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The paper aims to argue that new tools are needed for operating, developing and learning in work‐life networks where academic and practice knowledge are intertwined in multiple levels of and in boundary‐crossing across activities. At best, tools for learning are designed in a process of co‐configuration, as the analysis of one tool, Development Radar, aims to demonstrate.

The “Development Radar” narrative offers a way to analyse what co‐configuration might mean in the development practices of the learning network. The data consist of the researchers' and participants' tool‐related actions in planning and running a workshop of the Forum of Workplace Development, for which Development Radar was created. Analysis draws from cultural‐historical activity theory by including cultural sources of knowledge beyond the immediate pedagogic interaction.

Metaphors seem to be facilitative in the early phase of co‐configuration of a tool but not enough for sustainable workplace learning. What is needed is opening up the core concepts for all parties involved and providing ongoing negotiations and elaboration concerning their potential and meaning.

Expansive learning is supported by co‐configuration of tools that simultaneously provide a generic orientation basis of learning and are open to contextual knowledge creation in and across the levels of developmental activities.

The visual co‐configuration of tools may be crucial for understanding learning, development and the implementation of tools in a specific context, and even have an effect on the professional identity of users.

The significance of tools for the quality of workplace learning is generally acknowledged but the investigation into the pedagogical dynamics and material co‐configuration of tools needs more attention.

The aim of this paper is to present the effectiveness of participatory information and communication technology (ICT) tools for urban planning, in particular, supporting bottom-up decision-making in urban management and governance.

This work begins with a presentation on the state of the art literature on the existing participatory approaches and their contribution to urban planning and the policymaking process. Furthermore, a case study, namely, the UrbanAPI project, is selected to identify new visualisation and simulation tools applied at different urban scales. These tools are applied in four different European cities – Vienna, Bologna, Vitoria-Gasteiz and Ruse – with the objective to identify the data needs for application development, commonalities in requirements of such participatory tools and their expected impact in policy and decision-making processes.

The case study presents three planning applications: three-dimensional Virtual Reality at neighbourhood scale, Public Motion Explorer at city-wide scale and Urban Growth Simulation at city-region scale. UrbanAPI applications indicate both active and passive participation secured by applying these tools at different urban scales and hence facilitate evidence-based urban planning decision-making. Structured engagement with the city administrations indicates commonalities in user needs and application requirements creating the potential for the development of generic features in these ICT tools which can be applied to many other cities throughout Europe.

This paper presents new ICT-enabled participatory urban planning tools at different urban scales to support collaborative decision-making and urban policy development. Various technologies are used for the development of these IT tools and applied to the real environment of four European cities.

The purpose of this paper is to first empirically illustrate the construction of accounting for sustainable development tool (Bebbington and Gray, 2001) and, second, to discuss the operationalization of accounting for sustainable development (Bebbington and Larrinaga, 2014).

This research is based on a unique intervention-research approach, the main author having worked part-time for four years on the development of the tool for a business organization in the organic food sector.

This paper proposes an operationalization of sustainable development within an accounting tool and presents the results of the calculations. It also touches briefly upon the organization’s decision not to adopt the tool. The research concludes on the difficulty of operationalizing the economic, social and environmental capitals while proposing results that demonstrate “unsustainability”.

This research in operationalizing sustainable development paves the way for future potential use of the tool described, and future developments to address the model’s current shortcomings, notably in interconnecting social and economic capitals with natural capital.

The non-adoption of the accounting tool raises questions about the acceptability among practitioners of visualizing the unsustainability of their own organization, in particular within “green” and “socially responsible” businesses. Moreover, it raises the question of growth and decoupling of the organization’s impact from its economic growth.

This paper makes three contributions to the current literature. First, it furthers the discussion on how to operationalize accounting for sustainable development, notably by trying to implement capital as a liability (a debt), placing its “maintenance” at the very heart of the design. Second, it offers an initial operationalization of “system thinking” within a tool to account for sustainable development. Finally, it contributes to the literature on “engagement research” through a four-year intervention-research project.

This paper aims to contribute to talent management literature by examining empirically the relationship between talent identification and development tools.

The study sample consisted of 112 Argentina-based companies. All participants completed an online survey containing a list of identification and development practices. Responses were analyzed with SPSS 19.

Results show that companies running more talent identification processes (performance management and potential identification) make use of a greater number of development tools. Significant differences were observed in the use of all development tools analyzed, with the exception of formal education and job rotation. Results indicate that the presence of a Development Department encourages the implementation of identification and development tools.

The study suggests that the better the quality of the information involved during the identification stage, the higher the contribution to development investment decisions. Companies should do well to rely on higher-quality diagnostic information to facilitate a better selection of development tools to fulfill specific objectives. The existence of a Development Department favors the implementation of a greater number of identification and development tools.

