Search results

The purpose of this paper is to show that virtual mirroring-based learning allows members of an organization to see how they communicate with others in a visual way, by applying principles of “social quantum physics” (empathy, entanglement, reflect, reboot), to become better communicators and build a shared “DNA” within their organization.

E-mail based social network analysis creates virtual maps of communication – social landscapes – of organizations, similar to Google Maps, which creates geographical maps of a person’s surroundings.

Applying virtual mirroring-based learning at various mulitnational firms has significantly increased their organizational efficiency and performance, for instance increasing customer satisfaction by 18 per cent in a large services organization, increasing retention, making sales forecasts, and improving call center employee satisfaction.

To address concerns of individual privacy, the guiding principle is to give individual information to the individual and provide aggregated anonymized information to management.

Virtual mirroring-based learning offers a unique way of creating collective awareness within an organization by empowering the individual to take corrective action aligned with collective action, and improves their own communication behavior through analyzing and visualizing their e-mail archive in novel ways, while giving strategic insight to management and improving organizational culture.

The central purpose of the research presented in this paper is to synthesize the current state of the field in qualitative methods in international organizational change research and to provide a call to researchers to use this type of methodology more frequently. The intent is to provide readers with an overview of how and when qualitative research methods should be used for investigating important theoretical and empirical questions in management research.

The authors developed several working hypotheses based on their own experiences in using an extensive array of qualitative methods in organizational change research. They coupled this with an extensive literature search to understand how these methodologies have been used to date. The findings from the literature search were analysed to uncover where there are gaps in the work and how organizational change and other management scholars can effectively use qualitative methods to advance their understanding of international change phenomena, given the unique questions and situations confronted in various contexts. The authors include an array of examples to show how qualitative research has been used to successfully test theories, uncover new phenomena, find connections between various situations, and provide a deep understanding of contextual influences on organizational change.

The authors' findings include several examples and ideas of how and when scholars can use qualitative methods to advance understanding of international change phenomena. This provides a much richer, deeper, and more nuanced understanding of many of the phenomena and issues under investigation by employing the more observational and human‐centric techniques available through the use of qualitative methods. Several of the implications of context are only observable through some of the qualitative methods discussed, such as ethnography, case studies, interviews, observations, and their respective analysis methods. Qualitative research can be employed successfully and fruitfully in organization studies' contexts to: help uncover new organizational phenomena; build and test theories of change; and create new methods that researchers can use specifically in international change studies.

The paper is the only one of its kind, bringing a cohesive and focused review of qualitative methods studies in international organizational change research. It provides readers and the field with a menu of ways to effectively use qualitative methods and a description of where and how to bring in these methods to answer questions and uncover new themes that are not effectively dealt with through the use of more commonly employed quantitative methods and analyses.

The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence of engineering knowledge creation in the context of product failure management, thereby extending knowledge about organizational learning and mindfulness to a largely unexplored context. The study addresses a gap in the literature by illustrating “engineering epistemology” as a critical knowledge asset that gives rise to superior problem solving – and potentially – superior business performance.

The authors conducted qualitative research based on phenomenological interviews with product engineers to generate a grounded theory about organizational knowledge creation. Rigorous analysis of narratives detailing the “lived lives” of problem solvers relied on a research protocol recommended by Corbin and Strauss.

The findings show that engineers' real‐world problem‐solving practices mirror Nonaka and Takeuchi's five phases of knowledge creation and the three stages of sensemaking in enactment theory, the genesis of Weick's notion of mindfulness. A synthesized model illustrates how a five‐step problem‐solving process facilitated by environmental conditions resulting in organizational learning is influenced by an “engineering epistemology”.

The sample was limited to engineers based primarily in the US Midwest. While the authors' methodology (grounded theory) was appropriate for theory generation, the results invite quantitative testing involving a larger and more diversified sample of engineers.

The paper highlights the social aspects of engineering problem solving that firms can optimize for effective problem investigation and higher organizational learning.

The paper conceptualizes problem‐solving teamwork as epistemic collaboration, with the often un‐optimized potential of generating organizational learning. It is, to the authors' knowledge, the first research to concentrate on modeling the dynamics of knowledge creation in an engineering problem‐solving context.

The purpose of this introductory paper is a harbinger to the collection of scholarly articles by some well‐known international scholars in quality and business fields to this special edition of IJQRM on mindfulness and quality in small and large firms. It also provides an analysis of existing research on mindfulness in general.

Through a survey of secondary data, this conceptual paper reviews the theory and extant literature on mindfulness, quality and reliability in small and large firms, and provides a picture of the application of the mindfulness theory in different disciplines, including business.

First, mindfulness enhances quality and mindlessness diminishes it. Second, mindfulness‐based approaches to quality may offer a more resilient and sustainable solution to quality and reliability issues facing organisations, compared to routine‐based approaches.

The paper shows how management approaches that promote human cognition of quality and reliability issues in organisations and capacity to develop multiple effective and resilient solutions can better serve businesses than the routine‐based quality and management initiatives.