Theory-Y leadership in the knowledge economy: Towards tackling the tacit knowledge enigma

The changing nature of the psychological contract between employer and employee has brought new challenges to leaders of organizations in the knowledge era. A major challenge for leadership now is what form of psychological contract will motivate people to share the knowledge held in the heads of knowledge workers, which is mostly tacit? Related to this is the setting up of an environment in an organization to facilitate knowledge transfer. It has been mentioned that in an age where organizations have become flat, networked and amorphous, leadership is actually distributed according to the circumstances. So setting up effective practices to develop many leaders is also an issue for organizations. Long before industries caught up with the idea of knowledge as a resource, Universities had been in the business of managing knowledge. They provided an appropriate environment to facilitate creation, sharing and dissemination of knowledge based on collaboration and trust, and public recognition as a currency of exchange for using other peoples knowledge. This may lead us to believe that the academic model of leadership is applicable to industry. The general management of academics and staff at the University seems to be catching up with the commercial world these days. Therefore it is futile to look for a new leadership model for the knowledge age in the University governance area. Could mentoring, coaching and the use of reflective practice, used successfully in the supervision of research in the University, provide clues to a model for leadership and leadership development that can be applied in industry in the knowledge age

Je regrette: Towards marshalling remorse in knowledge transfer

In the manifold excesses of current Anglo-American managerial praxis, from short-term time horizons, grossly distorted expressions of managerial prerogatives and remuneration rationales and a calculated brutality far in excess of any Human Relations sensitivity, the need to inflate shareholder perceptions of the bottom line has led to a managerial immorality that staggers many ethical and stakeholders boundaries. Post Enron, Tyco and others, can much change? Are all senior managers doomed to the moral/ethical vacuum of the bottom line? With remuneration packages deliberately focused around an economic-rationalist brutality, what reflective space, what discourse allows and enables moments of remorse/regret and accommodates the inevitable need for personal accountability and attempts at restitution? Is it merely recourse to recalcitrant legal/governance codes that provides for accounting for managerial incompetence and ideologized greed? How will management discourse remember the current regressive nature of managerial behaviour? How will Knowledge Management, in full flight with rhetoric about the importance of Tacit Knowledge, deal with organizational incompetence

Addressing governance, accountability and performance monitoring issues in partnerships: can \u27Infrastructure Australia\u27 provide a strategic response?

This article considers whether a new agency of the national government - Infrastructure Australia - can effectively overcome the many gaps in governance, accountability and performance monitoring, which surround the development and operation of major economic infrastructure projects, gained through public-private partnerships, also known as Privately Financed Projects. To examine the subject agency, the article uses qualitative, case-study research based on literature, document, media review, and findings from previous empirical research, conducted through an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (Johnston and Gudergan 2007, 2009). While findings for this article are tentative due to the relative newness of the organization, the research determines that such an agency will face many challenges, not least of all political ones, if it is to improve the success rate of these large, problematic infrastructure projects. To date, development is slow. All contents © 2008 SPAE

Careless conversations, costly mistakes: Coercive managers and organizations in the litigious spotlight

Despite what we know about the psychology of human behaviour at work and communication, careless conversations on the part of managers to each other and to other employees have an enormous human resource cost to organisations and, emotionally, to those involved. This paper is based on a number of case studies in which careless conversations by managers have led to: workers compensation claims; sick leave; prolongation of workers compensation and sick leave; staff turnover; organisational ineffectiveness; low morale; and mental and physical illness. These case studies have unearthed several manifestations of careless conversations. These include: inappropriate emotional responses on the part of managers; a failure to recognise the impact of punishment for what are relatively minor breaches of policy on hard working employees; covert punishment; lack of recognition for hard work; job insecurity; favouritism; unresolved conflict; inability to deal with people in distress; ignoring the prompt resolution of work problems; workers compensation paralysis; ignoring issues of justice; and ignorance of individual styles and needs. The reasons for this behaviour are discussed and we argue that this is largely a preventable problem and provide a number of solutions

Harvesting people: Toward the political economy of a knowledge society

The present patenting of 'life' and the rush to economically 'harvest' people warrants the Knowledge management discourse to broaden its focus and its time horizons

O discurso da nova administração pública The discourse of the new public administration

O artigo faz uma análise crítica da estratégia de reforma do Estado defendida, no artigo publicado nesta edição de Lua Nova, por Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira.<br>The paper submits to a critical analysis the strategy for the reform of the state put forward by Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira in the paper published in this issue of Lua Nov

Crisis Communication Post Katrina: What are we Learning?

Centralization, Crisis communication, Disaster capitalism, ICT, Media behaviour, Neo-liberalism, Policy invisibility, Public-private partnerships, Hurricane Katrina, Technology and crisis, Emergency management,