692 research outputs found

    Re-thinking the project manager's role and practice : a case study in the context of an IT department

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    This thesis explores the social construction of the project manager role and its enactment within an organizational context. The research builds on the themes of the Rethinking Project Management agenda in focusing on research that is about, in and for project management practice (Winter et al. 2006b). The complex organization context of project practice is engaged with and themes such as role legitimacy, organizational power, organizational boundaries and the nature of project and organizational time are explored. The importance of the influence of the professional association’s project management model to the construction of the organizational project manager role and enactment is investigated. The research utilizes an empirically focused treatment of structuration theory (Giddens 1984) as a conceptual framework in addressing the social construction of the project managers’ role and its enactment. The research was conducted using a case study approach in which multiple instances of project managers’ practice in a shared IT organizational context were examined from the perspective of interactions across the boundary between the projects and the organization. The case study data was analysed and findings were generated through the iterative engagement with the organizational phenomena, the conceptual framework and the research questions being explored. The conclusions of the research support the Rethinking Project Management agenda and propose a wider and more social consideration of projects and their management that takes into account the social construction of projects, the importance of boundary spanning activities and objects, and the social nature of time as key elements in rethinking the role and practice of project managers

    Dynamic multi-linked negotiations in multi-echelon production scheduling networks

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    10.1109/IAT.2006.56Proceedings - 2006 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT 2006 Main Conference Proceedings), IAT'06498-50

    Frame-bending quality: Leading through discourses towards equity and student success

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    In 2018, the Government of Ontario introduced a post-secondary accountability framework that attributes up to 60% of colleges’ annual public funding to the achievement of ten government-directed performance outcomes. The new framework’s shift from the previous enrollment-based funding model intensifies neoliberal and post-structural policy discourses of quality and accountability, further relegating social inequities to the margins of post-secondary education. At the same time, burgeoning social movements have appealed to governments and post-secondary institutions to dismantle systemic barriers that impede students from equity-deserving communities from accessing and flourishing in college. This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) explores how a large urban college can reconcile neoliberal and post-structural representations of quality to develop a strategic approach to improving college-level outcomes that advances equity and promotes student success. Managing inherent tensions between government-defined quality and the college’s moral obligations to advance equity and promote student success is conceptualized using a hybrid social justice framework through lenses of moral leadership, transformative educational leadership, and tempered radicalism. Examining leadership through these lenses produces a proposed solution that reorients quality by organizational frame-bending and situates individual and organizational leadership practice towards equity and student success with tempered radicalism. Continuous negotiation of neoliberal and post-structural representations of quality is deliberately discussed as a means through which leaders and the organization can engage in an ongoing process of praxis and sensemaking to navigate an increasingly complex and competitive post-secondary terrain

    The Application of Soft Systems Methodology for Improving the Agrotechnology Transfer Process Responding to Tree Crop Farming Concerns in Kona, Hawaii

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    This dissertation applied soft systems methodology for improving the agrotechnology transfer process responding to tree crop farming concerns in Kona, Hawaii. The ten-month study undertook on-site research activities involving randomly selected Kona farmers, leaders of commodity organizations and university staff. The analyst engaged participants in the methodology's seven-stage process. They 1) described non-commodity specific and coffee, macadamia nut and avocado concerns, 2) envisioned improvements, 3) developed models of improved situations, 4) compared these models with the actual situation, 5) debated feasible and desirable changes and 6) implemented agreed-upon changes. Major conclusions of the study were that: 1) soft systems methodology caused change in agrotechnology transfer because it accounted for multiple worldviews affecting the process, 2) the current agrotechnology transfer structure, the Industry Analysis Program, had shortcomings, 3) participants requested soft systems methodology for improving the agrotechnology transfer process and on-farm research activities in Kona for assisting small-scale farmers, and 4) the analyst was a catalyst that assisted community members in bringing changes to the agrotechnology transfer process

    ICT-driven interactions: on the dynamics of mediated control

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    Interactions driven by Information Communications Technologies (ICT) have gained significant acceptance and momentum in contemporary organisational settings, this is illustrated by their massive adoption and varied deployment across the various levels of an organisation’s hierarchy. ICTs such as mobile telephones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDA), videoconferencing, BlackBerries and other forms of portable and immovable computing technologies provide enduring bases for mediated interactions in human activities. This thesis looks into the dynamics of ICT-driven interactions and, distinctively, focuses on the manifestations and implications of mediated control in a collaborative environment. The study draws on the concept of administrative behaviour which leads to the observation that the nature of mediated control is not static, but evolutionarily dynamic that springs from highly unpredictable contexts of work. Thus, interactions driven by ICTs influence and change the dynamics of mediated control against the background of the rhythm, structure and direction of an organisation’s purposeful undertakings. Findings indicate, quite paradoxically, that networks set up through the instrumentality of technology mediated interaction discourage domination and inspire individual discretion in spite of their promise of electronic chains. The analysis reflects the notion that mediated control is not only about the predetermination of targets that are attained at the subordinate level. Indeed, the study advocates a fundamental conceptualisation of mediated control as double-sided concept, integrating the use of discretion that, occasionally, makes subordinates drive and initiate key control techniques that steer organisational life. Therefore, through the application of philosophical hermeneutics for a rigorous data interpretation, this study develops an innovative and holistic understanding of mediated control which not only adds to, but also extends, the current organisational perception of control by the incorporation of discretion and, in the process, makes a distinctive contribution to scholarship

    Relationality in an Age of Measurable Outcomes: Teaching, Tenure, and Collegiality.

