No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This research is concerned with the problems faced by managers within manufacturing when they are expected to successfully implement a major change within their organisation. It uses, as the vehicle for the research, the Theory of Constraints Thinking Process (TOC/TP) first developed by Dr Goldratt between 1986 and 1994. The TOC is used by managers to determine what requires to be changed within their organisation and then to develop both the solution and the implementation strategy. The research has used the access obtained by the researcher to examine the approaches adopted by manufacturing managers in implementing improvement projects, which involve significant change. The primary focus of the research was to confirm the existence of a significant barrier to change and to determine whether this was a function of the individual. Once the obstacle had been identified in specific situations, the second step was to consider whether the obstacle could be described in a generic form with application to a much wider range of change environments. The final stage was to replicate the exploratory stage in other companies in other countries through the involvement of colleagues of the researcher and then consider what might be included in any change project, which would overcome the obstacle so defined. The primary method of data collection was through the application of action research and the development of the data in the form of case studies. The number and types of companies that took part in the study and the range of countries was intended to ensure a reasonable spread of data. The results suggest that one of the key obstacles to change is that outlined in the research problem and that the TOC/TP, through the use of the cloud technique, can describe this obstacle and give direction to the way of successfully dealing with it.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Open University. BLDSC no. DX216017.

The focus of my research is teachers' planned professional development experience and the effect of context on teachers' learning and changes to practice. It seeks to understand effective approaches to teachers' learning, contribute to knowledge and identify implications for practitioners and policy makers. The research begins with an investigation into young people's and teachers' perceptions of effective classroom work. A significant mis-match is found between what is experienced and what they perceive is effective . This is analysed in terms of inhibiting forces and contradictions influencing teachers' practice. An in-service programme is designed as a change strategy for the teachers involved. The research findings suggest this is only partially successful in bringing about change. From a critique of theoretical perspectives of professional development an expanded approach is created. This approach forms the basis of another programme for teachers which includes working collaboratively and integrating personal and professional learning. The research findings demonstrate that this in itself is not enough to bring about changes to professional practice. A typology of teachers' planned development experiences is created and a set of hypotheses used to investigate teachers' personal constructs of the effectiveness of professional experiences for change to professional practice . The significance of the learning context and subjective experiences emerge. This leads to the redesign of the programme to include an explicit focus on learning and the use of action research to bring about change within teachers' own contexts. The research continues to focus on contextual influences in organisational learning. It analyses the effects of a change that contributes to organisational learning by tracking one organisation's revision of its appraisal scheme. Key conclusions emerge: teachers' learning, the processes of learning and the organisational context have strong influences on one other. Effective professional learning for positive outcomes requires both a multi-dimensional and context specific view of learning.

No / This paper analyses whether and how organizational learning from diversification experience affects diversification value. Three main findings are reported. First, we find a U-shaped relationship between diversification value and diversification experience. Second, higher similarity in industries of diversifications results in higher diversification value. Finally, value of diversification and temporal interval between diversifications is related an inverted U-shaped curve. In the extension analysis, the paper demonstrates that external learning from others’ experience also affects value of diversification in a cubic pattern. Taken together, the study illustrates the effects learning from both own and population experience on the cross-sectional variance of diversification value.

This thesis explores organisational learning, a process of improving actions through better knowledge and understanding (Fiol & Lyles, 1985). Organisational learning is essential in an organisation's ability to evolve and grow and respond to environmental changes and is implicated in its survival. While all organisations are said to be learning constantly, the processes involved in this learning are highly contested, multi-layered and intricate. Knowledge, memory and practice have been implicated in the multi-faceted nature of organisational learning. This study examines the role of organisational learning in stability and change patterns and the ways that this learning is manifested in an organisational context. In particular, this study focuses on the routine actions taken by organisational members and their role in reproducing relations of stability and change organisationally. It employs Giddens's Structuration Theory (1984) as a sensitising device to view the relationship between organisational structure and employees as one of mutual constitution where knowledgeable agents both produce their world at the same time as they reproduce it anew through their daily actions. The research takes the form of a single case study comprising interview and documentary data collected over a period of eighteen months with an aerospace manufacturing company. The analysis of the findings indicated that organisations and the individuals who comprise them: are driven by a mutual objective that directs collective action; constantly interpret the information they receive from within and outside the organisation and act upon their interpretations; and accept that such varied interpretations can and do create conflict about organisational priorities. The findings are presented in the context of existing literature on organisational learning, knowing, remembering, practising and routine work; and within the theoretical framework of structure and agency. In doing so this study discusses the transformation of the organisation through practices, thus making stability and change constantly present rather than being viewed as mutually exclusive. This transformation is constant because organisations are comprised of individuals who engage in knowing as an element of living. Individual employees, driven by incomplete and provisional knowledge, engage in learning about their work, their organisation and how to improve by constantly interpreting the knowledge transmitted to them through their socialisation in and through organisational practices. Their knowing and learning is continuous; when practising routine work not only do they reproduce the conditions that make their actions possible, they also produce the organisation anew. Better knowledge has increased the capacities of employees and their contribution to organisational efficiency has improved. In their joint efforts they have thus transformed the organisation which in turn forces change back upon the individuals – a transformed organisation needs to be interpreted and understood once more and the cycle starts again. Organisational learning can be viewed as the transformation of the organisation, not only through major changes that are deliberate and contingent, but also though the subtle alterations that happen continuously in the course of each day as people go about their work.