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1 – 10 of over 2000Itamir de Morais Barroca Filho and Gibeon Soares Aquino Júnior
This paper aims to present a case study of the Metamorphosis process in the development of a mobile application based on an existing web information system.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present a case study of the Metamorphosis process in the development of a mobile application based on an existing web information system.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper presents the design and execution of a case study to investigate the feasibility of using the Metamorphosis process to create mobile applications based on existing web information systems. This case study reports the development of a mobile version from SIGEventos web information system.
Findings
The use of Metamorphosis process for the development of SIGEventos Mobile, based on SIGEventos web version, allowed the investigation of the feasibility of it on creation of mobile applications based on existing web information systems. This process was considered useful for creating mobile applications based on existing information systems.
Originality/value
This paper presents a case study of Metamorphosis process.
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Marta Morais-Storz and Nhien Nguyen
This paper aims to conceptualize what it means to be resilient in the face of our current reality of indisputable turbulence and uncertainty, suggest that continual metamorphosis…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to conceptualize what it means to be resilient in the face of our current reality of indisputable turbulence and uncertainty, suggest that continual metamorphosis is key to resilience, demonstrate the role of unlearning in that metamorphosis and suggest that problem formulation is a key deliberate mechanism of driving continual cycles of learning and unlearning.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper entails a conceptual analysis.
Findings
It is found that both the unlearning and resilience literature streams are stuck in a paradigm whereby organizational behavior entails adaptation to the external environment and reaction to crisis. This paper suggests that, given a world of turbulence and uncertainty, a more useful paradigm is one where organizations take action before action is desperately needed, and that they proactively contribute to enacting their environment via their own continual metamorphosis.
Research limitations/implications
Future research should explore further the factors that can facilitate sensing the early warning signs, and facilitate the cyclical learning–unlearning process of metamorphosis.
Practical implications
The primary practical implication is that to ensure strategic resilience, managers must be able to identify early warning signs and initiate metamorphosis. This means understanding the processes needed to support unlearning, namely, problem formulation.
Originality/value
The originality and value of the present paper lies in that it suggests a shift in paradigm from adaptation and reaction, to action and enactment. Further, it proposes a cyclical process of learning and unlearning that together define periods of metamorphosis, and suggests problem formulation, whereby the mission statement is assessed and revised, as a mechanism in that endeavor.
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Informed by Jung’s analytical psychology, this chapter discusses Kafka’s short-story The metamorphosis in relation to moral reflection on organisational life. Adopting the view…
Abstract
Informed by Jung’s analytical psychology, this chapter discusses Kafka’s short-story The metamorphosis in relation to moral reflection on organisational life. Adopting the view that fiction offers a promising path to engage the reader’s imagination and reflection on moral issues, I explore such process in light of The metamorphosis. I argue that this story not only outlines important moral issues of relevance to workers in modern organisations, but is also particularly effective in eliciting a reaction from the reader which calls for further analysis. Reading about Gregor Samsa’s transformation precludes indifference; instead, it asks us to reflect on our own moral values and behaviours, and to ponder on our tolerance for what is ‘other’. In turn, this enhanced knowledge and understanding of ourselves help explore ethical issues in organisations in a more subjective, creative and holistic manner.
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Compared with its status in Islamic history, the mosque today has become a distinctive phenomenon, perceived as an identity vessel of contemporary Islamic architecture that…
Abstract
Purpose
Compared with its status in Islamic history, the mosque today has become a distinctive phenomenon, perceived as an identity vessel of contemporary Islamic architecture that conveys sacred metaphysical meanings. Since the advent of modernity Muslim societies has become increasingly secularized; the relationships of the sacred–secular and the divine-based demythologized knowledge have been deformed. The mosque was glossed over as the sole contemporary sacred edifice that bears metaphysical/Islamic connotations with cultural continuity. Its architecture, meanings and function have gone through a process of metamorphosis, particularly the state mosques. The contemporary mosque as such is facing a “semiological deterioration.” State mosques today are symbolic statements and communicative messages of their rulers’ power and national sovereignty, with a subsidiary role for worship, i.e., the sacred has turned into a secular power metaphor. This led to a state semantic confusion accompanied by a loss in the deeply rooted collective cultural codes of the sacred. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the metamorphosis of the semiological connotation of the contemporary mosque, with a special focus on grand state mosques, and its effects on the architecture of the contemporary mosque.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is theoretical research (no case studies included).
