Advancing Dispute Resolution by Unpacking the Sources of Conflict: Toward an Integrated Framework

Organizational leaders, public policy makers, dispute resolution professionals, and scholars have developed diverse methods for resolving workplace conflict. But there is inadequate recognition that the effectiveness of a dispute resolution method depends on its fit with the source of a particular conflict. Consequently, it is essential to better understand where conflict comes from and how this affects dispute resolution. To these ends, this paper uniquely integrates scholarship from multiple disciplines to develop a multi-dimensional framework on the sources of conflict. This provides an important foundation for theorizing and identifying effective dispute resolution methods, which are more important than ever as the changing world of work raises new issues, conflicts, and institutions

Understanding Leadership in Public Collaborative Context

The paper aims to contribute to theory on collaboration through problematizing and exploring the complexity that characterizes leadership in collaborative contexts and to provide some generative conceptualizations to inform future empirical and conceptual development. It draws on a substantial review of leadership theory relevant to the context of public sector collaboration and provides examples from empirical research on collaboration over the last two decades in the UK and US respectively. It does so by identifying and developing key characteristics of the context, the nature of leadership in relation to context, and leadership agency pertaining to actors who actually make a difference in the process and outcomes of collaboration

Beyond the Product – Enabling design services in small and medium sized enterprises

While the design industry is moving into new domains, it seems that potential customers do not always understand how the designer can contribute beyond the aesthetically appealing product. The overall purpose of this thesis is to expand our understanding of design as an enabling service in the context of small and medium sized enterprises. Enabling design services have the potential to result in organizational learning and change. The co-creation of new knowledge and competencies can in turn enable the customer organization to become more innovative and able to deal with an ambiguous environment. The first part of the research consisted of interviews and workshops with the major industrial design consultancies in Sweden and Finland and some smaller American consultancies. A conceptual business model canvas based on service dominant logic is presented in the thesis to increase our understanding of the business of the industrial design consultancy. During the study, we observed several changes in the organization of the industrial design consultancy. We also noticed self-confidence among the industrial design consultancies in respect to their skills in methods to orchestrate collaboration and contribute to strategic development in customer organizations. An analysis of the initial interviews and workshops together with a literature study helped me to summarize the characteristics of the methods and processes designers are educated in as being integrative, collaborative and explorative. They are integrative in that they incorporate hands with thought, and theory with practice. They are collaborative in that interaction between individuals is a necessity to solve the wicked, ambiguous and open-ended problems the designer usually faces. This has resulted in designers being educated in methods involving a broad range of stakeholders such as users in development processes. Finally, the methods and processes are explorative in that they aim at ingenuity and focus on how things ought to be rather than on the present state. The second part of the research consisted of interviews and observations and had a focus on shared activities between design students and participants from small and medium sized companies. Design methods and processes were put into the context of organizational learning and change theories that centered on knowing as embodied and encultured. An activity theoretical model was applied to enrich the analysis of the diversity of perspectives that may lead to conflicting interpretation and negotiation in shared activities. The concepts of place and space were used to highlight the dynamics between how structures and human desires and needs motivated participants in the shared activities. Place is characterized by stability and is the strategy of the prevailing and often connected to identity. Space is practiced place and connected to change and human agency. The thesis presents how design services enabled individuals and organizations to be introduced to and to strengthen a given place, such as a discipline or organization. It also provides examples of the opposite, with individuals distancing themselves from a place, such as a discipline. Mediating artifacts and the integration of doing and reflection created experiences that evoked emotional involvement and enactment among the participants. Most activities resulted in creating space for change and learning and the outcome can be characterized as business and organizational development

Theoretical Perspectives on Work and the Employment Relationship

Developing a strong theoretical base for research and practice in industrial relations and human resource management has, to date, remained a largely unfulfilled challenge. This pioneering volume helps close the theory gap by presenting contributions from fifteen leading scholars that develop and extend theoretical perspectives on work and the employment relationship. Subject areas covered include theories of employment relations systems, varieties of capitalism, the labor process, new institutional economics, individual work motivation, strategic human resource management, a theory of transaction costs and employment contracts, efficiency versus equity, and comparative industrial relations

