Held in conjunction with Oxford University Press, the Clarendon Lectures are designed to inform a general academic audience of important issues in management and the social sciences. Mauro Guillén presents The Architecture of Collapse: The Global System in the 21st Century The global system is both highly structured and predictable. And yet, crises and other episodes of abrupt change do occur rather frequently. These three lectures will develop a new theoretical framework to think about the evolution of the global system in terms of its interactive complexity and degree of coupling. These two variables will be examined at the level of the global network of nation-states, and within countries. Economic, political and social factors will be taken into consideration when it comes to assessing the structure of the global system and its evolution over time. The lectures will show how management theory and organizational sociology can be used to understand dynamics at the global level. Lecture 2 - Two Intriguing Cases of Complexity & Coupling: The Eurozone and the U.S./China Relationship Can we understand the trials and tribulations of the Eurozone by reference to complexity and coupling, especially when compared to the European Union? Is the U.S./China relationship another case of complexity and tight coupling? What can we learn about complex global systems from this comparison? In this second lecture Professor Guillen will argue that the Eurozone is likely to remain inherently unstable for a very long time, and that the U.S./China relationship can be seen as both stabilizing and destabilizing. Lecture 1 - Complexity and Coupling in the Global System http://goo.gl/dmMltZ Lecture 3 - Isomorphism, Impermeability, and Institutional Diversity http://goo.gl/vbIhHp www.sbs.oxford.edu/events @OxfordSBS

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