Search results

Organizations increasingly operate under volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) conditions. Traditional command-and-control leadership can be ineffective in such chaotic environments. The purpose of this paper is to outline an alternative model to help leaders and organizations navigate effectively through VUCA environments. By developing three fundamental capacities (absorptive, adaptive and generative), leaders can cultivate organizations capable of continuous synchronization with their fitness landscapes. Central tenets of the framework include diversity, slack, learning, humility, reflection in action and abductive logic.

This framework is designed based on literature insights, conceptual analysis and experts’ judgment. The paper integrates knowledge from a variety of disciplines and interprets them through the lens of complex adaptive systems.

This paper argues for a process centered, contemplative approach to organizational leadership and development. By providing the underlying rationale for the proposed interventions (e.g. Ashby’s law of requisite variety), the paper also reorients busy leaders’ mental models to show why these time investments are worth implementing.

This actionable framework can help leaders and organizations be more effective operating in a VUCA context.

This paper provides a historic context as to why prediction and certainty are favored leadership strategies, why these approaches are no longer suitable and specific steps leaders can take to develop absorptive, adaptive and generative capacities to transform their organizations. Its scholarly contribution is the synthesis of disparate bodies of literature, weaving those multiple academic perspectives into a practical roadmap to enhance organizational leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of various catalyst contents, resin solid contents, catalyst species and wood extract on urea‐formaldehyde (UF) curing by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) technique. The finding obtained would benefit the manufacturers of UF‐bonded composite panels.

The UF curing rate under each condition in terms of DSC peak temperature was measured by high‐pressure DSC at a heating rate of 15°C/min; the correlations of peak temperature with catalyst content, resin solid content, catalyst species and wood extract, respectively, were regressed via a model equation, which described the curing characteristics of the UF bonding system.

A model equation, T_p=A · EXP(−B · CC per cent)+D, was proposed to characterise the DSC peak temperatures or the rate of UF curing with regressing coefficients greater than 0.97 (commonly greater than 0.99). The constants A and B in the model equation were found to correspond to kinetic characteristics of UF resin curing reaction. The constant D in the model equation is believed to be associated with the utmost peak temperature, which implies that the DSC peak temperature will finally reach a maximum with catalyst content increasing. It was also found that the wood extracts having higher pH value and base buffer capacity had stronger catalyses on UF curing.

The catalysts commonly used in medium density fibreboard plants or particleboard plants are those having the utmost peak temperature of about 90‐95°C; the catalyses of wood extracts were much weaker than that of catalyst NH₄Cl.

The model equation could be used to predict the peak temperature or the curing rate of UF resin, and to quantify the effects of wood extracts on UF curing.

The study developed a model equation that can well characterise the UF curing, and quantified the effects of wood extracts on UF curing.

This study aims to answer two research questions, namely, what kinds of mundane resistance practices emerge in the local food system and which spatial, material and social elements catalyse the resistance practices.

The study adopts a post-humanist practice approach and focusses on exploring the agentic capacity of socio-material elements to generate resistance practices. The data were generated through a multi-method approach of interviews, field observations and Facebook discussions collected between 2014 and 2017.

The empirical context is the rejäl konsumtion local food network in Finland. The analysis presents two types of resisting practices – resisting facelessness and resisting carelessness – which are connected to spatial, material and social elements.

The study focusses on one local food system, highlighting the socio-material structuring of resistance in this specific cultural setting.

The practical implications highlight that recognising the socio-material elements provides tools for better engagement of consumer actors with local food systems.

The study adds to the extant research by interweaving the consumer resistance literature and local food systems discussions with the neo-material approach. The findings present a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which consumer resistance is actualised in a non-recreational, mundane context of consumption. Consequently, the study offers new insights into the agentic socio-material actors structuring the local food system.

This paper aims to report “positively deviant” experiences of three public sector networks seeking to enhance organizational and system level capacities. It is the authors' thesis that the knowledge base concerning the true benefits and pitfalls of networks can be captured and interpreted only through intense, ongoing learning effort embedded in practice on the ground, combined with sustained in‐depth observation and collaborative research.

The paper describes through case examples why and how different kinds of networks within different jurisdictional contexts and different organizational cultures are being used to enhance the climate for change towards better health care and improved health. The authors describe the contexts, structures, processes and impacts of three “positively deviant” networks.

The network form can provide opportunity for nurturing changes and innovations within large organizational and complex system environments. This opportunity to create additional and different pathways for improved decision making and service provision comes with challenges that should be recognized.

The authors' experiences indicate that, for networks, a key component of success relates to pulling and pushing at the edges of multiple connections and boundaries in “positively deviant” ways. This pushing and pulling is intrinsically evidence of organizational and intraorganizational learning – in the examples presented – for the improvement of health care and health.

