The role of leadership in an effective IT/Business relationship

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.The conventional view of leadership is that of a phenomenon that enables an organization to establish and achieve its goals. In this respect, the literature portrays two main streams of leadership thought. Historically, based almost entirely on studies stemming from the positivist research paradigm, the notion of the heroic individual has prevailed, where, through superior traits, skills and qualities and with overarching control and influence over subordinates, a designated individual guides an organization to success. More recently, based upon studies stemming from the interpretivist and constructionist research paradigms, this notion of leadership has being challenged. Instead, a more collective notion of leadership is being proposed; one in which a contextually-contingent set of shared practices that are distributed throughout an organization, manifest appropriately in response to organizational challenges and needs. Implicit in both of these notions of leadership is the importance of people to organizational success. In the heroic model of leadership, the individual leader mobilises his/her supporters through charisma and skill. In the collective model of leadership, the importance of social relationships is stressed and, in particular, the access which these provide to the relationship-based intangible resources (such as trust, commitment and resilience) required for organizational success. In both cases, people are motivated to collaborate in ways required to ensure organizational success and to express their ‘collective intelligence’ as a service to the organization. This research, located within the interpretivist paradigm, explores the specific link between organizational leadership and a particular set of relationships – those between the IT function and the rest of the business - in a global telecommunications organization. Through a phenomenological case study, the dialectical relationship between leadership practices and the workplace relationships that constitute the IT-Business nexus, is explored in three of the operating companies of this organization. The rich interview data generated by this research portray the complex interplay between workplace relationships and current leadership practices in each of these three operating companies; the analysis of which uncovers a number of spheres of influence that impact the IT-Business nexus. These influences include: the formal organizational structure and competing functional priorities; formal and informal leadership practices; organizational culture; and those social practices that either generate or mediate workplace tension. The major contribution of the study is in its rich portrayal of the complex array of distributed leadership practices that influence business success within a large global organization. In particular, the study highlights the reciprocal relationship between these leadership practices and the IT-Business relationship, in particular, and other workplace relationships, more generally. In this respect, the research findings highlight the critical role that context plays in the effective execution of leadership practices; the absence of commentary on the importance of the relationship-based intangible resources in the IT-Business relationship literature; and the impact of more recent practices, such as that of outsourcing, on the IT-Business relationship

Home: The place the older adult can not imagine living without

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Rapidly aging populations with an increased desire to remain at home and changes in health policy that promote the transfer of health care from formal places, as hospitals and institutions, to the more informal setting of one's home support the need for further research that is designed specifically to understand the experience of home among older adults. Yet, little is known among health care providers about the older adult's experience of home. The aim of this study was to understand the experience of home as experienced by older adults living in a rural community in Sweden.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Hermeneutical interpretation, as developed by von Post and Eriksson and based on Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, was used to interpret interviews with six older adults. The interpretation included a self examination of the researcher's experiences and prejudices and proceeded through several readings which integrated the text with the reader, allowed new questions to emerge, fused the horizons, summarized main and sub-themes and allowed a new understanding to emerge.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Two main and six sub-themes emerged. Home was experienced as the place the older adult could not imagine living without but also as the place one might be forced to leave. The older adult's thoughts vacillated between the well known present and all its comforts and the unknown future with all its questions and fears, including the underlying threat of loosing one's home.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Home has become so integral to life itself and such an intimate part of the older adult's being that when older adults lose their home, they also loose the place closest to their heart, the place where they are at home and can maintain their identity, integrity and way of living. Additional effort needs to be made to understand the older adult's experience of home within home health care in order to minimize intrusion and maximize care. There is a need to more fully explore the older adult's experience with health care providers in the home and its impact on the older adult's sense of "being at home" and their health and overall well-being.</p

Older People, Sense of Coherence and Community

Population ageing is a global trend and even though years added to life often are lived in good health; it will have an impact on healthcare, housing and facilities, and social security costs. Healthy ageing in place, especially in one’s own home and community, increasingly receives attention from health professionals, researchers, and policymakers. In this chapter, we first discuss the meaning of the concept of healthy ageing, and how Sense of Coherence contributes to this process. Next, we discuss the characteristics of the community in which older people live their lives and how the community can provide resources (GRR and SRR) to strengthen Sense of Coherence and hence perceived well-being and quality of life

Fall Classification by Machine Learning Using Mobile Phones

Fall prevention is a critical component of health care; falls are a common source of injury in the elderly and are associated with significant levels of mortality and morbidity. Automatically detecting falls can allow rapid response to potential emergencies; in addition, knowing the cause or manner of a fall can be beneficial for prevention studies or a more tailored emergency response. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate techniques to not only reliably detect a fall but also to automatically classify the type. We asked 15 subjects to simulate four different types of falls–left and right lateral, forward trips, and backward slips–while wearing mobile phones and previously validated, dedicated accelerometers. Nine subjects also wore the devices for ten days, to provide data for comparison with the simulated falls. We applied five machine learning classifiers to a large time-series feature set to detect falls. Support vector machines and regularized logistic regression were able to identify a fall with 98% accuracy and classify the type of fall with 99% accuracy. This work demonstrates how current machine learning approaches can simplify data collection for prevention in fall-related research as well as improve rapid response to potential injuries due to falls

Effect of folate derivatives on the activity of antifolate drugs used against malaria and cancer

The folate derivatives folic acid (FA) and folinic acid (FNA) decrease the in vivo and in vitro activities of antifolate drugs in Plasmodium falciparum. However, the effects of 5-methyl-tetrahydrofolate (5-Me-THF) and tetrahydrofolate (THF), the two dominant circulating folate forms in humans, have not been explored yet. We have investigated the effects of FA, FNA, 5-Me-THF, and THF on the in vitro activity of the antimalarial antifolates pyrimethamine and chlorcycloguanil and the anticancer antifolates methotrexate (MTX), aminopterin, and trimetrexate (TMX), against P. falciparum. The results indicate that these anticancers are potent against P. falciparum, with IC50 < 50 nM. 5-Me-THF does not significantly decrease the activity of all tested drugs, and none of the tested folate derivatives significantly decrease the activity of these anticancers. Thus, malaria folate metabolism has features different from those in human, and the exploitation of this difference could lead to the discovery of new drugs to treat malaria. For instance, the combination of 5-Me-THF with a low dose of TMX could be used to treat malaria. In addition, the safety of a low dose of MTX in the treatment of arthritis indicates that this drug could be used alone to treat malaria