Search results

This article discusses the importance of existential meaning in career counseling, provides a case study of its application, and relates it to career development theory. Career development and counseling professionals will find existential analysis useful in their service to others. Using logotherapy, a counseling professional living in a pluralistic society can assist individuals with distinct worldviews in their search for meaning. Given our lives and careers, we can find meaning by creating something or doing some good, by experiencing something or someone, and by our attitude towards unavoidable suffering.

This article attempts to provide an institutionalist analysis and diagnosis of the current crisis of orthodox economics. We shall, first, characterise the predominant opinion in economics—the neoclassical synthesis. Next, we examine the anomalies which are currently vexing orthodox opinion and their power to provoke a period of crisis and extraordinary science. In the final section, we diagnose the source of the anomalies of the neoclassical synthesis.

Global competition has created an endless cycle of innovation and imitation among companies striving to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Increasingly, the traditional sources of differentiation, such as product uniqueness, are not sustainable enough to create sufficient competitive advantage. So some of the most successful companies today are using behavior to differentiate themselves in their markets. Behavioral differentiation is more difficult to copy, even when competitors know what you are doing, because differentiating yourself behaviorally requires more skill and will than many companies have. Herb Kelleher at Southwest Airlines, Horst Schultze at Ritz‐Carlton, George Zimmer at Men’s Wearhouse, and Sam Walton at Wal‐Mart understood that they could attract and retain customers by creating significantly positive experiences – and it starts with treating their own employees well. These business leaders succeeded in part because they understood the powerful effect their employees’ behavior has on customers’ experiences with their companies. Positive behavior is attractive. Behavior that is significantly negative also differentiates, but it has a repulsive effect on customers. Three forces drive behavioral differentiation: leadership, culture, and processes. Companies that excel at behavioral differentiation, including Harley‐Davidson and Xilinx, have leaders who set a powerful behavioral example and understand the role behavior plays in business strategy. These companies also have strong cultures of differentiated treatment toward employees as well as customers. Finally, they have processes in place that help them operationalize superior behavior. Behavioral differentiation offers a significant advantage to companies whose products and services have become commoditized in today’s tough markets.

This research explores perceptions of knowledge management processes held by managers and employees in a service industry. To date, empirical research on knowledge management in the service industry is sparse. This research seeks to examine absorptive capacity and its four capabilities of acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation and their impact on effective knowledge management. All of these capabilities are strategies that enable external knowledge to be recognized, imported and integrated into, and further developed within the organization effectively. The research tests the relationships between absorptive capacity and effective knowledge management through analysis of quantitative data (n = 549) drawn from managers and employees in 35 residential aged care organizations in Western Australia. Responses were analysed using Partial Least Square-based Structural Equation Modelling. Additional analysis was conducted to assess if the job role (of manager or employee) and three industry context variables of profit motive, size of business and length of time the organization has been in business, impacted on the hypothesized relationships.

Structural model analysis examines the relationships between variables as hypothesized in the research framework. Analysis found that absorptive capacity and the four capabilities correlated significantly with effective knowledge management, with absorptive capacity explaining 56% of the total variability for effective knowledge management. Findings from this research also show that absorptive capacity and the four capabilities provide a useful framework for examining knowledge management in the service industry. Additionally, there were no significant differences in the perceptions held between managers and employees, nor between respondents in for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. Furthermore, the size of the organization and length of time the organization has been in business did not impact on absorptive capacity, the four capabilities and effective knowledge management.

The research considers implications for business in light of these findings. The role of managers in providing leadership across the knowledge management process was confirmed, as well as the importance of guiding routines and knowledge sharing throughout the organization. Further, the results indicate that within the participating organizations there are discernible differences in the way that some organizations manage their knowledge, compared to others. To achieve effective knowledge management, managers need to provide a supportive workplace culture, facilitate strong employee relationships, encourage employees to seek out new knowledge, continually engage in two-way communication with employees and provide up-to-date policies and procedures that guide employees in doing their work. The implementation of knowledge management strategies has also been shown in this research to enhance the delivery and quality of residential aged care.

