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The paper is concerned with alliances and learning. It provides an overview of recent contributions to the emergent literatures on knowledge management and organizational learning, identifies similarities and differences between the two, and highlights the implications of these for academics and practitioners. The paper explores the significance of networks, alliances and inter‐organizational relationships for organizations and considers the nature and importance of learning in and through such relationships. A modified version of Coghlan’s (1997) model of organizational learning as a dynamic interlevel process is then presented to reflect these developments.

Educational standards debates are a promising area of investigation for transnational study by historians of education. Drawing upon the work of Foucault, Kliebard, and Aldrich, the paper critically examines some of the outstanding features of the emerging debate over literacy and numeracy standards that sharply divided teachers, educational officials, parents, and employers in New Zealand during the mid-to-late 1950s. These included the polarisation of opinion across the nation, the involvement of the national media, and the tactics of mass persuasion adopted by the various protagonists.

The paper utilises contemporary theory to critically interrogate an historical episode in which controversy over literacy and numeracy standards in schools led first to an in-house report, and finally to a national inquiry. The paper draws upon contemporary newspaper commentary, professional journals and parliamentary debates, as well as a considerable amount of archival material held at Archives New Zealand repositories in both Wellington and Auckland.

The paper contributes to the field by illustrating the way in which historical debates over literacy and numeracy lie at the intersection of completing claims to truth. Behind such claims lie rival conceptions of education that make it unlikely that standards issues will ever be resolved satisfactorily. Hence the title of the paper, which refers to a jocular suggestion by a newspaper editor of the time that only an “August Assembly of Suave Venusians” could adjudicate in the debate.

The value of the paper is that it links current theories on transnationality with archival research in order to critically examine a national case study. Much of the primary source material has never been utilised previously for research as Archives New Zealand has only just released the relevant files for research purposes.

The purpose of this paper is to explore management decisions during the ongoing financial crisis from a gender perspective.

An empirical analysis was conducted using a sample of 132 personal surveys involving managers of independent small travel agencies. Findings were extracted using a logistic regression analysis.

This paper finds some significant gender differences in strategic management decisions in crisis times and in strategic choices. Nevertheless, no differences were found in organizational performance.

The research covers travel agencies in Madrid, Spain. Thus, findings might be restricted to this specific sector or geographic area.

The findings provide useful empirical evidence for leadership development and strategic management that will enhance leadership effectiveness from a gender viewpoint and facilitate advances in women business management theory.

This paper compares strategic managerial decisions in crisis times from a gender viewpoint and analyzes their impact on performance. According to our knowledge no study has currently been found that analyzes decision making in companies led by women and contrasts their actions to those taken by men faced with an identical situation.

The purpose of this paper is to re‐explore the concept of transformational leadership using a combination of action research methods in order to contribute to a clearer understanding of the practice of strategy development and culture change management.

Reflects on an organizational development (OD) intervention which addressed strategic culture change with the senior management team of a UK‐based international manufacturing organization. In line with emergent theory and practice OD consultants, authors intervened at the three levels: strategy, culture and top team dynamics. Whilst the client seemed happy with the outcomes, the authors believed that the intervention had failed to effect transformational change and were thus motivated to re‐examine practice in the light of recent contributions to the OD and organizational learning literature. This analysis suggests that future OD practice should be grounded in processes of dialogue permeating all phases of the intervention. At the diagnostic phase, there is a need to identify more clearly the enablers and barriers to productive learning. Subsequently, during implementation, the boundaries of the intervention with particular reference to politics, authority and task should be managed more carefully and explicitly.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the feasibility of using kinetic energy harvesting to power wireless condition monitoring sensors.

The system presented duty cycles its operation depending upon the energy being harvested. The harvested energy is stored on a supercapacitor and the system samples sufficient vibration data to enable an FFT to be performed at the receiver.

The results of this study show it is perfectly feasible to power practical wireless condition monitoring sensors entirely from the vibrations of the machines being monitored.

Energy harvesting techniques can be used to power wireless sensors in a range of applications. Removing the need for a battery power supply presents obvious environmental benefits and avoids the need to periodically replace batteries.

This paper reports on a novel load cell and a novel torque transducer having stiffness and potential overload capability some ten times that of existing load cells and torque transducers based on the resistance strain gauges.

Describes the practical capabilities and technology – the design, construction and characterisation.

Both the load cell and the torque transducer use recently developed metallic triple beam resonators with thick‐film lead zirconate titanate (PZT) drives and pickups. The advantages of this technology are frequency output, high overload capability, high sensitivity, high resolution, and low‐cost manufacture. Both the load cell and torque transducer output large changes in frequency (>500 Hz for relatively low changes in strain level i.e. <200 microstrain for the load cell and <400 microstrain for the torque transducer), providing high sensitivity and high overload capability.

Load cells and torque transducers employing the new metallic resonators are expected to be far more robust than those using metallic resistance strain gauges.

Focuses on an instrument with important features of use in many applications.

The purpose of this paper is to present a knowledge management (KM) tool which has been designed to support the creation of virtual knowledge sharing networks (KSNs). It is a software‐based application that enables the sharing of knowledge related to the implementation of manufacturing excellence (ME) best practices and improvement tools.

A survey of SMEs was carried out to investigate the implementation of ME best practices. The results indicated that that the main barrier to the implementation of best practices, quality models and improvement tools is a lack of knowledge about these initiatives due to the resource constraints experienced by SMEs. This led to the development of a KM tool to support the creation of virtual networks to enable SMEs to manage improvement projects and share effectively the generated knowledge. The KM tool is currently at the stage of validation and its future implementation is also under consideration.

The KM tool supports the creation of KSNs through an explicit KM approach to share ideas, experiences and knowledge about implementation of best practices and improvement tools; helping SMEs to become more competitive.

This research has demonstrated that is possible to provide a KM tool that is suitable for use by a KSN of SMEs. This approach allows transferring some of the tacit and explicit knowledge generated during the implementation of improvement initiatives into electronic documents for future consultation by KSN members.

The KM tool works not only as an electronic repository for knowledge, but it also drives users to apply and share knowledge through its capability to help managing improvement projects.

Corporate-startup collaboration is an opportunity for inter-organizational learning. This paper aims to develop an empirically grounded typology to guide researchers and managers in choosing a model that is coherent with the underlying learning processes.

The empirical research consisted of three phases. First, 30 large companies were interviewed to identify different models of interaction. Second, eight different models and cases were selected, and a list of key characteristics of each model was drawn based on the empirical data, obtaining a first typology. Third, the typology was tested, improved and validated on nine corporations.

The main result of the study is an empirically grounded typology of models for corporate-startup interaction and inter-organizational learning. Six dimensions distinguish each model from the others.

The paper contributes to extend the literature on inter-organizational learning through different models of corporate-startups interaction. It also contributes to organizational ambidexterity theory, showing how collaboration with startups can improve exploitation and exploration.

The typology provides an instrument for analyzing and selecting operational models for corporate-startup collaboration and learning. The models can be modified or broadened, creating new hybrids.

The paper presents a novel way of looking at corporate-startup relations by studying them through the lens of organizational learning theory. It explains the existence of different inter-organizational arrangements and provides guidance in selecting the correct model.