teaching for the Brookings Institute, the Gallup Organization, and universities in both the U.S. and Europe, and is a commentator on CNBC Squawk Box.  

Respondent:           

Mr. Tony Canavan:  Tony Canavan was recently appointed Regional Executive Officer for the new HSE West and North West region.  He is formerly CEO of the Saolta University Health Care Group and has worked in the Health Services in the West for over 30 years. Over that time he has held a number of appointments with the Western Health Board in the Mental Health Services, the Department of Public Health, Primary Care Services and Acute Hospitals Services. In 2012, he was appointed Chief Operating Officer of the first Hospital Group in the country known then as the Galway Roscommon University Hospitals Group, which subsequently became the Saolta Group and was extended to include Letterkenny and Sligo.  In 2015, he became Chief Officer of Community Healthcare West before returning to the Saolta Group four years later as CEO. Tony has been the President of the Health Management Institute of Ireland since 2021.

Presentation is available here

Watch the webinar here