Monthly Archive for August, 2011

Call for Journal Editor

Published on August 30, 2011 in Headline, Journal and Newsletter. 0 Comments

The International Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Change Management seeks an editor, or team of editors, for a one-year term. This is an opportunity to make a significant contribution to what we believe is one of the leading journals in its field, the journal’s associated conference and, more broadly, the knowledge-community which the journal and conference seek to serve.

The roles of the editor are to:

  • write an introduction for the Journal volume which would be included in the first issue for the year, and possibly on the website, the newsletter and other appropriate places or for the purposes of marketing and promotion.
  • collate papers addressing a theme of the editor’s choosing into a book, to be launched at the conference at the completion of the editor’s term. The chapters may be drawn from submissions to the journal during this or recent years, and other material as considered appropriate.
  • actively solicit manuscripts for the Journal from well-known and notable members of the community—these would could be refereed if the author wished, or regarded as ‘invited papers’.
  • assist the Commissioning Editor with suggestions of supplementary peer reviewers for specific papers (and this will never be burdensome – note that the Commissioning Editor of the Journal finalizes a majority of the peer reviewer requirements based on thematic matching and ‘mutual obligation’ principles in which all author requested to review up to three other papers).
  • promote the journal throughout their network and other associated networks.
  • maintain regular communications with the community via periodical blog posts to the community website (which feeds automatically to our email newsletter, Facebook and Twitter).

The editor will be offered a complimentary electronic subscription to the Journal, free copies of the book which they edit, an electronic subscription to the book series as well as complimentary registrations to attend the conferences at the beginning and end of their term.

Qualifications

The Editor of the Journal must possess the following attributes:

  • They will have successfully obtained higher degree, and have academic teaching and scholarly research experience in an area related to the subject matter of the Journal.
  • They will have published in this or other comparable scholarly journals.

Applicants are asked to send:

  1. a cover letter outlining their interest and relevant experience, and the ways in which you would propose to enhance the profile of the journal
  2. a curriculum vitae
  3. a special theme outline: a title with paragraph explanation.

Please send applications and supporting documentation to journals@ontheorganization.com

The deadline for applications is 26 September 2011.

From Human Nature to Human Resources

Published on August 29, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From Dan Morrell, Harvard Magazine

In 1990, just as professor of organizational behavior Paul Lawrence was preparing to retire from the Business School, he began to notice a new leadership model gaining traction among some of his colleagues. “Agency theory” argued that managers’ prime responsibility was to work in the best interest of shareholders, he says, and was widely embraced. Lawrence thought the theory ignored employees, customers, suppliers, neighbors, the environment—every other conceivable constituency—for the sake of shareholder profit. “To maximize just one of those didn’t make sense. ‘There’s more to human beings than just making money,’” he recalls thinking. “I had a kind of visceral reaction to this.”

Looking not only for a better leadership model, but a better theory of human behavior, he read books on religion, paleontology, and neuroscience; histories of societies from ancient to modern American, in chronological order; and the latest science digests. Above all, he read Darwin.

In The Descent of Man, Lawrence found what he was looking for: Darwin’s description of human evolutionary history can be used, he says, to explain almost every aspect of human behavior, from religious faith, to the subprime mortgage crisis and the bond market, to the corporate corruption of politics—even the rise of Hitler. He read and re-read his personal copy, now well-worn and heavily annotated. “I thought, ‘There it is.’ It became my chief reference point from then on.”

To Read More…

Think Different

Published on August 11, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From The Economist

Innovation is today’s equivalent of the Holy Grail. Rich-world governments see it as a way of staving off stagnation. Poor governments see it as a way of speeding up growth. And businesspeople everywhere see it as the key to survival.

Which makes Clay Christensen the closest thing we have to Sir Galahad. Fourteen years ago Mr Christensen, a knight of the Harvard Business School, revolutionised the study of the subject with “The Innovator’s Dilemma”, a book that popularised the term “disruptive innovation”. This month he publishes a new study, “The Innovator’s DNA”, co-written with Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen, which tries to take us inside the minds of successful innovators. How do they go about their business? How do they differ from regular suits? And what can companies learn from their mental habits?

Mr Christensen and his colleagues list five habits of mind that characterise disruptive innovators: associating, questioning, observing, networking and experimenting. Innovators excel at connecting seemingly unconnected things. Marc Benioff got the idea for Salesforce.com by looking at enterprise software through the prism of online businesses such as Amazon and eBay. Why were software companies flogging cumbersome products in the form of CD-ROMs rather than as flexible services over the internet? Salesforce.com is now worth $19 billion.

To Read More…

Still Lonely at the Top

Published on August 5, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From The Economist

In François Ozon’s latest film, “Potiche”, Catherine Deneuve (pictured) plays a trophy wife, a potiche, who spends her days jogging in a scarlet jumpsuit, making breakfast for her cantankerous husband and writing poetry perched on a sofa. But then her husband, the boss of an umbrella factory, is taken hostage by striking workers. Ms Deneuve takes over the factory and charms the workers into returning to work. She jazzes up the products and generally proves that anything a man can do, a woman can do better.

The film was set in 1977, when the only women in a typical Western boardroom were serving the coffee. Times have changed. These days no one doubts that women can run companies: think of Indra Nooyi at PepsiCo, Carol Bartz at Yahoo! or Ursula Burns at Xerox. Sheryl Sandberg, the number two at Facebook, is more widely applauded than her young male boss, Mark Zuckerberg.

To Read More…

Recently Published: Management Journal

Published on August 4, 2011 in Journal. 0 Comments

management

The latest issue of  The International Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Change Management includes: