Innovation sustainability in challenging health-care contexts : embedding clinically led change in routine practice

The need for organizational innovation as a means of improving health-care quality and containing costs is widely recognized, but while a growing body of research has improved knowledge of implementation, very little has considered the challenges involved in sustaining change – especially organizational change led ‘bottom-up’ by frontline clinicians. This study addresses this lacuna, taking a longitudinal, qualitative case-study approach to understanding the paths to sustainability of four organizational innovations. It highlights the importance of the interaction between organizational context, nature of the innovation and strategies deployed in achieving sustainability. It discusses how positional influence of service leads, complexity of innovation, networks of support, embedding in existing systems, and proactive responses to changing circumstances can interact to sustain change. In the absence of cast-iron evidence of effectiveness, wider notions of value may be successfully invoked to sustain innovation. Sustainability requires continuing effort through time, rather than representing a final state to be achieved. Our study offers new insights into the process of sustainability of organizational change, and elucidates the complement of strategies needed to make bottom-up change last in challenging contexts replete with competing priorities

Researcher self-care in organizational ethnography: lessons from overcoming compassion fatigue

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to offer practical researcher self-care strategies to prepare for and manage the emotions involved in doing organizational ethnographic research. Institutional ethics policies or research training programmes may not provide guidance, yet emotions are an integral part of research, particularly for ethnographers immersed in the field or those working with sensitive topics or vulnerable or marginalised people.Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork over nine months with a voluntary organization in the UK, Yarl’s Wood Befrienders, to explore the experiences and activities of volunteer visitors who offer emotional support to women detained indefinitely in an immigration removal centre. The author is a “complete member researcher”, or “at-home ethnographer”, a volunteer visitor and a former detainee.Findings – The author describes the emotional impact the research personally had on her and shares learning from overcoming “compassion fatigue”. Self-care strategies based on the literature are recommended, such as a researcher self-assessment, identification of the emotional risks of the research, and self-care plan formulated during project planning. Suggested resources and activities to support the well-being of researchers are explored.Practical implications – This paper provides practical resources for researchers to prepare for and cope with emotional and mental health risks throughout the research process. It builds awareness of safeguarding researchers and supporting them with handling emotional disruptions. Without adequate support, they may be psychologically harmed and lose the potential to critically engage with emotions as data.Originality/value – The literature on emotions in doing research rarely discusses self-care strategies. This paper offers an actionable plan for researchers to instil emotional and mental well-being into the research design to navigate emotional challenges in the field and build resilience

Innovation for a circular economy : exploring the adoption of PSS by UK companies in the baby products sector

Several authors have commented on the relatively slow rate at which Product Service Systems (PSS) have been adopted in B2B networks. Despite some prominent examples, such as the provision of integrated lighting systems to Sainsbury’s (supermarket chain) by Parkersell in the UK, and the ‘pay per copy’ (lease and take back) systems provided by copier companies such as Xerox and Canon, PSS has not been widely adopted even though the business case seems sound. Consequently, the question of identifying and overcoming barriers to PSS adoption has become an important research topic. In this study we explore barriers to the adoption of PSS in the UK baby products industry using a qualitative research design employing in-depth interviews with baby products suppliers (manufacturers) and buyers (retailers). The novelty of the approach adopted in this study is that key concepts from the Industrial Networks Approach are used to frame the analysis. Buyers and suppliers of baby products acknowledge the value of the PSS approach, but PSS adoption is found to require considerable adaptation to conventional patterns of inter-organizational interaction

Constructs of Successful and Sustainable SME Leadership in East Africa

Despite the markedly increased foreign investment, East African economies remain characterized by low levels of investment and capital formation with high level of attrition amongst indigenous small and medium enterprises. While there is a high failure rate amongst these SMEs, some are beginning to turn the corner and are exhibiting signs of robustness, innovativeness and sustainability. Relying on narrative accounts of successful SMEs leaders in Kenya and Uganda obtained through interviews and focus group discussions, this study sought to construct an account of leadership practices and ascriptions of success for SMEs that had succeeded. The study identified eight leadership constructs characteristic of successful SME leaders in Kenya and Uganda grouped into visioning, building commitment, social capital, personal values, anticipation and resilience, resourcefulness, responsiveness, and entrepreneurial orientation. While these results, on the face value, are apparently not unique, it was in the nuances of the leadership practice that difference was made. In conclusion, the study highlights implications for these findings in relation to policy and leadership practice among SMEs

