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1 – 10 of 68Thomas J. Chermack, Laura M. Coons, Gregory O’barr and Shiva Khatami
The purpose of this research is to examine the effects of scenario planning on participant ratings of resilience.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to examine the effects of scenario planning on participant ratings of resilience.
Design/methodology/approach
The research design is a quasi experimental pretest/posttest with treatment and control groups. Random selection or assignment was not achieved.
Findings
Results show a significant difference in reports of resilience for the scenario planning treatment group and no significant difference for the control group.
Research limitations/implications
Limitations include the use of self-report perception measures, possible social desirability of responses and a lack of random selection and assignment.
Practical implications
Practical implications imply that scenario planning can be viewed as a legitimate tool for increasing resilience in organizations.
Social implications
Organizations with an ability to adjust quickly and recover from difficult conditions means reduced layoffs and healthy economic growth.
Originality/value
While there is increasing research on scenario planning, to date, none has examined the effects of scenarios on resilience.
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Lindsay Elizabeth Kalis, Natalie M. Garza, Thomas J. Chermack, Victor A. Dzirasa and Mark J. Hutt
The purpose of this study is to determine the quantity, nature and frequency of intervention research published in Human Resource Development (HRD) journals.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to determine the quantity, nature and frequency of intervention research published in Human Resource Development (HRD) journals.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology for this study was a literature review, analysis and synthesis with specific attention to locating intervention research in HRD journals.
Findings
Based on the results of this study, it seems clear that intervention research is not a fundamental research method for HRD professionals and is not being consistently conducted across the HRD field. This raises potential questions about the extent to which HRD professionals are integrating research and practice. The presence and conduct of intervention research applied to HRD-related problems may provide another means for practitioners and scholars to work together toward optimal, practical solutions with evidence to support them.
Originality/value
Creating a community of professionals who assess and/or evaluate the effectiveness of the interventions and disseminate the information that lean toward causal claims is critical. Intervention research could represent a cultural shift for the HRD discipline because it lends weight to claims of causality and practical recommendations. Under these circumstances, HRD intervention research could be used with confidence by HRD practitioners to inform, shape or evaluate the content of their management and leadership training programs, including the training and development of coaching managers and coaching leaders.
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Margaret B. Glick, Thomas J. Chermack, Henry Luckel and Brian Q. Gauck
The purpose of this paper is to assess the effects of scenario planning on participant mental model styles.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to assess the effects of scenario planning on participant mental model styles.
Design/methodology/approach
The scenario planning literature is consistent with claims that scenario planning can change individual mental models. These claims are supported by anecdotal evidence and stories from the practical application of scenario planning. This research study documents the responses of 129 participants from 10 organizations using the mental model style survey as a pretest and posttest, with scenario planning as the intervention. Paired samples t‐tests were performed between participant pretest and posttest, to test hypotheses on all five factors of the mental model style survey.
Findings
Results provide evidence that scenario planning can change individual mental model styles. More specifically, results show that scenario planning promotes efficiency, social, and systems mental model styles, with moderate effect sizes.
Research limitations/implications
The implications of this research include contribution to the growing body of quantitative studies attempting to document the impact scenario planning has on participants. Implications for future research include the use of control groups to isolate effects of the scenario planning intervention.
Originality/value
The study documents one of the largest sample sizes to date in scenario planning research and makes a clear contribution in clarifying significant changes in mental model styles from pretest to posttest.
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Thomas J. Chermack and Kim Nimon
– The paper ' s aim is to report a research study on the mediator and outcome variable sets in scenario planning.
Abstract
Purpose
The paper ' s aim is to report a research study on the mediator and outcome variable sets in scenario planning.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a cannonical correlation analysis (CCA)
Findings
Twso sets of variables; one as a predictor set that explained a significant amount of variability in the second, or outcome set of variables were found.
Research limitations/implications
The study did not involve random selection or assignment and used perception-based measures.
Practical implications
The findings support scenario planning as a tool to reinforce certain decision styles and learning organization culture.
Originality/value
A critical contribution to scenario planning research, this study brings some order to the variety of variables espoused to be involved in scenario work. Clear outcomes are a learning culture and intuitive/dependent decision styles. The study makes a real contribution to quantitative scenario studies.
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Everon C. Chenhall and Thomas J. Chermack
The purpose of this paper is to propose an integrated model of action learning based on an examination of four reviewed action learning models, definitions, and espoused outcomes.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose an integrated model of action learning based on an examination of four reviewed action learning models, definitions, and espoused outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach
A clear articulation of the strengths and limitations of each model was essential to developing an integrated model, which could be applied to Lynham's general method of theory‐building research in applied disciplines. The paper examined common themes according to the model structure, methods, and methodologies. The four models selected for this review were Gregory's Group Action Learning Process Model, Paton's Systemic Action Learning Cycle, Paton's Systemic Action Learning Spiral, and Watkins and Marsick's Continuous Learning Model.
Findings
A comparison of the key variations in the definitions of action learning and desired outcomes explained differences in model designs. HRD practitioners need a better understanding of the variables that affect the outcomes of action learning through exploring learning transfer issues and through testing multiple methodologies. Similarly, the integrated model was designed to indicate how change takes place within an organization, dictated by either internal or external factors. A description of the construction of the integrated model is provided.
