Search results
1 – 10 of over 157000Dan Bouhnik, Yahel Giat and Yafit Sanderovitch
The purpose of this study is to characterize learning from asynchronous sources among research and development (R&D) personnel. It aims to examine four aspects of asynchronous…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to characterize learning from asynchronous sources among research and development (R&D) personnel. It aims to examine four aspects of asynchronous source learning: employee preferences regarding self‐learning; extent of source usage; employee satisfaction with these sources and the effect of the sources on the workplace.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 120 R&D employees of a high‐tech firm were administered questionnaires consisting of open‐ended and close‐ended questions regarding different features of asynchronous learning.
Findings
The study finds that a synchronous sources are highly utilized by employees and are used both for general‐purpose learning and solving specific problems. Despite the high usage and satisfaction from these sources, we do not find evidence to support the creation of an expert community of practice.
Research limitations/implications
The research is limited to a single, albeit large, firm. Possibly, in different organizational, cultural or geographical settings, expert communities of knowledge may be created in a more pronounced manner.
Practical implications
Managers should: consult with employees as to what they need most to complement the asynchronous sources; put more emphasize on measuring satisfaction from asynchronous sources to predict the value of these sources to the organization; and encourage and ensure the creation of an expert community of practice and support and maintain it thereafter.
Originality/value
Empirical research about the implications of asynchronous sources on the workplace is scarce. This paper complements previous research and provides new insight into understanding these effects.
Details
Keywords
Billie Eilam, Merav Yosfan, Joel Lanir and Alan J. Wecker
The authors conducted a study at a history museum with the objective of examining changes in the knowledge of students aged 12 to 14 concerning the use of primary sources.
Abstract
Purpose
The authors conducted a study at a history museum with the objective of examining changes in the knowledge of students aged 12 to 14 concerning the use of primary sources.
Design/methodology/approach
Students utilized self-led guides while exploring two museum spaces presenting different historical events. These guides encouraged students to scrutinize the exhibits, become acquainted with the methods employed in their research, and develop an awareness of the information derived from them. Students' responses to pre- and postquestionnaires were compared and analyzed using mixed methods.
Findings
The results revealed that students became familiar with various types of primary sources, recognized that only specific sources endure through time and gained an understanding of the research methods employed to study them. Additionally, most students comprehended that the same sources could lead to diverse historical accounts and the potential reasons for such variations.
Practical implications
Recommendations for practice are discussed.
Originality/value
This study contributed to the limited knowledge regarding learning during a single, self-led tour in a history museum. The findings illuminate the potential for learning and advancing historical thinking concepts even within such museum-visit contexts.
Details
Keywords
Nathan S Hartman, Scott J Allen and Rosanna F Miguel
The purpose of this paper is to explore how educators can benefit from data on teaching methods or sources of learning used for the leader development of undergraduate students…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how educators can benefit from data on teaching methods or sources of learning used for the leader development of undergraduate students. To advance the field, the authors contend that programs for leader development need to clearly identify what area of development is being improved (e.g. conceptual understanding, personal growth, skill building, feedback), intentionally build connections toward those objectives for development, and incorporate experience within the structure of undergraduate education to facilitate better outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach
Ratings on the teaching methods used by participants with experience facilitating leader development activities for undergraduate students were solicited in an online survey. Each participant (n=66) responded to questions about 25 sources of learning for leader development. Questions asked the degree to which each source of learning provided the learning outcomes of conceptual understanding, feedback, skill building, and/or personal growth to undergraduate students.
Findings
Participants perceived small group discussion, and film/television clips to promote conceptual understanding, while internships and 360-degree feedback did so to a lesser degree. Sources of learning perceived to facilitate skill building were group projects, and giving presentations. Conversely, completing case studies and listening to lectures were rated as unlikely to foster personal growth.
Originality/value
The results can help educators make a more informed decision about the adoption of teaching methods for leader development. Hopefully, this practice will create standardization in undergraduate leader development that researchers have asked for and serve as a platform for recommending timetables and sources of learning that better define the what and how of leader development. Likewise, these findings benefit industry, because strong parallels to both the content and techniques used in industry and by universities exist.
