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Article
Publication date: 26 January 2010

John P. Girard and Susan McIntyre

The purpose of this paper is to describe the successful use of a knowledge management (KM) model in a public sector organization.

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to describe the successful use of a knowledge management (KM) model in a public sector organization.

Design/methodology/approach

Building on the theoretical foundation of others, this case study demonstrates the value of KM modeling in a science‐based initiative in the Canadian public service.

Findings

The Inukshuk KM model, which comprises the five elements of technology, leadership, culture, measurement, and process, provides a holistic approach in public service KM.

Practical implications

The proposed model can be employed by other initiatives to facilitate KM planning and implementation.

Originality/value

This the first project to consider how KM models may be implemented in a Canadian public service environment.

Details

International Journal of Public Sector Management, vol. 23 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3558

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 October 2005

John P. Girard

The aim of this paper is to report the finding of an exploratory research project that considered how public service organizations may conquer the debilitating effects of…

Abstract

Purpose

The aim of this paper is to report the finding of an exploratory research project that considered how public service organizations may conquer the debilitating effects of enterprise dementia.

Design/methodology/approach

Building on the seminal research of Michael Earl, this project sought to solicit the view from the front, which in this case are the middle managers of the Canadian public service. Specifically, the aim was to determine which of Earl's schools of knowledge would be most appropriate in curbing the organizational memory loss and taming the information anxiety that are common place today.

Findings

The sample of public service middle managers overwhelmingly opted for a single strategy. The organizational school surfaced as the strategy most likely to fit respondents' perceived needs. Through collaboration, Earl's organizational school focuses on maximizing the use of social networks with a view to knowledge sharing.

Practical implications

This paper provides a compendium of knowledge strategies that may be useful for public service executives.

Originality/value

This the first project to consider how Earl's taxonomy of knowledge strategies may be implemented in a Canadian public service environment.

Details

International Journal of Public Sector Management, vol. 18 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3558

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 November 2006

John P. Girard

The aim of this paper is to theorize what relationship exists between knowledge loss and the manager type. Specifically, the purpose of this research is to determine if some types

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Abstract

Purpose

The aim of this paper is to theorize what relationship exists between knowledge loss and the manager type. Specifically, the purpose of this research is to determine if some types of middle managers report lower levels of information anxiety. A manager's knowledge classification was based on the seminal research of Davenport and Prusak, and Nonaka and Takeuchi.

Design/methodology/approach

A sample of Canadian Public Service middle managers completed an online survey instrument over a three‐month period in the autumn of 2003. Ninety‐nine usable survey results formed the basis of analysis for the project. To increase how one may generalize the findings, the sample was compared to a recent large random sample of the same population, which determined that the two samples were statistically the same. Segmenting the managers by knowledge transformation tasks (based on Davenport and Prusak) and knowledge exchange methods (based on Nonaka and Takeuchi) permitted the development of two hypotheses based on the dependent variable of information anxiety.

Findings

An empirical examination revealed that most of the sample reported relatively low levels of information anxiety. The type of tasks performed by the respondents was not a major factor; however, there was a significant negative relationship between frequency of task and information anxiety. The discovery of a weak positive relationship between tacit knowledge use and information anxiety provides the promise of exciting future research opportunities.

Originality/value

This pioneering research is the first project to consider the relationship between information anxiety and type of middle manager through the lens of knowledge transformation tasks and knowledge exchange methods.

Details

Journal of Knowledge Management, vol. 10 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1367-3270

Keywords

Content available
Article
Publication date: 1 November 2006

Rory L. Chase

794

Abstract

Details

Journal of Knowledge Management, vol. 10 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1367-3270

Article
Publication date: 11 November 2014

Henri Guénin-Paracini, Yves Gendron and Jérémy Morales

– This paper aims to better understand why neoliberal governance is so resilient to the crises that frequently affect all or part of the economy.

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to better understand why neoliberal governance is so resilient to the crises that frequently affect all or part of the economy.

Design/methodology/approach

The argument of this paper relies on a macroanalysis of discourses surrounding the Global Financial Crisis.

Findings

Drawing on Girard and Foucault’s work, this paper argues that the resilience of neoliberalism partly ensues from the proclivity of this mode of governing to foster, for reasons that this paper seeks to highlight, spontaneous and widespread processes of scapegoating in times of turmoil. As a consequence of these processes, crises often are collectively construed as resulting from frauds: the blame is focused on specific actors whose lack of morality is denounced, and this individualizing line of interpretation protects the regime from systemic questioning.

Practical, social and political implications

Particular actors, rather than the system itself, are made accountable when things go wrong. Consequences are paramount. Today’s political economy is characterized with a proclivity toward social reproduction. While substantive change is possible in theory, considerable challenges are involved in practice in overcoming the dominance of neoliberalism in society.