This paper adds to fill a perceived gap in the literature investigating, empirically, the relationship between talent identification processes and development tools.

Benchmark surveys regarding talent management assessment practices and interventions of choice for organization development (OD) practitioners have shown 360-degree feedback to be a popular tool for both development and decision-making in the field today. Although much has been written about implementing 360-degree feedback since its inception in the 1990s, few longitudinal case examples exist where interventions have been applied and their impact measured successfully. This chapter closes the gap by providing research findings and key learnings from five different implementation strategies for enhancing 360-degree feedback in a large multi-national organization. Recommendations and implications for future research are discussed.

Organization development is focused on implementing a planned process of positive humanistic change in organizations through the use of social science theory, action research, and data-based feedback methods. The role of personality in that change process, however, has historically been ignored or relegated to a limited set of interventions. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a conceptual overview of the linkages between personality and OD, discuss the current state of personality in the field including key trends in talent management, and offer a new multi-level framework for conceptualizing applications of personality for different types of OD efforts. The chapter concludes with implications for research and practice.

Expert systems are being effectively applied to a variety of engineering problems. A growing number of languages and development tools are available for their building. Expert systems building tools (shells) are not so flexible as the high‐level languages, but they are easier to use. The problem is that there are too many development tools on the market today, no standards for their evaluation are available, so it is quite difficult to choose the ‘best’ tool for the developer's/user's needs. This paper is an attempt to review the situation on the confused market. Eighty‐six development tools are described in a table form for easy comparisons. Tools implemented on the AI machines only are not included in this survey.

States that the rate of change of Internet technology is alarmingly high. The main question addressed in this article is: how can organizations cope whose main activities are not Internet‐technology related? METANET is a framework containing the concepts required to keep pace with the rapid evolution of Web applications. It has four main components: development, maintenance, tools architecture and organizational fit. A typology of Web applications and the development method allows IT departments to determine what types of Web applications they are ready to develop. Content maintenance models are set out. The necessary organizational structure is discussed. An architecture for efficient and productive corporate development tools is set out. To illustrate the concepts a prototype repository is discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the current practices of tool and die development, particularly in the Malaysian context with respect to collaborative manufacturing (CM). It is important to gauge the presents of CM, which is one of the key elements of Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0) so that significant initiatives could be taken. The findings are also expected to address the issues pertaining limited information related to collaborative tool and die development in Malaysia.

A survey was carried out among the key players in the local tool and die industry, covering issues such as operational structure in practice, internal collaboration, external collaboration and application of collaborative technology.

The results revealed that although practitioners realise that there are systems and available technological support, unfortunately, it has not been embraced due to poor communication, lack of commitment and cooperation from employees and business owners. In addition, industry players also need to be aware of the benefits concerning CM for a sustainable future.

Many industry players are rather reluctant to participate in surveys and tend to reserve their opinions regarding their operational practices. Lack of awareness among the industry players contributed to the poor participation of the survey and based on the feedback, some of the industry players are not well-informed regarding the latest developments in the industry.

The data and feedback gained through the research offer the perspective for the current state of CM particularly the tool and die industry in Malaysia. This may be a preliminary study with limited data but the value of the information is significant for further in-depth study and policy alignment towards enhancing the tool and die industry which is rarely given attention to. Understanding the current state of CM particularly in the tool and die development would be critical for the expansion of IR 4.0 concerning this field in Malaysia.

The creation of well‐designed products is widely acknowledged as an important contributor to company success. In principle, an effective design process, as part of the wider new product development (NPD) process, should result in well‐designed products. This paper aims to present a tool to enable a design team to evaluate their design process in a workshop setting, with a view to targeting improvements.

This tool is based on literature and has been iteratively developed using a mixed research approach, including detailed exploratory cases and application in action research mode.

The resulting tool comprises two main components. A “process audit” based on process maturity principles, which targets the design‐related activities in NPD. The process audit enables a company team to identify improvement opportunities in the design process. A product audit enables perceptions towards product characteristics to be assessed. The audit tool does not seek to be a benchmarking tool, but aims to capture “good design” principles in a form which is accessible and useful to practitioners.

In use, the tool enabled managers to balance their concern with meeting budget and timescale demands against the importance of producing well‐designed products. By first focusing on the tangible output of the design process – the product – practitioners are better able to understand the way in which design decisions influence product usability, desirability and producibility. Evidence from cases confirms the value and originality of this tool.

Previous tools addressing product development have focused on strategic and managerial concerns. This novel assessment tool focuses explicitly on design issues, within the wider context of NPD.