Design Principles For Knowledge Productivity

This study explores the learning processes that contribute to knowledge productivity: the improvement and innovation of an organisation’s procedures, products and services, based on the development and application of new knowledge. Based on reconstruction and parallel case studies in more than 20 innovation practices, we formulated eleven design principles. Those principles help key players to turn the work environment into a learning environment that supports knowledge productivity

Cruser Place Green Streets Plan

Combining green and complete street design techniques leads to multiple environmental, social and economic benefits that often enhance each other\u27s effectiveness. In urban areas confronting increased pressures of sea level rise, green streets, which incorporate landscaped features or vegetative areas to manage stormwater within the right of way, can be crucial pieces of pedestrian oriented urban design and multimodal planning frameworks that consider and plan for diverse, complementary transportation options. This plan works with the Colonial Place and Riverview Civic League as well as the Norfolk Preservation Collective to come up with green street design recommendations in order to strengthen pedestrian connections between three flood prone neighborhoods on the west side of Norfolk, Virginia. Integrating sustainable stormwater management with street design represents an opportunity to carve out new public spaces from auto oriented environments. Throughout, it is argued that streets are vital public spaces in themselves that serve important environmental functions

Video analysis in Design-Based Research – Findings of a project on self-organised learning at a vocational school

The use of video analysis in Design-Based Research (DBR) seems to be promising, because the quality of video data matches the reality of educational fields. Educational fields are multidimensional and complex. And more than other types of data, video may capture, for example, the simultaneity of verbal and non-verbal interactions. This seems to be valuable in the quest for new insights and better designs of educational interventions. However, to date there has been limited use of video data in researching their design. This paper aims at reflecting how the benefits of video-based analysis may be utilised in DBR. Experiences with the collection and analysis of video data in a project to design self-organised learning (SOL) at a vocational school in Germany will be used as a case study to illustrate the type of findings that may feed into the DBR process. In this case, the project school had already introduced a sophisticated SOL model but was experiencing various implementation difficulties. Resolving issues like this requires insights into how exactly a concept is realised and what happens in the field. Therefore, video data on classroom interactions was gathered and sub-sequently analysed using the documentary method. This led to the reconstruction of two different types of orientation that were guiding the students when they dealt with their self-organised learning environment. In a subversive orientation, students playfully infiltrate the formal learning space with peer activities. In a confirming orientation, students stick to both, the (informal) rules of the (formal) learning arrangement and of the peer environment, thus expressing respect for the boundary between these two worlds. These findings have been used to redesign the SOL intervention

Critical Complexities, (from marginal paradigms to learning networks)

The concepts of critical theory require critical changes. Strategies of a Frankfurt school had been transformed in the new academic and institutional environment. The development of scientific research programs resulted in a flexible restructuring of research communities. The new complexity of research networks is less hierarchic, more mobile, not easily centralized. Theories of organizational learning reflect methodological compromises with respect to the paradigms and political compromises with respect to the governance structures. Nomadic, virtual and flexible research communities float in cyberspace discovering the fundamentals of democracy in an era of informational affluencecritical theory;methodological and political compromises;research paradigms and communities

STRATEGY AS DISCURSIVE PRACTICE IN A BRAZILIAN PUBLIC UNIVERSITY: A LOOK UNDER THE PERSPECTIVE OF CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

The aim this article a critical discursive analysis of the “management plan” genre of a public institution of higher education, from 2012 to 2015, located in southeast Brazil. The aforementioned plan is inserted in the discursive practice of strategic management, specifically the institutional, bureaucratic management, and is used as an instrument for decision-making. The goal of this analysis will be to discuss the first step of the “management plan”, named “organizational policies”. We can see that, while elaborating declarative sentences, there is an evaluation of the statements regarding what is to be considered relevant to the institutions by means of the ideological discourse on neoliberal ideals and market behavior. The adoption of market-oriented managerial tools has been a constant in public administration. The public administration looks for bases of organizational practices in the private sphere. This mimicry is still present in the field, and the search for new managerial practices still crosses the imaginaries of the public managers. However, the increasing incorporation of a market-oriented, neoliberal logic, mainly in the adoption of strategic planning, can still be verified. The conclusion presented in this paper serves to foment the debate on the strategies formulated for the Brazilian public service and the methodological applicability of the critical discourse analysis. This meets the emerging need to systematize and integrate distinct theoretical and methodological approaches in the field of organizational studies when strategy is studied as a social and discursive practice

General Theory and Local Action: Experiences from the Quality of Working Life Movement

Quality of Working Life was a researcher-driven social movement culminating in the early 1980s. Its 1981 conference had some 2000 participants from research, management, unions, and government from about 30 countries. Their unifying idea was that the kind of workplace organization demonstrated in the Industrial Democracy Experiments had an emancipatory potential for democracy, productivity, and health in the workplace and beyond. A key question remained, however: how could this transformation take place on a large scale in society? There were different attempts within the movement at combining the general frameworks required to maintain societal significance and impact on the one hand, at the same time as creating relevant knowledge for the local context. After leaving the initial ambition of a universal theory, a turn toward purely local development work was again followed by a return to the general, not as the foundation of a general theory but as elements in a social movement