René Abel, Suleika Bort, Indre Maurer, Clarissa E. Weber and Hendrik Wilhelm
Portfolios of temporary organisations, particularly portfolios of R&D projects with different project partners, are a common yet understudied phenomenon. We know that these…
Abstract
Portfolios of temporary organisations, particularly portfolios of R&D projects with different project partners, are a common yet understudied phenomenon. We know that these portfolios suffer from tensions inherent in project portfolio ambidexterity (e.g. portfolios balancing R&D projects with new and recurrent partners), yet our understanding of what might lessen these tensions remains limited. This study introduces the idea of project portfolio maturity and theorises how it can mitigate the negative effects of ambidextrous project portfolios. We test our hypotheses by combining proprietary survey and archival data on 136 R&D project portfolios in the German biotechnology industry covering project partnerships with both new and recurrent partners. Our results show that ambidextrous project portfolios hamper firm performance and that portfolio maturity mitigates these negative effects. By introducing a new perspective on project portfolios that accounts for overlooked temporal dimensions, this study provides a new contingency that has the potential to ease the tensions that result from projects with new and recurrent partners. We thereby add to the literatures on temporary organising, project portfolios, and ambidexterity.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore the educative experiences of Arthur Wesley Wheen – his socialisation and indoctrination within a devout family, on the one hand, and his…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the educative experiences of Arthur Wesley Wheen – his socialisation and indoctrination within a devout family, on the one hand, and his elite classical schooling on the other hand. Such influences laid the seeds of internal conflict and were compounded at Teachers College, the Arts Faculty of the University of Sydney and at New College Oxford. It is argued that profound educative influences and the trauma of First World War shaped and redefined his life, work and personality as a scholar, cultural critic and translator. The impact of the curriculum and ethos of elite schooling on life interests is a major theme. Attempts will be made to discover from the vast mosaic of classical learning what eventually became inscribed on Wheen’s psyche.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper the author uses a critical biographical and life-study approach in the broad parameters of historical research by a close examination of primary and secondary sources including a rich vein of correspondence and related unpublished writings; school, teachers college and university records, battalion and personal war records and published literature, frequently contemporary in nature. In design subtle iconographic and psychoanalytic nuances will be drawn from the raw material of history.
Findings
This research is intended to demonstrate how the traumatic requirements of a frontline soldier affected a profound disillusionment with imperial institutions. The study attempts to show how Wheen lost his religious convictions in the heat of total war and later became a passionate expatriate pacifist, social theorist and scholar. It is intended to reveal the complex layers of personal conviction. The author glances at the literary impact of AW Wheen’s translation of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front and the Hollywood film version in terms of his contribution that has not been well recognised.
Originality/value
The paper demonstrates how educative experiences led to significant literary outcomes and how elite classical educative forces shaped style and scholarly endeavour. It draws from history, theology, education and cultural studies and synthesises them.
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Standards are important in all areas of library automation. Standards will facilitate the linking of different types of systems within one library as well as systems that perform…
Abstract
Standards are important in all areas of library automation. Standards will facilitate the linking of different types of systems within one library as well as systems that perform similar functions in different libraries. Stephen Salmon (Carlyle), George Sidman (INLEX), Richard Woods (Biblio‐Techniques), Mike Monahan (Geac), Richard Goldberg (CLSI), Stephen M. Silberstein (Innovative Interfaces), and M.E.L. Jacob (OCLC) express their views on existing standards, and the need for and probable course for developing additional standards.
George Woods, Carlo Lantsheer and Richard E. Clark
Describes an example of a successful learning programme focused on customer satisfaction. Reports on a programme for experienced staff in the European Patent Office called ChOral…
Abstract
Describes an example of a successful learning programme focused on customer satisfaction. Reports on a programme for experienced staff in the European Patent Office called ChOral (CHairing ORAL proceedings). The stages of the programme included sponsoring by a top manager to overcome initial resistance, to support cognitive task analysis and to give “pep talks” to the learners to emphasise the customer‐satisfaction goal; using a consultant to learn “active listening” and “empathy” techniques, which were then included as training content; creating representative case studies and “courtroom” role‐playing exercises; self‐study by the learners of the recommended procedures; and a video‐based, role‐playing practice and feedback system using recently trained examiners as “models”, demonstrating the procedures to be learned by new trainees, with subsequent feedback commentary from respected experts.
