Application of a Generic Curriculum Change Management Process to Motivate and Excite Students

The School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Queen’s University Belfast is committed to enhancing the quality of student learning. A plan to implement curriculum change around this goal has been formulated and is already several years underway. A specific part of the plan involved instigating a first year introductory module to engage the students in the practice of their engineering discipline. The complicated nature of devising this type of module with regard to objectives, resources, timeframe and the number of students involved meant that a very systematic approach had to be adopted. This paper presents the simple but definitive change management process that facilitated in the creation of a first year Introduction to Engineering module. The generic nature of this process is described and its application to other facets of curriculum change is discussed. Within this process the importance of collaboration to establish a forward momentum is emphasised. This enables academic staff to progress as a group and build curriculum development based on their own experiences, expertise and established practice

Lean Software Management: BBC Worldwide Case Study

This case study examines how the lean ideas behind the Toyota production system can be applied to software project management. It is a detailed investigation of the performance of a nine-person software development team employed by BBC Worldwide based in London. The data collected in 2009 involved direct observations of the development team, the kanban boards, the daily stand-up meetings, semistructured interviews with a wide variety of staff, and statistical analysis. The evidence shows that over the 12-month period, lead time to deliver software improved by 37%, consistency of delivery rose by 47%, and defects reported by customers fell 24%. The significance of this work is showing that the use of lean methods including visual management, team-based problem solving, smaller batch sizes, and statistical process control can improve software development. It also summarizes key differences between agile and lean approaches to software development. The conclusion is that the performance of the software development team was improved by adopting a lean approach. The faster delivery with a focus on creating the highest value to the customer also reduced both technical and market risks. The drawbacks are that it may not fit well with existing corporate standards.

Heeding the stains: Lacan and organizational change

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to add to current discussions on the use of Lacanian psychoanalysis in organizational change. Specifically, It argues that critiques of Lacan's work must be acknowledged and incorporated into these discussions. To date, there remains a silence surrounding these critiques within organization studies.
Design/methodology/approach: The paper presents the existing studies that draw upon Lacan's work in the context of organizational change initiatives. It highlights the value of this theory. Next, it outlines critiques of Lacan's concepts of phallus and incest taboo, and show how these concepts can be exclusionary.
Findings: The paper finds that there remains little debate within organization studies around such critiques. Lacan tends to be employed in ways that risk reproducing particular, exclusionary aspects of his theory. A homophobic and patriarchal legacy persists in appropriations of his writing. It outlines alternative ways of reading Lacan, which aim to avoid such exclusions. It shows how introducing such alternatives is a difficult project, first, given the silence surrounding critiques of Lacan in the organizational change literature. Second, following Foucault, It argues that language has power: a patriarchal schema is self-reinforcing in its persistence within a particular discipline, and thus difficult to dislodge.
Research limitations/implications: Given these findings, the paper concludes that organization theorists and practitioners ought to engage with critiques of Lacan's work, when employing it in their own. The silence surrounding such legacies is dangerous. It argues that the first step in engaging with Lacan's work should be to give voice to such critiques, if his writing is to be employed in the practice and study of organizational change.
Originality/value: This paper provides a unique engagement with Lacan's work in the context of the study and practice of organizational change interventions. It presents an evaluation of well-known critiques and useful recommendations for theorists and practitioners considering a Lacanian approach to this area of management studies. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Species composition of coastal dune vegetation in Scotland has proved resistant to climate change over a third of a century

Climate change is expected to have an impact on plant communities as increased temperatures are expected to drive individual species' distributions polewards. The results of a revisitation study after c. 34years of 89 coastal sites in Scotland, UK, were examined to assess the degree of shifts in species composition that could be accounted for by climate change. There was little evidence for either species retreat northwards or for plots to become more dominated by species with a more southern distribution. At a few sites where significant change occurred, the changes were accounted for by the invasion, or in one instance the removal, of woody species. Also, the vegetation types that showed the most sensitivity to change were all early successional types and changes were primarily the result of succession rather than climate-driven changes. Dune vegetation appears resistant to climate change impacts on the vegetation, either as the vegetation is inherently resistant to change, management prevents increased dominance of more southerly species or because of dispersal limitation to geographically isolated sites.

