Search results
1 – 10 of 332This conceptual chapter sets the stage for how librarians can support informed learning. It looks at how the intersections between informed learning, Bakhtin’s philosophy of…
Abstract
This conceptual chapter sets the stage for how librarians can support informed learning. It looks at how the intersections between informed learning, Bakhtin’s philosophy of communication, and relational leadership contribute to a model of relational liaising. This chapter provides examples of practical applications, interdisciplinary collaboration, and shared leadership which librarians and other teachers can adapt for specific arts, humanities, or social sciences disciplines. Many of the illustrations are set within communication-related curricula but also include the arts.
Details
Keywords
Jas Kalra, Michael Lewis and Jens K. Roehrich
This paper aims to investigate governance in service triads, specifically studying significant steering and connecting coordination failures, to reveal typically hidden…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate governance in service triads, specifically studying significant steering and connecting coordination failures, to reveal typically hidden characteristics and consequences.
Design/methodology/approach
This study focuses on coordination functions and activities between a buyer (a government department), a customer (a military service) and two service providers. Rich data on these normally confidential service ties are drawn from an official report into the causes of a fatal accident involving a UK reconnaissance aircraft and specifically from the evidence presented regarding the earlier development of its complex safety case. The authors also analysed a range of additional secondary data sources.
Findings
The authors examine the sources, drivers and manifestation of coordination failures. The authors uncover a series of coordination failures driven from the bridge position, revealing that while bounded rationality and opportunism influenced steering coordination failures, connecting coordination failures were associated with knowledge asymmetry, dyadic inertia and unethical practices.
Practical implications
Organisations and governments delivering complex projects and knowledge-intensive professional services should guard against outsourcing the “coordination” activity to a third party, thereby relinquishing the bridge position. Handing over the bridge position to an integrator would leave the client vulnerable to coordination dysfunctions such as bounded rationality, opportunism, knowledge asymmetry, dyadic inertia and unethical practices.
Originality/value
The study links the previously separate research streams of service triads and inter-organizational coordination. While extant research pays attention to mainly positive control functions, this study focuses on all three actors in two (failed) service triads – and highlights the impact of coordination activities and failures.
Details
Keywords
Rodney Coyte, Federica Ricceri and James Guthrie
The paper's aim is to examine processes used to control the management of knowledge resources in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and to compare the findings with the…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper's aim is to examine processes used to control the management of knowledge resources in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and to compare the findings with the underlying assumptions and prescriptions of intellectual capital guidelines designed for SMEs.
Design/methodology/approach
An in‐depth case study of a successful Australian SME is conducted to identify the means used to control strategizing and the management of knowledge resources.
Findings
It was found that informal, intensive dialogue based processes, structured by an overriding management philosophy, governed strategization and the management of knowledge resources. These governance processes were affected by a combination of formal and informal controls and serendipitous outcomes.
Research limitations/implications
The paper examines only one organization and the study can be extended to other SMEs to develop more detailed specific policy recommendations.
Practical implications
Intellectual capital management guidelines developed for SMEs may have little benefit due to assumptions of resource availability and the fundamental importance of formalization of strategy and control, ignoring possible scarcity of resources and the benefits of flexibility and responsiveness afforded by informal controls in SMEs. The research shows that knowledge harvesting is affected through the way knowledge is used rather than what is developed.
Originality/value
The paper empirically examines the management of knowledge resources in an Australian SME and outlines the way formal and informal controls were interwoven in organizational practices to manage knowledge harvesting. It provides a critique of intellectual capital guidelines in SMEs, highlighting a potential mis‐match between practice and key assumptions underlying the guidelines.
Details
Keywords
Isabel Metz, Carol T. Kulik, Christina Cregan and Michelle Brown
Managers develop psychological contracts (PCs) with staff as part of their people management responsibilities. A second-stage mediated moderation model explains how a manager’s…
Abstract
Purpose
Managers develop psychological contracts (PCs) with staff as part of their people management responsibilities. A second-stage mediated moderation model explains how a manager’s personality influences the content and fulfillment of PCs in different organizational contexts. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
Survey data from 749 managers at Australian organizations were collected and regression analyses were used to test the hypotheses. The Edwards and Lambert (2007) approach was used to analyze conditional indirect effects.
Findings
Managers high on agreeableness, conscientiousness and extraversion are more likely to establish relational PCs with their staff than managers low on these personality traits. The effects of agreeableness and conscientiousness on the fulfillment of the PC occur through the “relational PC” variable. Once a relational PC is established, a manager’s ability to fulfill the PC is constrained by the extent to which polices and practices are formalized.
