This paper aims to demonstrate why a people-focused strategy is vital to ensuring the successful implementation of large-scale organizational change initiatives.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to demonstrate why a people-focused strategy is vital to ensuring the successful implementation of large-scale organizational change initiatives.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper shares insights gained from the creation of a “Program Acceleration Office,” which saw the bringing together of 15 different organizations and aligning their implementation of workforce-related policies and procedures to foster employee buy-in and to care for the different needs of the individuals in these organizations. This aimed to support the transition of government employees in the State of Alaska to a remote and hybrid working environment as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Findings
Project managers are motivated to ensure the successful implementation of their projects. This creates a powerful internal focus, i.e. what is happening at a project-level. However, when an organization requires a multi-project, multidisciplinary program of activity, this internal focus can become a derailer with opportunities missed to optimize total resource utilization, reduce overall program costs, minimize organizational disruption and appropriately synchronize or sequence implementation. The creation of a dedicated “Program Acceleration Office” enabled the State of Alaska to implement broad, transformational changes to the fundamental way work was accomplished. The multi-projects were centered around human capital strategies, and this meant focusing on ensuring the workforce have a positive experience during and after this transition so that the changes would be sustainable.
Originality/value
By prioritizing workforce involvement through this multi-project, collaborative approach, complex workforce-related projects have a better chance of success. The findings will help organizations accelerate this implementation and return on investment of synchronous, complex, multi-project, multidisciplinary programs.
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Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.
Abstract
Purpose
Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.
Design/methodology/approach
This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.
Findings
Coles Meyer Limited (CML) is Australia's largest private sector employer, operating in such diverse businesses as retail, supermarkets and commercial products. It employs approximately 165,000 people in over 1,900 stores throughout Australia and New Zealand. It is this company that Peter Holland and Amanda Pyman chose to study regarding the development of its own corporate university (CU), in which employees are not only trained in day‐to‐day jobs, but tailored for all aspects of career development within the organization.
Practical implications
Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.
Originality/value
The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.
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William Lindsay, Anthony Holland, John Taylor, Amanda Michie, Marie Bambrick, Gregory O'Brien, Derek Carson, Lesley Steptoe, Clare Middleton, Karen Price and Jessica Wheeler
Several studies have related diagnostic information and adversity in childhood to criminal careers and risk of recidivism. Notably, ADHD and conduct disorder in childhood…
Abstract
Several studies have related diagnostic information and adversity in childhood to criminal careers and risk of recidivism. Notably, ADHD and conduct disorder in childhood, schizophrenia, sexual abuse and physical abuse have been associated with offences in adulthood. This study investigates these variables in relation to large cohorts of offenders with learning disabilities. A case note review was undertaken for 126 individuals referred but not accepted into forensic learning disability services and 197 individuals accepted for such services. Results are reported on diagnostic information and experience of adversity in childhood. ADHD/conduct disorder featured prominently in both groups. Autistic spectrum disorders were not particularly over‐represented. For adversity in childhood, general socioeconomic deprivation featured prominently in both groups. This also increased significantly for those accepted into services. Sexual abuse and non‐accidental injury were featured at around 13‐20% for both groups. These results are broadly consistent with the mainstream literature on offending, ADHD/conduct disorder and general deprivation featuring significantly in all groups and rising for those accepted into offender services. It is important to deal with these aspects during assessment and to provide appropriate psychotherapeutic services for these individuals.
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The purpose of this paper is to outline an empirical study of how professionals experience work and learning in complex adaptive organisations. The study uses a complex adaptive…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to outline an empirical study of how professionals experience work and learning in complex adaptive organisations. The study uses a complex adaptive systems approach, which forms the basis of a specifically developed conceptual framework for explaining professionals’ experiences of work and learning.
Design/methodology/approach
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 professionals from a variety of organisations, industry sectors and occupations in Sydney, Australia. The transcripts were subjected to an adapted phenomenographic analysis, and an analysis using the complex adaptive organisations conceptual framework (CAOCF).
Findings
The findings indicated that professionals experienced learning mainly through work, where work was experienced as fluid and influenced by varying degrees of emergence, agency, complex social networks and adaptation. Further, the greater the degree of work fluidity, the greater the impetus towards learning through work, empirically indicating that the experience of learning in contemporary organisations is entwined with work.
