Enabling Community Development and Interdependence

Positive deviance is a social mechanism whereby a beneficial practice that is not considered as normal gets taken up and spread within a community. This enables a community to solve its own problems aided by mentorship and facilitation. Through two long term case studies, we have identified positive deviants and are now learning how to leverage the ICT inherent in our interventions to cultivate and amplify positive change. We find both ourselves and beneficiary communities developing through various stages of dependence, independence and interdependence. We consider the latter a strong form of development. We now look at ICT4D projects as opportunities to identify positive deviants, and to amplify positive deviance with ICT. We posit that affordable, accessible and generic ICTs offer a way to do so, and that explicitly aiming to mentor and facilitate positive deviance with such ICT offers a path toward community development and interdependence

Public sector reform and complex adaptive systems - an analysis of the Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation model

Information Scienc

Applying innovation system concepts in agricultural research for development: a learning module

This learning module is expected to have multiple uses. One, a source material for trainings that could be organized at different levels, and two, as reference document to upgrade the knowledge of staff of partner organizations about innovation systems approach and applications. The design of the learning module includes guidance notes for potential trainers including learning purpose and objectives for each session; description of the session structure (including methods, techniques, time allocation to each activity); power point presentations, presentation text, exercise handouts, worksheets, and additional reading material. There are also evaluation forms and recommended bibliography for use by future facilitators. The module has been prepared in the style of a source book and it assumes that the reader is familiar with the concepts, procedures and tools used in participatory research approaches. Users can pick and choose the sessions/idea/tools/concepts that are most relevant and appropriate in specific contexts and for specific purposes. This is work in progress. The module is being continually refined and updated, based on application of the concept and tools in the project and elsewhere and, lessons learned in the process. Case studies will be prepared to supplement this module. Therefore, IPMS would like to encourage users of this learning module to actively provide feedback, including suggestions on how it can be improved

Emergence and public administration: A literature review for the project 'A new synthesis in public administration'

This literature review explores the concept of emergence in public governance, and the need for building anticipative capacity in public organisations. The purpose of this review is to explore how public organisations can deal with issues that emerge in their environment. Emerging issues are characterised by a great deal of complexity and uncertainty, and therefore create challenges for static public governance arrangements. Dealing with emerging issues requires that organisations and systems build anticipative capacities. The literature review summarises recent but also less recent organisation theory focusing on organisational improvisation and on complex governance arrangements. This literature presents an alternative way of both analysing organisations and of organising beyond static and highly proceduralised or systemised conceptions. New organisational arrangements to cope with emergence sometimes appear counterintuitive, and they sometimes appear to defy the rules of economy, efficiency, democracy and the rule of law. As is evident from Bourgon’s ‘New Synthesis’ framework, an organisation or system that facilitates emergence needs to make a trade-off with other objectives. While such arrangements are good at anticipating change and at detecting trends, they come with challenges to the performance, compliance, and the resilience of the public sector

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

IFPOC Symposium:Discovering antecedents and consequences of complex change recipients' reactions to organizational change.

IFPOC symposium: Discovering antecedents and consequences of complex change recipients' reactions to organizational change Chairs: Maria Vakola (Athens University of Economics and Business) & Karen Van Dam (Open University) Discussant: Mel Fugate (American University, Washington, D.C) State of the art Organisations are required to continuously change and develop but there is a high failure rate associated with change implementation success. In the past two decades, change researchers have started to investigate change recipients' reactions to change recognizing the crucial role of these reactions for successful change. This symposium aims at identifying and discussing the complex processes that underlie the relationships among antecedents, reactions and outcomes associated with organizational change. New perspective / contributions This symposium consists of five studies that extend our knowledge in the field by (i) providing an analysis of change recipients' reactions going beyond the dichotomous approaches (acceptance or resistance) (ii) revealing understudied antecedents-reactions and reactions-consequences patterns and relationships (iii) shedding light on the role of contextual factors i.e team climate and individual factors i.e emotion regulation on the adaptation to change. This symposium is based on a combination of both quantitative (i.e diary, survey) and qualitative (i.e interviews) research methodology. Research / practical implications This symposium aims to increase our understanding of the complex processes associated with change recipients' reactions to change. Discovering how these reactions are created and what are their results may reveal important contingencies that can explain how positive organizational outcomes during times of change can be stimulated which is beneficial for both researchers and practitioners

Qigong at Work: Where East Meets West

State of the Art Qigong is part of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TMC) and aims to balance body and mind. The roots of Qigong lie in China, where Confucian and Daoist scholars (500-400 B.C.) noted that one must learn to balance and relax one’s thoughts and emotions to avoid illness (Yang, 1997). In the Western world, Qigong is best known for its slow and coordinated movements. According to TCM, these movements will help regulate one’s ‘qi’, or life energy, through the body to improve the health and harmony of mind and body. During the practice of Qigong, one’s breathing, attention and movement are aligned. As such, Qigong is sometimes considered Mindfulness in movement (although there are many important differences). New perspectives / contributionsQigong has many positive outcomes on health and wellness. In both patient groups and healthy individuals, Qigong has been shown to improve psychological well-being, quality of life, immune function, balance and related risk-factors, and bone density (Jahnke et al., 2010). As such, Qigong offers a validated way to reduce the physical and mental activation that results from a person's work. While recent research has demonstrated how important it is to take short breaks at work, there is still little attention for Qigong exercises as a means to recover at work.Practical Implications In this presentation, we will explain and practice several Qigong exercises. These movements can be used at work (and at home) to recover from (hormonal) activation, ‘empty’ one’s head, and restore the body-mind balance. <br/

Next generation network evaluation

Networking and networks have become increasingly and consciously utilized as organizing strategies and structures for creating social change. This paper reviews the current (2010) field of network monitoring and evaluation. It proposes a framework for network impacts planning, assessment, reporting and learning that can help to close some current gaps in network evaluation. It identifies where progress has been made and where further work is required