Karin Breu

Workforce agility: the new employee strategy for the knowledge economy

The notion of the agile workforce has been discussed as central to creating the agile organization, which achieves superior environmental responsiveness in contexts of turbulence and change. Previous agility research has focused overly on the organization, paying scant attention to the workforce. This paper addresses a significant gap in agility research by reporting on the first empirical study to examine how the pressures of organizational agility impact upon the workforce. Survey evidence from 515 UK organizations is used for eliciting an initial indicator of workforce agility. The data suggest that agile workforces acquire the five capabilities of intelligence, competencies, collaboration, culture and information systems (IS). From an information technology (IT) perspective the determinants of workforce agility are flexible infrastructure platforms that support the rapid introduction of new IS and the enhancement of IT competencies across the entire workforce. The survey also revealed that information and communications technology applications increase workforce agility most when used for collaborative working.

Useful knowledge for information systems practice: the contribution of the participatory paradigm

Information systems research has become methodologically pluralistic, not least in the hope of achieving greater relevance of scholarly output to practice. Although interventionist approaches have considerable potential for bridging the theory-practice gap, they are dismissed as unscientific because of the purported absence of a philosophical foundation that would justify the interactive research process and the co-productive relationships between researchers and practitioners that are so defining of this type of inquiry. The intention in this paper is to demonstrate that philosophical foundations for interventionist research strategies do exist. This task is pursued by the introduction of the participatory worldview, as articulated in the fields of sociology, philosophy and organization studies. The paper shows its distinctness to other, non-positivist paradigms, describes the participatory research process, presents participatory inquiry methods and extrapolates the distinctness of the knowledge they produce. The application of its paradigmatic principles is illustrated through an empirical example of a participatory research programme and the challenges that this approach presents for research practice are indicated.

Modelling individual transition in the context of organisational transformation

The processes of management development within a change management context have mostly been informed by models which assume that individuals can be developed by planned and purposive intervention to perform effectively within a new, forecast, but essentially stable environment. Alongside such shifts at individual and organisational level, the last decade has seen revolutionary change in national economies as the former state socialist countries transform themselves to participate in the global market economy. This paper, based on an in‐depth analysis of interviews with 73 chief executives and senior managers of 61 key companies in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), identifies a model of the individual transition process of managers during the process of state transformation. From this the authors draw lessons for the practice of management development under conditions of transformative change.

Challenges for Participatory Action Research in Industry-Funded Information Systems Projects

The purpose of this position paper is to open a discussion about the practicability of participatory action research (PAR) within industry-funded information systems (IS)research. We reflect on a project in which the undue exercise of power by the practitioners on the research team compromised the methodological rigor of the inquiry. Theories of power are used to articulate our reflections and develop suggestions for mitigating power imbalances on PAR research teams, although we conclude that PAR cannot be followed faithfully to its principles in industry-funded engagements.