Originality/value
This study used the concept of complex adaptive organisations as a conceptual framework, coupled with an adapted phenomenographic methodology, to investigate individual professionals’ experiences of work and learning. The adoption of the concept of complex adaptive organisations provided a rigorous way to adopt a complexity approach. In particular, the concept of emergence provides insights into how organisational complexity influences work and, subsequently, learning and adaptation.
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Holly Louise Crossen-White, Ann Hemingway, Adele Ladkin, Andrew Jones, Amanda Burke and Olaf Timmermans
This paper aims to present the feasibility study findings from a four-year project funded by the European Union Commission (the SAIL project, Staying Active and Independent for…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present the feasibility study findings from a four-year project funded by the European Union Commission (the SAIL project, Staying Active and Independent for Longer). The funding stream was Interreg 2Seas which offers opportunities for coastal areas on both sides of the English Channel to work together on complex practical issues. The project focused on enabling older people to stay active and independent for longer using social innovation (co-production) approaches.
Design/methodology/approach
Ten pilot projects were developed, and each of the pilots worked with an academic partner to undertake a feasibility study that included 10 pilots across the four countries involved, France, Belgium, Holland and England.
Findings
This paper presents barriers and facilitators (using logic models) to the social innovation process with older people, which has wider relevance in terms of social innovation and its application.
Research limitations/implications
The findings which inform this paper are extensive, and this is a longitudinal qualitative study with much of the data collection being done using an online wiki (complemented by interviews and documentary analysis) which is a relatively new method for data collection. However, the consistency of the findings when analysed by three researchers was clear and pragmatically this complex method was required to examine complexity in the process of implementing social innovation in practice.
Practical implications
This project has enabled greater understanding of how social innovation can be applied and has highlighted contextual issues that can undermine or enable attempts to adopt the approach.
Social implications
For the 10 pilot projects generated, there were obviously important cultural and geographical differences in terms of engagement and practical implementation of social innovation. Some of which, as mentioned in this paper, are very important for the successful implementation of social innovation in a particular setting and indeed may be a strength or a barrier in terms of engaging with local people and agencies.
Originality/value
The development of logic models is a useful approach when the topic under study is complex and likely to produce a diverse set of process outcomes. The logic model focuses upon the relationships between the resources that are used to create the intervention and what is produced in terms of outcomes. Ultimately, this enables the identification of the factors that contribute to a successful intervention. Thus, in relation to this study, logic models have helped to provide an evidence-based framework that can support decision-making regarding the most effective use of limited resources to support successful social innovation processes in the future. The logic model for each area of the findings presented here can in the future be used to help implement social innovation; also, to consider how it can be improved in future research.
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Amanda S. Davis and Beatrice I.J.M. Van der Heijden
An employee engagement/disengagement typology is presented to visually illustrate their possible constructive and destructive effects within the workplace, and identify some of…
Abstract
Purpose
An employee engagement/disengagement typology is presented to visually illustrate their possible constructive and destructive effects within the workplace, and identify some of the contextual drivers that may lead to these occurrences.
Design/methodology/approach
A narrative literature review was conducted during 2020–2023 to gain a comprehensive overview of employee engagement and disengagement processes and theories since 1990. Content analysis enabled the findings to be grouped into their destructive and constructive behavioural effects to produce a new typology.
Findings
The typology shows that not all employee engagement is constructive and that not all disengagement is destructive. This more accurately reflects organisational life. Destructive employee engagement in particular, demonstrates that there can be “too-much-of-a-good-thing”.
Research limitations/implications
The typology may help inform future research designs to further understand the impact of contextual factors on both constructs, the pluralist interests involved and which interventions are likely to encourage constructive engagement and disengagement within specific contexts.
Practical implications
It is recommended that employee engagement and disengagement are incorporated into leadership and management training and that practices to foster constructive employee engagement (or permit temporary constructive disengagement to allow recovery) endorse the principles of mutuality and reciprocity. Interventions to prevent destructive employee engagement and disengagement are also advisable, particularly when there are adverse internal and external contextual issues which risk disengagement.
Originality/value
The typology is the first to classify engaged and disengaged behaviours within the workplace across two dimensions. In doing so, this helps to evaluate employee engagement and disengagement theory by challenging the normative assumptions held within these constructs. This categorisation more accurately represents both constructs and visually illustrates that within the workplace, not only is employee engagement sometimes destructive but also that sometimes disengagement is constructive. Furthermore, it demonstrates that purposive destructive employee disengagement responses may be passive or active.