The author of this article describes the central IT structure of her institution, the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Based on her experiences, she observes that building and maintaining a community of support that spans the central IT organization and the distributed IT support providers presents real challenges. As such, she believes that…

A decision to don the chaos lens, adopt dialogue as its primary mode of communication, and to recognize the power of the organizational mind has fundamentally and irreversibly changed the way a Dutch capital-equipment manufacturer operates in its rapidly complexifying global marketplace. Beginning in September 1999, the focus of an ever widening…

"Better inter-agency working" has been the oft-quoted remedy to many reviews of services to support vulnerable children and young people, and yet outside the realms of tightly focused specialist teams it seems to be very difficult to achieve. Georgina Glenny here reviews three case studies of interdisciplinary and inter-agency working to examine…

The study investigates learning as knowledge-creation processes on individual and collective levels. The processes were examined in an ethnographic study, conducted in a metal industry company over a four-year period. The empirical study suggests that conflicts and crises experienced on individual level were some kind of incidental starting…

Purpose: Based on a typology of contextualized multiple thinking, this paper aims to elaborate how the levels of thinking (data, information, knowledge, and intelligence), and the types of thinking as a whole, can be used to profile the characteristics of multiple thinking in organizational learning, re-conceptualize the nature of creativity in…

Economic value of Emotional Intelligence (EI) has been mentioned extensively in recent organizational behavior research. In the age of information and highly specialized work teams, EI is becoming a vital skill as people must accomplish their work by collaborating with each other, and their ability to communicate effectively becomes as critical,…

Numerous corporations offer support to the community through charitable foundations. Some of these foundations focus on national initiatives, but many earmark their resources for regional, state, and local programs. The recent economy has reduced the amount of available money, but education is often a high funding priority and grants are being…

Schools have found religion when it comes to solutions designed to deliver critical information to the campus community in a timely fashion. And the vendor community is now offering a multitude of routes to the Promised Land. The question is: Will the "right" technology solution solve all the mass communication problems? Those who have weathered…

This study considered how physical education teacher education students "perform" their "selves" within subject department offices during the practicum or "teaching practice". The research was framed by a conceptual framework informed by the work of Goffman on "performance" and "front". The findings revealed three common performances across the…

Information Technology has brought significant benefits to organizations by allowing greater information sharing within and across firm boundaries leading to performance improvements. Emerging technologies such as Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web2.0 have transformed the volume and process of information sharing. However, a comprehensive…

As Americans near the end of the first decade of the new millennium, higher education in the United States is caught in a classic "good news/bad news" dilemma. The good news? Broad recognition of the importance of higher education to the country's future, along with larger federal funding increases than at any time in their history. The bad news?…

The "2011 Superintendent's Briefing Book" provides comprehensive yet concise overviews of the best thinking available on a wide range of top-priority PreK-12 education concerns. This resource will prove invaluable in making research-based decisions with confidence, and in identifying programs and practices that will improve student achievement.…

Organizations seeking advocacy roles must be informed, organized, and consistent in their commitment to achieve and maintain success. The experiences of the Texas Speech Communication Association's 12-year process to become a viable force in drafting and implementing educational policy in Texas might be useful to other state educational…

The Advertising and Public Relations section of this collection of conference presentations contains the following 17 papers: "Using the FCB Grid and the 'Lost Quadrants' to Write Advertising Strategy" (Johan C. Yssel); "Antitrust and the Marketplace of Ideas: The Continuing Problem of Issue Advertising Access to Broadcast…

Leadership has traditionally been viewed as a process of social influence. This paper presents an alternative perspective, which views leadership as a social meaning-making process that occurs in groups of people who are engaged in some activity together. It uses the constructivist perspective to describe how people construct their own personal…