Research limitations/implications
Owing to the disconnect between the conceptual development and application phases of theory‐building research, more empirical evidence is needed to support the connection between action learning models and methodologies and desired outcomes. The integrated model was designed from a systems perspective with particular emphasis on soft systems in the problem and analysis phases to illustrate the role of organizational modeling of the relationships among members, processes, and the internal and external environment. HRD practitioners could re‐examine their decision making, particularly in approaching large‐scale change. HRD practitioners could document their specific approaches to action learning, including a combination of action research methods and soft systems methodologies. A comparison of outcomes versus the methodologies could be made.
Originality/value
The objective of the integrated action learning model is to improve decision making related to facilitating change from an HRD perspective, given the theories and principles underlying each model. The integrated model could serve as the basis for gaining new knowledge about critical systems theory and action research as it relates to action learning and change facilitation. It is the paper's intent that the proposed integrated model will spur further theory‐building research in employing action learning as an organizational change intervention.
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This paper is an extension of a panel presentation delivered in response to a joint call for panels by the Social Informatics and Information Ethics and Policy Special Interest…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper is an extension of a panel presentation delivered in response to a joint call for panels by the Social Informatics and Information Ethics and Policy Special Interest Groups for the 2022 Association for Information Science and Technology conference. The purpose is to introduce critical race frameworks and tenets as a lens to develop, assess and analyze the social informatics (SI) within information science (IS) research, professional discourse, praxis and pedagogical paradigms. This paper spotlights one of the presentations from that panel, an iteration of Critical Race Theory (CRT) designed specifically for information studies: CRiTical Race information Theory (CRiT).
Design/methodology/approach
Just as importantly, using SI as part of the context, the paper also includes a discussion that illustrates research and theory building possibilities as both counter and complement to the technocratic advances that permeate society at every level (macro, mezzo and micro), which can also be reasonably framed as the information industrial complex. Thus, CRiT joins other forms of critical discourse and praxis grappling with deconstructing, decolonizing, demarginalizing and demystifying the influence and impact of information technologies. While CRiT has global intentions and implications, this specific discussion has an extensive American focus.
Findings
If we consider the rapid pace in which techno-determinism is moving toward the vise grip of techno-fatalism controlled by frameworks generated from the information industrial complex, we can reasonably consider that humanity on a global basis is living within a meta-large technocratic crisis moment. This crisis moment is both acute and chronic. That is, the technocratic crisis is continuously moving quickly while simultaneously worsening over an extended period of time with no remedies and few responses to substantively address the crisis.
Research limitations/implications
Part of the nature of information and data is measurability. Thus, identifying compatible nomenclature connecting the descriptiveness of intersectionality (a seminal CRT tool) as a qualitative research method to the measurability of data connected to quantitative research, a mixed method approach moves from possible to plausible. Additionally, within IS, there are often opportunities to measure human engagement, such as social media content, search engine use, assessing practices of categorizations, and multiple forms of surveillance data as a short list. Hence, the descriptiveness of intersectional qualitative research “mixed” with the measurability of quantitative research within information settings implies exponential methodological possibilities.
Practical implications
CRiT is multilayered, on the one hand, with the intention of being a discipline-specific, information-specific form of CRT. On the other hand, CRiT theory building is interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary based on information as omnipresent phenomena. An ongoing challenge for CRiT theory building is identifying and working within a balance between, practitioners who typically throw anything and everything at practical problems, while scholars often slice problems into such small segments that practical understanding is severely limited. Embracing and integrating the dynamic interplay between developing ideas and using them is the key to evolving CRiT within the social sciences.
Social implications
There is plenty of room as well as a need for additional narrative discussing or challenging the use or appropriation of information from a technocratic approach, a counter to the information industrial complex.
Originality/value
CRiT is emerging and cutting edge in discussion that addresses the technocratic determinism found in most scholarly discourses.
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Gordon Bowen, Richard Bowen, Deidre Bowen, Atul Sethi and Yaneal Patel
Successful smart cities' implementation will require organisational leadership decision-making competences. The foundation of smart cities is digital technologies; many of these…
Abstract
Successful smart cities' implementation will require organisational leadership decision-making competences. The foundation of smart cities is digital technologies; many of these technologies are emerging technologies that require IT skills, which are scarce and will exacerbate the battle for talent between organisations. Filling the talent gap will necessitate global hiring, which has implications for organisational culture, cultural diversity and organisational leadership. Organisational cultural mix is an important contributor to leadership decision-making. However, decision-making is underpinned by trust. Blockchain is an emerging technology that has the potential to engender organisational trust in decision-making and, by extension, in the leadership with the ‘right’ organisational culture. Smart cities will be required to leverage emerging technologies to give business performance a competitive advantage and use emerging technologies’ applications to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
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Jose Balarezo and Bo Bernhard Nielsen
This paper aims to identify four areas in need of future research to enhance the theoretical understanding of scenario planning (SP), and sets the basis for future empirical…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to identify four areas in need of future research to enhance the theoretical understanding of scenario planning (SP), and sets the basis for future empirical examination of its effects on individual and organizational level outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper organizes existing contributions on SP within a new consolidating framework that includes antecedents, processes and outcomes. The proposed framework allows for integration of the extant literature on SP from a wide variety of fields, including strategic management, finance, human resource management, operations management and psychology.
Findings
This study contributes to research by offering a coherent and consistent framework for understanding SP as a dynamic process. As such, it offers future researchers with a systematic way to ascertain where a particular study may be located in the SP process and, importantly, how it may influence – or be influenced by – various factors in the process.
Originality/value
This study offers specific research questions and precise guidelines to future scholars pursuing research on SP.
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