Stuart Umpleby

Stuart Anspach Umpleby (born March 5, 1944) is an American cybernetician and professor in the Department of Management and Director of the Research Program in Social and Organizational Learning in the School of Business at the George Washington University.

[2] After moving to George Washington University, he was the moderator from 1977 to 1980, of a computer conference on general systems theory supported by the National Science Foundation.

In the early 1970s Umpleby studied cybernetics with Heinz von Foerster and Ross Ashby in the Biological Computer Laboratory at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

[14] In 1960 Heinz von Foerster published an article in Science showing that if demographic trends of the past two millennia continue, world population would go to infinity in approximately 2026.

About sixty scientists in the United States, Canada, and Europe interacted for a period of two and a half years using the Electronic Information Exchange System (EIES) located at New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Umpleby refuted this claim by organizing meetings in 1990 in both Washington, DC, and Vienna, Austria, to discuss the theories of economic, political, and social development that can guide the transformation of socialist societies.

[20] Since 1994 the Research Program in Social and Organizational Learning at The George Washington University, which Umpleby heads, has hosted over 150 visiting scholars supported by the U.S. Department of State.

[21] He has found that the Participatory Strategic Planning methods developed by the Institute of Cultural Affairs not only improve the effectiveness of organizations but also lead to more humane management practices and build mutual trust among the participants.