Organizational Learning

"How organizations create, transfer, and retain knowledge has been the focus of intensive investigation by management researchers. However, one aspect of the dynamics of knowledge—organizational forgetting— has received comparatively little attention. In this paper, we draw on an exploratory, multiple-case study of learning in international strategic alliances to explore how and why organizations forget.

Based on our case study, we develop a theory of organizational forgetting, discuss the role of forgetting in the dynamics of organizational knowledge, and present a typology of types of organizational forgetting."

""Students are encouraged to explore routine spatial practices and forms of interaction in public spaces. The course includes series of field works and practical workshops in urban art interventions, which are considered both as an analytical tool for spatial research and as a tool for arranging spaces of communication in city. This course was launched in 2010.

Kursas skirtas rutininių naudojimosi viešosiomis erdvėmis scenarijų analizei ir sąveikos formų viešosiose erdvėse narginėjimui. Kaip baigiamąjį darbą studentai įgyvendina meninę intervenciją į pasirinktąją viešąją erdvę. Meninės intervencijos šio kurso rėmuose traktuojamos ir kaip analitinis erdvių analizės įrankis, ir kaip būdas suaktyvinti vietą, išvystant alternatyvųjį šios vietos panaudojimo scenarijų. Kursas dėstomas nuo 2010 m."

Managers in a growing number of organizations are moving beyond arm’s length relationships with the arts and seeking ways of engaging in mutual learning with artists because they believe that engaging with the cultural differences can be productive. This article describes and compares seven artistic intervention residency programs in five European countries, showing commonalities and differences in their structures, objectives, funding arrangements and implementation processes, and illustrating diverse outcomes. It breaks new ground by documenting and analyzing the manifold functions that intermediaries fulfil to bridge across the cultural divide that separates the world of the arts and the world of organizations.

Reforming public services has become an integral part of instituting austerity measures as governments around the world struggle to balance the books in the wake of the financial crisis. Vital public services and government departments have been given the seemingly impossible task of delivering better services to the public while receiving less funding. This excellent and highly original collection brings together contributors from across the globe to explore and analyse innovational methods aimed at helping overburdened and under-funded public services cope with the demands of austerity and continue to deliver high quality services to the public. In the process this book develops new theoretical models and analyses case studies to provide an important and timely insight into how to reform public services across the globe.

"Note: best viewed on this site: http://thormay.net/shop/TP&Esalepage.html (full preview and Paypal button).

A study of factors affecting teacher productivity, supported by case studies in teaching English as a foreign or second language from Australia, New Zealand, China, South Korea, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. This is a commercial version of Thorold May's doctoral dissertation."

"This thesis argues that foreign and second language teaching productivity can only reach its proper potential when it is accorded priority, second only to language learner productivity, amongst the many competing productivities which are always asserted by stakeholders in educational institutions.

A theoretical foundation for the research is established by examining the historical concept of productivity, and its more recent manifestation as knowledge worker productivity, especially as applied to teachers.

The empirical basis of the thesis is sourced from a chronological series of twenty biographical case studies in language teaching venues in Australia, New Zealand, Oceania and East Asia. The biographical case study methodology, although rare in applied linguistics, is justified by reference to its wide and growing application in other fields of qualitative research. The case studies are analysed for common patterns of productivity, as well as teaching productivity inhibition or failure.

It was affirmed across all of the case studies without exception that external parties could not control or even reliably predict what individual students might learn, and how well, from instances of instructed language teaching. This was regardless of the power of institutional players, external resources, curriculums or the teacher. Student belief in the immediate value of what was to be learned in a given lesson, and personal confidence in an ability to learn it were the most critical factors.

Teaching productivity was found to turn, ultimately, on the teacher's ability to influence the probability of student learning. The teacher could best influence learning probability by enhancing student motivation. The most effective environments for teaching productivity were seen to be those where the teacher was professionally equipped and politically enabled to exercise judgements which maximized opportunities for student language learning productivity. A negotiated pact concerning both curriculum and method often proved effective, especially with mature students, and at times required some deception of institutional authorities.

Empirically, the encouragement of reciprocal learning relationships between teacher and students was found to be powerfully enabling for language teaching productivity in the case studies.

In many venues a small but effective minority of 'intimate learners' were also able to leverage their language learning productivity by forging more personal relationships with the teacher.

