Michael Zanko

The Use of Personality Typing in Organizational Change: Discourse, Emotions and the Reflexive Subject

This article is based on a study of an organizational change program that sought to alter employees’ self-perceptions, emotions and behavior through the use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a popular personality-typing tool. The program affords an opportunity to explore the various ways in which discourses advocating personal and organizational change work through employees’ subjectivity. We argue that theoretical approaches that view the targets of such programs as passive - as either ‘colonized’ or constructed by discourses - fail to capture the complex and contradictory nature of organizational control, and subjects’ changing positions within it. Drawing on symbolic interactionism, we argue that the power of discourses is mediated through an active, reflexive, and often emotional engagement on the part of individuals. Through their involvement, employees variously reproduce, resist or reconfigure power relationships which, during organizational change, are themselves unstable and inconsistent.

Occupational Health and Safety Management in Organizations: A Review

In examining the research literature on occupational health and safety (OHS), this paper argues that the growth in the number of specialists in OHS has resulted in an emphasis on policy and practice away from more scholastic concerns previously addressed by academics in the disciplines of psychology and sociology. A hiatus has occurred, and this is evidenced by the general absence of studies in management, even though OHS is increasingly seen as a key operational and strategic concern of business organizations. The authors call for OHS to be placed firmly on the research agenda of management scholars, and advocate the need for greater conceptual development, empirical study and theoretical reflection to complement existing pragmatic concerns of OHS specialists. In this review, the contributions of psychology, sociology, industrial relations and management studies are assessed, and five categories of specialist OHS literature are analysed, namely: prescriptive; systematic OHS management; success based; error and disaster based; and culture, climate and high‐reliability studies. The conceptual and methodological limitations of this specialist focus are discussed, and future research opportunities are highlighted, for which the authors argue that management scholars embrace a range of methodological approaches. The authors advocate the value of extended case studies which examine OHS in context and over time in particular workplace settings. There remains considerable scope to develop this field further and, in conclusion, particular attention is drawn to the value of process‐oriented contextual approaches for understanding OHS management in organizations.

Designer Deviance: Enterprise and Deviance in Culture Change Programmes

This article explores the value of investigating cultural change programmes as exercises in engineering deviance. It does so through a case study of an organizational development cultural change programme at Sprogwheels, a large Australian corporation. Drawing on and extending the classic work of Becker (1966), the article details how the programme combined a moral crusade against what it sought to have labelled as the ‘deviant conservatism’ of the existing organizational culture with social support for ‘deviant radicalism’, in the form of a counter-cultural, self-enterprising set of middle managers promoting corporate change. The article explores the complex and contradictory ideas of deviance that are deployed in such programmes, and examines the implications of a deviance analysis for an improved understanding of the dynamics of cultural change.

Innovation and HRM: absences and politics

This article analyses the role of HRM practices in the implementation of an innovative cross-functional approach to new product development (concurrent engineering, CE) in Eurotech Industries. Contrary to CE methodology stipulations, and despite supportive conditions, HRM received scant attention in the implementation process. Organizational power and politics were clearly involved in this situation, and this article explores how their play created such HRM ‘absences’. The article builds on a four-dimensional view of power in order to provide a deeper understanding of the embedded, interdependent and political nature of HRM practice and innovation.

Change and diversity: HRM issues and trends in the Asia-Pacific region

This paper reports on key human resource management (HRM) trends and issues in 21 economies that are part of a project to study contextually embedded HRM policies and practices in the Asia -Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), a major international regional organization. After a brief description of the Global Advantage Through People project, the identified HRM trends and issues are analysed in terms of: time, the World Bank classification of developed and developing economies, regional regime membership, culture and the aggregate APEC level. This analysis is undertaken in order to ascertain any similarities, differences or patterns that enhance our understanding of HRM. The results provide a useful basis for future comparative HRM research in the Asia-Pacific region that is pitched at finer grained analysis at organization/industry levels.

Implementing concurrent engineering

This article addresses the conditions necessary for firms to implement concurrent engineering successfully. Although there has been considerable interest in concurrent engineering since the late 1980s, and many books and articles have been published on this approach to product innovation, there is still some confusion about the concept, and the issues associated with its successful implementation remain largely unresearched. This article seeks to add to the body of knowledge in these areas by drawing on recent Australian surveys and on the findings of four case studies of the introduction of concurrent engineering in Australian firms. It is argued that concurrent engineering research may be usefully extended by adopting a “sociotechnical configuration” approach to further extend the study of implementation practices.

The role of human resource management in concurrent engineering approaches to product innovation: Australian and Indonesian experiences

Where human resource management (HRM) has been addressed in concurrent engineering (CE), it has been universalistic, prescriptive, and issues rather than system based. This article challenges this perspective through a critical examination of CE and its associated cross-functional arrangements. Following a review of HRM in CE, an analytic framework is proposed for the systematic exploration of HRM in product innovation. Next, a case analysis of HRM involvement in CE initiatives in Australian and Indonesian manufacturing firms is undertaken, and the implications for real and rhetorical change in CE practices are discussed.

Stories affording new pathways: bridging the divide between aged and disability care

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the early stages of change and the way that stories can open up forms of collaborative dialogue and creative thinking among divergent stakeholders on known but “intractable” problems by enabling multiple voices to be heard in the co-construction of future possibilities for change. The empirical focus is on a project undertaken by two organizations located in Australia. The organizations – AAC, a large aged care provider and Southern Disability Services, a disability support service – collaborated with the researchers in identifying and re-characterizing the nature of the problem in the process of storying new pathways for tackling the transitioning needs of people with intellectual disabilities into aged care services. Design/methodology/approach – An action research approach was used in conducting interviews in the case organizations to ascertain the key dimensions of the presenting problem and to identify change options, this was followed by an ethnograp...

Mobilizing PD: Professional development for sessional teachers through mobile technologies

The emergence of mobile technologies has changed the higher education landscape. The expansion of mobile technologies in our classrooms presents new learning opportunities not just for students but also for teachers. While professional development is core business for higher education providers, over the years, increasing attention has been afforded to the growing cohort of casual teachers typically overlooked. Sessional teachers are at the interface of learning, yet have historically experienced limited professional development. A unique opportunity is presented to utilize the flexibly of mobile technologies with the needs of time-poor, provisional sessional teachers. This chapter explores this notion and what this might look like by offering two exemplary cases. B. Dean (*) • M. Zanko • J. Turbill University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia e-mail: bonnie_dean@uow.edu.au; mzanko@uow.edu.au; jturbill@uow.edu.au # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015 Y.A. Zhang (ed.), Handbook of Mobile Teaching and Learning, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-54146-9_55 165 These cases demonstrate ways in which to use the affordances of mobile technologies to deliver and customize professional development, thereby embedding professional learning in practice. This is an important strategic, pedagogical, and capacity building movement that currently seems to be lacking in uptake and explication of best practice.

Rebels without applause: time, politics and irony in action research

Purpose – This paper seeks to raise for discussion and reflection some of the key dynamics of action research projects‐in‐practice. It focuses in particular on how action researchers broker academic and client interests, and how this brokering shifts over time.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on participant observation, drawing on the reflective and processual accounts of action researchers involved in a collaborative academic–industry–government project.Findings – The paper argues that the scope of action research projects to effectively address the needs of both audiences is compromised by managerialism in universities and organizations. However, the emergent and chaotic nature of action research provides opportunities for researchers to overcome some of these limitations.Research limitations/implications – The paper provides a model and case analysis to support critical reflection amongst action researchers.Practical implications – If the argument of the paper is accepted, then action r...