One would imagine that the nation of thinkers and poets—a nation enjoying the highest and best of modern elementary education—and a nation which points with pride to a province (Siebenbürger Sachsen) whose people are the best educated in the world, would have no need of such an enthusiastic advocate of the Public Library cause as Dr. Schultze. English readers unfamiliar with Germany will be surprised and puzzled at the existing state of affairs in the German library world, for it is generally believed, in Germany and England, that the “Volksbibliothek” is very much like the “Public Library,” and the number of Volksbibliotheken is large enough to confirm our belief that Germany is always trying to get ahead or to keep abreast of us. The author points to the folly of raising monuments to the memory of their great writers when their works are unknown or forgotten by the people, owing to lack of opportunity for reading them. He also calls upon the nation to have a fitting Gutenberg celebration “by making it possible for books —living witnesses of this world‐changing discovery—to be read by everyone, even in the remotest hamlet, instead of feasting, carousing, and parading with Chinese lanterns.” That the old German appetite is potent enough to hinder the progress of education and culture is evident. “As I write these lines, I am informed that a German University town which in many ways takes high rank, and which also has a large working‐class population, is going to celebrate the matriculation of the 1,000th student. The municipal authorities had previously decided to show their appreciation of the growth of the intellectual life of their town by establishing a public reading room, which had long been projected, but which all private efforts had been unable to effect. But what did the City Fathers? They thought the 1,000th student could not be welcomed in a worthier manner than by filling him with strong drink. And how much was voted for this object? 500 Mark? or even 1,000 Mark. Oh no, not at all—but thrice that amount, 3,000 Mark! (£150). The reading room remains a project—to commemorate the intellectual importance of the town!”

The Scottish Branch Annual General Meeting and Conference will be held in the Hume Tower, University of Edinburgh, George Square, on Friday 31st March 1967, from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. During the morning session Mr F.N. Hogg, DPA, FLA, Principal, School of Librarianship, Aberystwyth, and Mr W.E. Tyler, FLA, Director, Department of Librarianship, University of Strathclyde, will speak on aspects of library education.

This chapter is a contribution to the intellectual history of the anxiety that full employment in the modern United States depended somehow on military spending. This discourse (conveniently abbreviated as “military Keynesianism”) is vaguely familiar, but its contours and transit still await a full study. The chapter shows the origins of the idea in the left-Keynesian milieu centered around Harvard’s Alvin Hansen in the late 1930s, with a particular focus on the diverse group that cowrote the 1938 stagnationist manifesto An Economic Program for American Democracy. After a discussion of how these young economists participated in the World War II mobilization, the chapter considers how questions of stagnation and military stimulus were marginalized during the years of the high Cold War, only to be revived by younger radicals. At the same time, it demonstrates the existence of a community of discourse that directly links the Old Left of the 1930s and 1940s with the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s, and cuts across the division between left-wing social critique and liberal statecraft.

This conceptual article aims to explore the current state of knowledge management systems, to describe the potential role of synthetic worlds for knowledge integration, and to suggest a future research agenda.

Using the constraints of current knowledge management systems outlined in Alavi and Tiwana as a guiding structure, this article explores knowledge integration through a synthetic world and outlines several propositions intended to frame existing knowledge and guide the development of future inquiry.

Current knowledge management systems neither exploit the capabilities of high performance computing, nor adequately address organizational challenges presented by increasingly knowledge‐laden, dispersed, global organizations. The limitations of current systems: constraints on transactive memory, insufficient mutual understanding, limited retention of contextual knowledge, and inflexibility of organizational ties; can be effectively addressed through the synthetic world environment.

Debate regarding the role of Web 2.0 in twenty‐first century knowledge management continues. In order to move this debate forward, the Web 2.0 phenomenon must be unbundled and the role a specific virtual environment may play considered. To that end, this article explores the potential role of synthetic worlds for organizational knowledge management and integration. It heightens awareness and generates dialogue that fosters an appreciation of the emerging synthetic world environment.

THE title of this short paper is somewhat of a misnomer, as the German Volks bibliothek is not the same as an English Public Library. As Dr. Schultze says: “When we speak of an English Public Library we know exactly what is meant, but the German Volks bibliothek does not convey any definite impression. Too often it still means a very small collection of books, probably gifts which are accessible to borrowers at certain hours each week. As a rule, the revenue is so trifling that after paying the small working costs there is little or nothing left for buying books.” Taking, therefore, the term Public Library for the sake of convenience, we may assume that the first Public Library in Germany was opened in Hamburg, in 1529, as the result of Luther's recommendation (1524) “that good libraries, especially in the large towns, should be established.” At the beginning of the 18th century, a number of free libraries were established, these were usually connected with churches and schools, yet their very name “free” seemed an invitation to everyone to share the treasures they contained. These libraries were principally in central Germany and Saxony.

It has often been said that a great part of the strength of Aslib lies in the fact that it brings together those whose experience has been gained in many widely differing fields but who have a common interest in the means by which information may be collected and disseminated to the greatest advantage. Lists of its members have, therefore, a more than ordinary value since they present, in miniature, a cross‐section of institutions and individuals who share this special interest.