A framework for challenging deficits in compression bandaging techniques

Northern Irish (and all UK-based) health care is facing major challenges. This article uses a specific theory to recommend and construct a framework to address challenges faced by the author, such as deficits in compression bandaging techniques in healing venous leg ulcers and resistance found when using evidence-based research within this practice. The article investigates the challenges faced by a newly formed community nursing team. It explores how specialist knowledge and skills are employed in tissue viability and how they enhance the management of venous leg ulceration by the community nursing team. To address these challenges and following a process of reflection, Lewin's forcefield analysis model of change management can be used as a framework for some recommendations made.

Parker Morris and the economies of the Fordist house

The Parker Morris report of 1961 attempted, through the application of scientific principles, to define the minimum living space standards needed to accommodate household activities. But while early modernist research into ideas of existenzminimum were the work of avant-garde architects and thinkers, this report was commissioned by the British State. This normalization of scientific enquiry into space can be considered not only a response to new conditions in the mass production of housing – economies of scale, prefabrication, system-building and modular coordination – but also to the post-war boom in consumer goods. The domestic interior was assigned a key role as a privileged site of mass consumption as the production and micro-management of space in Britain became integral to the development of a planned national economy underpinned by Fordist principles. The apparently placeless and scale-less diagrams executed by Gordon Cullen to illustrate Parker Morris emblematize these relationships. Walls dissolve as space flows from inside to outside in a homogenized and ephemeral landscape whose limits are perhaps only the boundaries of the nation state and the circuits of capital.

Parker Morris and the Fordist House

6.00 pm. If people like watching T.V. while they are eating their evening meal, space for a low table is needed (Ministry of Housing and Local Government, Space in the Home, 1963, p. 4).

This paper re-examines the 1961 Parker Morris report on housing standards in Britain. It explores the origins, scope, text and iconography of the report and suggests that these not only express a particularly modernist conception of space but one which presupposed very specific economic conditions and geographies.

Also known as Homes for Today and Tomorrow Parker Morris attempted, through the application of scientific principles, to define the minimum living space standards needed to accommodate household activities. But while early modernist research into notions of existenzminimum were the work of avant-garde architects and thinkers, Homes for Today and Tomorrow and its sister design manual Space in the Home were commissioned by the British State. This normalization of scientific enquiry into space can be considered not only as a response to new conditions in the mass production of housing – economies of scale, prefabrication, system-building and modular coordination – but also to the post-war boom in consumer goods. In this, it is suggested that the domestic interior was assigned a key role as a privileged site of mass consumption as the production and micro-management of space in Britain became integral to the development of a planned national economy underpinned by Fordist principles. Parker Morris, therefore, sought to accommodate activities which were pre-determined not so much by traditional social or familial ties but rather by recently introduced commodities such as the television set, white goods, table tennis tables and train sets. This relationship between the domestic interior and the national economy are emblematized by the series of placeless and scale-less diagrams executed by Gordon Cullen in Space in the Home. Here, walls dissolve as space flows from inside to outside in a homogenized and ephemeral landscape whose limits are perhaps only the boundaries of the nation state and the circuits of capital.

In Britain, Parker Morris was the last explicit State-sponsored attempt to prescribe a normative spatial programme for national living. The calm neutral efficiency of family-life expressed in its diagrams was almost immediately problematised by the rise of 1960s counter-culture, the feminist movement and the oil crisis of 1972 which altered perhaps forever the spatial, temporal and economic conditions it had taken for granted. The debate on space-standards, however, continues.

The role of Lean at the interface with between operations management and applied services within a large aerospace organisation: a boundary spanning perspective

Increased complexity in large design and manufacturing organisations requires improvements at the operations management (OM)–applied service (AS) interface areas to improve project effectiveness. The aim of this paper is explore the role of Lean in improving the longitudinal efficiency of the OM–AS interface within a large aerospace organisation using Lean principles and boundary spanning theory. The methodology was an exploratory longitudinal case approach including exploratory interviews (n = 21), focus groups (n = 2), facilitated action-research workshops (n = 2) and two trials or experiments using longitudinal data involving both OM and AS personnel working at the interface. The findings draw upon Lean principles and boundary spanning theory to guide and interpret the findings. It was found that misinterpretation, and forced implementation, of OM-based Lean terminology and practice in the OM–AS interface space led to delays and misplaced resources. Rather both OM and AS staff were challenged to develop a cross boundary understanding of Lean-based boundary (knowledge) objects in interpreting OM requests. The longitudinal findings from the experiments showed that the development of Lean Performance measurements and lean Value Stream constructs was more successful when these Lean constructs were treated as boundary (knowledge) objects requiring transformation over time to orchestrate improved effectiveness and in leading to consistent terminology and understanding between the OM–AS boundary spanning team.