John Pourdehnad is an American organizational theorist, consultant

Management consulting

Management consulting indicates both the industry and practice of helping organizations improve their performance primarily through the analysis of existing organizational problems and development of plans for improvement....

, and associate director of the Ackoff Center for Advancement of Systems Approaches at the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

.

Biography

John Pourdehnad graduated in 1971 from the Brunel University

Brunel University

Brunel University is a public research university located in Uxbridge, London, United Kingdom. The university is named after the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel....

, Uxbridge, Middlesex, England as B.S. in Mechanical and Production Engineering. He received a Ph.D. in Social Systems Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

.

In 1971 he started his career in British Leyland in Lancashire

Lancashire

Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...

, England as Design Engineer. After one year he joined General Industrial Group in Teheran, Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

 as Vice-President responsible for Manufacturing. After that he became Senior Consultant and project Manager in the Industrial Management Institute of Iran. For a short period he returned to the commercial setting in 1978-1979 as a President of Systems Development Company, called "Micro-Data", in Teheran.

In 1980 he becomes a System Research Associate and Project Manager in the Busch Center of The Wharton School in the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

, Philadelphia. Since 2000 he has been a Professor and Associate Director of the Ackoff Center for Advancement of Systems Approaches (A-CASA) which is a part of the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering in the same university.

Since 1979, John Pourdehnad, mostly as associate of Russell Ackoff, worked as a consultant in a broad range of industries including aerospace, chemicals, computer equipment, data services and software, electronics, energy, food and beverages, healthcare, hospitality, industrial equipment, automotive, insurance, metals, mining, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, utilities, and transportation.

John Pourdehnad is a Member of the Editorial Board, Systems Research and Behavioral Science

Systems Research and Behavioral Science

Systems Research and Behavioral Science is an international scientific journal for theory and research in the fields of systems sciences....

 Journal, a John Wiley Publication and Member of the Academy of Management and journal of "Problems of Governance," Tomsk State University, Russia. He is an honorary member of the Society for Organizational Excellence.

Work

Pourdehnad primary areas of interest include implications of systems thinking

Systems thinking

Systems thinking is the process of understanding how things influence one another within a whole. In nature, systems thinking examples include ecosystems in which various elements such as air, water, movement, plants, and animals work together to survive or perish...

 in complex problem formulation, including complex project management, and systems redesign, knowledge development in creation of new products and services, and the development of socio-technical systems for learning and knowledge-to-wisdom management in complex adaptive systems.

Publications

Pourdehnad has written and edited a book and several artciles and papers.

• 1993. Internal markets : bringing the power of free enterprise inside your organization. With William E. Halal and Ali Geranmayeh. Foreword by Russell L. Ackoff
  Russell L. Ackoff
  Russell Lincoln Ackoff was an American organizational theorist, consultant, and Anheuser-Busch Professor Emeritus of Management Science at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Ackoff was a pioneer in the field of operations research, systems thinking and management...
  
  . New York : Wiley, 1993.
• 2005. Social Influence And Climate Change: Entertainment And Advertising. Instruments For Exploring The Training And Aesthetic Dimensions Of Edutainment: Case of the Heart Sense Game. With Barry Silverman at al. Technical Report. 2005, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.

Selected Articles and papers

• 1995. "From Downsizing to Rightsizing to Selfsizing". With William Halal and Erwin Rausch. In: Total Quality Review, July/August 1995.
• 1997. "The Irresponsibility and Ineffectiveness of Downsizing". With Russell L. Ackoff. In: Systems Practice, Vol. 10, No.1 1997.
• 1999. "What Drives Organizational Learning at GM?" With Wendy Coles. In: Handbook of Business Strategy, Faulkner & Gray, 1999.
• 2000. "Building Corporate ‘Black Boxes’: A Different Perspective on Organizational Learning." In: Proceedings, International Conference on Systems Thinking in Management, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, Australia, November 2000.
• 2000. "On Misdirected Systems". With Russell L. Ackoff. In: Systems Research and Behavioral Science. Vol 18, Issue 3, May/June 2001, Pages: 199-205.
• 2001. "Systems Approach to Knowledge Development for Creating New Products and Services". With Patrick Robinson. In: Systems Research and Behavioral Science Vol 18, 1, Jan/Feb 2001, Pp 29-40.
• 2002. "Beyond Knowledge Management". With Vince Barabba and Russell Ackoff. In: The Strategic Management of Intellectual Capital and Organizational Knowledge: A Collection of Readings, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002.
• 2002. "Redesigning the Academy of Vocal Arts (AVA)". With Adele Hebb. In: Systems Research and Behavioral Science Vol 19, Issue 4.
• 2002. "Re-Creating the Capital Project: A Social Systemic Approach". With Mark Steele. In: Proceedings, the 2nd International Conference on Systems Thinking in Management, April, 2002, University of Salford, Salford, UK.
• 2002. "System Dynamics and Intelligent Agent-Based Simulation: Where is the Synergy?". With Kambiz Maani and Habib Sedehi. In: Proceedings for the Twentieth International Conference of the System Dynamics Society, July 28 – August 1, 2002, Palermo, Italy.
• 2004. "Systems Thinking and Its Implications in Organizational Transformation". With Gnana Bharathy. In: Proceedings for the 3rd International Conference on Systems Thinking in Management. May, 2004, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.
• 2005. "User Interface Design -- An Experimental Study." With Barry Silverman et al. In: Proceedings for the American Society For Cybernetics (ASC) 2005 Conference. October 2005, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
• 2006. "Social Systems Simulation For Group Learning: Adding Realism To Modeling," With Gnana Bharathy et al.. In: Systems Thinking and Complexity Science: Insights for Action. A Volume in ISCE Publishing’s Complex Systems Series. 2006 ISCE Publishing, Mansfield, MA.
• 2006. "Unlearning/Learning Organizations – The Role of Mindset". With Bruce Warren, Maureen Wright and John Mairano. In: Proceedings of the 50th Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences. ISSS 2006 Papers, Sonoma State University, Sonoma, CA
• 2006 "Individual Consumer Differences and Design Implications for Web-Based Decision Support" (with Barry Silverman et al.), Ackoff Center for the Advancement of Systems Approaches (ACASA), University of Pennsylvania. Submitted for Publication to Erg Soc. J of Behavior and Info Tech.
• 2007 "Synthetic (Integrative) Project Management" Business Strategy Series,Volume 8, Issue 8, Page: 426 – 434, Emerald Publications, New York, NY.
• 2009 "A Useful Distinction Between Managers and Leaders" (with Russell L. Ackoff), Strategy and Leadership, 2009, Volume 37, Issue 3, Emerald Publications, New York, NY.
• 2011 "Systems & Design Thinking: A Conceptual Framework for Their Intergration", Organizational Dynamics Working Papers, Working Paper #11-03

External links

• ACASA Ackoff Collaboratory for Advancement of the Systems Approach, center for the vanguard of systems approaches, since July 2000.
• Ackoff Center Weblog Prof. John Pourdehnad is a co-author of the blog.
• University of Pennsylvania The homepage of prof. Pouderhnad at the University of Pennsylvania
• Profile at Amazon Prof. Pourdehnad's reviews of books at Amazon.