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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.

Across different research fields, it is increasingly acknowledged that gender is not a binary variable and goes beyond the male–female dichotomy. At the same time, gender is a prominent social cue that affects evaluations and interactions among individuals. Thus, gender can impact social processes on many levels in complex ways. Meetings provide arenas where key social processes unfold that are relevant to the organization. Understanding which role gender takes in this context is therefore central to organizations as well as meeting research. This chapter provides a critical review of research to date on social influence in meetings, specifically zooming in on the role of gender. The authors conducted a multi-step systematic literature review and identified 43 studies across a wide area of disciplines (e.g., psychology, communication, and management). The authors put special emphasis on the methodologies employed across this work since a comprehensive understanding of the applied methods is core for a synthesis of research results. Through the analysis, the authors pinpoint six variables – individual gender, sex role orientation, gender composition, gender salience, contextual factors such as task type and organizational settings, and the construction of gender as a social concept – that are directly related to gender and which represent factors that are critical for the role of gender in the meeting context. Thereby, this chapter aims to provide a roadmap for researchers and practitioners interested in the role of gender during workplace meetings. The authors conclude by highlighting methodological and managerial recommendations and suggest avenues for future research.

We examine how interpersonal behavior and social interaction influence team sensemaking and subsequent team actions during a hospital-based health information technology (HIT) implementation project.

Over the course of 18 months, we directly observed the interpersonal interactions of HIT implementation teams using a sensemaking lens.

We identified three voice-promoting strategies enacted by team leaders that fostered team member voice and sensemaking; communicating a vision; connecting goals to team member values; and seeking team member input. However, infrequent leader expressions of anger quickly undermined team sensemaking, halting dialog essential to problem solving. By seeking team member opinions, team leaders overcame the negative effects of anger.

Leaders must enact voice-promoting behaviors and use them throughout a team’s engagement. Further, training teams in how to use conflict to achieve greater innovation may improve sensemaking essential to project risk mitigation.

Health care work processes are complex; teams involved in implementing improvements must be prepared to deal with conflicting, contentious issues, which will arise during change. Therefore, team conflict training may be essential to sustaining sensemaking.

Future research should seek to identify team interactions that foster sensemaking, especially when topics are difficult or unwelcome, then determine the association between staff sensemaking and the impact on HIT implementation outcomes.

We are among the first to focus on project teams tasked with HIT implementation. This research extends our understanding of how leaders’ behaviors might facilitate or impeded speaking up among project teams in health care settings.