Campus Orleon

Albert Cath is more than 25 years active as a self-employed researcher, advisor and initiator in the context of public and private organizations. His primarily fields of activity encompass, Water Management, Sustainability and Climate Change, Healthcare,Traffic and Transport and Knowledge Institutes. The inherent complexity of issues is for me a starting point in the problem-solving, instead of reducing issues to top down blueprints. Coping with social complexity summarizes my activities. This starting point has at least three implications in the design, reflection and the (re)search for problem-solving directions: introducing a plurality of perspectives, co-framing through stakeholders participation and stimulating ‘humanization of organization’, as an expression of 'bottom-up' processes at the crossroads between society, organization, the individual and knowledge. I work in the field of tension between the paper reality of model, plan and protocol and the experienced realities of practice.It It is at the watershed of the world as it should be and the world as it is that coping with organisational complexity takes place. In my view the experienced realities of practice should be leading in organising and strategy development. Organisational interventions should take place in projects and practices. Emergence in terms of unexpected change and carrier of social complexity is real and should be coped with at the appropriate organisational level, situatedness and practice where people still can make the difference.  

On balance:
Paraphrasing the French philosopher Edgar Morin: "The still dominant (scientific) paradigm of Simplicity implies a sharp separation (disjunction) between that what is naturally connected and unifies that what is naturally divers (reduction). Wicked problems need a transdisciplinary,narrative complexity approach with focus on craftmanship and the tacit dimension of organising. The organisational deficit is that wicked problems are orphaned in the present public and private institutions."  

Present activities:
• Narrative Research and action perspectives in relation to knowledge and watermanagement.
• Research and action perspectives from a social-cultural context in relation to the possible consequences of climate change for the Netherlands. See www.klimaatmatrix.nl.
• Co-founder and initiator of the Parrhesia.nu foundation. A petition Platform for the new media in relation to democracy and democratization.
• Participation in the PhD program (critical management studies) of the University for Humanistics in Utrecht.
• Participating in M2MOBI, a mobile services company that makes apps for the Location Based Services Market.
- Co-author of the book 'A Leap in the Deep End'; the interest of tacit knowledge in relation to watermanagement.
- Co-author of the book 'Combine the existing'; Sustainability through connecting societal Functions.
-Co-author of the book 'The Matrix, An interdisciplinary search for integral action perspectives on climate change'.
- Co-author of the book 'The frays of participation in Health Care'. Towards a patient centered Health Care.

Specialties:
+ Narrative Organizational Studies in relation to complex issues.
+ Concept development and supervising the content and process of social innovation (humanisation of organization).
+ Organizational development in connection with strategy development. Narrative scenario planning.
+ Reframing of organisational issues.
+ Design, Chairmanship, and Processmanagement of workshops and communities of practice.
+ Coaching.
+ Teaching

+ Lecturing

Albert Cath studied Medicine (Bachelor) at the University of Amsterdam and Organizational studies (Master of Science) at the Erasmus University Rotterdam.

You can contact me at: albert.cath@planet.nl.