Zoekresultaten

Digital Sustainability Practices: a Research Agenda

Expectations are high for digital technologies to address sustainability related challenges. While research into such applications and the twin transformation is growing rapidly, insights in the actual daily practices of digital sustainability within organizations is lacking. This is problematic as the contributions of digital tools to sustainability goals gain shape in organizational practices. To bridge this gap, we develop a theoretical perspective on digital sustainability practices based on practice theory, with an emphasis on the concept of sociomateriality. We argue that connecting meanings related to sustainability with digital technologies is essential to establish beneficial practices. Next, we contend that the meaning of sustainability is contextspecific, which calls for a local meaning making process. Based on our theoretical exploration we develop an empirical research agenda.

Nietzsche’s New Dawn / Nietzsches nieuwe dageraad

Professional higher education is expected to educate large numbers of students to become innovative professionals within a time frame of three or four years. A mission impossible? Not necessarily, according to Henriëtta Joosten who is a philosopher as well as a teacher. She uses the experimental, liberating, but also dangerous ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche to rethink contemporary higher professional education. What does it mean to teach students to strive for better in a professional world where horizons tend to disperse and the possibility of long-term orientation is disappearing? Following Nietzsche, five key elements of striving for better are explored: uncertainty, excellence, critical thinking, truth seeking friendship, and learning through ups and downs. From these five perspectives, Joosten scrutinises existing educational discourses on professional higher education in search for openings to transform these discourses into new, more appropriate ones. Understanding excellence as rising above oneself (rather than being better than others), she argues for a learning environment in which all students are encouraged to excel. Such an environment allows for uncertainty and learning through ups and downs. Furthermore, teachers are prepared to risk their certainties in order to let a joined quest - that is, a quest of students and teacher - for better truths arise. Using the Nietzschean-inspired notions which have been developed in the study, Joosten describes two factual cases. One case relates to a course in close reading: first-year students jointly read philosophical and scientific texts. The second case involves a group of eleven senior students developing a course in project management. These descriptions and the recommendations serve as a catalyst for constructive debate on the question of how all students can be equipped for a dynamic professional world.

Value, Valuation, and Valorisation

Knowledge valorisation is the transfer of knowledge from one party to another for economic benefit. The concept of valorisation is based on the underlying metaphor of KNOWLEDGE AS A THING. It is the same metaphor that makes it possible to talk about the value of knowledge. If knowledge is like a ‘thing’, then that ‘ thing’ must have a specific value. Value can be defined as the degree of usefulness or desirability of something, especially in comparison with other things, and is by definition subjective. Value is in the eye of the beholder. Any valuation method therefore needs to take into account this subjective nature by deliberately choosing the appropriate ‘standard of value’ (value to whom?) and ‘premise of value’ (value under what circumstances?). There are three ways to determine the value of something of which financial valuation is the most used. In turn financial valuation can be done using a cost approach, a market approach or an income approach. In most cases the income approach is the most appropriate. However, this approach requires a number of assumptions to be made; most of which are impossible to validate. The formulas that are used in the process can be intimidating to non-experts with the danger of disguising the inherent subjective and speculative nature of any valuation of knowledge as a ‘thing’.

Pathway to zero emissions in global tourism: opportunities, challenges, and implications.

Armchair travelling the innovation journey

The promotor was Prof. Erik Jan Hultink and copromotors Dr Ellis van den Hende en Dr R. van der Lugt. The title of this dissertation is Armchair travelling the innovation journey. ‘Armchair travelling’ is an expression for travelling to another place, in the comfort of one’s own place. ‘The innovation journey’ is the metaphor Van de Ven and colleagues (1999) have used for travelling the uncharted river of innovation, the highly unpredictable and uncontrollable process of innovation. This research study began with a brief remark from an innovation project leader who sighed after a long and rough journey: ‘had I known this ahead of time…’. From wondering ‘what could he have known ahead of time?’ the immediate question arose: how do such innovation journeys develop? How do other innovation project leaders lead the innovation journey? And could I find examples of studies about these experiences from an innovation project leader’s perspective that could have helped the sighing innovation project leader to have known at least some of the challenges ahead of time? This dissertation is the result of that quest, as we do know relatively little how this process of the innovation project leader unfolds over time. The aim of this study is to increase our understanding of how innovation project leaders lead their innovation journeys over time, and to capture those experiences that could be a source for others to learn from and to be better prepared. This research project takes a process approach. Such an approach is different from a variance study. Process thinking takes into account how and why things – people, organizations, strategies, environments – change, act and evolve over time, expressed by Andrew Pettigrew (1992, p.10) as catching “reality in flight”.

PrimaVera

The full potential of predictive maintenance has not yet been utilised. Current solutions focus on individual steps of the predictive maintenance cycle and only work for very specific settings. The overarching challenge of predictive maintenance is to leverage these individual building blocks to obtain a framework that supports optimal maintenance and asset management. The PrimaVera project has identified four obstacles to tackle in order to utilise predictive maintenance at its full potential: lack of orchestration and automation of the predictive maintenance workflow, inaccurate or incomplete data and the role of human and organisational factors in data-driven decision support tools. Furthermore, an intuitive generic applicable predictive maintenance process model is presented in this paper to provide a structured way of deploying predictive maintenance solutions https://doi.org/10.3390/app10238348 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-bolte-0856134/