Organisational Self-Evaluation and Teacher Education for Community Relations in a Transforming Society?

During 2004, the School of Education at the University of Ulster embarked on an innovative three-year project designed to embed community relations objectives within initial teacher education. With the advent of more peaceful times in Northern Ireland, this was a precipitous time for initial teacher educators to review the preparation given to beginner teachers for teaching in an increasingly pluralist society emerging from conflict. The present paper reports on one very specific and time-limited element of the broader project. That is, development work designed to investigate the possibilities of using processes of self-review and evaluation as a lever for improvements in initial teacher education for community relations. Following a brief contextualisation, the background to, and the development of, a set of materials designed to support rigorous and systematic self-review of all aspects of provision in a university-based initial teacher education department is described. The Community Relations Index for Initial Teacher Education (Cr-ITE) was envisaged as being of use to initial teacher education establishments in order to help teacher educators take responsibility for rigorous learning from their practice, whilst placing inclusive values at the centre of organisational development. The final section includes further critical reflection on the role of organisational self-review in transforming teacher education for inclusion in a society emerging from longstanding communal conflict.

Help or hindrance? Supplier involvement and causal ambiguity within inter-organisational NPD teams

Suppliers are increasingly involved in buyer firms’ interorganizational new product development (NPD) teams. Yet the transfer of knowledge within this context may be subject to varying degrees of causal ambiguity, potentially limiting the effect of supplier involvement on performance. We develop a theoretical model exploring the effect of supplier involvement practices on the level of causal ambiguity within interorganizational NPD teams, and the subsequent impact on competitor imitation, new product advantage, and project performance. Our model also serves as a test of the paradox that causal ambiguity both inhibits imitation by competitors, but also adversely affects organisational outcomes. Results from an empirical study of 119 R&D intensive manufacturing firms in the United Kingdom largely support these hypotheses. Results from structural equation modeling show that supplier involvement orientation and long-term commitment lower causal ambiguity within interorganizational NPD teams. In turn, this lower causal ambiguity generates a new product advantage and increases project performance for the buyer firm, but has no significant effect on competitor imitation. Instead, competitor imitation is delayed by the extent to which the firm develops a new product advantage within the market. These results shed light on the causal ambiguity paradox showing that lower causal ambiguity during interorganizational new product development increases both product and project performance, but without reducing barriers to imitation. Product development managers are encouraged to utilize supplier involvement practices to minimise ambiguity in the NPD project, and to target their supplier involvement efforts on solving causally ambiguous technological problems to sustain a competitive advantage.

Ownership structure, organisational flexibility and store performance in retail chains.

Drawing on agency and flexible capability perspectives, the authors develop a theoretical framework explaining the impact of ownership structure on organisational flexibility and store performance in retail chains. The researchers argue that franchised stores attract more entrepreneurial managers with more flexible capabilities and they have a stronger incentive to align their flexible capabilities with the demands of the business environment. A sample of 105 franchised and company-owned stores of an optical retail chain is used to test the hypotheses. Furthermore, the study found strong support for the hypotheses that 'Franchised stores have a higher structural flexibility than company-owned stores', but only weak support for operational and strategic flexible capabilities. Furthermore, in line with the study's theoretical framework, it has been found that in a highly turbulent business environment, franchised stores perform better than company-owned stores. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for theory development and management of ownership structures in retail chains.

A leadership framework to support the use of e-learning resources

Aim
This inquiry aims to apply the NHS leadership framework to nurse education for the implementation of e-learning.
Background
Recognition needs to be given to the emerging postgraduate nursing students new status of consumer and the challenge now for nurse education is how to remain relevant and competitive in this consumer led market. The move towards an e-learning paradigm has been suggested as a competitive and contemporary way forward for the student consumer. The successful introduction of e-learning in nurse education will require leadership and a strong organisational management system.
Discussion
Each element of the NHS leadership framework is described and interpreted for application in a higher education setting for the implementation of e-learning.
Conclusions
Change in the delivery of post graduate nurse education is necessary to ensure it remains current and reflective of consumer need in a competitive marketplace. By applying a leadership framework that acknowledges the skills and abilities of staff and encourages the formation of collaborative partnerships from within the wider university community, educators can begin to develop skills and confidence in teaching using e-learning resources.

