This paper reviews the way in which employee communication has developed in National Business Communications, a major customer facing division in BT, during a time of significant…
Abstract
This paper reviews the way in which employee communication has developed in National Business Communications, a major customer facing division in BT, during a time of significant change. It covers how getting communications on the agenda, providing dedicated resources and taking a structured approach is essential for the effective management of change. It also looks at how the emphasis of employee communications is changing from a supply driven strategy to one that will become demand led and how measurement underpins continuous improvement.
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Steve Suckling, Paul Ryan and Mike Dent
The purpose of this paper is to introduce an innovative qualitative methodology, the beliefs, barriers and control (BBaC) model. The BBaC model facilitates the understanding of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to introduce an innovative qualitative methodology, the beliefs, barriers and control (BBaC) model. The BBaC model facilitates the understanding of how perceptions are formed through actors' interactions with their environments and each other, enabling targeted solutions for social and organisational questions.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws on a case study of a sports‐based intervention that addresses the physical activity levels of at risk youths in Stoke‐on‐Trent. It is an account of how the BBaC model was used to provide an understanding of barriers to participation in sport and active recreation amongst the target population. The study involved youth workers utilising the BBaC approach in focus groups with young people (YP) and staff. Moreover, the model was used in this case study in conjunction with the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) framework, which demonstrated how this qualitative methodology can be used with “harder” focused management tools to produce strategies for social and organisational improvement.
Findings
The BBaC model was used to collect rich qualitative data from the target YP. This was translated into action points using the EFQM model which were used in strategic and policy decision making; delivering improved results for the target YP.
Originality/value
The paper introduces an innovative and original methodology, the BBaC model, and demonstrates how it can be used to deliver strategies that have positive impacts.
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David Clutterbuck and David James
This paper comments on the findings of a new survey into the status of internal communication within British companies and organisations. It suggests that while many companies…
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This paper comments on the findings of a new survey into the status of internal communication within British companies and organisations. It suggests that while many companies have opened the door to internal communication as a distinct business discipline — even given it a desk and a chair — most have yet to grant its practitioners a seat at the boardroom table. The authors put forward reasons for this, and identify some of the issues that internal communication managers should address to continue to improve their status.
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Marlane C. Steinwart and Jennifer A. Ziegler
This paper explores the implications of using Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs as a “paradigm case” of transformational leadership by comparing the practical…
Abstract
This paper explores the implications of using Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs as a “paradigm case” of transformational leadership by comparing the practical metadiscourse of remembrances published at the time of his passing to the theoretical metadiscourse of transformational leadership. The authors report the frequency of transformational leadership characteristics that appeared in characterizations of Jobs in the months after his passing in October 2011. Results show that people do remember Jobs as a leader, and as one who possessed three key personal characteristics of a transformational leader: creative, passionate, and visionary. People also remembered Jobs as an innovator, which is not typically associated with transformational leadership but which does reflect the discourse of the consumer electronics industries upon which he had an impact. However, the results also show that two important interpersonal characteristics of a transformational leader were absent in the remembrance discourse: empowering and interactive. The authors discuss the implications of the two missing terms for pedagogy and theorizing, including how problematizing Jobs as a paradigm case might lead to fruitful discussions about the importance of a transformational leader’s engagement with followers.
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The purpose of this paper is to know the extent to which a decision-making framework assists in providing holistic, comprehensive descriptions of strategies used by school leaders…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to know the extent to which a decision-making framework assists in providing holistic, comprehensive descriptions of strategies used by school leaders engaging with distributed leadership practices. The process by which principals and other education leaders interact various school-based actors to arrive at a distributed decision-making process is addressed through this paper. The position taken suggests that leadership does not reside solely with principals or other education leaders, but sustains the view that the actions of various actors within a school setting contribute to fuller and more comprehensive accounts of distributed leadership.
Design/methodology/approach
While the application of rational/analytical approaches to organizational problems or issues can lead to effective decisions, dilemmas faced by principals are often messy, complex, ill-defined and not easily resolved through algorithmic reason or by the application of rules, as evidenced by the two stories provided by Agnes, a third-year principal in a small countryside elementary school in a small northeastern community, and by John, a novice principal in a suburb of a large Southwestern metropolitan area.