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    Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2017

    Knowledge-Based Task Structure Planning for an Information Gathering Agent

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    An effective solution to model and apply planning domain knowledge for deliberation and action in probabilistic, agent-oriented control is presented. Specifically, the addition of a task structure planning component and supporting components to an agent-oriented architecture and agent implementation is described. For agent control in risky or uncertain environments, an approach and method of goal reduction to task plan sets and schedules of action is presented. Additionally, some issues related to component-wise, situation-dependent control of a task planning agent that schedules its tasks separately from planning them are motivated and discussed

    More than the Sum of the Parts: Shared Representations in Collaborative Design Interaction

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    This dissertation presents an inquiry into the roles played by persistent, shared external representations in design collaboration. It advances an understanding of the active participation of these representations—including drawings, models and prototypes—in the collective reasoning of design teams. Interaction was analyzed using a novel network formalization to portray the accomplishment of essential work in this context. A synthesis of analyses over different time scales provides the basis for a comprehensive notion of representational support for design interaction, and a diagnostic for problems that may arise with inadequate support and/or disparities of access and participation. Data were collected during working sessions of a leading, “real-time” concurrent design practice at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, notable for accelerated performance and the use of technologically-advanced, shared representations. Fine-grained analysis of this activity offers insights to complement those obtained from laboratory studies of individual designers, ad-hoc groups, and organizationally-situated ethnographic accounts. A microanalytic technique was developed to assess dynamic interaction between participants and representations. The resulting, novel formalization of an actor-discourse network makes concepts derived from actor-network theory operational to understand the work accomplished through design interaction. Network visualization and structural metrics highlight patterns associated with productivity in the design process. On this basis, indicators for the quality of design conversation are proposed: these include the degree of participants’ engagement, the development of design discourse, the integration of representations and the consolidation of commitment to action. Specific roles and situational attributes of representations are identified that foster and sustain advances in collective design reasoning. The dissertation advances a view of design activity in terms of temporally-evolving constellations of issues and actors, in which representations act to stabilize and anchor expanding networks of commitment. Directions for further work include technical enhancement to network metrics and visualization, extension of the actor-discourse network formalization and further exploration of theoretical and practical issues pertaining to representational actors in social situations

    A Corporative Theory of Corporate Law and Governance

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    This book investigates how a corporation, as a legal entity with certain specific attributes, but lacking human form, can take action in the “real world” of human activity. It contends that a corporation must take such action through, and by means of, an organization, both inside and outside its “corporate” legal limits, consisting of real individual persons and groups of persons. The corporation thus presents itself both as a legal entity assuming the legal form of a corporation and as a social entity taking the form of an organization. One form overlays the other. Those with whom it has legal relations, its legal counterparties, are also, in respect of its organization, participants in that organization. This theory of, or perspective on, the corporation and its governance is explicated here as “corporative”. The corporation comes into being, is situated, participates, and is “embedded”, in a complex sociopolitical-economic environment, which includes its legal counterparties and organizational participants. In addition to shareholders, they include employees, customers, suppliers, creditors, local, regional, and national communities, polities and governments, and non-governmental and other organizations, including those whose objectives include the environment, sustainability, governance, and social responsibility. Despite arguments from advocates of shareholder primacy and maximizing shareholder value, neither the corporation nor any of its participants, including shareholders, have any single objective. Instead, such participants have a variety of objectives which may be consistent to varying degrees with those of each other and with those of the corporation. However, the prosperity and well-being of corporations and their organizational participants, and the groups and other organizations of which organizational participants are members, at a macro-level, are, in many ways, interdependent. Today, prompted by various concerns (including the environment, sustainability, technology, changes in employment and other economic engagement patterns, and increasing income disparities), corporations, industry groups and NGOs, like governments, educational institutions, and other organizations, are facing challenges to the continued viability of contemporary capitalism and of its paradigmatic vehicle, the corporation. Addressing these challenges requires that corporations be considered in the context of the complex socio-political-economic environment in which they are situated and of which they partake. Drawing on analysis of corporate statutes and other relevant law, and historical, social, political, economic, organizational, business, and other theory, information and analysis, this work elucidates the corporative theory of, or perspective on, the corporation. It outlines how this might be applied in analyzing the corporation and its governance from a legal perspective. It illustrates how organizational participants may, and do, influence the behaviour of the relevant corporations; and how corporations may, and do, influence the behaviour of organizational participants. This contributes to understanding how such relationships may be employed, not only to “save” capitalism and the corporation, but to advance common interests in human prosperity, happiness, meaning, and even simple sustenance
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