Reconstructing the Farm: Life Stories of Dutch Female Farmers

My research asks: what are the lived experiences of female farmers within the hegemonic construction of the Dutch farmer and how have their roles shifted through time? Popular culture has implanted stereotypes that most female farmers are uneducated, low-class individuals but the six women whom I interviewed present life stories that complicate this. How did these women come into their roles as farmers? Once they became such entrepreneurs, what were their challenges in a potentially male-dominated profession? While there has been extensive research on rural women’s historical roles in farming, I analyze the personal experiences of a small sample of women farmers in the Netherlands. They discuss their inspiration, challenges, successes and innate passion within farming. Farming is considered a lifestyle by most of the women. There is not a defined line between work and home and thus the arduous nature of the job does not easily permit the woman to be a sole proprietor and active mother. These women’s stories complicate Sherry Ortner’s theory of women as closer to nature and men as closer to culture. The only drastic conclusion that can be made from these few narratives is that every female farmer will have her own story to tell

Going Beyond Contemporary Leader Development Practices: Assessing Leader Readiness Using Cognitive Stage Development and Experiential Learning Theories

Consider the employee who is highly engaged and self-directed in her work, manages ambiguity well, genuinely engages in the journey of becoming an agent of change, seeks ways to understand herself as a leader, and relishes the possibilities of ideas. On the other hand, there is the employee who looks to others for direction and answers, finds the lack of clarity and ambiguity unbearable, resists new ideas, has difficulty making decisions, or jumps right into the decision-making process without careful reflection. These disparate behaviors in employees seem to occur unrelated to age, gender, and socioeconomic level. As teachers, managers, and consultants, we have engaged in our own leader development practices and observed those of others in an attempt to explain these differences

Kolb’s experiential learning as a critical frame for reflective practice

David Kolb’s conception of experiential learning has informed wide-ranging studies and practices in education, business, organizational development, and leadership studies for over two decades now. His work has guided the work of trainers, teachers, and scholars, affording significant insights into both individual and organizational learning. Because deep and sustained change in human settings requires that people learn, Kolb’s penetrating analysis of the complexities involved in human learning has provided clues about the notorious difficulties surrounding change in both individuals and organizations. In an era where the newest ideas tend to have special cache, Kolb’s work has had remarkable staying power. Perhaps this is because his ideas have repeatedly served as a foundation for theorists and practitioners to understand and influence institutions and the people in them (Sandmire, Vroman & Sanders, 2000; Loo, 2002; Pauleen, Marshall & Ergort, 2004). In a rapidly changing world, contemporary institutions and organizations must foster human learning. Indeed, they must be led by effective learners if they are to be relevant and enduring

Off the rails: understanding the derailment of a lean manufacturing initiative

This study focuses on why lean manufacturing change initiatives at a Northern New England company failed to produce sustained results. Consultants and leaders share responsibility for the sustainability of the change initiatives they undertake. Rationally, neither party would undertake a change initiative with the intent to fail, yet clearly, even highly structured and well-tested initiatives often do fail (derail) in practice. This research used an observational methodology to uncover answers to the question, “what are the key factors that can cause the derailment of a well-intended, highly-structured change initiative?” In addition to consistency with findings from other studies on sustaining lean projects, this study further extends those findings and uncovered new variables to consider when implementing lean projects and other structured interventions in general. Based on the results of this study, the authors propose a model of four phases that influence lean project sustainability: foundation, preparation, implementation and sustainability for continuous improvements

University Identity Change Through a Psychological Sense of Community Framework: A Case Study of the ELIMAR Model

Leading through identity change is a highly emotive experience. When leadership is understood as an emotional community development process, the benefits for repurposing identity are greatly enhanced. This article introduces a change model that embeds emotional awareness throughout a four-phased process, adapting concepts originally presented in McMillan and Chavis’s (1986) psychological sense of community (PSOC) theory and Scott and Jaffee’s (1989) change curve model. In this case study, we focus on a four-year multi-campus northeastern United States public university as a model to investigate how individuals in leadership positions consider the role of affect in creating positive identity change to the university’s psychological sense of community

50 Years of Pride: Queer Spatial Joy as Radical Planning Praxis

Planning has historically been used as a tool to regulate queer people in urban space and parades have long been a vibrant, yet overlooked, practice for resisting such municipal regulation - although parades themselves require spatial planning practices. We analyze the 50-year history of the Los Angeles Pride parade through archival materials, asking to what extent and how the historical planning of LA Pride demonstrates a radical planning praxis, especially in relation to policing. We find that LA Pride was initially (a) a ritual of remembrance and (b) a political organizing device. In contrast to heteronormative readings of Pride as an opportunity to "come out" and transform the "straight state," we argue that the early years of Pride demonstrated intersectional and insurgent planning wherein heterogeneous queer people claimed agency through collectively expressing joy as an act of resistance to municipal governance. Based on theories of Black joy and the feminist killjoy, we conceptualize this experience as a "spatialized queer joy." This concept is particularly germane given ongoing debates regarding the relationship between queer and BIPOC urban life and policing. We suggest that spatialized queer joy complicates conventional readings of Pride and queer urban space, offering instead powerful tools for radical queer planning praxis