Search results

To examine the role of new aeronautical technologies in improving commercial aviation’s environmental performance.

Reviews the environmental improvements that may be conferred through the adoption of alternative aviation fuels and new airframe, engine and navigation technologies.

Although aeronautical technologies have evolved considerably since the earliest days of powered flight, the aviation industry is now reaching a point of diminishing returns as growing global consumer demand for air transport outstrips incremental improvements in environmental efficiency. The chapter describes some of the technological interventions that are being pursued to improve aviation’s environmental performance and discusses the extent to which these innovations will help to deliver a more sustainable aviation industry.

Development of intellectual capital, in conjunction with collaborative capabilities, is particularly important to continuously generating innovation. In the literature to date, the link between collaborative and intellectual capital, although key assets in knowledge-intensive industries, has rarely been investigated. This chapter introduces a model illustrating the interaction between human, intellectual, and structural capital, and their interplay. Several propositions are also derived in view of the need for companies to harness these three types of capital which are integral to implicit knowledge generation and leveraging the dynamic capabilities of the organization. As a consequence, team-based organizational forms are considered to be the most appropriate collaborative pattern for knowledge-intensive industries. This suggests that companies must increasingly focus on building valuable collaborative capital using flexible forms of organization in order to perpetuate successful product innovations.

Running an organization in a rapidly changing world is no easy task. Members of supervisory or executive boards must take the interests of all stakeholders into account. From shareholders, employees and suppliers, to customers, and beyond. Yet reaching the boardroom is equivalent to running a Spartan marathon. At a time when complexity is increasing and technological developments are hard to keep up with, the stakes for organizations and candidates are high. In this chapter, we explore the context of executive search: major trends, the profile of the executive search sector and the types of firms that operate in it. We de-mystify the process: the selection, search, presentation and accompaniment of candidates, looking at the responsibilities of the key players and the accompanying performance pressure and stress. Finally, we propose a vision for the future of executive search and potentially re-think about a professional code of conduct.

An earlier form of this chapter by the author was published in Dutch in “Bestemming Boardroom: over zoeken en gevonden worden” (Boom, Amsterdam, 2018) and in English (online) by the Amrop Partnership (2021) as “Destination Boardroom 1: Three Trends Redefining the Executive Talent Domain.”

This chapter has six sections. I summarize and refine key themes I explored at length during 25 years in three editions of Productive Workplaces. In Flying Lessons section, I describe how the invention of the airplane changed life on earth, not least my own. In Life Lessons section, I discuss how flying influenced my consulting career. In Myths section, I describe beliefs that I abandoned as I learned my trade. In The Future Never Comes section, I explore what it means to encounter the future as having already arrived. In Afterthoughts section, I sum up what learning to fly has to do with learning Organization Development consulting. The section Postscript contains excerpts from my dialogue with Bill Pasmore, a colleague who also flew airplanes and sought to improve workplaces.

Constraints on human-machine systems’ performance are generally treated as due to anatomy, physiology, and cognitive or behavioral limits. It is assumed that research findings can be universally applied to the design of such systems. It is now clear that social and cultural constraints are equally important, even in simple work systems. Context and culture are at least as important as limits of cognitive ability, and in many situations social and cultural factors are the dominant constraints on performance. This is particularly true in the cross-cultural transfer of advanced technological systems. A particularly clear example is given by population stereotypes of stimulus-response relations.