Social innovation is the renewal of labour organisation that leads to improved performance by the organisation. The innovations that are promoted under the heading of social innovation often require substantive behavioural change on the part of employees and managers. However, in many organisations there are hidden, often unconscious forces at work that make it difficult to implement these new ways of working. In this paper Maslow‟s hierarchy of needs and transactional analysis theory are used to identify possible barriers for the implementation of social innovation. A case study is presented to show how potential barriers can be identified.
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From the article: The ‘Axiomatic Design Methodology’ uses ‘Axioms’ that cannot be proven nor derived from physical phenomena. The axioms serve as guidelines for the design process of products and systems. The latest contribution was the addition of the ‘Complexity Axiom’ in 1999. However, the underlying theory of complexity did not get much traction by designers and their managers yet. It emphasises difficulties in the design, not primarily focussing on solutions. The ‘Theory of Complexity’ is converted to a ‘Theory of Maturity’ in this paper. It is supported with a graphical way to plot maturity as it develops. It visualises the results in a way that can be understood by all entities in a company, engineers, managers, and executives. Understanding the maturity of a system enables selection of the right measures to control it. Visualisation enables communication between the interacting parties. If successful development trajectories are understood, eventually from earlier experience, even better corrective actions can be applied. The method appears an affirmative way to graphically represent progression in design, thus presenting advances in a positive context. Though positively presented, it is not the case that the method hides problems; presumed and legitimate project progression can be quite different, which challenges the designer to understand the process. In this way, the method sends out a continuous warning to stay critical on design choices made.
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Background: In the Netherlands, most of the academic curricula for teacher training in religious education (RE) focus on shortfalls of students, like a lack of knowledge about the plurality of worldviews and the diversity in interpretations of the Christian tradition. In our research project, the focus is not on the students, but on the university professors and lecturers who teach the subject of RE: professors and lecturers who train and educate students to teach RE. Aim: The main aim of the project was to gain a better insight into the inherent complexity of the professionalism of academics, that is, their own positionality in the plurality of the Roman Catholic traditions they adhere to in relation to their capabilities and commitment to the current curriculum – the ‘old’ one – and the new curriculum to be developed, in the context of the Dutch plural society. Setting: Respondents in this research were university professors and lecturers of the Teacher Training Institute of Tilburg University, located at Utrecht, the Netherlands. Methods: For this investigation, we used a research instrument based on the dialogical self theory and its self confrontation method for organisations to gain insight into professionals’ own and their colleagues’ positionality regarding teaching RE. Results: Preliminary results show that the self confrontation method for organisations has shown itself to be a challenging instrument to invite academics involved in the process of data construction and data analysis. Conclusion: Based on these results, we recommend to include the research population in a validation process to increase the sustainability of the results and to maximise engagement in the implementation phase of the new curriculum.
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In this thesis several studies are presented that have targeted decision making about case management plans in probation. In a case management plan probation officers describe the goals and interventions that should help offenders stop reoffending, and the specific measures necessary to reduce acute risks of recidivism and harm. Such a plan is embedded in a judicial framework, a sanction or advice about the sanction in which these interventions and measures should be executed. The topic of this thesis is the use of structured decision support, and the question is if this can improve decision making about case management plans in probation and subsequently improve the effectiveness of offender supervision. In this chapter we first sketch why structured decision making was introduced in the Dutch probation services. Next we describe the instrument for risk and needs assessment as well as the procedure to develop case management plans that are used by the Dutch probation services and that are investigated in this thesis. Then we describe the setting of the studies and the research questions, and we conclude with an overview of this thesis.
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In 2010, the Dutch Probation Service introduced a digital decision support system for case management plans, a so called fourth generation risk/needs assessment instrument. Does this system help probation officers in determining the appropriate interventions that should prevent recidivism for each individual client? And to what extent are the case management plans based on existing theories on desistance from crime? These are the central questions in the thesis of Jacqueline Bosker of the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht: ‘Linking Theory and Practice in Probation – Structured decision support for case management plans’. “Further development is still needed, but we can conclude that the use of digital decision support helps improve the quality of case management plans.” Bosker concluded in her research that this form of decision support enhances the quality of the case management plans. “In the most practical sense, it helps a probation officer not to overlook certain measures that might be applicable for the client considering the risks and needs. The plans also correspond better to the offenders’ goals and focus more on strengthening social bonds. Over the years, desistance from crime has been studied and researched. This knowledge should be used in practice. A decision support system helps linking theory and practice.”
