The role of leadership in facilitating Organisational Learning and collective capacity building

The paper examines the role of leadership in facilitating collective learning and capacity building by utilising ideas from the fields of evolutionary learning, operations strategy, quality, project and risk management. Two contrasting cases are chosen to show how success and failure can depend upon collective capacity building through participative leadership and Organisational Learning (OL). The bulk of the literature surveyed concerns evolutionary OL in particular those that involve leadership which is rather a new development in this field. The paper welcomes the new trend but warns against the overenthusiastic views that ignore the reservations of the mainstream evolutionary/complexity perspective

Flexible management of logistics in response to turbulent oil prices: case of a European paint producer

How can flexible logistics improve performance in a turbulent world when volatile customer demand and rising oil prices require responsive operations? This paper seeks an answer for this question in the field of control management in J.W. Ostendorf, a European paint company. Until recently logistics had been largely farmed out and paid for as required. It had no or little role in business policy. The new business environment, however, requires that all organisational sectors flow in concert with the corporate objectives. A flexible logistics guided by an independent budgeting based on real costs expectations is offered as a solution. Major changes in information systems is assumed to contribute substantially to this effort

A complexity view of organisational reputation

This paper looks at the concept of reputation from four angles: costbenefit, semiotics, quality and complexity. The complexity outlook may include all the other approaches in certain conditions but is in comparison wider, deeper, evolutionary and more fickle. It can embrace apparently contradictory states that evolve through interaction. The focus is on ambiguity, one of the less-known principles of complexity and is argued that it can act as a stem cell to build sustainable reputation. Two cases from industry are reviewed

Herd mentality and oil prices: implications for sustainability

Despite the current volatility (early 2007), oil prices have experienced a persistently upward trend since 2004. By examining the cascading and stochastic models of herding, the paper looks at the role of herding and diminishing resources behind the volatility and rapid rise in oil prices. A main argument here is that the existence of institutional herding is not incompatible with the entry of noise traders; it rather leads and complements them. The paper also shows that persistent rise may in fact encourage sustainable alternative sources of energy to save the pernicious impact of herding, which can always rattle the prices dissuading the investors from investing in alternative energy. The methodology is based on literature review and the relevant data on oil prices.herd mentality, cascading models, stochastic modelling, oligopoly, oil prices, alternative energy sources, sustainability, sustainable development, institutional herding, noise traders,

The globalisation of Japanese subsidiaries: a case in the UK

Since the early 1990s, the Japanese economy has been trapped in a long-term recession signified by zerobound interest rate, little or no inflation, and imperceptible growth. The most visible outcome is, strangely enough, a significant drop in foreign direct investment. One would have thought intuitively that if they cannot spend money internally, at least they should be able to enhance foreign direct investment in search of better interest rates. It is not happening yet. This is bound to have some effect on Japanese subsidiaries. In terms of marketing, survival should mean innovation in products and services, integration with local economies, and more vigorous search for exports. In terms of management, it may mean enhanced quality, more supply chains, more integration and more adaptive globalisation. By using an old Japanese subsidiary in London and re-examining the literature, we hope to provide a more balanced view of the Japanese subsidiaries abroad. The company we have studied is one of the oldest cases of Japanese direct investment anywhere in the world. Its emergence as a Greenfield investment and survival is quite interesting, and compares well to the flood of subsidiaries and joint stock companies that came to life during the pre-crisis optimism. With the help of an Ramp;D-oriented sister-company in Sweden, and a vigorous pursuit of quality, the old entity in Old Woking is hobbling on into the 21st century faced with many challenges.Japanese subsidiaries; FDI; foreign direct investment; evolution; locality; autonomy; suppliers; technology; UK; United Kingdom; globalisation.