Strategy Workshops and Strategic Change

Despite the attention that strategic change as a topic of research has received, there remain considerable difficulties in conceptualizing the actual sources of strategic change. Strategy workshops represent one obvious and explicit research site since organizations often use such events as a means of effecting or initiating strategic change. This paper examines empirical data from ninety-nine strategy workshops in ten separate organizations to address the research question: Do strategy workshops produce strategic change? The paper concludes that workshops can produce change but that one-off workshops are much less effective than a series of workshops. The data presented indicates that the elapsed duration of the entire series of workshops, the frequency of workshops, the scope and autonomy of the unit concerned, and the seniority of participants have an impact on the success or failure of the venture

Strategy Workshops and Strategic Change

Despite the attention that strategic change as a topic of research has received, there remain considerable difficulties in conceptualizing the actual sources of strategic change. Strategy workshops represent one obvious and explicit research site since organizations often use such events as a means of effecting or initiating strategic change. This paper examines empirical data from ninety-nine strategy workshops in ten separate organizations to address the research question: Do strategy workshops produce strategic change? The paper concludes that workshops can produce change but that one-off workshops are much less effective than a series of workshops. The data presented indicates that the elapsed duration of the entire series of workshops, the frequency of workshops, the scope and autonomy of the unit concerned, and the seniority of participants have an impact on the success or failure of the venture.Co-production of Knowledge; Engaged Scholarship; Strategic Change; Strategy as Practice; Strategy Workshops

The role of the vadose zone in the generation of runoff from a headwater basin in the Canadian shield

Hydrological processes occurring within the vadose zone, especially in heterogeneous soils and tills typical of the Canadian shield, are not well understood. This research investigates the importance of the vadose zone in a small headwater basin (Harp 4-21) in the Canadian shield with respect to the generation of stream runoff quantity and quality during episodic rainfall and snowmelt events. The study focused specifically on: firstly the effect of variable antecedent moisture conditions on water-table and stream response, secondly, the significance of the stored vadose water in water extracted from a rising water-table, and thirdly the significance of preferential flowpathways in the vadose zone as a means of rapidly rotating, stored vadose water to the stream during runoff events. The instrumentation of the Harp 4-21 basin includes three v-notch weirs along the stream, numerous piezometers and wells, several soil lysimeters, and three tensiometer nests. Much of the data used in this study was obtained from five sites located along a hillslope transect. Soil water content at each of the hillslope sites was accurately determined using time domain reflectometry (TDR), whereas water table elevations were measured using both electronic water level tapes and calibrated rod floats. Preferential flowpath data was derived from flow gauging and chemical analyses of water samples. Results obtained from the near-stream and lower slope reaches of the hillslope transect indicated that soil water content in the vadose zone is maintained at a high level of saturation by shallow water-table depths. Further analysis of simultaneously measured soil water content and depth to water—table data clearly showed that the existence of a thick essentially saturated zone overlying the water table (capillary fringe) was responsible for the large and rapid water-table responses observed during many of the nine studied precipitation events. On a basin scale, the seasonal variability of the area in which the capillary fringe extended to the ground surface was largely responsible for the observed trend in basin yield (runoff volume/ rainfall volume) for the nine runoff events. Chemical tracing results using silica, pH and DOC showed that the large vadose water reservoir in the near-stream and lower slope areas was a dominant component in water extracted from a rising water-table during most precipitation events. Silica results from the near-stream vadose zone showed that only the massive groundwater recharge associated with spring snowmelt could completely replace the vadose water reservoir with shorter residence time snowmelt/rainfall water. The rapid routing of stored near-stream capillary fringe vadose water through preferential pathways (macropores, soil pipes) was a significant source of runoff to the stream during runoff events. The presence of soil pipes, along with the significant vadose water reservoir in near-stream and lower slope areas are sufficient to explain the large phreatic/vadose water component typically identified in two component flow separation models, and constitutes the basis of a physically-based conceptual runoff model for the Harp 4-21 basin

A Rock In The Sea

The Celtic culture pervades life in Cape Breton, though it has been seasoned with French, Irish and Aboriginal influences, and is just one of the unique features of the “rock in the sea”

A new Janet Hamilton holograph manuscript discovered

Describes and illustrates a newly-identified short poem in the distinctive hand of the Scottish working-class poet Janet Hamilton (1795-1873), discovered tipped into a volume of The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine (1852 [1853]), in University of Glasgow Library, with information on the provenance of the volume

A New Janet Hamilton Manuscript

Describes and illustrates a newly-identified short poem in the distinctive hand of the Scottish working-class poet Janet Hamilton (1795-1873), discovered tipped into a volume of The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine (1852 [1853]), in University of Glasgow Library, with information on the provenance of the volume