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Many global challenges cannot be addressed by one single actor alone. Achieving sustainability requires governance by state and non-state market actors to jointly realise public values and corporate goals. As a form of public-private governance, voluntary standards involving governments, non-governmental organisations and companies have gained much traction in recent years and have been in the limelight of public authorities and policymakers. From a firm perspective, sustainability standards can be a way to demonstrate that they engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) in a credible way. To capitalise on their CSR activities, firms need to ensure their stakeholders are able to recognise and assess their CSR quality. However, because the relative observability of CSR is low and since CSR is a contested concept, information asymmetries in firm-stakeholder relationships arise. Adopting CSR standards and using these as signalling devices is a strategy for firms to reduce these information asymmetries, by revealing their true CSR quality. Against this background, this article investigates the voluntary ISO 26000 standard for social responsibility as a form of public-private governance and contends that, despite its objectives, this standard suffers from severe signalling problems. Applying signalling theory to the ISO 26000 standard, this article takes a critical stance towards this standard and argues that firms adhering to this standard may actually emit signals that compromise rather than enhance stakeholders' ability to identify and interpret firms' underlying CSR quality. Consequently, the article discusses the findings in the context of public-private governance, suggests a specification of signalling theory and identifies avenues for future research.
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What is a pop-up store and how can it be used for organisational counterspacing? The pop-up can be interpreted as a fashionable and hypermodern platform focusing on the needs of a younger generation of consumers that searches for new experiences and is prone to ad hoc decision-making. From this perspective, the pop-up is a typical expression of the experience economy. But it is more. The ephemeral pop-up store, usually lasting from one day to six months, is also a spatial practice on the boundary between place as something stable/univocal and space as something transitory/polyphonic. Organizational theory has criticized the idea of a stable place and proposed the concept of spacing with a focus on the becoming of space. In this article, the pop-up store is introduced as a fashionable intervention into organizational spacing. It suggests a complementary perspective to non-representational theory and frames the pop-up as co-actor engaging everyday users in appropriating space. Drawing on Lefebvre’s notions of differential space, festival and evental moment, theory is revisited and then operationalized in two pop-up store experiments. Apart from contributing to the ongoing theoretical exploration of the spacing concept, this article aims to inspire differential pop-up practices in organisations. https://www.linkedin.com/in/overdiek12345/
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This special issue of Somatechnics: Journal of Bodies – Technologies – Power is an invitation to critically interrogate how our everyday technological, social, and embodied experience of organisation as a traveling concept (Bal 2002) and socio-material (Orlikowski 2007) production of reality, can generate new modes of organising and being and nonbeing organised. The articles in this special issue span across the humanities, social sciences, performing arts, and critical management studies, to trouble the concept of organisation by de-organising it and the manner in which it has traditionally been instrumentalised and put to use in modern-day organisational theory and practice. Somatechnics presents a thoroughly multi-disciplinary scholarship on the body, providing a space for research that critically engages with the ethico-political implications of a wide range of practices and techniques. The term ‘somatechnics’ indicates an approach to corporeality which considers it as always already bound up with a variety of technologies, techniques and technics, thus enabling an examination of the lived experiences engendered within a given context, and the effects that technologies, technés and techniques have on embodiment, subjectivity and sociality.
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The central focus of this article is on the moral dilemmas that social servants face when applying the law. These moral dilemmas result from the professional’s discretionary space. Exploratory qualitative research shows that, in order to solve these dilemmas, professionals in some public organisations try to find tailormade solutions. However, this sometimes leads to a more or less denying of the discretionary space at hand, or to the creation of more rules in an effort to close the discretionary space. The question is, are these approaches effective? The answer may very well turn out to be negative. This article shows that applying a rule always leaves the professional some discretionary space. It is precisely in this free space that moral issues come up. Social servants will attain a stronger stance regarding moral issues by focussing on the development of their own moral sensitivity, both individually and as an organisation, as well as by their increasing awareness of the moral standards held by themselves, their organisation, and society at large. A social servant’s job is not inserting coins in a jukebox. He must create the music himself by interpreting the rules in a given situation. Just as it takes a person to turn a musical score into music, so it takes a person to interpret the law in order to create justice. De morele dilemma’s van publieke professionals die voortkomen uit het toepassen van de wet, vormen het voornaamste onderwerp van dit artikel. Deze morele dilemma’s ontstaan vanuit de discretionaire ruimte van professionals. Verkennend kwalitatief onderzoek laat zien dat in sommige publieke organisaties professionals deze dilemma’s proberen op te lossen door maatwerk te leveren. In de praktijk leidt dit soms echter tot het min of meer negeren van de discretionaire ruimte, of het dichttimmeren van de discretionaire ruimte door middel van meer regels en richtlijnen. Het is de vraag of een van deze strategieën effectief is. Het antwoord hierop is waarschijnlijk ontkennend. Dit artikel laat zien dat het toepassen van een regel altijd discretionaire ruimte laat voor de professional. Juist in deze vrije ruimte spelen morele kwesties. Publieke professionals kunnen moreel gesterkt worden door de ontwikkeling van morele gevoeligheid, individueel en als organisatie, en door een groeiend bewustzijn van de morele standaarden die de samenleving en zijzelf in hun organisatie handhaven. De publieke professional kan niet als bij een jukebox door een druk op de knop de machine zijn werk laten doen. De regels en de situatie interpreterend zal hij zelf muziek moeten maken. Zoals er mensen nodig zijn om van notenschrift muziek te maken, zo kunnen alleen mensen van wet- en regelgeving in een unieke situatie recht en rechtvaardigheid maken.
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