Findings
The metamorphosis that the contemporary mosque is experiencing today as a religious edifice with symbolic connotations and architectural iconism is but an effect of the changes that occurred in the concept of the scared and its relationship to the secular in contemporary Muslim communities, as a result of modernity. Such conceptual changes led to altering the deeply rooted cultural codes to be replaced by new intentional codes, used today as vehicles of communication in mosque architecture, especially in grand state mosques. Contemporary state mosques with its new symbolism and semantic meanings have contributed to redefining the concept of the contemporary mosque in general.
Originality/value
Mosque architecture today receives a significant importance. Many conferences and awards are dedicated to celebrating this phenomenon. Attempts to define the criteria and style of the contemporary mosque architecture are mounting. However, rarely there are studies that defy such attempts in a critical manner. This research seeks to criticize such approaches by highlighting the essence of the transformation in mosque architecture and its relationship to the concepts of the sacred and the secular, from a semiological perspective.
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Itamir de Morais Barroca Filho and Gibeon Soares Aquino Júnior
This paper aims to identify and propose strategies for development of mobile applications from Web-based enterprise systems and introduce a process called Metamorphosis. This…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to identify and propose strategies for development of mobile applications from Web-based enterprise systems and introduce a process called Metamorphosis. This process provides a set of activities subdivided into four phases – requirements, design, development and deployment – to assist in the creation of mobile applications from existing Web information systems.
Design/methodology/approach
With the aim to provide a background to propose the Metamorphosis process, a systematic review was performed to identify strategies, good practices and experiences reported in the literature about creation of mobile applications.
Findings
This paper identifies and proposes strategies for development of mobile applications from Web-based enterprise systems and introduces a process called Metamorphosis. Then, this process is applied for creation of SIGAA Mobile.
Originality/value
The originality of this paper is the proposal of Metamorphosis process, that is, a process for development of mobile applications from Web-based enterprise systems.
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Marta Morais-Storz, Rikke Stoud Platou and Kine Berild Norheim
The purpose of this paper is to examine what it means to be resilient in the context of environmental turbulence, complexity, and uncertainty, and to suggest how organizations…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine what it means to be resilient in the context of environmental turbulence, complexity, and uncertainty, and to suggest how organizations might develop strategic resilience.
Design/methodology/approach
Sampling from the theoretical and empirical contributions to the understanding of resilience within the management and organizational literatures, this conceptual paper presents a model of strategic resilience and theoretical propositions are developed that suggest directions for future research.
Findings
It is proposed that strategic resilience is an emergent and dynamic characteristic of organizations whereby organizational legacy is a defining antecedent, top management team future orientation is a fundamental belief system, and problem formulation is a key deliberate process.
Research limitations/implications
Although the conceptual inquiry of strategic resilience offers clarity on a complex phenomenon, empirical evidence is needed to provide a test of the concepts and their relations.
Practical implications
By asserting that the environment is turbulent, complex, and uncertain, this paper opens up new possibilities for the understanding and study of strategic resilience, whereby metamorphosis and innovation are requisites, and entrepreneurship is part and parcel of strategy. As such it highlights the importance of managerial beliefs and behaviors that facilitate proactively and deliberately challenging of the status quo.
Originality/value
The proposed conceptualization of strategic resilience in this paper connotes action rather than just reaction, and in so doing highlights the importance of the synergy between strategic management and entrepreneurship. As such, it proposes factors that may help organizations persist and create value within a context and future that they themselves also shape.
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Vasileios Georgiadis and Lazaros Sarigiannidis
The paper redefines workplace spirituality (WS/WPS) by transcending the existential vacuum (in psychiatric terms a sense of lack of meaning of human existence and thus of work)…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper redefines workplace spirituality (WS/WPS) by transcending the existential vacuum (in psychiatric terms a sense of lack of meaning of human existence and thus of work), leading to the development of workplace creativity, productivity and satisfaction, targeting operational profitability and organizational optimization.