The wider cultural paradigm within each of the countries represented in the case studies sanctioned different paths and limitations for both language learners and teachers, and hence was seen to influence teaching productivity in critical ways. It was found that under certain conditions, notably (but not exclusively) those prevailing in many East Asian educational institutions, that certification of foreign language skills had a higher cultural, employment and monetary value than the actual ability to exercise foreign language skills.

A negative influence on teacher productivity in many of the case studies was an ignorance about language learning and teaching amongst institutional players. The disregard of language teacher professionalism was fed by a belief that being able to speak a language was all that was necessary to teach it, and reinforced by misinterpreting the meaning of test results. Related to this, an imbalance of power relationships between teachers or students with other institutional interests was consistently found to interfere with teaching and learning productivities. Overall, the model of productivity understood in institutions instanced by the case studies tended to reflect a 19th Century economic paradigm of capital, raw materials (students) and labour (dispensable classroom workers) rather than any more sophisticated grasp of knowledge worker productivity.

It was demonstrated in the context of the case studies that productivity, and in particular knowledge worker productivity, is a complex concept whose facets require detailed analysis to arrive at a proper understanding of the role that foreign and second language teachers play in educational institutions."

This report presents a road map to 2015 on the future of work-and-learning in the Autonomous Province of Trent, Italy, a.k.a. Trentino. It begins with a brief review of the course literature, followed by a section on past and current policies in Trentino. My recommendations and conclusion will close the report.

"This research examines the intergovernmental coordination to reduce vulnerability of local communities to disasters. Turkey’s exposure to seismic risk is very high and achieving intergovernmental coordination in response operations is a challenge. The formal bureaucratic structure
of the disaster management inhibits timely collective action in complex disaster environments. The paper examines one of the most destructive regional disasters of the last century, the 1999 Marmara earthquake. The research uses data from content analyses of news reports, interviews with public and nonprofit managers, and direct field observations. This analysis was carried out using UCINET 6.0 social network analysis software program. The results of the network analysis have shown that there is a
problem of communication and coordination among public agencies in response to the disaster. Moreover, the integration of organizations from different jurisdictions and other sectors was problematic in the response operations. The results of the study reveal the leverage points for improving intergovernmental collective action from the perspective of complex adaptive systems theory. "

Pohdimme artikkelissa akateemisen tutkimuksen ja yritysmaailman välisen yhteistyön haasteita ja mahdollisuuksia empiirisen tapaustutkimuksen kautta. Tarkastelemme erään ekonomisen mallin kehittäjiä (akateemisia operaatiotutkijoita) sekä käyttäjiä (erään suuryrityksen tietotyöläisiä) tietoa tuottavina yhteisöinä. Kiinnitämme huomiomme yhteisöissä vallitseviin tiedontuotannon kulttuureihin sekä niihin liittyviin käsityksiin oppijasta, oppimisympäristöstä ja oppimisprosessista. Tutkimme ja kuvaamme empiirisesti, miten erilaiset käsitykset sekä niihin liittyvät tiedolliset arvot ja normit näkyvät eri toimijaosapuolten tavoissa hahmottaa tiedon ja erityisesti akateemisen operaatiotutkimuksen (OR) tiedon roolia yritystoiminnassa. Tutkimuksemme mukaan erot tiedontuotannon kulttuureissa ovat paikoin hyvinkin merkittäviä. Monissa yhteyksissä yhteinen kieli ja jaettu maailmankuva puuttuu eikä hedelmälliselle yhteistyölle ole suotuisia edellytyksiä. OR-yhteisössä vallitseva tiedontuotannon kulttuuri ei näytä tarjoavan sellaisia todellisuuskäsityksiä tai ajattelun, ymmärtämisen, maailman jäsentämisen ja tulkinnan välineitä, jotka soveltuisivat erityisen hyvin nykyisten tiimi- ja verkostopohjaisten organisaatioiden oppimisympäristöihin ja toiminnan kehittämiseen. Erityisen ongelmallista tässä näyttäisi olevan se, että inhimilliselle toiminnalle ominainen sosiaalinen, kulttuurinen, historiallinen ja kontekstuaalinen dimensio jää usein formaalien mallien ja niiden käytön ulkopuolelle