Unseen and unheard? women managers and organizational learning

Purpose This paper uses (in)visibility as a lens to understand the lived experience of 6 women managers in the U.K. HQ of a large multinational organization, in order to identify how ‘gender’ is expressed in the context of organizational learning Design/methodology/approach The researchers take a phenomenological approach via qualitative data collection with a purposeful sample –the six female managers in a group of 24. Data was collected through quarterly semi structured interviews over 12 months with the themes - knowledge, interaction and gender. Findings Organisations seek to build advantage in order to gain and retain competitive leadership. Their resilience in a changing task environment depends on their ability to recognize, gain and use knowledge likely to deliver these capabilities. Here gender was a barrier to effective organizational learning with women's knowledge and experience often unseen and unheard. Research limitations/implications This is a piece of research limited to exploration of gender as other but ethnicity, age, social class, disability and sexual preference, alone or in combination may be equally subject to invisibility in knowledge terms, further research would be needed to test this however. Practical implications Practical applications relate to the need for organizations to examine and address their operations for exclusion based on perceived ‘otherness’. Gendered organizations cause problems for their female members but they also exclude the experience and knowledge of key individuals as seen here, where gender impacted on effective knowledge sharing and cocreation of knowledge. Originality/value This exploration of gender and organisational learning offers new insights to help explain the way in which organisational learning occurs – or fails to occur - with visibility/invisibility of one group shaped by gendered attitudes and processes. It shows that organizational learning is not gender neutral (as it appears in mainstream organizational learning research) and calls for researchers to include this as a factor in future research

The impact of changes in stakeholder salience on CSR activities in Russian energy firms: a contribution to the divergence / convergence debate

This empirical paper examines the drivers underpinning changes to socially-responsible behaviours in the Russian energy sector. Responding to recent requests to contextualise CSR research, we focus on the changing set of stakeholders and developments in their saliency as reflected in corporations’ CSR activities. Based on interviews with more than thirty industry professionals, our findings suggest that Russian energy companies’ CSR is strongly stakeholder driven, and organisations adapt their activities according to their dependence on the resources that these salient stakeholders possess. We challenge the proposition that CSR in Russia arises from purely endogenous, historical, paternalism or neo-paternalism. We identify stakeholders that now shape CSR in the Russian energy sector, both endogenous (institutional and contextual forces relevant to the national business system) and exogenous (relating to the organisational field of the energy industry - international by nature). We thereby contribute to the convergence / divergence debate within CSR theory by demonstrating that both national business systems and the organisational field must be taken into account when analysing the forces that shape CSR strategies in any one country

Mapping Philanthropic Foundations’ Characteristics: towards an international integrative framework of foundation types

As philanthropic foundations take on increasingly prominent sociopolitical roles, the need for stronger conceptualizations of foundations as an organizational form is articulated widely across academic, policy, and practice contexts. Building on institutional research’s tradition of categorizing, classifying and typologizing organizational forms, our article critically explores the different ways in which foundations have been cast and differentiated in international academic and practice literatures. Examining and integrating these, we propose an integrative framework of foundation types. Incorporating 13 categories—three contextual, five organizational, and five strategic ones—the framework allows for clarifying distinctions and identifying commonalities between different foundation forms, offering a basis for developing more reflective and differentiated research and practice knowledge

High-intensity sprint training inhibits mitochondrial respiration through aconitase inactivation

Intense exercise training is a powerful stimulus that activates mitochondrial biogenesis pathways and thus increases mitochondrial density and oxidative capacity. Moderate levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) during exercise are considered vital in the adaptive response, but high ROS production is a serious threat to cellular homeostasis. Although biochemical markers of the transition from adaptive to maladaptive ROS stress are lacking, it is likely mediated by redox sensitive enzymes involved in oxidative metabolism. One potential enzyme mediating such redox sensitivity is the citric acid cycle enzyme aconitase. In this study, we examined biopsy specimens of vastus lateralis and triceps brachii in healthy volunteers, together with primary human myotubes. An intense exercise regimen inactivated aconitase by 55-72%, resulting in inhibition of mitochondrial respiration by 50-65%. In the vastus, the mitochondrial dysfunction was compensated for by a 15-72% increase in mitochondrial proteins, whereas H2O2 emission was unchanged. In parallel with the inactivation of aconitase, the intermediary metabolite citrate accumulated and played an integral part in cellular protection against oxidative stress. In contrast, the triceps failed to increase mitochondrial density, and citrate did not accumulate. Instead, mitochondrial H2O2 emission was decreased to 40% of the pretraining levels, together with a 6-fold increase in protein abundance of catalase. In this study, a novel mitochondrial stress response was highlighted where accumulation of citrate acted to preserve the redox status of the cell during periods of intense exercise

The Role of the Learning Organization to Effect Successful Change: VTC—A Case Study

© 2020, Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. Higher education has expanded rapidly since the last century following a global trend that has strengthened in recent decades (Lo & Tang, 2017). The main cause of this expansion being attributed to national competitiveness and the essential role which higher education plays especially in the context of the emerging knowledge economy. Globalization’s effect on higher education has been significant and substantive (Lo & Tang, 2017). One of these effects is the increase in access to higher education to a much greater proportion of the population (Eftimie, 2017)