Design/methodology/approach
Spirituality is analyzed philosophically, following the Nietzschean definition in response to Schopenhauer’s primordial suffering. Philosophical syncretism yields a viable organizational culture change model of spiritualizing the workplace. For this purpose, specific techniques are proposed which are combined with those already applied to various large companies and organizations.
Findings
Spirituality in the workplace acts as a catalyst for developing beneficial qualities by increasing employee job satisfaction, organizational efficiency and business profitability, when equally responding to stakeholders’ needs.
Practical implications
The suggested change model holistically fosters organizational, operational, individual and collective effectiveness through work place spirituality redefined.
Originality/value
For the first time spirituality in the workplace is discussed under a brand new perspective, resulting in an interdisciplinary emerging model, contributing to the field by providing guidance to academics and practitioners to its auspicious implementation through organizational culture change.
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This research paper aims at showing how a play focused on the rhetoric of gender discrimination can be instrumental to challenge the multifaceted reality of violence. The approach…
Abstract
This research paper aims at showing how a play focused on the rhetoric of gender discrimination can be instrumental to challenge the multifaceted reality of violence. The approach to the play – a contemporary adaptation from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Book VI) by Canadian playwright Erin Shields – consists of a combination of a philological, linguistic and critical tool able to foreground the way in which language functions, and to interpret the inter-and infra-textualities that make up the work as a whole (Barthes, 1977; Kristeva, 1986). The sacred dimension of myth (whether religious or secular) is also studied in its interaction with human rights, the horror of wars, and the process of becoming inhumane. (Calasso, 2001; Gutmann & Taylor, 1994.). The analysis of the text shows how the violence against woman dealt with in myth is very similar to the violence perpetrated on women during today’s wars. It also shows that violence begets more violence on the part of the victim, who becomes, in turn, a perpetrator herself, in an endless cycle of inhumane actions. The research is directed specifically at an intellectual, rather than active, involvement, and it primarily argues that gender equality needs being enabled in human relationships, and it must preside over punishment. When a reaction to female violation is set in motion in terms of a just as violent revenge, then a metamorphosis of people into beasts is equally (and justly) applied (by the Gods) to male and female inhuman behaviour. That is how Shields takes the opportunity to critique gender equality in the theatre.
Gordon Müller-Seitz and Jörg Sydow
Purpose – The aim of this study is to inquire into the circumstances and mechanisms that drive temporary systems to become permanent organizations.Methodology/approach – This…
Abstract
Purpose – The aim of this study is to inquire into the circumstances and mechanisms that drive temporary systems to become permanent organizations.
Methodology/approach – This study is based on a retrospective longitudinal case study (1980–1995) and informed by research on organizational path dependence. Our research object is SEMATECH, the leading global semiconductor manufacturing consortium.
Findings – This longitudinal case study of the research and development consortium SEMATECH shows how and under what conditions a project, once its initial objective had been achieved, managed to turn itself into a permanent organization, that is, it terminated its institutionalized termination. Based on our findings, we argue that the postponing of this specific project's institutionalized termination can be understood by adopting a path dependence perspective that allows for the capturing of self-reinforcing processes to account for the stability of the (once temporary) system.
Originality/value of the paper – In this chapter, we question the certainty put forward in organizational studies of projects concerning the ephemeral nature of projects due to their built-in termination mechanism.
‘As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armour-plated, back…
Abstract
‘As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armour-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little, he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes’ (Kafka, The Metamorphosis, 1915, p. 19).
Kafka's The Metamorphosis (1915) appears in disability theory to aid explanation for those who experience acquired disability. This allegory offers a visceral picture of what a person can go through; there is a before and an after, a death and a life. I was able-bodied, capable, bursting with energy and then I woke up one morning utterly transformed. I no longer recognise myself; my consciousness mourns my previous existence, and I must come to terms with my reconstituted self.
It is that ‘other’ that I identify with now and, to discover what that means, I began composing a Requiem Mass. I have a long love affair with them; I have sung and conducted them and their ability to pierce the veil between life and death is of particular significance to me. This chapter examines the ways in which my acquired disability, this mystical death, impacts and informs my composition.
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