Learning, development, and support needs of community palliative care clinical nurse specialists

Background: The palliative care clinical nurse specialist (PC-CNS) is a core member of the specialist palliative care team. According to professional policy, the role has four specific components: clinical practice, education, research, and leadership and management. Little is known about how to support staff in this role. Aim: The aim of this study was to explore what learning, development, and support PC-CNSs in one hospice need to enable them to fulfil all components of their role. Design: Using a descriptive exploratory approach, semi-structured interviews were undertaken with a purposive sample of community PC-CNSs from a hospice in Northern Ireland. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and thematically analysed. Findings: Seventeen interviews were analysed and three themes identified: influence of organisational culture, influence of the individual, and learning and development solutions. Conclusions: Participants reported that the PC-CNS role was stressful. They identified that the organisational culture and indeed individuals themselves influenced the learning and development support available to help them fulfil the four components of the role. Working relationships and stability within teams affected how supported individuals felt and had implications for managers in meeting the needs of staff while balancing the needs of the service.

Resilience and Burnout in Child protection social work: Individual and organisational themes from a systematic literature review

Child protection social work is acknowledged as a very stressful occupation, with high turnover and poor retention of staff being a major concern. This paper highlights themes that emerged from findings of sixty-five articles that were included as part of a systematic literature review. The review focused on the evaluation of research findings, which considered individual and organisational factors associated with resilience or burnout in child protection social work staff. The results identified a range of individual and organisational themes for staff in child protection social work. Nine themes were identified in total. These are categorised under ‘Individual’ and ‘Organisational’ themes. Themes categorised as individual included personal history of maltreatment, training and preparation for child welfare, coping, secondary traumatic stress, compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction. Those classified as organisational included workload, social support and supervision, organisational culture and climate, organisational and professional commitment, and job satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The range of factors is discussed with recommendations and areas for future research are highlighted.

The impact of organisational factors and government policy on psychiatric nurses family focused practice with parents who have mental illness, their dependent children and families in Ireland

Government policy and organizational factors influence family focused practice in adult mental health services. However, how these aspects shape psychiatric nurses’ practice with parents who have mental illness, their dependent children and families is less well understood. Drawing on the findings of a qualitative study, this article explores the way in which Irish policy and organizational factors might influence psychiatric nurses’ family focused practice, and whether (and how) family focused practice might be further promoted. A purposive sample of 14 psychiatric nurses from eight mental health services completed semi-structured interviews in 2013. The analysis was inductive and presented as thematic networks. Both groups described how policies and organizational culture enabled and/or hindered family focused practice, with differences between community and acute participants seen. The need to develop national and international policies along with practices to embed information and support regarding parenting into ongoing care is implicated in this study.

Enhancing Security Requirements Engineering by Organisational Learning

More and more software projects today are security-related in one way or the other. Requirements engineers often fail to recognise indicators for security problems which is a major source of security problems in practice. Identifying security-relevant requirements is labour-intensive and errorprone. In order to facilitate the security requirements elicitation process, we present an approach supporting organisational learning on security requirements by establishing company-wide experience resources, and a socio-technical network to benefit from them. The approach is based on modelling the flow of requirements and related experiences. Based on those models, we enable people to exchange experiences about security-requirements while they write and discuss project requirements. At the same time, the approach enables participating stakeholders to learn while they write requirements. This can increase security awareness and facilitate learning on both individual and organisational levels. As a basis for our approach, we introduce heuristic assistant tools which support reuse of existing security-related experiences. In particular, they include Bayesian classifiers which issue a warning automatically when new requirements seem to be security-relevant. Our results indicate that this is feasible, in particular if the classifier is trained with domain specific data and documents from previous projects. We show how the ability to identify security-relevant requirements can be improved using this approach. We illustrate our approach by providing a step-by-step example of how we improved the security requirements engineering process at the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and report on experiences made in this application.