Overcoming Managerial Challenges to Realize Growth Spurts: Insights from Cases of Three Enterprises

Organizations face several managerial challenges during their growth period. Growth spurts are realized when organizations overcome these challenges. Though the literature is full of studies on the enterprise growth, the knowledge about how these challenges facilitate or hinder growth is limited. We conceptualize and explain five challenges faced by an enterprise along its growth trajectory. For evidence, we then look at history of three organizations from different sectors and trace their strategies to overcome the challenges faced by them. The firm and the environment interact and make certain strategic choices, which in turn results in growth spurts in the organization. We draw insights from their growth stories and discuss the different strategies and interactions between the firm and the environment.

Secure data sharing and processing in heterogeneous clouds

The extensive cloud adoption among the European Public Sector Players empowered them to own and operate a range of cloud infrastructures. These deployments vary both in the size and capabilities, as well as in the range of employed technologies and processes. The public sector, however, lacks the necessary technology to enable effective, interoperable and secure integration of a multitude of its computing clouds and services. In this work we focus on the federation of private clouds and the approaches that enable secure data sharing and processing among the collaborating infrastructures and services of public entities. We investigate the aspects of access control, data and security policy languages, as well as cryptographic approaches that enable fine-grained security and data processing in semi-trusted environments. We identify the main challenges and frame the future work that serve as an enabler of interoperability among heterogeneous infrastructures and services. Our goal is to enable both security and legal conformance as well as to facilitate transparency, privacy and effectivity of private cloud federations for the public sector needs. © 2015 The Authors

Climbing the Great Wall: Linking Teacher Beliefs and Learning Styles in Cross-Cultural Teaching - Observations from cross-cultural teaching in Mainland China

Scholars have suggested separate relationships between culture and learning styles, and between culture and teaching beliefs. In this essay I suggest that interrelated relationships between culture, learning styles and teacher beliefs may exist. Drawing on personal observations from cross-cultural teaching experiences in Mainland China, the essay illustrates how culture, learning styles and teacher beliefs inform each other and how they might be combined into an inclusive framework. Such a framework could aid in identifying and overcoming challenges from cross-cultural teaching and cross-cultural learning. The observations shed further light onto the on-going debate of how Chinese learn. The essay concludes with directions for future research for further development of the framework and our understanding of cross-cultural differences in the classroom

WGBH's Teacher's Domain: Producing Open Materials and Engaging Users

Launched in 2002 by WGBH, the non-commercial public media service, located in Boston, Massachusetts, Teachers' Domain is an online repository of multimedia open educational resources for use in classrooms and for professional development. As part of its effort to increase the availability of freely accessible resources WGBH has developed content from public media archives into high quality, open educational resources for Teachers' Domain. Using a participatory case study methodology, this report examines WGBH and Teachers' Domain's successes and challenges in 1) converting proprietary content to open content 2) engaging users in content and 3) redesigning the Teacher's Domain site to accommodate new categories of use and tools for teachers and learners of all different backgrounds and activity levels. For OER projects more generally, ongoing research on user behaviors, experiences and perceptions can be a challenging and resource-intense process; however, by assessing and building data collection mechanisms and research questions into organizational practices, knowledge and learnings can be cultivated to inform how users are best supported, as well as to inform continuous improvement for the projects overall

Preparing to Preserve: Three Essential Steps to Building Experience with Long-Term Digital Preservation

Many organizations face complex questions of how to implement affordable and sustainable digital preservation practices. One strategic priority at the University Libraries at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, United States, is increased focus toward preservation of unique digital assets, whether digitized from physical originals or born digital. A team comprised of experts from multiple functional library departments (including the special collections/archives area and the technology area) was established to help address this priority, and efforts are beginning to translate into operational practice. This work outlines a three-step approach: Partnership, Policy, Pilot taken by one academic research library to strategically build experience utilizing a collaborative team approach. Our experience included the formation of a team, education of all members, and a foundational attitude that decisions would be undertaken as partners rather than competing departments or units. The team’s work included the development of an initial digital preservation policy, helping to distill the organizational priority and values associated with digital preservation. Several pilot projects were initiated and completed, which provided realistic, first-person experience with digital preservation activities, surfaced questions, and set the stage for developing and refining sustainable workflows. This work will highlight key activities in our journey to date, with the hope that experience gained through this effort could be applicable, in whole or part, to other organizations regardless of their size or capacity