How do business leaders learn in peer-group coaching?

Peer coaching has been established as a useful tool in educational learning. Peer-group coaching practice among business leaders is historically built on peer coaching practice and has received little academic attention so far. This study aims to understand the processes within peer-group coaching and the factors that participants experience as influencing their learning in order to develop a theoretical framework of how business leaders learn in peer-group coaching. The methodology employed to achieve this aim is grounded theory. Data for this research came from two sources, focus groups and interviews. The processes of peer-group coaching were explored in four focus groups and twelve leaders from two private organisations were interviewed using a semi-structured interview approach to investigate individual aspects of learning in peer-group coaching. The accounts of leader experiences were used to develop a theoretical peer-group coaching framework, conceptualising leaders’ learning, applying grounded theory coding cycles and strategies, and identifying, comparing and connecting different categories. Core aspects of how leaders learn during peer-group coaching included the sharing of information, various forms of self-reflection and emotional reactions. The matching of peers, group-dynamics, and specific peer-group coaching processes are considered as factors that shape learning through influencing the learning environment. Psychological factors, such as trust and respect among peers, openness, empathy, and motivation were also identified as inter-connected with the learning experience. The results of the learning from peer-group coaching were manifested in new behaviour in leaders’ daily work. This thesis contributes to the academic debates on the role of peer-group coaching in the learning of leaders. A proposed theoretical framework adds new elements to the currently accepted models of experiential learning. Furthermore, the findings of this study are used to develop specific recommendations for practice on how to increase leader’s learning and personal growth by introducing an extended definition of peer-group coaching and key methods for initiating peer-group coaching. A proposed framework can add value for practitioners and for organisations who plan to employ this coaching method for leader development. Further research is suggested to explore pragmatic conditions for peer-group coaching sessions and to understand what influences might jeopardise learning in peer-group coaching

Beyond Control-Flow: Extending Business Process Configuration to Roles and Objects

A configurable process model is an integrated representation of multiple variants of a business process. It is designed to be individualized to meet a particular set of requirements. As such, configurable process models promote systematic reuse of proven or common practices. Existing notations for configurable process modeling focus on capturing tasks and control-flow dependencies, neglecting equally important aspects of business processes such as data flow, material flow and resource management. This paper fills this gap by proposing an integrated meta-model for configurable processes with advanced features for capturing resources involved in the performance of tasks (through task-role associations) as well as flow of data and physical artifacts (through task-object associations). Although embodied as an extension of a popular process modeling notation, namely EPC, the meta-model is defined in an abstract and formal manner to make it applicable to other notations

Cohousing for older people: Housing innovation in the Netherlands and Denmark

Objective: The aim of this paper is to elucidate cohousing for older people. Method: The research is based on a literature review and interviews (in English) with residents of seven schemes in the Netherlands and Denmark, a social housing organisation and several researchers in the field (in 1995 and 2002). Results and Conclusions: Cohousing for older people is now well established in its countries of origin - Denmark and the Netherlands - as a way for older people to live in their own house or unit, with a self-chosen group of other older people as neighbours, with shared space and facilities they collectively determine or control. As more such housing is built and occupied it has become easier to choose and assess this option. It remains to be seen how widespread its appeal will be, but cohousing for older people is now a valued housing niche

Area Decay Law Implementation for Quark String Fragmentation

We apply the Area Decay Law (ADL) straightforwardly to simulate a quark string hadronization and compare the results with the explicit analytic calculations. We show that the usual "inclusive" Monte--Carlo simulations do not correspond to the ADL because of two mistakes: not proper simulation of two--dimensional probability density and lack of an important combinatorial factor in a binary tree simulation. We also show how to simulate area decay law "inclusively" avoiding the above--mentioned mistakes.Comment: 5 pages (REVTEX) + 3 figures (available in ps format from G.G.Leptoukh , IPGAS-HE/93-3, to be published in Phys. Rev.

How perchlorate improves excitation-contraction coupling in skeletal muscle fibers

The effect of the "chaotropic" anion, perchlorate, on the activation of contraction has been studied in voltage clamped frog skeletal muscle fibers. It was found that the voltage dependence of either the contractile force or the intramembrane charge movement was shifted towards more negative membrane potentials. The maximum values of force or charge movement attained with large depolarizing pulses did not change significantly. It is concluded that a specific perchlorate effect on the movement of charged particles can explain the potentiating effect of perchlorate anions on contractile force, strengthening the view that these charged particles serve as voltage sensors regulating Ca2+ release from the sarcoplasmic reticulum