A method for assessing and developing features of a learning organization

The primary objective of this thesis is to evolve a method for assessing and developing features of a learning organization . To fulfill this, I approached the thesis by examining several research questions and using multiple research methodologies. The research questions were not all established at the outset. Rather, they evolved as features of a journey down a road less traveled. With this journey came the decision to write the thesis in the first person. The first research question was Q1: What will bridge the divide between organizational learning and the learning organization? By reviewing the extant literature on organizational learning and the learning organization, I developed a theoretical framework that linked these two streams. The framework suggests that the extent of divide between the two streams is determined by the extent of learning transfer. The learning transfer is affected by the learning barriers operating at the levels of learning (i.e., individuals, groups, and organizational). This led me to my second research question Q2: What are these barriers to learning transfer and how do they impact the levels of learning in the organization? I cumulated the dispersed literature on learning barriers, and synthesized the learning barriers into five key dimensions: Intrapersonal, relational, cultural, structural, and societal. I then used the Delphi technique on 17 individuals to investigate the impact of the learning barriers on the levels of learning. This generated two additional research questions. The third research question was Q3: How do individuals initiate a double-loop change? This deals with the little researched area of initiation of double-loop change whilst engaging with the interfaces at the levels of learning. I used multiple case studies to examine this question and found that individuals transit through four distinct stages when initiating double-loop change: 'embedded', 'embedded discomfited', 'scripted', and 'unscripted'. Once double-loop learning has been initiated at the individual level, it is important that it is transferred across the organization. Therefore, my fourth research question was Q4: How does a new shared understanding for a double-loop change develop across the organization? I did an in-depth, single case based investigation of an organization. Using Identity and Complexity theory perspectives, I tracked the evolving new shared understanding through four phases: de-identification phase, situated re-identification phase, transition phase, and identification with core ideology phase. The key insights from examining these research questions, particularly insights from examining Q3 and Q4, enabled me to suggest nine key organizational interventions necessary to overcome the learning barriers and develop a learning organization: Identifying, developing, and dispersing double-loop mastery; Enabling constructive contradictions; Creating a superordinate organizational identity; Building emotional intelligence (in individuals and groups); Ambidextrous leadership; Strategic support for experimentation; Promoting 'systems doing'; Accessibility of valid information; Institutionalizing scanning across industry boundaries. When these nine organizational interventions are implemented, they produce five new learning organization orientations: genetic diversity, organizational ideology, organizational dualism, organizational coupling, and strategic play. These five new learning organizational orientations provide the archetypes of the learning organization. I then developed an instrument to assess these five new orientations, and did a preliminary testing of the instrument. While aspects of my work overlaid with previous knowledge, new advances in knowledge were established by: Postulating a link between the streams of organizational learning and learning organization Synthesizing learning barriers into the five key dimensions, and investigating their impact on the levels of learning Understanding the stages of double-loop learning initiation by an individual, whilst engaging with the interfaces at the levels of learning Understanding the process of a new shared understanding evolving Postulating five new orientations of the learning organizatio

The impact of change readiness on the knowledge sharing process for professional service firms

Purpose– The study aims to assess the influence of change readiness on the knowledge sharing process. This study proposes that readiness for knowledge sharing involves developing holistic understanding of the process through identification of individual and organisational readiness. Design/methodology/approach– The study adopts a qualitative case study design involving three New Zealand professional service firms (PFSs).Using grounded theory analysis, categories and concepts of change readiness that shape the knowledge sharing process were identified. The linkages among these elements offer an explanation of how readiness for knowledge sharing is formed.Findings – Findings show that beliefs regarding knowledge sharing and individual expertise determine individual readiness to share knowledge. Readiness for the process is escalated by instilling collective commitment for knowledge sharing. A conducive organisational context, which comprises communication, participation and learning, represents a firm’s capability to implement the knowledge sharing process. Findings also highlight the moderating influences of firm archetype, inter-profession differences and knowledge nature in the interplay between change readiness elements and the knowledge sharing process.Research limitations/implications– Findings reveal elements that motivate readiness for knowledge sharing from a change perspective. The propositions and theoretical model offered could extend understanding of the phenomena and lead to further studies assessing readiness for other knowledge management processes. The study involves three PFSs; hence, interpretation of the findings is limited within the scope and context of the study. Practical implications– Findings contribute to the formulation of firms’ knowledge sharing strategies by offering holistic insights into the importance of motivating readiness for knowledge sharing through consideration of multidimensional change readiness: individual and collective beliefs, individuals’ characteristics and organisational context.Originality/value– It is the first empirical study that seeks to develop theory how change readiness elements influences knowledge sharing in the organisation. To offer more contextualized findings, the study focuses on the phenomena of change readiness and knowledge sharing within the professional service industry

Change readiness: Creating understanding and capability for the knowledge acquisition process

