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1 – 10 of 709Denise Bedford and Thomas W. Sanchez
This chapter explores the role of messages in knowledge networks. Messages are characterized in terms of the type of knowledge they represent and their attributes. Messages…
Abstract
Chapter Summary
This chapter explores the role of messages in knowledge networks. Messages are characterized in terms of the type of knowledge they represent and their attributes. Messages represent knowledge transactions in a network. The authors describe the type of message in terms of the knowledge capital it contains. The chapter considers what is involved in making all forms of knowledge capital available, accessible, and consumable in a network. Making knowledge available involves articulation – semantic, linguistic, visual, acoustic, and kinesthetic. Making knowledge accessible means encoding the knowledge, formatting, and packaging it as a message. The chapter also addresses factors that influence knowledge consumption, including coherence, completeness, verifiability, usefulness, relevance, orientation, freshness, and redundancy. The authors also provide examples of messaging human, structural, and relational capital.
Denise Bedford, Ira Chalphin, Karen Dietz and Karla Phlypo
Denise Bedford, Ira Chalphin, Karen Dietz and Karla Phlypo
Alexander Styhre and Pernilla Gluch
The purpose of this paper is to look into the knowledge‐intensive work that entangles the use of various visual representations such as drawings, CAD images, and scale models…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to look into the knowledge‐intensive work that entangles the use of various visual representations such as drawings, CAD images, and scale models. Rather than assuming that knowledge is exclusively residing in the human cognitive capacities, most knowledge‐intensive work integrates a variety of perceptual skills and the use of language.
Design/methodology/approach
A case study of a Scandinavian architect bureau, including semi‐structured interviews with architects, design engineers and managers, was conducted.
Findings
The study shows that architects mobilize and use a variety of visual representations in their day‐to‐day work. Such visual representations serve a variety of roles and purposes but actually more generally enhance communication between colleagues and external stakeholders. The paper concludes that visuality and visual representations deserve a more adequate analysis in the knowledge management literature.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to an understanding of how visual representations are constitutive of knowledge and central to architect work. Rather than residing in language or being embodied, knowledge is developed through the use of a variety of tools and aids.
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Fenwick W. English and Lisa Catherine Ehrich
The purpose of this paper is to establish the case that innovation in the theory and practice of educational administration/leadership is very unlikely to occur within the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to establish the case that innovation in the theory and practice of educational administration/leadership is very unlikely to occur within the existing doxa of our times. By innovation is meant a novel conceptual or practical change in the field of practice. By doxa is meant the unquestioned rules of the game and the linkage between the agencies and organs of government and foundations supporting research in the field. An approach toward thinking outside of the prevailing doxa is presented and explained as one possible antidote to the current dominant model.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is a conceptual/logical analysis of the reasons why the current paradigm dominant in the study and the practice of educational administration/leadership is inadequate. The paradigm has not predicted anything currently unknown or understood yet its continued dominance in the field will not lead to any new discoveries or innovation but only continued verification of what is already known.
Findings
The major findings are that the boundaries of behavioral empiricism and social science methods impose an orthodoxy of approach in examining matters of administrative and leadership practice. Subsequently, it not only limits but also prohibits any new breakthroughs in understanding or predicting novel thinking about administration and leadership in educational institutions. Breaking out of this conceptual and theoretical box will be difficult as it is embraced by an interlocking apparatus of agencies and institutions and enshrined in most research journals in the field.
Research limitations/implications
It is unlikely that true new discoveries in understanding educational leadership will occur without a restoration of the full range of human emotions and motivations which inspire and sustain leaders. New visions of leadership are required which will lead to what Lakatos has called a progressive research program in which prediction is enhanced and novel aspects of leadership emerge. These are not likely to occur given the tradition of inquiry currently in use. To use Lakatos’ term, the current research program is de-generative or regressive and lags behind the actual practice of school leadership. Thus, the authors perpetuate the theory-practice gap.
Practical implications
The continued employment of social science protocols anchored in behavioral empiricism and the scientific method are unlikely to lead to any new breakthroughs in the practice of educational administration/leadership. The lens of behavioral empiricism prohibits a complete understanding of the practice of leadership where that practice becomes “subjective” and/or essentially artistic in nature. Practice, therefore, is anchored only in what is considered “rational” and the non-rational aspects marginalized or eliminated.
Social implications
Researchers working in the dominant social science perspectives using hard behavioral empirical traditions embodied in the usual perspective regarding the scientific method will continue to miss or marginalize the emotional and intuitive side of leadership, aspects which are hard to quantify and assess. Leaders not only act but they feel as well. Without emotion in leadership it is extremely hard to build trust in an organization. The moral responsibilities of leaders are also anchored in emotion and values held by the leader. These elements continue to be understated or marginalized in check list approaches to preparation and licensure.
Originality/value
The originality of the paper synthesizes the parallel perspectives of William Foster, Karl Popper, Paul Feyerabend, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, and Imre Lakatos as it pertains to explaining why the current theory of knowledge is not likely to lead to any new breakthroughs in the practice of educational administration/leadership. One different approach to thinking of leadership as connoisseurship is presented as a potential perspective from the arts as a way of viewing leadership as a form of performance in which emotion and intuition are recognized aspects of practice.
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A central issue in contemporary dance ethnography is that of writing the somatic – the attempt to articulate kinesthetic, bodily sensations that emerge in a particular culture or…
Abstract
A central issue in contemporary dance ethnography is that of writing the somatic – the attempt to articulate kinesthetic, bodily sensations that emerge in a particular culture or context, within a research format (Ness, 2008; Sklar, 2000). Emerging methods including performance making and poetic, narrative, experimental, or performative writing create space for recognition of choreographic and sensory knowledges within ethnographic research.This chapter presents a case study that illustrates what I term “movement-initiated writing”: writing that emerges through dance making, wherein the dance ethnographer is a participant observer in studio practice. This emic approach attempts to translate the felt affects of a specific world of movement into performances sited in the terrains of pages. This mode of writing draws on Roland Barthes’ (1977) notion of the “grain of the voice,” Gilles Deleuze's concept of the “minor literature” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), Hélène Cixous’s examples of écriture feminine (Cixous, 1991), and the field of performance writing.
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Aims to define the conceptual tools of Gregory Bateson's epistemology – the nature of difference, logical typing, and recursion – and to apply this to understanding how we can…
Abstract
Purpose
Aims to define the conceptual tools of Gregory Bateson's epistemology – the nature of difference, logical typing, and recursion – and to apply this to understanding how we can approach the analysis of ethnographic reports of the Bushman n/om‐kxaosi (shamans) and the Bushman rock art of Southern Africa.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper argues that kinesthetic interaction with n/om‐kxaosi provides a vehicle for learning their way of construing the world.
Findings
The n/om‐kxaosi have a kinesthetic lexicon and a set of dominant metaphors rooted to their ecstatic body expression that provide coherence to their ways of healing and spiritual understanding. The previously assumed incoherent nature of Bushman religious views noted by anthropologists is argued to have been the consequence of underestimating the importance Bushman thinking gives to circularity and transformation of all aspects of their experience.
Originality/value
Illuminates the analysis of the Bushman culture.
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Malva Daniel Reid, Jyldyz Bekbalaeva, Denise Bedford, Alexeis Garcia-Perez and Dwane Jones