Supporting multi-organisational collaborative groups in the public sector

In this paper, the issues that arise in multi-organisational collaborative groups (MOCGs) in the public sector are discussed and how a technology-based group support system (GSS) could assist individuals within these groups. MOCGs are commonly used in the public sector to find solutions to multifaceted social problems. Finding solutions for such problems is difficult because their scope is outside the boundary of a single government agency. The standard approach to solving such problems is collaborative involving a diverse range of stakeholders. Collaborative working can be advantageous but it also introduces its own pressures. Conflicts can arise due to the multiple contexts and goals of group members and the organisations that they represent. Trust, communication and a shared interface are crucial to making any significant progress. A GSS could support these elements.

A Conceptual Model for Group Support Systems in Local Councils

This paper proposes a conceptual model of a context-aware group support system (GSS) to assist local council employees to perform collaborative tasks in conjunction with inter- and intra-organisational stakeholders. Most discussions about e-government focus on the use of ICT to improve the relationship between government and citizen, not on the relationship between government and employees. This paper seeks to expose the unique culture of UK local councils and to show how a GSS could support local government employer and employee needs.

Customer satisfaction and organisational justice

Applies organisational justice theory to facilities management with the aim of increasing customer satisfaction with the service received. Provides an overview of organisational justice theory, and reviews the numerous different forms that this may take. Although there is strong theoretical support for participative decision making, in practice it often leads to conflict and delays. Two-way communication appears to represent the most effective form. The conclusions are based upon theoretical support as well as semi-structured interviews and observations in an organisational setting. The conclusions drawn do not have the benefits of more objective quantitative research methods. Contributes to practical understanding of how to maintain customer satisfaction in the facilities management industry and the theoretical reasons why the proposed methods will be effective. Argues that the impact of organisational justice on employee satisfaction can be applied to customer satisfaction with specific reference to facilities management.

A conceptual model for group support systems in local councils

This paper proposes a conceptual model of a context-aware group support system (GSS) to assist local council employees to perform collaborative tasks in conjunction with inter- and intra-organisational stakeholders. Most discussions about e-government focus on the use of ICT to improve the relationship between government and citizen, not on the relationship between government and employees. This paper seeks to expose the unique culture of UK local councils and to show how a GSS could support local government employer and employee needs.

A multi-agent architect for CSCW systems: from organisational semiotics perspective

This paper describes a multi-agent architecture to support CSCW systems modelling. Since CSCW involves different organizations, it can be seen as a social model. From this point of view, we investigate the possibility of modelling CSCW by agent technology, and then based on organizational semiotics method a multi-agent architecture is proposed via using EDA agent model. We explain the components of this multi-agent architecture and design process. It is argued that this approach provides a new perspective for modelling CSCW systems.

Changing building user attitude and organisational policy towards sustainable resource use in healthcare

Health care provision is significantly impacted by the ability of the health providers to engineer a viable healthcare space to support care stakeholders needs. In this paper we discuss and propose use of organisational semiotics as a set of methods to link stakeholders to systems, which allows us to capture clinician activity, information transfer, and building use; which in tern allows us to define the value of specific systems in the care environment to specific stakeholders and the dependence between systems in a care space. We suggest use of a semantically enhanced building information model (BIM) to support the linking of clinician activity to the physical resource objects and space; and facilitate the capture of quantifiable data, over time, concerning resource use by key stakeholders. Finally we argue for the inclusion of appropriate stakeholder feedback and persuasive mechanism, to incentivise building user behaviour to support organisational level sustainability policy.

An organisational semiotics inspired information architecture: pervasive healthcare as a case study

Information architecture (IA) is defined as high level information requirements of an organisation. It is applied in areas such as information systems development, enterprise architecture, business processes management and organisational change management. Still, the lack of methods and theories prevents information architecture becoming a distinct discipline. Healthcare organisation is always seen as information intensive organisation, moreover in a pervasive healthcare environment. Pervasive healthcare aims to provide healthcare services to anyone, anywhere and anytime by incorporating mobile devices and wireless network. Information architecture hence plays an important role in information provisioning within the context of pervasive healthcare in order to support decision making and communication between clinician and patients. Organisational semiotics is one of the social technical approaches that contemplate information through the norms or activities performed within an organisation prior to pervasive healthcare implementation. This paper proposes a conceptual design of information architecture for pervasive healthcare. It is illustrated with a scenario of mental health patient monitoring.