Purpose– This study aims to show how change readiness shapes the knowledge acquisition process. The study elicits change readiness factors, at the individual and firm levels, that influence the knowledge acquisition process and are based on the context of professional service firms.Design/methodology/approach – The qualitative study is grounded in interpretive philosophy and adopts a multiple-case study design. Three New Zealand Professional Service firms were analyzed for this study. Using grounded theory analysis, categories and concepts of change readiness that shape knowledge acquisition were identified.Findings– Knowledge acquisition understanding, knowledge acquisition context and individual differences, represent primary dimensions defining change readiness for the knowledge acquisition process. Finally, distinctive firm archetypes, inter-profession differences and professionals’ demography, affect the way change readiness elements shape the knowledge acquisition process in the firms studied.Research limitations/implications – The study develops a theoretical model that shows how elements of change readiness, at the individual and organizational levels, influence knowledge acquisition. The study offers several propositions that could be tested in future studies. The study involves three professional service firms; hence, interpretation of the findings is limited.Practical implications – A holistic understanding of change readiness factors that influence knowledge acquisition could mitigate failures of knowledge management processes in organizations.Originality/value – It is the first empirical study that seeks to develop a theory on how change readiness elements influence knowledge acquisitions in the organization.To offer more contextualized findings, the study is done within the professional service industry

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Five critical knowledge management organizational themes

Purpose – This study is motivated by the question “how do organizational routines influence the three knowledge management processes of acquisition, creation, utilization and sharing?” and accordingly it seeks to address this issue. Design/methodology/approach – A theoretical framework is first built by linking absorptive capacity (a routine-based capability) with knowledge management processes. A literature search guided by the theoretical framework, and evidence from two case studies, were used to address the objective of the study. Findings – The study elicited the organizational routines that influence the three knowledge management processes. These routines were then clustered into five key organizational themes: systemic knowledge; strategic engagement; social networking (external and internal); cultural context; process and structural context. Research limitations/implications – Several implications for research are suggested. More specifically, the study offers five propositions that can be further tested. The key limitation of this study is the use of only two case studies for empirical data, and therefore further testing is needed. Practical implications – The study shows that, although leadership behavior is critical for knowledge management, its impact depends on the platform of routines and processes built for it. The identified routines and their influence on knowledge management are invaluable for knowledge management practitioners. Originality/value – The paper furthers understanding of how organizational routines influence the three knowledge management processes of knowledge acquisition, creation, utilization and sharing. This aspect has been little studied and is of value to both academics and practitioners

The servant identity: Influences on the cognition and behavior of servant leaders

This paper approaches the study of servant leadership by concentrating on the identity of servant leaders. An identity is important to one's sense of self and it influences the way a leader cognitively processes socially relevant information and exercises a particular leadership behavior in response to a situation. Unlike existing studies, which typically approach servant leadership as one of a number of possible leadership styles, and which merely describe its characteristics, this paper serves to explain the basis for individuals enacting this mode of leadership. This paper defines and elaborates on the servant identity by showing the psychological factors constituting it. Taking a socio-cognitive approach, the paper offers a theoretical framework for the servant identity. The framework encompasses the cognitive and behavioral disposition of leaders with servant identity and the organizational contexts that influence it. This new angle on servant leadership opens avenues for future research and practice

Knowledge management strategy employed in a SME: The case of a building materials supplier

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the knowledge management strategy of a small to medium enterprise (SME), and the consequences of a misplaced strategy. The methodology employed for this study applied three triangulated techniques for data collection in the field. The findings showed that management level and staff level employed different strategies to manage knowledge. Management focused on more formal IT systems and tools to manage knowledge, with a focus on explicit knowledge management. Frontline staff depended more heavily on communities of practice and learning-by-doing and to manage their knowledge. This resulted in many frontline staff finding little value for the standard technological tool and systems implemented. There are few empirical studies that look at knowledge management strategies within SMEs. This article, to some degree, fills this knowledge gap

The combined influence of top and middle management leadership styles on absorptive capacity

Absorptive capacity is an important organizational capability constituted by exploratory, transformative, and exploitative learning processes. Leadership has been shown to affect such processes, but little is known about how the combined leadership styles of top and middle management influence absorptive capacity. This theory-building, exploratory qualitative case study discusses the need for top and middle management to be ambidextrous and to change their styles to better facilitate the three different learning processes. We found that an exploratory learning process was facilitated when both top and middle management used a transformational style, a transformative learning process was facilitated when top management used a transformational style while middle management used a transactional style, and an exploitative learning process was facilitated when both top and middle management used a transactional style. Furthermore, for each of the three learning processes, the leadership styles of top and middle management operated more effectively when certain attributes of the organizational context were emphasized

Civic capacity: Building on transformational leadership to explain successful integrative public leadership

An emerging stream of work has been investigating the leadership processes necessary to guide public multi-sector collaborations. This stream of work argues that new leadership theory about integrative public leadership is needed because the context is different from that traditionally investigated by leadership researchers. In this paper, we advance the study of integrative public leadership by arguing that transformational leadership theory does apply to multi-sector collaborations, but needs to be augmented with an additional construct called “civic capacity.” We elaborate on this construct and suggest that it consists of three components: civic drive, civic connections, and civic pragmatism