Details
Keywords
Gary Kleinman, Philip Siegel and Claire Eckstein
The pace of organizational and environmental change seems to demand that such professional organizations as CPA firms become learning organizations in order to compete adequately…
Abstract
The pace of organizational and environmental change seems to demand that such professional organizations as CPA firms become learning organizations in order to compete adequately with other firms. The flattening out of traditional hierarchical structures within organizations argues that traditional mentoring and supervisory structures may be inadequate for fostering needed individual learning and personal learning. One effect of the lack of such learning may be increased role stress, job burnout, loss of commitment to the organization, intention to leave, and diminished job satisfaction. Using a sample of 440 accounting professionals from major CPA firms in several regions of the USA, studies the ability of team social interaction processes within work teams to foster the personal, organizational, and team‐source learning, and also to influence attitudinal outcomes directly and indirectly. Also examines whether personal learning, organizational socialization and team‐source learning mediate the impact of team social interaction process on attitudinal outcomes. Uses a hierarchical regression‐based test to evaluate our hypotheses. The results supported our expectations. A structural equation modeling test of the model showed that organizational and personal learning mediated the relationship between team social interaction processes and the attitudinal outcomes, but team‐source learning did not.
Details
Keywords
Fang Chen, Hari Bapuji, Bruno Dyck and Xiaoyun Wang
Although knowledge transfer is generally conceived as a two‐way process in which knowledge is transferred to and from the knowledge source, research has tended to focus on the…
Abstract
Purpose
Although knowledge transfer is generally conceived as a two‐way process in which knowledge is transferred to and from the knowledge source, research has tended to focus on the first part of the process and neglect the second part. This study aims to examine the feedback loop and how knowledge is transferred from the knowledge receiver to the knowledge source.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper relies on interviews and archival records to conduct an in‐depth case study of cross‐border knowledge transfer work carried out by a Canadian non‐profit organization.
Findings
The paper finds that by learning about receivers' knowledge, background and learning styles, as well as their social context or learning environment, such as language, culture, tradition and history, “source” persons are in fact able to acquire for themselves valuable new knowledge. This in turn assists both the source and receiver to establish shared understandings, thereby facilitating a more effective knowledge transfer thus enhancing learning for both the source and receiver.
Research limitations/implications
Given that this is a case study of one organization, the findings of this study may not be readily generalizable to other organizations, or settings. Despite this limitation, the study raises some important questions for further investigation and contributes to existing research on intercultural knowledge transfer.
Practical implications
Individuals involved in knowledge transfer who pay attention to the feedback loop can better perform their roles and also improve their knowledge.
Originality/value
It has been acknowledged in the literature that expatriates engage in extensive learning while transferring knowledge in their overseas assignments. However, little research has examined what they have learned, how they learn, and the benefits of such learning. This research suggests that knowledge sources can enhance their own knowledge as well as improve knowledge transfer to recipients by nurturing feedback loops.
Details
Keywords
Gregoris Demetriou, George Papageorgiou and Andreas Efstathiades
The purpose of this research is the modeling of the relationship of Learning Style and Learning Source Preferences to Organizational Learning Capability (OLC).
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this research is the modeling of the relationship of Learning Style and Learning Source Preferences to Organizational Learning Capability (OLC).
Design/methodology/approach
A survey questionnaire gave us data from 274 employees in the hotel industry in Cyprus, which was chosen because it is a labor-intensive industry with big economic impact on the National Domestic Product (as per Cyprus Investment Promotion Agency this is more than 20%). SPSS and AMOS were used to analyse the proposed model.
Findings
The findings provided evidence to support the position that the proposed model demonstrates that OLC is affected by the Individual Learning Preferences (ILP) which are the learning style preference and the learning source preference of individual workers.
Research limitations/implications
The study did not consider the effect of learning style and learning source preferences on the different departments of a hotel. Further, a longitudinal study with more organizations within the hotel sector, or other economic sectors, was outside the scope of this study.
Practical implications
The proposed model can be used by organizations to reflect on how learning source and learning style preferences can affect the OLC.
Originality/value
What relevant research did not explore enough, is the learning preferences of individuals in their work environment and not as often seen, the learning styles or learning (dis)abilities of students in a school environment. Therefore, this research fulfills the need to study learning preferences in the business context and examines their effects on OLC.