Findings
The value of the objective knowledge growth framework (OKGF) process is found in its ability to focus Agnes’s attention on things that she may have overlooked, such as options she might have ignored or information that she might have resisted or accepted, as well as innumerable preparations she might have neglected had she not involved all the teachers in her school.
Research limitations/implications
The implementation of the OKGF may appear, occasionally, to introduce unnecessary points along this route and may not be laboriously applied to all decision-making situations. However, the instinctively pragmatic solutions provided by this framework will often produce effective results. Therefore, in order to reduce potentially irrational outcomes, the systematic approach employed by the OKGF is preferable. The OKGF must be managed, implemented and sustained locally if it is to provide maximum benefits to educational decision makers.
Practical implications
Given the principals’ changing roles, it is abundantly clear that leadership practice can no longer involve just one person, by necessity, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine how things could have been accomplished otherwise. Expecting the principal to single-handedly lead efforts to improve instruction is impractical, particularly when leadership may be portrayed as what school principals do, especially when other potential sources of leadership have been ignored or treated as secondary or unimportant because that leadership has not emanated from the principal’s office (Spillane, 2006). In this paper, the authors have striven to reveal how a perspective of distributed leadership, when used in conjunction with the objective knowledge growth framework, can be effective in assisting principals in resolving problems of practice.
Social implications
Different school leaders of varying status within the educative organization benefit from obtaining different answers to similar issues, as evidenced by John’s and Agnes’s leadership tangles. Lumby and English (2009) differentiate between “routinization” and “ritualization.” They argue, “They are not the same. The former erases the need for human agency while the latter requires it” (p. 112). The OKGF process, therefore, cannot provide school leaders with the “right” answers to their educative quandaries, simply because any two school leaders, facing the same issues, may utilize differing theories, solutions, choices or options which may satisfy their issues in response to their own individual contextual factors. Similarly, in a busy day or week, school leaders may be inclined to take the shortest distance between two points in the decision-making process; problem identification to problem resolution.
Originality/value
Should the OKGF process empower decision makers to obtain sound resolutions to their educative issues by assisting them in distancing themselves from emotions or confirmation biases that may distract them from resolving school problems, its use will have been worthwhile.
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Kate Pahl and Steve Pool
This article explores the processes and practices of doing participatory research with children. It explores how this process can be represented in writing. The article comes out…
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This article explores the processes and practices of doing participatory research with children. It explores how this process can be represented in writing. The article comes out of a project funded by Creative Partnerships UK, in which a creative agent, three artists and a researcher all worked within an elementary school in South Yorkshire, UK, for two years, to focus on the children’s Reasons to Write. It considers whether it is truly possible for children to enter the academic domain. Using a number of different voices, the article interrogates this. It particularly focuses on children’s role in analysing and selecting important bits of data. It engages with the lived realities of children as researchers. It considers ways in which children’s voices can be represented, and also acknowledges the limitations of this approach for adults who want to write academic peer reviewed articles. Ideas the adults thought were clever were found to be redundant in relation to children’s epistemologies. The article considers the process that is involved in taking children’s epistemologies seriously.
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Charlie Gregson and Steve Little
Sherwood Forest is a mosaic of heritage, habitats and stakeholder relations. Scheme Manager, Steve Little, and Senior Lecturer in Museum Studies, Charlie Gregson, share their…
Abstract
Sherwood Forest is a mosaic of heritage, habitats and stakeholder relations. Scheme Manager, Steve Little, and Senior Lecturer in Museum Studies, Charlie Gregson, share their story of developing a working methodology in this complex landscape. By evaluating their relationship through the lenses of knowledge brokering and collaborative mentoring, they identify six themes relating to how their working environment evolved and functioned. Discussion finds significant overlap between collaborative mentoring, KE and the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals in their ability to enable more nuanced and holistic changemaking that is contextualized in a deep understanding of need.
Knowledge brokering, a process by which an individual (or an organization) supports the transfer of research evidence into policy and practice, can improve evidence-based decision-making through knowledge exchange (KE) but is, on the whole, poorly defined in academia (Cvitanovic et al., 2017). This chapter seeks to contribute to the ‘necessary and urgent’ need for evaluation of KE in practice (Rycroft-Smith, 2022) by providing edited snippets of dialogue, analysis and key learning points. It is intended as inspiration and encouragement for academics, professionals, students and volunteers developing human-centric projects or design-thinking methodologies between universities and external partners.