A Framework to Capture and Share Knowledge Using Storytelling and Video Sharing in Global Product Development

In global engineering enterprises, information and knowledge sharing are critical factors that can determine a project’s success. This statement is widely acknowledged in published literature. However, according to some academics, tacit knowledge is derived from a person’s lifetime of experience, practice, perception and learning, which makes it hard to capture and document in order to be shared. This project investigates if social media tools can be used to improve and enable tacit knowledge sharing within a global engineering enterprise. This paper first provides a brief background of the subject area, followed by an explanation of the industrial investigation, from which the proposed knowledge framework to improve tacit knowledge sharing is presented. This project’s main focus is on the improvement of collaboration and knowledge sharing amongst product development engineers in order to improve the whole product development cycle.

Social Media Strategies in the Retail Sector: Analysis and Recommendations for Three Multi-National Retailers

During the last twenty years (1995-2015), the world of commerce has expanded beyond the traditional brick-and-mortar high street to a global shop front accessible to billions of users via the Worldwide Web (WWW). Consumers are now using the web to immerse themselves in virtual shop fronts, using Social Media (SM) to communicate and share product ideas with friends and family. Retail organisations recognise the need to develop and adapt their strategies to respond to the increasing use of SM. New goals must be set in order to identify how companies will integrate social media into current practices. This research aims to suggest an advisable and comprehensive SM strategy for companies operating in the global retail sector, based on an exploratory analysis of three multi-national retail organisations' existing SM strategies. This will be assessed in conjunction with a broader investigation into social media in the retail industry. From this, a strategy will be devised to improve internal and external communication as well as knowledge management through the use of social media. Findings suggest that the use of SM within the retail industry has dramatically improved collaboration and communication processes for organisations as they are now able to converse better with stakeholders and the tools are relatively simple to integrate and implement as they benefit one another.

Welcoming International Visitors - Communication and Culture

It is extremely rare for an international visitor to museums and galleries in the UK to find information in foreign languages which is anything more than a relatively literal translation of an English source text. At the same time, a huge body of research and theory in the humanities and social sciences implies that major cultural differences are likely to accompany the differences in first language of international visitors. As such, in spite of the fact that museums and galleries often declare their intention to meet the needs of their visitors, it is fairly clear that, in this instance, they are at best meeting their international visitors’ linguistic needs whilst ignoring their broader cultural needs. With this in mind, staff from the University of Westminster together with a number of London’s major museums and galleries obtained UK Research Council funding to work on the production of leaflets in foreign languages fully acknowledging cultural differences amongst international visitors. The collaboration was intended to generate reflection on how such materials might be most effectively produced, what impact they might have and what forms of policy review museums and galleries might as a result wish to undertake. The collaboration confirmed that cultural difference, and therefore difference in need, between visitors with different first languages is a simple reality. Translations, including ones which are culturally ‘adapted’ or ‘sensitive’, will always fall short of acknowledging the intercultural complexity of the experience of international visitors. Materials acknowledging that complexity are more effective. Museums and galleries need, therefore, to ask themselves how far and in what ways they wish to acknowledge this reality in the nature of the welcome they offer. The core of this article will draw on the outcomes of this collaboration, and also on aspects of translation and intercultural theory, to offer a critical exploration of some of the options museums and galleries therefore have in producing materials to welcome international visitors in ways which acknowledge the intercultural complexity of their experience.

The effects of conflict in driving forward innovation in shared leadership management consultant teams

It is argued in this study that current investigations of the role of conflict in shared leadership teams and, thus, teams in which all members have the opportunity to participate in its decision-making process are insufficient as they have focused on the downsides of these conflicts. This study demonstrates that task conflict is beneficial in that it can have positive effects on innovation in teams. It shows that particularly in shared leadership management consultant teams task conflict can stimulate innovation. Therefore, this research investigates the relationships among shared leadership, conflict and innovation. The research develops and empirically tests a conceptual model which demonstrates the relationships between these concepts and for which the inclusion of multiple research methods was essential. The sequential explanatory approach included a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, the order of which can be adapted for other domains of application. The conceptual model was first tested with a sample of 329 management consultants. This was followed by 25, in-depth, face-to-face interviews conducted with individual survey respondents. In addition, weekly meetings of a management consultant team in action were video recorded over several months. This allowed for an in-depth explanation of the findings from the survey by providing an understanding of the underlying processes. The inclusion of observational methods provided a validating role and explained how and why conflicts contributed to the development of team innovation, through the analysis of subtleties and fleeting disagreements in a real-life management consultant team. The results deliver an assessment of the theoretical model and demonstrate that task conflict can allow for additional innovation in management consultant teams operating under a shared leadership structure. A practical model and guidelines for management consultant teams wanting to enhance their innovatory capacities are provided. In addition, a novel-user methodology which includes video observations is developed, with recommendations and steps aiding researchers aiming to employ a similar combination of methods. An original contribution to knowledge is made regarding the positive effects that task conflict can have towards innovation in shared leadership teams. Collaboration and trust are identified as important mediators between shared leadership and task conflict and significant regarding the development of innovation. The effectiveness of shared leadership in reducing negative relationship conflict and the benefits of both shared leadership and task conflict in enhancing innovation are demonstrated.