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1 – 9 of 9Adrian McLean and Alistair Moffat
The metaphor of marriage is frequently invoked in the context of mergers. The evidence is that the success rate for marriages is low and even worse for mergers. In this chapter we…
Abstract
The metaphor of marriage is frequently invoked in the context of mergers. The evidence is that the success rate for marriages is low and even worse for mergers. In this chapter we explore why mergers often fail to meet the expectations of either party and bring to bear insights from the relational field of marriage counselling to the challenge of achieving cultural development in the wake of a merger. Based on our experience of leading the cultural aspects of a major global merger, we propose some practical methods to help leaders create the conditions for a ‘lasting and happy marriage’.
Alistair Moffat and Adrian McLean
The purpose of this paper is to describe an intervention aimed at supporting the formation of a distinctive new culture in a post‐merger context. The work is informed by social…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe an intervention aimed at supporting the formation of a distinctive new culture in a post‐merger context. The work is informed by social constructionist thinking, complexity theory and draws on a semiotic approach to the understanding of cultures.
Design/methodology/approach
The case describes an experiment in the use of social networking and web‐based technology in order to enable and support a sustained, organization‐wide conversation. In particular, it describes the combined use of two virtual platforms: a global 72‐hour, virtual conference that allowed for the participation of all 60,000 employees and a virtual forum (Culture Square) that invited ongoing discussion of the desired culture.
Findings
Social networking technologies represent powerful new ways of expanding the possibilities for participation. They can also serve as useful ways of containing the ambiguity and uncertainty associated with mergers. The use of metaphorical representations of legacy cultures can create a helpful platform for generative dialogue and cultural understanding. Legitimating the shadow conversation through the Culture Square accelerated the formation of the emergent culture and powerfully complemented the virtual conference.
Practical implications
The use of an emergent approach to the formation of a new culture calls for high tolerance of ambiguity on the part of organizational leadership. The use of online forums calls for careful facilitation early in the process. Large‐scale virtual conferences present a host of logistical challenges and call for a high level of project management capability as well as skilful local facilitation. Social networking technology enables the formation and effective functioning of virtual teams and participative creation of the new culture at reduced cost.
Originality/value
Several distinctive features of this approach make it a novel approach to post‐merger integration. The paper is of specific value to organisation development and HR professionals at a technical level and to organisation leaders considering strategies for the cultural integration of mergers.
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Ian H. Witten and Rodger McNab
The New Zealand Digital Library project aims to develop the underlying technology for digital libraries and make it available for others to use to create their own collections. We…
Abstract
The New Zealand Digital Library project aims to develop the underlying technology for digital libraries and make it available for others to use to create their own collections. We have built a large number of demonstration collections. Because our policy is to avoid manual processing of material, full‐text indexing and — to a lesser degree — automatically created browsing structures provide the primary point of access to the material. As well as conventional textual collections, we are experimenting with collections of musical and audio material. This article describes the library structure and present and planned collections, and summarises our experiences in the project.
The purpose of this paper is to show how mergers can be accomplished with minimum disruption and a positive outcome.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to show how mergers can be accomplished with minimum disruption and a positive outcome.
Design/methodology/approach
Describes how integration of employees, and their separate cultures, during a merger can be successful with the use of technology.
Findings
Organizations coming together through mergers face a steep learning curve. There are elements of the “give and take” of a marriage in buying into each other's cultural legacy. The formation of that new culture is as much about the process through which standards are arrived at as the values themselves. If a harmonious outcome can be achieved, with process and values aligned, the result will surely be the “good fit” which was promoted enthusiastically by both sides when the merger was first mooted.
Originality/value
Looks at the question of getting the best of both worlds by ensuring that during a merger of two organizations, cultural integration brings something positive to the new organization?
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Humphrey Boogaerdt and Alistair Brown
The purpose of this study is to consider how a local government authority may present a tree asset register of street trees for the decision-making of the authority's stakeholders.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to consider how a local government authority may present a tree asset register of street trees for the decision-making of the authority's stakeholders.
Design/methodology/approach
Using the tenets of population density theory, urban form theory and social stratification theory, the approach of the study is to develop a tree asset register in a local government authority's setting that could be modelled using many different attributes to derive important information for decision-making purposes.
Findings
Tree asset registers represent a critical tool in managing street trees across local government authorities.
Research limitations/implications
Although the efficacy of an asset tree register may be curtailed by lack of internal audit or yearly updates, the practical consequence of an asset tree register is that local administrators may use the register to gather summarised, organised and parsimonious measures of a wide range of environmental, historical, cultural, aesthetic and scientific values of street trees.
Practical implications
Tree asset registers affords ratepayers, developers, tree managers and valuers a technology to plan, coordinate and manage street trees to support ecosystem services.
Social implications
Asset tree registers offer planners a means to bring about sustainable change management.
Originality/value
The originality of the study rests in introducing tree registers as a means to meet diverse strategies for street tree management by interested stakeholders.
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The purpose of this research is to compare several machine learning techniques on the task of Asian language text classification, such as Chinese and Japanese where no word…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to compare several machine learning techniques on the task of Asian language text classification, such as Chinese and Japanese where no word boundary information is available in written text. The paper advocates a simple language modeling based approach for this task.
Design/methodology/approach
Naïve Bayes, maximum entropy model, support vector machines, and language modeling approaches were implemented and were applied to Chinese and Japanese text classification. To investigate the influence of word segmentation, different word segmentation approaches were investigated and applied to Chinese text. A segmentation‐based approach was compared with the non‐segmentation‐based approach.
Findings
There were two findings: the experiments show that statistical language modeling can significantly outperform standard techniques, given the same set of features; and it was found that classification with word level features normally yields improved classification performance, but that classification performance is not monotonically related to segmentation accuracy. In particular, classification performance may initially improve with increased segmentation accuracy, but eventually classification performance stops improving, and can in fact even decrease, after a certain level of segmentation accuracy.
Practical implications
Apply the findings to real web text classification is ongoing work.
Originality/value
The paper is very relevant to Chinese and Japanese information processing, e.g. webpage classification, web search.
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David Littlejohn and Sandra Watson
Development of managers is key to the future health of hospitality and tourism: sectors increasingly affected by trends in globalisation and pressures on competitiveness…
Abstract
Development of managers is key to the future health of hospitality and tourism: sectors increasingly affected by trends in globalisation and pressures on competitiveness. Reporting on a round table event, driving forces affecting the development of the sectors are identified; major stakeholder views are offered and the ensuing discussion of graduate profiles was organised into three main scenarios: professional developers, portfolio strategists and pragmatic mavericks. The scenarios identify varying approaches for graduates, higher education institutions and employers. One outcome of the analysis is to note high levels of interdependency between these stakeholders in ensuring any desired outcomes and argues for long‐term, strategic co‐operation.
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