Blurring Cultural Boundary between Scientists and Farmers in the Philippines Through a Mediated Bilateral Model

A model utilizing a science-society communication framework was developed to analyze through a casestudy approach the innovation transmission and adoption mechanisms under the dairy buffalo project being implemented by the Philippine Carabao Centre (PCC) in the province of Nueva Ecija. Called a “Mediated Bilateral Model,” Centerit first depicted the unique features of cultural spaces occupied by the farmers, the PCC scientists, and the PCC field technicians. The basic distinguishing feature is the “scripts” of the interacting actors, which constitute the contexts in which their meaning-making and decision-making activities take place. These contextual factors contribute to the shaping of the actors’ distinct frames of reference, which influence their viewpoints or how they interpret meanings. Unmediated and unilateral performance of scripts by scientists was evident in the introductory Technical Training sessions given to farmers. This has resulted in boundary demarcation and in low or non-adoption of particular innovations. Boundary blurring was made possible through a mediated performance of scientific scripts whereby the field technicians, as hybrid actors, engaged in negotiations with the farmers during field visits. These were anchored on joint inscriptions of scientific and farmers’ cultural scripts to what become “interface instruments”, which resulted in integrative agreements regarding the performance or adoption of specific innovations

Agricultural Knowledge Management System Development for Knowledge Integration

Agricultural KMS development involves various participants from different communities of practice (CoPs) who possess their own knowledge. However, the current development of technology neglected the local communities who possess indigenous knowledge, which is the key success factor for agricultural development. This study aims at contributing in the discourse on how to integrate scientific and IK in agricultural KMS development and use. An interpretive analysis of primary qualitative data acquired through in-depth semi-structured interviews and participant observations was carried out following system development action research approach. The research result yields concepts for understanding the process conceptual framework in KMS development and use for knowledge sharing and integration

Searching for joint gains in automated negotiations based on multi-criteria decision making theory

It is well established by conflict theorists and others that successful negotiation should incorporate "creating value" as well as "claiming value." Joint improvements that bring benefits to all parties can be realised by (i) identifying attributes that are not of direct conflict between the parties, (ii) tradeoffs on attributes that are valued differently by different parties, and (iii) searching for values within attributes that could bring more gains to one party while not incurring too much loss on the other party. In this paper we propose an approach for maximising joint gains in automated negotiations by formulating the negotiation problem as a multi-criteria decision making problem and taking advantage of several optimisation techniques introduced by operations researchers and conflict theorists. We use a mediator to protect the negotiating parties from unnecessary disclosure of information to their opponent, while also allowing an objective calculation of maximum joint gains. We separate out attributes that take a finite set of values (simple attributes) from those with continuous values, and we show that for simple attributes, the mediator can determine the Pareto-optimal values. In addition we show that if none of the simple attributes strongly dominates the other simple attributes, then truth telling is an equilibrium strategy for negotiators during the optimisation of simple attributes. We also describe an approach for improving joint gains on non-simple attributes, by moving the parties in a series of steps, towards the Pareto-optimal frontier

Understanding the System Context of Alternative Food Supply Chains

This paper focuses upon the case of alternative food supply chains (AFSCs) as a "laboratory" for the implementation of sustainability concepts on a larger scale. To realize this type of upscaling, two important conditions should be fulfilled: the initiatives have to combine a performing internal organisation with the ability to understand and interact with the larger food system. To explore these concepts, the theory of hybrid organisations and the system innovation policy approach are discussed. Theory and empirical evidence learns that both concepts are complementary, as they both stress the importance of networking with actors that can be situated within or outside the supply chain.Agribusiness, Industrial Organization,