Business and Higher Education Partner to Develop a High‐Skilled Workforce: A Case Study

The workforce development literature contains little scholarly work on how organizations in a community work together to develop a high‐skilled workforce. This exploratory case study examined business and higher education partnerships that were instrumental in creating such an educational infrastructure for information technology in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The findings from this case study provide insight into the chronology of key events and the leaders' characteristics and their interactions. Tulsa's IT workforce‐development infrastructure was negotiated one partnership at a time, bridging diverse interests, until a workforce‐development system emerged. The infrastructure grew as the result of accident, purposeful activity, serendipity, and negotiated processes and structures. The leaders' differing motivations and energy, their history of collaboration and mutual trust, and their different perspectives influenced the information technology workforce development infrastructure that developed. The insights into inter‐organization processes that resulted from the study can contribute to theory building in human performance technology and to our understanding of how to address gaps between desired and actual workforce performance at a community level.     

Using Performance Analysis for Training in an Organization Implementing Integrated Manufacturings A Case Study

Focused efforts to improve organizational and individual performance begin with analysis of the needs. However, the theory and practice of performance analysis are not well connected. This case study examined the use of a theory-based model, the Performance Analysis for Training (PAT) Model, for assessing performance needs within an organization that was integrating its manufacturing processes. The results showed that the PAT Model was a useful guide for assessing performance needs. This research also showed that the process and product of the performance analysis were influenced by the organization's characteristics, the decision maker's characteristics, and the analyst's characteristics. In practice, the PAT model and the actual process of performance analysis were similar. However, the analyst noted three adaptations of the model. These adaptations suggest that performance analysis in some instances may be more an iterative than a linear process.     

Evaluation and Reward Systems: The Key Shapers of Organization Culture

Evaluation and reward processes, more so than communication, access to information, problem solving, work design, and training shape an organization's culture and employee's attitudes. The three most popular evaluation systems—MBO, BARS, and the 360 degree—encourage competition and even conflict by emphasizing individual performance. This emphasis is made stronger when the bell‐shaped density curve is used to categorize employees so that the weakest can be terminated. The evaluation and reward process should, instead, encourage cooperation.     

Using SAS® PROC CALIS for path analysis: An introduction

This article presents a straightforward approach for using PROC CALIS programs that will perform path analyses using observed variables. The step‐by‐step approach should help the beginner understand concepts in path analysis and how to use the SAS^® System's PROC CALIS procedure. The approach begins with the development of a program figure, a figure that graphically illustrates the researcher's theoretical model and identifies the parameters to be estimated in the model. A set of 14 rules guide this task. The article illustrates how to convert the program figure into a PROC CALIS program that will estimate parameters in the diagrammed model and how to review the output of PROC CALIS (e.g., residuals, chi‐square test, fit indices) to assess the fit of the model to the data.     

Evaluating web usability

Web usability focuses on design elements and processes that make web pages easy to use. A website for college students was evaluated for underutilization. One‐on‐one testing, focus groups, web analytics, peer university review and marketing focus group and demographic data were utilized to conduct usability evaluation. The results indicated that an organization's mission, policies, user capabilities, and competitive environment all affect usability. The recommended interventions included interface redesign and update.     

Methodology for Evaluating the Effectiveness of Human Performance in Safety–Oriented Industries: A Conceptual Design

The methodology described here provides an approach for evaluating safe human and organizational performance in nuclear power generating utilities and other high–risk, safety–oriented industries. Using existing indicators of desired organizational performance, internal and external evaluators can measure performance outcomes, as well as the effects of training on performance readiness. The performance outcomes “state of readiness” collectively impact on the safety of organizational operations. This proposed methodology is cost–efficient because it uses existing human and organizational resources; it is unobtrusive on the organization's time and manpower; it can be employed readily by external evaluators; and it can simultaneously be used to analyze an organization's effects on society's safety.     

STILL TO COME

The hundredth anniversary of any organization's founding is an occasion for celebration. At the least, one can celebrate the organization's longevity in surviving for a whole century. The organization has to be doing something right to exist that long. The Religious Education Association has done many good things in its hundred years of existence. These things should be remembered and praised.     

Market versus Mandator. Control Structure and Strategies for Change in School Organizations 1

Berg, G. 1984. Market versus Mandator. Control Structure and Strategies for Change in School Organizations. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 28, 49‐70. An organization's activities are a function of the external control originating in its environment and the internal control regulating the interaction of its various component parts. In other words, an organization is shaped by its external and internal control structures. The nature of this control varies from one organization to another, the character of the control structure being dependent on the tasks or functions the organization is there to perform. It is argued that the type of control structure existing determines (a) what theoretical model has the greatest explanatory value in an analysis of phenomena occurring in a specific organization, and (b) what strategy for change corresponds to the control structure in question.

     

Managing information sharing within an organizational setting: A social network perspective

Information sharing is critical to an organization's competitiveness and requires a free flow of information among members if the organization is to remain competitive. A review of the literature on organizational structure and information sharing was conducted to examine the research in this area. A case example illustrates how a social network approach was used to explore the process of measuring the social structure of an organization and the implementation of change interventions to increase connectivity and manage information sharing. The process of conducting social network analysis is described using the case example. Interventions for increasing information flow are discussed. The authors provide an information‐sharing model that demonstrates the various domains of connectivity within an organization at any given state. The benefits of using social network analysis for information sharing and the implications for further research and practice are discussed.     

