The generative routine dynamics of internship/work placements : an exploration of process dynamics facilitating knowledge creating

The role of knowledge in organisations has tended to be considered in the context of its transfer and to a lesser extent its creation. The university-industry relationship is predominantly relied on as an appropriate context for these discussions. However little by way of scholarly attention has focused on the concept of 'knowledge creating' per se or addresses the research question "how can organisational processes facilitate knowledge creating over time?" This research introduces and explores the concept of 'knowledge creating' within an often ignored and under researched theory-practice context - the internship/work placement. Routines theory, and its generative claim, is relied on here to address the processual attribute associated with 'knowledge creating'. Dialogicality has also been identified as an attribute of 'knowledge creating'. This is understood as a sensitivity to otherness that leads to social interaction within dialogical exchanges. Consequently, the objective of this study becomes a question of unpacking process dynamics or generative routine dynamics by using a dialogical theory for knowledge creation. Dialogical exchanges that facilitate continuous articulations and productive relational engagement are assessed with dynamic aspects of routines. By combining routines theory with dialogicality a novel and robust conceptual lens guiding data collection and analysis is provided. Data was collected over four separate internship/placement cycles in Ireland's largest business school during the financial crisis from 2008 to 2014. A plurality of methods was employed for data collection; which included over 60 interviews, 18 hours of direct observation, and 50 separated documentary artifacts. Combined these minimise fragmented descriptions of the internship/placement, while highlighting novel processual dynamics that have previously been overlooked in empirical routines research. The empirical findings highlight three interlinked dualities which contribute to a nuanced understanding of generative routine dynamics; the presence/absence duality; the centrality/peripherality duality and the evaluating/quality duality. When combined these dualities reveal how dialogical exchanges can lead to continuous articulations, which in turn become productive when resulting in action. From this we gain an insight in what we understand as knowledge creating.The role of knowledge in organisations has tended to be considered in the context of its transfer and to a lesser extent its creation. The university-industry relationship is predominantly relied on as an appropriate context for these discussions. However little by way of scholarly attention has focused on the concept of 'knowledge creating' per se or addresses the research question "how can organisational processes facilitate knowledge creating over time?" This research introduces and explores the concept of 'knowledge creating' within an often ignored and under researched theory-practice context - the internship/work placement. Routines theory, and its generative claim, is relied on here to address the processual attribute associated with 'knowledge creating'. Dialogicality has also been identified as an attribute of 'knowledge creating'. This is understood as a sensitivity to otherness that leads to social interaction within dialogical exchanges. Consequently, the objective of this study becomes a question of unpacking process dynamics or generative routine dynamics by using a dialogical theory for knowledge creation. Dialogical exchanges that facilitate continuous articulations and productive relational engagement are assessed with dynamic aspects of routines. By combining routines theory with dialogicality a novel and robust conceptual lens guiding data collection and analysis is provided. Data was collected over four separate internship/placement cycles in Ireland's largest business school during the financial crisis from 2008 to 2014. A plurality of methods was employed for data collection; which included over 60 interviews, 18 hours of direct observation, and 50 separated documentary artifacts. Combined these minimise fragmented descriptions of the internship/placement, while highlighting novel processual dynamics that have previously been overlooked in empirical routines research. The empirical findings highlight three interlinked dualities which contribute to a nuanced understanding of generative routine dynamics; the presence/absence duality; the centrality/peripherality duality and the evaluating/quality duality. When combined these dualities reveal how dialogical exchanges can lead to continuous articulations, which in turn become productive when resulting in action. From this we gain an insight in what we understand as knowledge creating

Offshore Wind Industry Interorganizational Collaboration Strategies in Emergency Management

Some health and safety (HSE) managers within the offshore wind industry lack effective interorganizational collaboration strategies in emergency management (EM) for successful disaster mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. The failure and the reluctance of neighboring offshore wind industry organizations to share knowledge or resources during a disaster could hinder successful disaster response operations resulting in preventable loss of life, extensive property damage, or damaged company reputations. Grounded in the interorganizational collaboration theory, the purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies HSE managers in the offshore wind industry use for successful disaster mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. The participants included eight HSE managers actively contributing to the G+ Global Offshore Wind Health and Safety Organization. Data were collected from semistructured interviews and publicly accessible documents. Five themes emerged from methodological triangulation and thematic analysis pattern matching: shared plans, stakeholder engagement and commitment, government agency involvement and regulations, lessons learned, and standardization. Some key recommendations from the findings include developing joint disaster response plans, participating in government agencies and emergency services exercises, training, forums, and ensuring HSE managers or other EM specialists contribute to professional organizations. The implication for positive social change includes promoting positive employee health and safety practices, sustained employment, enhanced job satisfaction, and lower unemployment rate

