Book Review: Laura Erickson-Schroth (ed.) (2014), Trans bodies, Trans selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community. Oxford and New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Since the mid 1990s there has been a proliferation of books by academics and practitioners about transgender lives (see, for example, Bornstein, 1994; Stryker & Whittle, 2006; Teich, 2012). Trans Bodies, Trans selves breaks new ground, however, by offering an accessible, comprehensive and also practical resource guide for trans people themselves. The book is modeled on the feminist health manual, ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves’, first published by the Boston Women’s Health Collective in the 1970s. This book was written by and for women and aimed to counter malestream knowledge about women’s health and empower women by sharing information and experience

Organizational Learning: Keeping Pace with Change through Action Learning

In the current climate of economic ‘austerity’, organisational learning has increasingly gained importance, and a need for new ways of transferring learning has been identified. Organisational learning is seen as key to organisational success, ensuring both competitive advantage and organisational longevity. However, in order for organisations to keep pace with change they must not only strive to learn but also pay attention to how they might learn. A dominant view within the field of organisational learning is that employees are the most productive source for learning. For the most part, learning largely takes place through training, management and leadership development programmes, or on the job, where the goal is to convert tacit knowledge into explicit and practical forms of knowledge that can inform and transform organisational processes and practices. A limitation of these forms of learning is that they rely on a didactic approach to teaching and learning. This paper discusses the value of action learning as a tool for a more effective way of knowledge transfer, and as a way in which organisations can facilitate and utilise learning in new and more effective ways. The paper draws on qualitative research carried out with middle and senior managers, from a variety of sectors, who have recently completed educational programmes that utilised action learning. The paper highlights how through this learning approach, the managers uncovered explicit knowledge, and developed the skills and ability to challenge organisational mores. The paper also reports on the challenges and solutions they found in diffusing their new explicit knowledge in their respective workplaces. Through these findings the paper argues that action learning offers a productive approach to facilitate and support both organisational learning and organisational change. This paper discusses the value of action learning in facilitating and supporting both organisational learning and organisational change

Effective Action Learning Sets: An analysis of participant experiences

This thesis examines an under researched area in the field of action learning: how learning set participants experience action learning and the effectiveness of action learning sets. Through the adoption of a qualitative research approach, which utilised unstructured interviews with learning set members and employed a grounded theory approach to analysis, the thesis thus provides a unique insight into action learning practices and group processes, the latter significantly adding to knowledge in the field of organisational behavior. The research presented, which traces the connections between the research process, methodology and the ongoing development of analysis, also adds to existing knowledge in organisational research methods. Within the thesis, a number of significant issues concerning group processes within action learning sets are discussed. Through analysis of the data it is shown that differing hierarchies exist amongst set members and that these affect the contribution that individual members make to the operations in the set. Furthermore, trust is shown to be vital to the effective working of the set, with members needing to feel psychologically and politically safe before they will self disclose. Finally, member’s self disclosure is revealed to be located on a continuum ranging from comfort to discomfort, with a possibility that some set members may actively engage in dissimulation as a way of reducing cognitive dissonance in self disclosure. Analysis within the thesis also provides a unique insight into action learning practices. A discussion of the findings reveals several significant issues in relation to both set members and facilitators. These include the effect of the location of the set, member’s expectations of the facilitator’s role and the extent to which these expectations accord with the facilitator’s style of facilitation. Analysis of this latter point directly adds to the body of literature concerning the skills of facilitators in action learning sets

How Learning Happens: Action learning in an academic context

The session is designed to give a very brief overview of action learning in an academic context. The emphasis is placed on doing action learning….

Universality of Servant Leadership

Servant leadership is increasingly being tested, and proven to be a viable tool for managing multi-cultural organizations. Existing empirical and conceptual studies on servant leadership suggest that this leadership construct is practicable. While a lot of studies seem to have investigated its effect on individuals’ and organizations’ outcomes, none has moved the motion that servant leadership might have universal connotations. This conceptual paper explores the underpinning framework of the universality dimension of servant leadership, and why viewing the construct as such, is necessary now and in the near future. By critically examining past and present literature on servant leadership, the paper offers robust and useful insights needed to stimulate the universality debate of servant leadership. The implications of the paper for early career researchers were also discusse