Details
Keywords
Kyle Dillon Feuz and Diane J. Cook
The purpose of this paper is to study heterogeneous transfer learning for activity recognition using heuristic search techniques. Many pervasive computing applications require…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study heterogeneous transfer learning for activity recognition using heuristic search techniques. Many pervasive computing applications require information about the activities currently being performed, but activity recognition algorithms typically require substantial amounts of labeled training data for each setting. One solution to this problem is to leverage transfer learning techniques to reuse available labeled data in new situations.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper introduces three novel heterogeneous transfer learning techniques that reverse the typical transfer model and map the target feature space to the source feature space and apply them to activity recognition in a smart apartment. This paper evaluates the techniques on data from 18 different smart apartments located in an assisted-care facility and compares the results against several baselines.
Findings
The three transfer learning techniques are all able to outperform the baseline comparisons in several situations. Furthermore, the techniques are successfully used in an ensemble approach to achieve even higher levels of accuracy.
Originality/value
The techniques in this paper represent a considerable step forward in heterogeneous transfer learning by removing the need to rely on instance – instance or feature – feature co-occurrence data.
Details
Keywords
Learning to teach subject matter topics that emerge as challenging for culturally and linguistically diverse students remains a key goal for prospective teachers. Teacher…
Abstract
Learning to teach subject matter topics that emerge as challenging for culturally and linguistically diverse students remains a key goal for prospective teachers. Teacher education needs multiple ways to guide preservice teachers (PSTs) for this work. One context for such teacher development is classroom-based teacher inquiry. I describe an innovation in teacher inquiry pedagogy that mentors PSTs in (a) mining multiple sources of knowledge for teaching challenging areas of content learning, (b) systematically analyzing knowledge gleaned from these sources, and (c) mediating through visual representations the overlapping, reinforcing, and sometimes conflicting ideas gleaned from sources, in order to advance conceptions and practice in content-based learning for diverse youth. I describe the pedagogy in practice, then use a case of one PST to illustrate how her knowledge evolved in learning to teach persuasive writing to early adolescent English language learners. It was in the knowledge sources interface, mediated by visual representations and written reflections, that this PST’s developing knowledge gained texture and depth.
Details
Keywords
Honglan Yu, Margaret Fletcher and Trevor Buck
Understanding how and why firms behave differently during re-internationalization has increasingly been at a premium in international business research. The authors conducted a…
Abstract
Understanding how and why firms behave differently during re-internationalization has increasingly been at a premium in international business research. The authors conducted a case study of 11 Chinese international small and medium-sized enterprise and explored how they learned and recovered from involuntary de-internationalization. From case data, the “complete” re-internationalizers learned the lessons of foreign market exits more proactively than “partial” re-internationalizers. The complete re-internationalizers adopted internal and external sources of knowledge acquisition, “middle-up-down” information distribution and ambivalent information interpretation, while the partial re-internationalizers relied on internal sources of knowledge, “top-down” or “bottom-up” information distribution and univalent information interpretation. This study contributes by identifying the crucial role of learning processes to complete re-internationalization, which is absent in existing re-internationalization research.
Details
Keywords
Francesca Checchinato, Lala Hu, Alessandra Perri and Tiziano Vescovi
The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of different learning sources in the process of capability building of Chinese firms (CFs) approaching international markets.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of different learning sources in the process of capability building of Chinese firms (CFs) approaching international markets.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on the case study of the company “Goodbaby.” The primary data sources are two semi-structured interviews with one of the firm’s managers, which have been triangulated with point of sale visits, interviews with industry experts, and secondary data such as corporate records, patent and trademark data, industry reports and news articles.
Findings
Both the home-country and foreign markets act as sources of learning to support the development of CFs’ marketing capabilities. Learning at home is triggered by the complexity of the national market and the exposure to foreign entrants. Foreign learning is stimulated by the relationships with leading foreign partners and the exposure to advanced final markets. Moreover, each learning source has a positive effect on the development of CFs’ marketing capabilities in both market contexts in which they compete, i.e. the home-market and international markets.
Practical implications
CFs’ managers should be simultaneously receptive to the domestic and foreign contexts, as both may support the development of marketing capabilities. CFs’ managers should recognize the learning opportunities embedded in each of these contexts, and identify the markets where these can be effectively redeployed.
Originality/value
The authors distinguish between different sources of learning in the context of CFs’ internationalization, and explore their triggering factors and their role in the development of an underinvestigated type of capabilities, i.e. the marketing capabilities.
Details