Exploring Firm-Level Cloud Adoption and Diffusion

Cloud computing innovation adoption literature has primarily focused on individuals, small businesses, and nonprofit organizations. The functional linkage between cloud adoption and diffusion is instrumental toward understanding enterprise firm-level adoption. The purpose of this qualitative collective case study was to explore strategies used by information technology (IT) executives to make advantageous enterprise cloud adoption and diffusion decisions. This study was guided by an integrated diffusion of innovation and technology, organization, and environment conceptual framework to capture and model this complex, multifaceted problem. The study’s population consisted of IT executives with cloud-centric roles in 3 large (revenues greater than $5 billion) telecom-related companies with a headquarters in the United States. Data collection included semistructured, individual interviews (n = 19) and the analysis of publicly available financial documents (n = 50) and organizational technical documents (n = 41). Data triangulation and interviewee member checking were used to increase study findings validity. Inter- and intracase analyses, using open and axial coding as well as constant comparative methods, were leveraged to identify 5 key themes namely top management support, information source bias, organizational change management, governance at scale, and service selection. An implication of this study for positive social change is that IT telecom executives might be able to optimize diffusion decisions to benefit downstream consumers in need of services

Business incubation as a method of foreign market entry

Despite international business incubators becoming more widespread in recent years, knowledge about the role they can play in helping a firm to enter a foreign market is limited. Drawing upon interviews with 47 managers from 24 firms and organisations that have used an international business incubator operated in China by UK export promotion organisation the China-Britain Business Council, this research finds that the low risk, high control environment offered by business incubation can reduce the overall cost of commitment for entering a foreign market and thereby trigger a firm’s decision to enter it when such a move would otherwise be considered too risky or costly. Furthermore, during the business incubation process, the firm is able to benefit from an infusion of foreign market knowledge, network expansion and business development support, which provides it with the confidence to exit the business incubator and make a full market commitment of its own. In doing so, business incubation can the reduce the liabilities of foreignness experienced by the firm, and give rise to an accelerated, low risk and controlled foreign market entry process. These findings extend theory from the international business studies literature into the domain of business incubation. They also extend and apply theory from the business incubation literature (until now concerned with company growth and development in home markets) to the internationalization of the firm. The findings are particularly relevant for SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) seeking ways to overcome the fears and challenges of entering into promising but ‘difficult’ emerging markets, such as China. The findings also have implications for policy makers seeking effective methods to support the international business and trade activities of firms and organisations

Employee Engagement Strategies in Manufacturing Organizations in Nigeria

Employee engagement is a major concern for business leaders in the manufacturing sector due to the constantly shifting labor market and the demanding nature of the manufacturing work environment. Manufacturing leaders who lack effective strategies to improve employee engagement risk losing valuable employees, which can pose significant threats to productivity and business profitability. Grounded in Kahn’s engagement and disengagement theory, the purpose of this qualitative multiple-case study was to explore strategies manufacturing leaders in Nigeria use to increase employee engagement. Using semi-structured interviews, company business reports, and employee survey action plans and reports, data were collected from eight manufacturing leaders in Southwest Nigeria with at least five years of leadership experience who successfully initiated and implemented employee engagement strategies. Five key themes emerged after using Yin’s five-step data analysis process: a safe and inclusive work culture, supportive leadership, setting clear expectations, meaningful rewards and recognition, and frequent and effective communication practices. A key recommendation for manufacturing leaders is to engage employees in a way that encourages psychological safety, commitment and increases employee satisfaction at work. The implications for positive social change include the potential to increase employee engagement and performance as a major contributor to local communities’ sustainability and development, which may lead to increased employment, higher business tax remittance, and local production of products and services that meet community needs

Liquid stream processing on the web: a JavaScript framework

The Web is rapidly becoming a mature platform to host distributed applications. Pervasive computing application running on the Web are now common in the era of the Web of Things, which has made it increasingly simple to integrate sensors and microcontrollers in our everyday life. Such devices are of great in- terest to Makers with basic Web development skills. With them, Makers are able to build small smart stream processing applications with sensors and actuators without spending a fortune and without knowing much about the technologies they use. Thanks to ongoing Web technology trends enabling real-time peer-to- peer communication between Web-enabled devices, Web browsers and server- side JavaScript runtimes, developers are able to implement pervasive Web ap- plications using a single programming language. These can take advantage of direct and continuous communication channels going beyond what was possible in the early stages of the Web to push data in real-time. Despite these recent advances, building stream processing applications on the Web of Things remains a challenging task. On the one hand, Web-enabled devices of different nature still have to communicate with different protocols. On the other hand, dealing with a dynamic, heterogeneous, and volatile environment like the Web requires developers to face issues like disconnections, unpredictable workload fluctuations, and device overload. To help developers deal with such issues, in this dissertation we present the Web Liquid Streams (WLS) framework, a novel streaming framework for JavaScript. Developers implement streaming operators written in JavaScript and may interactively and dynamically define a streaming topology. The framework takes care of deploying the user-defined operators on the available devices and connecting them using the appropriate data channel, removing the burden of dealing with different deployment environments from the developers. Changes in the semantic of the application and in its execution environment may be ap- plied at runtime without stopping the stream flow. Like a liquid adapts its shape to the one of its container, the Web Liquid Streams framework makes streaming topologies flow across multiple heterogeneous devices, enabling dynamic operator migration without disrupting the data flow. By constantly monitoring the execution of the topology with a hierarchical controller infrastructure, WLS takes care of parallelising the operator execution across multiple devices in case of bottlenecks and of recovering the execution of the streaming topology in case one or more devices disconnect, by restarting lost operators on other available devices

