Cultivating Culture in Greenfields: The Heinz Wattie's Case

The establishment of new plants in Greenfield sires is a strategic organisational initiative providing the opportunity to develop alternative systems of staff values and beliefs which may be more appropriate for capitalising on external product marker opportunities. This paper explores whether an alternative organisational culture can be established at a Greenfield sire within a New Zealand food processing plant. This case organisation utilised the provisions of the Employment Contracts Act 1991 to establish alternative employment conditions in the Greenfield site to those of its Brownfield sire. A comparative analysis was made utilising quantitative organisational culture data from Human Synergistic's Organisation Culture Inventory. The data reveals the similarities and differences between the Greenfield and Brownfield sires and provides the basis for discussion of whether culture can be managed through the mechanism of a Greenfield site. Critical elements in creating a desired culture are identified

PRINCIPLES AND TECHNIQUES OF PUBLIC POLICY EDUCATION LEARNED FROM ELEVEN INNOVATIVE PROJECTS

Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Cultivating Culture in Greenfields: The Heinz Wattie's Case

The establishment of new plants in Greenfield sires is a strategic organisational initiative providing the opportunity to develop alternative systems of staff values and beliefs which may be more appropriate for capitalising on external product marker opportunities. This paper explores whether an alternative organisational culture can be established at a Greenfield sire within a New Zealand food processing plant. This case organisation utilised the provisions of the Employment Contracts Act 1991 to establish alternative employment conditions in the Greenfield site to those of its Brownfield sire. A comparative analysis was made utilising quantitative organisational culture data from Human Synergistic's Organisation Culture Inventory. The data reveals the similarities and differences between the Greenfield and Brownfield sires and provides the basis for discussion of whether culture can be managed through the mechanism of a Greenfield site. Critical elements in creating a desired culture are identified

Connectivity in and around Organizations:Waves, tensions and trade-offs

Connectivity has become the foundation for organizing as it increasingly underpins and defines the way we live and work. Notwithstanding all the advances in connectivity within organizations, there are even more pervasive changes between and around organizations. In a digital world, more and more of us are working anytime, anyplace, and companies deliver value by better connecting with customers and external partners within digital ecosystems. In this introduction to the Special Issue, we summarize four waves of connectivity – globalization, socialization, personalization and datafication – that combine to create opportunities and challenges for contemporary organizations. We then introduce the papers in the special issue and discuss their contributions to theory and practice. Finally, we draw upon currently emerging challenges to suggest enduring tensions and trade-offs for connectivity research in the future

FROM ISOLATION TO COLLABORATION - HOW THE INCREASING DIFFUSION OF MOBILE DEVICES HAS CHANGED PRACTICES OF KNOWLEDGE SHARING IN NON-OFFICE SETTINGS

The increasing diffusion of mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets has not only revolutionized how people communicate with each other, but has also changed work practices and the way employ-ees share knowledge. Knowledge management studies have to date mainly focused on office settings but paid little attention to non-office workplace settings. However, the use of mobile devices also changes the way employees can be supported and support each other in non-office settings and thus create new application areas for knowledge management. In this research, we applied a three step qualitative inquiry with 36 experts in the construction sector to investigate how the increasing diffu-sion of mobile devices has affected existing work practices that are associated with knowledge sharing in non-office settings. We found that the use of mobile devices helped to transform isolated work prac-tices into collaborative work practices, thereby reducing the spatial, temporal, contextual, and social barriers to knowledge sharing. As such, an increase in connectivity can be seen as an indicator for potential development of increased collaboration across work sites. We conclude the paper with a dis-cussion of implications for organizations concerning the support of knowledge sharing in such settings and an outlook on future work

Service Science

Service science, or service science, management, and engineering (SSME), is an emerging interdisciplinary academic discipline that aims at understanding service and service systems. Initially spearheaded by IBM Corporation, the discipline has matured in recent years. The state of service science to date has reached a point where universities around the world offer degree programs, while academics and practitioners alike advance the field through a variety of specialized journals and conferences

Connectivity in distributed service systems: The providers' perspective

`Connectivity', an emerging metaphor for interactions in and around organizations originating from organizational studies, is known to positively influence the performance of distributed or `virtual' teams. We posed the question of whether there can be too little or too much connectivity between organizational actors, and whether social or technical aspects of connectivity matter most. In this paper, we report on the analysis of the data from our survey gathered from 101 individuals within 75 Indian IT service providers. We explore the relationship between organizational performance (as represented by communication effectiveness and efficiency) and the nature of connectivity among individuals within these service systems. The results show that while having a robust technical infrastructure is important, optimizing the social dimension of connectivity is perhaps more important in the long run, to increase that system's ability to co-create value

Learning in the manufacturing sector

Article focusing on learning in the manufacturing sector