Originality/value

Although Girard’s work has exerted significant influence over a number of disciplines in the social sciences, his ideas have not yet been widely used in governance and accountability-related research. Anthropological theorizations – such as those proposed by Girard – are valuable in providing us with a sense of how power develops in the economy.

Details

Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, vol. 11 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1176-6093

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 22 September 2020

Hilary Downey and John F. Sherry

The actual uses to which public art is put have been virtually ignored, leaving multifarious dynamics related to its esthetic encounters unexplored. Both audience agency in…

Abstract

Purpose

The actual uses to which public art is put have been virtually ignored, leaving multifarious dynamics related to its esthetic encounters unexplored. Both audience agency in placemaking and sensemaking and the agentic role of place as more than a mere platform or stage dressing for transformation are routinely neglected. Such transformative dynamics are analyzed and interpreted in this study of the Derry–Londonderry Temple, a transient mega-installation orchestrated by bricoleur artist David Best and co-created by sectarian communities in 2015.

Design/methodology/approach

A range of ethnographic methods and supplemental netnography were employed in the investigation.

Findings

Participants inscribed expressions of their lived experience of trauma on the Temple's infrastructure, on wood scrap remnants or on personal artifacts dedicated for interment. These inscriptions and artifacts became objects of contemplation for all participants to consider and appreciate during visitation, affording sectarian citizens opportunity for empathic response to the plight of opposite numbers. Thousands engaged with the installation over the course of a week, registering sorrow, humility and awe in their interactions, experiencing powerful catharsis and creating temporary cross-community comity. The installation and the grief work animating it were introjected by co-creators as a virtual legacy of the engagement.

Originality/value

The originality of the study lies in its theorizing of the successful delivery of social systems therapy in an esthetic modality to communities traditionally hostile to one another. This sustained encounter is defined as traumaturgy. The sacrificial ritual of participatory public art becomes the medium through which temporary cross-community cohesion is achieved.

Details

Arts and the Market, vol. 10 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2056-4945

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 March 1992

John Conway O'Brien

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balanceeconomics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary toman′s finding the good life and society enduring…

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Abstract

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

Details

International Journal of Social Economics, vol. 19 no. 3/4/5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0306-8293

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 2 March 2023

Hilary Downey and John F. Sherry, Jr

Sacrifice, integral to gift giving, remains unexplored and undertheorized in marketing. This paper aims to address this shortfall by analyzing the dynamics of sacrifice and…

Abstract

Purpose

Sacrifice, integral to gift giving, remains unexplored and undertheorized in marketing. This paper aims to address this shortfall by analyzing the dynamics of sacrifice and theorizing how it serves as an engine of the gift chimney.

Design/methodology/approach

The ethnographic investigation of public ceremonial gift giving in sectarian Northern Ireland describes and interprets the complex nature of the gift.

Findings

The authors show that sacrifice is a plausible mechanism of the gift chimney and that the co-occurrence of monadic, dyadic and systemic giving in the same ritual acts as an accelerant.

Social implications

The authors analyze how public ceremonial gift giving induces sectarian communities to risk convocation, enabling them to exorcize trauma sustained at one another’s hands and to build a platform for future cross-community cohesion in a context of ineffective institutional efforts.

Originality/value

Sacrifice propels circulation of the gift, creating a social bond between antagonists whose ethos of mutuality depends upon ritualized reciprocal recognition of entangled loss.

Details

Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, vol. 26 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1352-2752

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 February 1980

SANDRA CLINGAN

The U.S. Congress has been struggling to create a comprehensive energy program. A key component of the present attempt, recommended by President Carter, is a synthetic fuel…

Abstract

The U.S. Congress has been struggling to create a comprehensive energy program. A key component of the present attempt, recommended by President Carter, is a synthetic fuel program. In July of 1979, the President asked for an $88 billion “crash program” to encourage development of synthetic fuels. To date, a three month struggle to reach a consensus between House and Senate conferees has brought only limited results. Compromise is emerging in the form of a proposal for a “synthetic fuels corporation.” The body would have the authority to disperse $20 billion in the form of federal loan guarantees and purchase agreements with more money to become available later.

Details

Studies in Economics and Finance, vol. 4 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1086-7376

Article
Publication date: 1 January 1905

Since the publication of the report of the Lancet Commission on Brandy and the prosecutions that followed, much attention has been given to the subject, and although no great…

Abstract

Since the publication of the report of the Lancet Commission on Brandy and the prosecutions that followed, much attention has been given to the subject, and although no great additions to our knowledge of the composition of this spirit have recently been made, practical use is now being made of information which has been at our disposal for five years or more, which has already had far‐reaching effects upon the trade.

Details

British Food Journal, vol. 7 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0007-070X

1 – 10 of 306