Research limitations/implications
Organizations may need to delegate more power and discretion to managers to enable them to fulfill employer obligations toward their staff, and/or clearly communicate to managers their boundaries in employment promises. In turn, managers need to be aware of personality’s influence on the creation and fulfillment of promises. Causality cannot be inferred because of the study’s cross-sectional data.
Originality/value
Research has focused on employees’ personality and perceptions of the PC. This study is the first to focus on managers’ personality and PC creation and fulfillment.
Details
Keywords
Joanna Kho, Andreas Paul Spee and Nicole Gillespie
This chapter advances understanding of how professional expertise is enacted and created to accomplish routines in the context of technology-mediated work. Information and…
Abstract
This chapter advances understanding of how professional expertise is enacted and created to accomplish routines in the context of technology-mediated work. Information and communication technologies broaden the participation of professionals with various specialist skills and expertise to accomplish work together, which is particularly salient in health care. Broadening participation, however, creates jurisdictional conflict among professionals. Thus, a key challenge of interprofessional work is the need to mutually adapt established professional routines and overcome jurisdictional conflict to perform interdependent routine tasks. The authors examine how professionals adapt established routines by analyzing the new interactions and interdependent actions required to accomplish technology-mediated geriatric consultation routines. The findings of this study show that professionals create new patterns of actions that are shaped by relational forms of professional expertise, namely selective and blending expertise. The findings and theoretical insights contribute to the literature on routine dynamics by highlighting the importance of relational expertise, and showing how it can transform and destabilize otherwise established professional routines.
Details
Keywords
Simone Guercini and Silvia Ranfagni
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the emergent role of market in cultural enterprises.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the emergent role of market in cultural enterprises.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors consider market as network and identify the role of the interaction process with a special focus on theatre organizations.
Findings
The interactions are examined on the basis of relationship models, distinguishing for each of them the progressive changes in their structural components (actors, activities and resources) and the outcomes (economic, artistic, social) produced.
Originality/value
The value of the study is to identify market representation by theatre organizations and to analyse their interactions with the market as a cumulative and continuous process.
Aurelia Engelsberger, Jillian Cavanagh, Timothy Bartram and Beni Halvorsen
In this paper, the authors argue that multicultural skills and relational leadership act as enablers for open innovation, and thereby examine the process through which teams can…
Abstract
Purpose
In this paper, the authors argue that multicultural skills and relational leadership act as enablers for open innovation, and thereby examine the process through which teams can utilize multicultural skills to support the development of relational leadership and knowledge sourcing and sharing (KSS) through individual interaction and relationship building. The authors address the following research question: How does relational leadership enable open innovation (OI) among employees with multicultural skills?
Design/methodology/approach
This paper applies a multi-level approach (team and individual level) and builds on interviews with 20 employees, middle and senior managers with multicultural experiences, working in open innovation environments.
Findings
The authors’ findings shed light on the process through which social exchange relationships among team members (e.g. R&D teams) and knowledge exchange partners are enhanced by the use of multicultural skills and support the development of relational leadership to facilitate KSS and ultimately OI. The decision for participants to collaborate and source and share knowledge is motivated by individual reward (such as establishing network or long-lasting contacts), skill acquisition (such as learning or personal growth in decision-making) and a sense of reciprocity and drive for group gain. The authors encourage greater human resource (HR) manager support for relational leadership and the development and use of multicultural skills to promote KSS.
Research limitations/implications
Despite the value of our findings, this paper is not without limitations. The authors explained that the focus of this study design was on the work activities of the participants and their skill development and not specific projects or organizations. It was outside the scope of this study to examine variations across organizations and individuals as the authors wanted to focus on multicultural skills and relational leadership as enablers for OI. The authors recommend that future studies extend our research by unpacking how various boundary conditions including relational leadership and multicultural skills impact KSS and OI over the life cycle of innovation teams within large multinational organizations, across countries and ethnicities.
Practical implications
The study’s findings provide managers with improved understandings of how to enable an individual's willingness and readiness to source and share knowledge through multicultural skills and relational leadership. Managers need to ensure that human resource management (HRM) practices celebrate multicultural skills and support relational leadership in innovation teams. The authors suggest managers engaged in OI consider the components of social exchange as described by Meeker (1971) and utilize reciprocity, group gain, rationality and status consistency to support the emergence relational leadership and KSS in innovation teams.
Originality/value
In this paper, the authors contribute to the dearth of literature on the boundary conditions for OI by examining the role of relational leadership and characteristics/skills of the workforce, namely multicultural skills and contribute to the scarce research on the role of employees with multicultural skills and their impact on OI and present multicultural skills/experiences and relational leadership as enablers for OI.
Details