Innovation and Employability in Knowledge Management Curriculum Design

During 2007/8, Southampton Solent University worked on a Leadership Foundation project focused on the utility of the multi-functional team approach as a vehicle to deliver innovation in strategic and operational terms in higher education (HE). The Task-Orientated Multi-Functional Team Approach (TOMFTA) project took two significant undertakings for Southampton Solent as key areas for investigation, one academic and one administrative in focus. The academic project was the development of an innovative and novel degree programme in knowledge management (KM). The new KM Honours degree programme is timely both in recognition of the increasing importance to organisations of knowledge as a commodity, and in its adoption of a distinctive structure and pedagogy. The methodology for the KM curriculum design brings together student-centred and market-driven approaches: positioning the programme for the interests of students and requirements of employers, rather than just the capabilities of staff; while looking at ways that courses can be delivered with more flexibility, e.g. accelerated and block-mode; with level-differentiated activities, common cross-year content and material that is multi-purpose for use in short courses. In order to permit context at multiple levels in common, a graduate skills strand is taught separately as part of the University’s business-facing education agenda. The KM portfolio offers a programme of practically-based courses integrating key themes in knowledge management, business, information distribution and development of the media. They develop problem-solving, communications, teamwork and other employability skills as well as the domain skills needed by emerging information management technologies. The new courses are built on activities which focus on different aspects of KM, drawing on existing content as a knowledge base. This paper presents the ongoing development of the KM programme through the key aspects in its conception and design

Value, Kaizen and Knowledge Management: Developing a Knowledge Management Strategy for Southampton Solent University

The process of development of the strategic plan for Southampton Solent University offered a vehicle for the development of kaizen and knowledge management (KM) activities within the institution. The essential overlap between the methods offers clear benefits in the HE environment. In consideration of the aspects of KM and kaizen, various potential opportunities were identified as targets for improvement, and clarified by knowledge audit as to value and viability. The derived outcomes are listed along with some of the principal factors and perceived barriers in the practical implementation of the outcomes. Knowledge audit applied here focused on the identification of where value arises within the business. Resource constraints and the practicalities of a people-centred system limit the permissible rate of innovation, so precise focus on the areas of business activity of most significance to the mission and client base is crucial. The fundamental question of whether such a strategy should be developed as a separate strand or embedded into existing strategies is discussed. In practice, Solent has chosen to embed, principally for reasons of maintenance of ownership and commitment. Confidence in the process has been built through prior success with trialled activities around retention, where an activity-based pedagogic framework was adopted to address issues with an access course. Other areas of early intervention include the development and reengineering of recruitment and admissions processes, and the development of activities and pedagogy based on the virtual learning environment as exemplars of the importance of cyclical feedback in continuous improvement. The inherent complexity of processes running across the university as an organisation offers opportunities for benefits from the through-process approach implicit in kaizen. The business value of the institution is in the skills of its employees and its deployed intellectual property, and thus the importance of the enhancement of both tangible assets and intangible processes is critical to future success

Knowledge Management Applied To Business Process Reengineering

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the role of knowledge management (KM) as a critical factor for the business process reengineering (BPR) success. It supports the theory that the knowledge management can supply the dynamic necessary to stimulate successful reengineering and minimize the failure rate and its sources. Implementing KM strategy in reengineering projects will lead to better outcomes, building the support for long-term success into the design of business systems and processes

Religious actors, civil society, and the development agenda: The dynamics of inclusion and exclusion

This article uses the World Bank\u27s engagement with religious actors to analyse their differentiated role in setting the development agenda raising three key issues. First, engagements between international financial institutions (IFIs) and religious actors are formalised thus excluding many of the actors embedded within communities in the South. Secondly, the varied politics of religious actors in development are rarely articulated and a single position is often presented. Thirdly, the potential for development alternatives from religious actors excluded from these engagements is overlooked, due in part to misrecognition of the mutually constitutive relationship between secular and sacral elements in local contexts