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The purpose of this paper is to highlight the views of Professor George Arnold Wood, a leading Australian scholar at the University of Sydney, concerning the involvement of the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to highlight the views of Professor George Arnold Wood, a leading Australian scholar at the University of Sydney, concerning the involvement of the British Empire in the Great War of 1914-1918.
Design/methodology/approach
The author has examined all of Professor Wood’s extant commentaries on the Great War which are held in the archives of the University of Sydney as well as the biographical material on Professor Wood by leading Australian scholars. The methodology and approach is purely empirical.
Findings
The sources consulted revealed Professor Wood’s deeply held conviction about the importance of Christian values in the formation of political will and his belief that the vocation of politics is a most serious one demanding from statesmen the utmost integrity in striving to ensure justice and freedom, respect for the rights of others and the duty of the strong to protect the weak against unprincipled and ruthless states.
Originality/value
The paper highlights Professor Wood’s values as derived from the core statements of Jesus of Nazareth such as in the Sermon on the Mount. And as these contrasted greatly with the Machiavellian practice of the imperial German Chancellors from Bismarck onwards, and of the Kaiser Wilhelm II. It was necessary for the British Empire to oppose German war aims with all the force at its disposal. The paper illustrates the ideological basis from which Wood derived his values.
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One of the good‐intentioned phrases which has become current in international relations is ‘investment in human resources’.
These notes on Sir Walter Scott by John Galt, here published for the first time, have been transcribed by Dr Hamilton B. Timothy, Associate Professor in the Department of…
Abstract
These notes on Sir Walter Scott by John Galt, here published for the first time, have been transcribed by Dr Hamilton B. Timothy, Associate Professor in the Department of Classical Studies and Galt Scholar at the University of Western Ontario, from a manuscript among the material given him by Henry Gordon Harvey Smith, Q.C., a great‐grandson of John Galt, and his sister, Mrs Muriel Harvey Turner, of Winnipeg. John Galt's youngest son, Alexander, with whom Galt's widow made her home after the novelist's death in 1839, became the Hon. Sir Alexander Galt and Canada's first Federal Finance Minister; from him John Galt's library and miscellaneous papers passed to his youngest daughter, Annie Prince Galt, who married Dr W. Harvey Smith, a distinguished opthalmologist. (In 1930 he had the rare honour of holding at the same time presidency of both the British Medical Association and the Canadian.) His carefully augmented collection of Galt family papers, inherited by his son and daughter, has now been passed to Dr Timothy for use in connexion with his study, The Galts: a Canadian Odyssey. At the same time the family collection of John Galt's writings—in sixty‐eight volumes, many from the novelist's own library—was presented to the library of the University of Western Ontario. For permission to print these interesting notes we are indebted to Mr Harvey Smith and Mrs Turner. The annotations initialled C are by Dr Robert Hay Carnie of the University of Calgary.
It is a matter of common knowledge that beer, in its several varieties, is by no means the same thing to‐day as it was a generation or less ago; the progress of chemical and…
Abstract
It is a matter of common knowledge that beer, in its several varieties, is by no means the same thing to‐day as it was a generation or less ago; the progress of chemical and biological knowledge on the one hand, and the keenness of competition on the other, have led to great alterations both in the materials used in its production and the methods by which it is produced. Exact or reliable knowledge about this, however, is far from being common; vehement assertions are made that all or almost all the changes are for the better, and also that beer is now a manufactured chemical product of deleterious nature, in which little or nothing of genuine material is used. Such statements are rendered unacceptable by the existence of self‐interest on one side and prejudice on the other. A short account of some of the facts concerned may, therefore, be of service.