Employee Engagement Strategies in Manufacturing Organizations in Nigeria

Employee engagement is a major concern for business leaders in the manufacturing sector due to the constantly shifting labor market and the demanding nature of the manufacturing work environment. Manufacturing leaders who lack effective strategies to improve employee engagement risk losing valuable employees, which can pose significant threats to productivity and business profitability. Grounded in Kahn’s engagement and disengagement theory, the purpose of this qualitative multiple-case study was to explore strategies manufacturing leaders in Nigeria use to increase employee engagement. Using semi-structured interviews, company business reports, and employee survey action plans and reports, data were collected from eight manufacturing leaders in Southwest Nigeria with at least five years of leadership experience who successfully initiated and implemented employee engagement strategies. Five key themes emerged after using Yin’s five-step data analysis process: a safe and inclusive work culture, supportive leadership, setting clear expectations, meaningful rewards and recognition, and frequent and effective communication practices. A key recommendation for manufacturing leaders is to engage employees in a way that encourages psychological safety, commitment and increases employee satisfaction at work. The implications for positive social change include the potential to increase employee engagement and performance as a major contributor to local communities’ sustainability and development, which may lead to increased employment, higher business tax remittance, and local production of products and services that meet community needs

Governance Of Projects: A Comparative Analysis Of Project Delivery Approaches

Governance of digital-focused projects in central government has lacked detailed definition, resulting in misunderstanding, inconsistency and a perception of inflexibility by project professionals. Consequently, governance was deemed restrictive and inflexible, which impacted progress in the delivery of digital solutions. This research aimed to investigate the principles, practices and perceptions of governance in central government by conducting a comparative analysis across different project delivery approaches, viz. Waterfall, Agile and Hybrid. A mixed-methods research design critically examined central government project professionals’ experiences of governance across the three delivery approaches: a quantitative survey established the perception of governance and identified themes to inform case studies across different central government departments; semi-structured interviews were conducted with individuals in various project roles; and, an analytical review of secondary data, supplied by central government project experts, supported triangulation of the findings. The study confirmed the requirement for all central government projects, regardless of delivery approach, to have a governance framework encompassing the accountabilities, responsibilities, procedures, controls and escalation routes within hierarchical structures. Delegated authority was allocated within tolerances that allowed projects to make decisions more quickly, but particularly benefitted Agile and Hybrid approaches to maintain delivery momentum. Flexibility was encouraged, but an absence of central guidance on its application led to inconsistency in governance practices. Stakeholder involvement in decision-making was crucial, but the absence of formal governance training meant some did not fully comprehend the importance of their role. This empirical research and comparative analysis have contributed the following knowledge: identified new underlying project governance principles and practices for central government; added to the ascertained lack of literature on the governance required to support a Hybrid project delivery approach; and identified an opportunity for future research on the principles underpinning the classification, management, and tracking of business and financial benefits for Agile and Hybrid project delivery approaches

Effectiveness of Constructivist Approach to the Teaching of Animal Classification in Science and Technology of Standard Ninth

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Successful Human Resource Outsourcing Strategies

Human resource outsourcing (HRO) is a strategic choice that managers implement because of a variety of anticipated benefits. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to identify HRO strategies managers used to reduce operating costs while maintaining human resource (HR) effectiveness. Data were collected from semistructured interviews using open-ended questions and a review of company documents. Study participants represented 3 midwestern firms with 50 or more employees. The participants drawn from the population consisted of a minimum of 2 participants per organization who had increased their organization\u27s strategic value using HRO strategies. The transaction cost economics (TCE) theory was the conceptual framework for this study. Data were analyzed using methodological triangulation to identify codes from words, phrases, and sentences using multiple sources to identify recurring themes. Five key themes emerged: outsourcing strategies, outsourced functions, operational costs, organizational effectiveness, and success measurement. The findings of this study may lead to social change by supporting managers in making HRO decisions conducive to reducing operating costs while maintaining HR effectiveness, which might positively impact social change by providing core function jobs to the local community thereby decreasing unemployment rates