Big Data Are,After All,Just Data

The use of big data has become the topic for discussion in many executive‐level meetings. Managers and administrators look at top‐flight companies and their successful competitors with envy, because a small number have learned to exploit large amounts of data to become more effective and efficient in their operations. Yes, large amounts of information can improve a company's performance. But first there must be a change in the organization's decision‐making culture.     

Measuring the ROI on Knowledge Management Systems

Illustrating the return‐on‐investment (ROI) for a portal solution or knowledge management (KM) system has proven an elusive target. This paper will demonstrate that ROI can be found for portals and KM systems in measuring the ROI on improved processes and increased economic value of employee performance. Thus, rather than employing traditional notions of value and assets as noted in standard accounting practices, KM solutions are tools managers should use to support opportunities for process improvement and redesign. ROI that measures value from this perspective creates new areas of value from an organization's existing, undervalued assets. A well‐developed measurement methodology for implementing a KM system may illustrate ROI, justify expenditures for implementing the system, and provide a format to ensure that process improvement occurs. A well‐thought‐out KM system has the capability of becoming the “digital nervous system” of an organization, tying all areas to the strategic goals of an organization.     

Family history,self‐perceptions,attitudes and cognitive abilities are associated with early adolescent reading skills

This study evaluated a model of reading skills among early adolescents (N=174). Measures of family history, achievement, cognitive processes and self‐perceptions of abilities were obtained. Significant relationships were found between family history and children's single‐word reading skills, spelling, reading comprehension, orthographic processing and children's perceived reading competence. While children with poor reading skills were five times more likely to come from a family with a history of reading difficulties, this measure did not account for additional variance in reading performance after other variables were included. Phonological, orthographic, rapid sequencing and children's perceived reading competence made significant independent contributions towards reading and spelling outcomes. Reading comprehension was explained by orthographic processing, nonverbal ability, children's attitudes towards reading and word identification. Thus, knowledge of family history and children's attitudes and perceptions towards reading provides important additional information when evaluating reading skills among a normative sample of early adolescents.     

Aspirations and actions: early childhood from policy to practice in Scotland

This paper explores early childhood experience in Scotland in terms of how readily the aspirations of policy convert to day-to-day practices. Ambitions to improve the lives of children and families have been high on the political agenda. Policy may be understood as a tool that aims to influence childhood experience in positive ways. If this is to be so, then the processes that effect change and their limitations need to be understood better, as do the underpinning values and assumptions. The workforce is at the heart of the endeavour to put policy aspirations into action: they are considered to be agents of change. In exploring such issues this paper draws on a policy-based functional analysis of the children's workforce [Dunlop, A.-W., L. Seagraves, S. Henderson, J. Henry, J. Martlew, and J. Fee. 2011. A Policy-Based Functional Analysis of the Children's Workforce. For Scottish Government: Children and Young People Social Care Directorate, Workforce and Capacity Issues Division] and on policy developments since. The paper therefore discusses Scottish policy aspirations for young children and their families, the contribution of the workforce to achieving those aspirations and asks if staff competence in itself is sufficient to ensure policy delivery for all in a climate where child poverty continues to contribute to unequal lives.     

Social Justice,Democratic Education and the Silencing of Words that Wound

In recent years, research within the sociocultural perspective on moral learning has contributed important knowledge about how individuals develop their moral ability by participating in sociocultural activities. To a lesser extent, sociocultural research has focused on the role of individual continuity in these processes. The purpose of this article is to contribute to the progress of the sociocultural perspective by suggesting an approach that allows for an in situ analysis of how individuals' prior experiences take part in the processes of moral meaning‐making, which also takes sociocultural activity into consideration. The philosophical and methodological basis for this approach consists of a combination of Dewey's transactional perspective on meaning‐making and Wittgenstein's first‐person perspective on language use. The article contains an empirical example that illustrates this approach. This analysis shows how prior experiences are re‐actualised in an event and thus participate in the process of moral meaning‐making, as well as contributing to the substance of the meanings made.     

Concurrent Evaluation of Customer Relationship Management and Organizational Excellence: An Empirical Study

This article concurrently studies customer relationship management (CRM ) and organizational excellence (OE ) by pursuing three goals. First, it investigates the relationship between CRM and OE ; second, it conducts a performance assessment from CRM and OE viewpoints; and third, it analyzes how each factor of CRM and each criterion of OE affects an organization's performance. To achieve the first goal, a number of hypotheses about potential relationships between CRM factors and OE criteria are proposed with the cooperation of experts and using fuzzy DEMATEL . These hypotheses are then examined using the path analysis method to find out which one is supported and which one must be rejected. Subsequently, the data envelopment analysis (DEA ) approach is employed to accomplish the second goal. Finally, a t‐test is used to achieve the third goal. To implement the research in the real world, two major international airports of Iran are considered as our survey cases.     

Now that we have all these people,what are we supposed to do with them? a field guide to workforce optimization by Ken Johnson

Ken Johnson has been helping people realize their job performance potential for 20 years. He switched from being a department manager to a career in training in 1989, completing his master's degree in instructional systems design in 1992. Today he works with people in 16 countries, applying the real‐world lesson that employee development must show its clear tie to bottom‐line results if it is to survive in the boardroom. Now That We Have All These People, What Are We Supposed to Do with Them? (ISBN: 1‐4196‐9167‐8) is published by Booksurge.     

Coming to Content Management: Inventing Infrastructure for Organizational Knowledge Work

Two project profiles depict content management as inquiry-driven practice. The first profile reflects on a project for a national professional organization that began with a deceptively simple request to improve the organization's website, but ended with recommendations that ran to the very core mission of the organization. The second profile focuses on an organization's current authoring practices and tools in order to prepare for a significant change: allowing users to develop and organize content.