Systems thinking, interdisciplinarity and farmer participation: essential ingredients in working for more sustainable organic farming systems

This report was presented at the UK Organic Research 2002 Conference. This paper discusses the principles and values behind some of the innovative agricultural research methods which have evolved over the past 30 years in many countries and suggests that the lessons from this experience could have significant benefits in the development of organic research in the UK. The author argues that the key elements which need to be incorporated into a new approach to research on organic systems are:- systemic thinking (the need for a more holistic understanding of the context of farming and rural livelihoods), interdisciplinarity, (contributions from both social and natural science in the research process) and farmer-participation (the active participation and partnership of farmers and other key stakeholders in the process of design, planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating research). By incorporating these principles, both into the vision of what research can become within in the organic movement, and into the methodologies that are used in new research partnerships, it is suggested that we could learn our way towards more sustainable, organically-based rural livelihoods in the future

Educational change and ICT: an exploration of priorities 2 and 3 of the DfES e-strategy in schools and colleges: the current landscape and implementation issues

Landscape review of integrated online support for learners and collaborative approaches to personalised learning activities

Initiating Community Engagement for Enhancing Preservice Teacher Education

Facilitating community engagement in education is promoted and emphasised in university policies and strategic plans. How can a university facilitate innovations to develop collaborative partnerships with its community? This paper presents leadership processes for initiating community engagement with an Australian university and highlights examples of innovations in Science Education for Sustainable Living (SESL) with preservice teachers’ reflections on their teaching practices. Data collection included observations of practice, interviews, minutes of meetings, and written correspondence with a wide range of participants (i.e., senior QUT staff, lecturers, preservice teachers, principals, school executives and teachers, and other community members). A four-step process for implementing SESL innovations provided an example of university-community engagement, and was used as a catalyst for preservice teachers (n=14) to reflect on SESL, which provided opportunities for enhancing their science teaching practices. Results indicated that connecting the community with preservice teacher education aided in promoting understandings of sustainable living and kept environmental issues on the agenda. The four-step process implemented by the preservice teachers for SESL assisted to conceptually advance understandings of scientific causes and effects in order to propose appropriate solutions. Initiating university-community engagement required articulating visionary directions, understanding change processes, motivating potential key stakeholders, and promoting collaboration and team effort. In addition, distributing leadership aided in facilitating university-community collaboration and allowed for the implementation of a wider range of innovations. It was concluded that distributing leadership will be essential in order to sustain university-community engagement, particularly as key stakeholders in leadership roles can deploy energy and resources at levels required for successful collaborations

The successful implementation of e-government transformation: A case study in Oman

The aim of this paper is to investigate, and to discuss the key critical factors that facilitate the successful implementation of E-government projects. The nature of this research is mainly qualitative. This investigation uses a single case study and data was mainly collected by means of semi-structured interviews and organisational documents from the Ministry of Higher Education in Oman. The research findings suggest that there are three paradigms which each include a set of factors that impacts the success of E-government success namely, organisational paradigm, technology paradigm and end-users paradigm. The authors believe that, this paper demonstrates an added value to the current literature on transformation of E-government and to E-government projects success, within the wider context of E-government implementation projects. Also the research will benefit organisations in the public sector, as it has identified main key success factors in E-government transformations and implementations

The role of socio-technical experiments in introducing sustainable Product-Service System innovations

This is the pre-print version of the chapter published in 2015 by Springer in the book “The Handbook of Service Innovation” (edited by Renu Agarwal, Willem Selen, Göran Roos and Roy Green). The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-6590-3_18Product-Service System (PSS) innovations represent a promising approach to sustainability, but their implementation and diffusion are hindered by several cultural, corporate, and regulative barriers. Hence, an important challenge is not only to conceive sustainable PSS concepts, but also to understand how to manage, support, and orient the introduction and diffusion of these concepts. Building upon insights from transition studies (in particular, the concepts of Strategic Niche Management and Transition Management), and through an action research project, the chapter investigates the role of design in introducing sustainable radical service innovations. A key role is given to the implementation of socio-technical experiments, partially protected spaces where innovations can be incubated and tested, become more mature, and potentially favor the implementation and scaling up process

Identifying critical success factors of ERP systems at the higher education sector

In response to a range of contextual drivers, the worldwide adoption of ERP Systems in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) has increased substantially over the past decade. Though the difficulties and high failure rate in implementing ERP systems at university environments have been cited in the literature, research on critical success factors (CSFs) for ERP implementations in this context is rare and fragmented. This paper is part of a larger research effort that aims to contribute to understanding the phenomenon of ERP implementations and evaluations in HEIs in the Australasian region; it identifies, previously reported, critical success factors (CSFs) in relation to ERP system implementations and discusses the importance of these factors

Distributing Leadership for Initiating University-Community Engagement

Facilitating community engagement in education is promoted and emphasised as an investment strategy (Garlick 2000). However, the responsibility for facilitating university-community engagement rests upon university personnel to initiate collaborations with the community. This paper describes and analyses leadership processes for initiating community engagement with the new Queensland University of Technology campus at Caboolture. Data collection and analysis involved observation of practices, and coding interviews, minutes of meetings, and written correspondence with a wide range of participants (i.e., senior QUT staff, lecturers, preservice teachers, principals, school executives and teachers, and other community members). Results indicated that leadership processes involved: (1) articulating visionary directions, (2) communication for instigating change processes, (3) motivating potential key stakeholders, (4) promoting collaboration and team effort, and (5) distributing leadership. This study highlighted the impact of creating positive working environments for developing collaborative partnerships. However, new campuses need to shape university goals to suit individual contexts, which will require considerable input from key stakeholders. Initiating community engagement requires university personnel to connect key stakeholders, and the distribution of leadership will be essential in order to sustain university-community collaborations

Correlating Architecture Maturity and Enterprise Systems Usage Maturity to Improve Business/IT Alignment

This paper compares concepts of maturity models in the areas of Enterprise Architecture and Enterprise Systems Usage. We investigate whether these concepts correlate, overlap and explain each other. The two maturity models are applied in a case study. We conclude that although it is possible to fully relate constructs from both kinds of models, having a mature architecture function in a company does not imply a high Enterprise Systems Usage maturity