The first two editions of the Handbook of Human Performance Technology helped define the rapidly growing and vibrant field of human performance technology—a systematic approach to improving individual and organizational performance. Exhaustively researched and edited by Dr. James A. Pershing, CPT, this third edition not only updates key foundational chapters on organizational change, evaluation, instructional design, and motivation, but features breakthrough chapters on “performance technology in action” and addresses many new topics in the field, such as certification, Six Sigma, and communities of practice. In this chapter, reprinted with permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (copyright 2006), Roger Addison and Carol Haig take you on a journey through the key elements of a full performance process with its pitfalls and how to avoid them. 相似文献
This paper critiques the so-called “Green Revolution” as a political myth of averted famine. A “political myth,” among other functions, reflects a narrative structure that characterizes understandings of causality between policy action and outcome. As such, the details of a particular political myth elevate certain policy options (and families of policy options) over others. One important narrative strand of the political myths of the Green Revolution is a story of averted famine: in the 1950s and 1960s, scientists predicted a global crisis to emerge in the 1970s and beyond, created by a rapidly growing global population that would cause global famine as food supplies would not keep up with demand. The narrative posits that an intense period of technological innovation in agricultural productivity led to increasing crop yields which led to more food being produced, and the predicted crisis thus being averted. The fact that the world did not experience a global famine in the 1970s is cited as evidence in support of the narrative. Political myths need not necessarily be supported by evidence, but to the extent that they shape understandings of cause and effect in policymaking, political myths which are not grounded in evidence risk misleading policymakers and the public. We argue a political myth of the Green Revolution focused on averted famine is not well grounded in evidence and thus has potential to mislead to the extent it guides thinking and action related to technological innovation. We recommend an alternative narrative: The Green Evolution, in which sustainable improvements in agricultural productivity did not necessarily avert a global famine, but nonetheless profoundly shaped the modern world. More broadly, we argue that one of the key functions of the practice of technology assessment is to critique and to help create the political myths that preserve an evidence-grounded basis for connecting the cause and effect of policy action and practical outcomes.
The purpose of this study was to examine changes in landing performance during fatigue that could result in increased stress fracture injury risk. Five participants performed nonfatigued and fatigued drop landings (0.60 m), while ground reaction force (GRF), electromyographic (EMG) activity, and kinematics were recorded. Fatigue was defined as a 5-20% reduction in vertical jumping performance. Single-subject analyses revealed that all participants were affected (p < or = .05) by fatigue. Post hoc comparisons revealed a group effect (p < or = .05) for selected variables. Participants landed with (a) less joint flexion at contact and used a greater range of motion, (b) greater GRF peaks and loading rates, and (c) less EMG activity. These changes were consistent with greater risk of stress fracture. 相似文献
Creativity is essential to the performance of product development programs (PDPs). Most PDPs are designed around teams that jointly work together according to the product decomposition into components, the design and development procedure, and the methods of the final integration. Since the creative product development task requires the teams to combine and integrate input from multiple other teams, the team's structure of interaction is an important determinant of their creativity. In research and practice, however, little is known about the social networks of the teams and their creativity within PDPs. In this study we investigate different structural aspects of social networks of such teams and their creativity within two multinational PDPs. The main results of our investigation imply that many direct network contacts around a weekly intensity stimulate the creativity of teams of PDPs, whereas very open networks with a high information variety minimizes the team's creativity. 相似文献