Other networks can learn from the reported experiences and add their own cases to the empirical understanding of how networks can make a difference; this in turn can help the conceptual and theoretical understanding of them.

One of the top domestic issues of concern to Americans is access to high-quality and affordable health care, and there is a growing concern about how institutions struggling to survive within this trillion-dollar industry will increase their effectiveness in the future. This chapter outlines a process of leadership development using an action learning approach in one Midwestern health care system over a period of three years. The process addresses both the development of the individual leader as well as the collective leadership capacity in an effort to sustain organizational learning and effectiveness over time. A model is presented that covers four phases or Four C's of development, which includes movement from individual Competency development, to the development of social capital through the enhancement of Connections and Creation of shared understanding, ultimately expanding Capacity for change within the organization. We also address other factors that must be taken into consideration that will either enhance or impede the concentric movement such as culture, sponsor support, and alignment of systems and structures.

The aim of this paper is to describe how academic institutions that focus improvement of student learning do much better than those that focus on compliance and assessment.

A reflective observation of institutional interaction with the North Central Association Higher Learning Commission, especially the 264 colleges and universities that have participated in the Commission's assessment workshops, provides insight into the characteristics that make the most positive difference.

The paper finds that academic institutions do better when: assessment is best understood as the means and student learning itself as the end; shared responsibility and collective capacity are intentionally developed; internal leaders, of different types, are identified and developed; collaborative processes that actively engage people replace concerns about buy‐in; institutions jump in and learn as they go along; program review becomes an area of shared faculty/administration interest; changed, parallel or separate core processes permit attention to enduring issues; and institutions begin wherever they chose to begin and from there develop the means to complete a full cycle of outcomes assessment. Another more recent emphasis is the need to inform the public and other stakeholders about what students are learning.

This paper draws on the insights of those who work at the Higher Learning Commission, who share the unusual perspective of having experience of dealing with hundreds of academic institutions.

The aim of this paper is to provide an advanced understanding of the dynamics of a scholarly career.

An assemblage of a theoretic lens was adopted to help make sense of how the focal scholar came to have certain capacities and characteristics and how these evolved over time.

The critical determinants of the capacities of this scholar have arisen from intersections with the institutions she has been a part of and individuals with whom she has been privileged to interact.

This paper is the first to adapt an assemblage theoretic lens to make sense of a professional’s career accomplishments and trajectory and to draw inferences for career management from this perspective.

This study investigates the development of absorptive capacity. Using an integrated cognitive learning perspective, this study provides empirical evidence about the conceptual absorptive capacity model through examining the full process step by step. Two groups of moderating variables were studied—namely, social integration and appropriability—to examine their impact on the process.

This study employed a longitudinal study from a community service program (Kuliah Kerja Nyata) at Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, by using surveys at the beginning and the end of the project. Of 492 teams from 2,444 students participated in the study. Each individual within a team had at least one project assigned to him/her during the project. The absorptive capacity process was examined through six consecutive models and analysed using hierarchical linear modelling. The moderating variables were tested using the Moderated Regression Analysis and Wald tests.

The study confirms the full cycle of absorptive capacity as an independent, dynamic and complex process; it involves acquiring, assimilating, transforming and exploiting sequencing variables from the individual level to the team level and vice versa using feed-forward and feedback mechanisms adopted from the 4I framework of organisational learning. However, the roles of the moderating variables are still inconclusive due to some possible factors, which were also reflected by the U-phenomenon.

This study provides vital support to the learning theory as well as to the organisation learning concept. This study also reveals empirical evidence about the unsupported moderating variables behave during a project cycle, such as what they function, how they evolve and what we should do about the moderating factors during a project. The findings of this study provide practical suggestions and highlight areas for future research.

Culture is increasingly recognized as a key component of local development, but this attention is largely focused on large cities. This paper aims to focus on the ways in which the innovative, participatory action-research (PAR) methods of IdeaLabs and community intervention workshops are used by two projects with solidarity economy enterprise (SEE) participants to activate place-based cultural resources for local development in small communities.

An in-depth reflexive analysis undertaken by researchers involved in the two projects, taking a feminist ethics of care perspective, demonstrates the ways in which these two PAR methods promote local development with the goal of fighting against the economic, social and cultural degradation of small cities and rural areas.

The PAR methods used by the two projects examined stimulate place-based local development initiatives through collaboration and knowledge co-production among participants and researchers. The projects go beyond an instrumental view of the use of culture and the arts for local development to innovate and demonstrate new methodologies for more participatory approaches.

This paper addresses a gap in social economy literature, presenting methods that can be used in PAR projects to catalyse the use of culture as a local development tool by local SEEs.