Religion research in international relations: A taxonomy

The discipline of international relations (IR) is beginning to readily engage with the variegations of religion manifest in world politics. The essay argues that the perception of research about religion can therefore no longer remain homogenous and it is imperative to differentiate between types of religion research available to IR scholars and policy-makers. With this objective in mind, the essay differentiates between four suggested types of religion research in the IR corpus (policy, cultural, global and postsecular research) and briefly identifies three additional types (disciplinary, data, and primary source research). It is posited that the demarcation between types is important to recognise if IR is to fully profit from the quality of religion research now on offer

The Next Big Thing? Why religion may (not) shape international relations in the 21st century

The exponential growth of IR studies in religion and the rise of religious actors and agendas in the minds of international policy makers suggest that religion will be an organising force in world politics of the future. This paper explores from an open critical position the assumption that religion will shape the evolving borders of world affairs. As modern international relations was partly borne of the need to contain the borders of religion, it is argued that the reemergence of religion in contemporary world politics may, paradoxically, reinforce that same system. Twenty-first century policy makers may thus take a neo-Westphalian turn in search of a broad-based secular polity that utilises yet also contains religio-political energies

The Shi\u27ites, the West and the future of democracy: Reframing political change in a religio-secular world

The present article critically reviews Paul McGeough’s important analysis of the most recent Iraq war within a broader consideration of secular-religious relations in international affairs. The thesis of Mission Impossible: The Sheikhs, the US and the Future of Iraq (2004) can be summarised around two ideas: that the US strategy in Iraq was flawed because it wilfully bypassed the traditional power structures of Iraqi society; and that these structures, formed around the tribe and the mosque, are anti-democratic thus rendering attempts at democratisation impossible. The article affirms McGeough’s argument concerning the inadequacy of the US strategy, but critically examines the author’s fatalism toward the democratic capacity of Iraqi structures, notably the structure of the mosque. By broadening the notion of democracy to include religious actors and agendas, and by an introductory interpretation of the Shi’ite community as vital players in an emerging Iraqi democracy, the article attempts to deconstruct the author’s secularist view that the world of the mosque exists in a ‘parallel universe’ to the liberal democratic West. Reframing the Shi’ites as essential actors in the democratic project thus situates political discourse in a ‘religio-secular world’ and brings the ‘other worlds’ of religion and secularism together in a sphere of interdependence. Such an approach emphasises the importance of post-secular structures in the discourses on democratic change

Religion and politics in review

A international scholarly review of two contemporary works in the study of religion and international realations. Eric O. Hanson, Religion and Politics in the International System Today (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Scott M. Thomas, The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation of International Relations: The Struggle for the Soul of the Twenty-First Century (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005). Published in the official journal of the London School of Economics and Politics

The Shi'ites, the West and the Future of Democracy: Reframing Political Change in a Religio-secular World

The present article critically reviews Paul McGeough’s important analysis of the most recent Iraq war within a broader consideration of secular-religious relations in international affairs. The thesis of Mission Impossible: The Sheikhs, the US and the Future of Iraq (2004) can be summarised around two ideas: that the US strategy in Iraq was flawed because it wilfully bypassed the traditional power structures of Iraqi society; and that these structures, formed around the tribe and the mosque, are anti-democratic thus rendering attempts at democratisation impossible. The article affirms McGeough’s argument concerning the inadequacy of the US strategy, but critically examines the author’s fatalism toward the democratic capacity of Iraqi structures, notably the structure of the mosque. By broadening the notion of democracy to include religious actors and agendas, and by an introductory interpretation of the Shi’ite community as vital players in an emerging Iraqi democracy, the article attempts to deconstruct the author’s secularist view that the world of the mosque exists in a ‘parallel universe’ to the liberal democratic West. Reframing the Shi’ites as essential actors in the democratic project thus situates political discourse in a ‘religio-secular world’ and brings the ‘other worlds’ of religion and secularism together in a sphere of interdependence. Such an approach emphasises the importance of post-secular structures in the discourses on democratic change