What are the capabilities necessary to meet 21st century challenges? Much of the literature on 21st century skills focuses on skills necessary to meet those challenges associated with future work in a globalised world. The result is a limited characterisation of those capabilities necessary to address 21st century social, health and particularly…

Multiple contexts shape team activities and how they learn, and group learning is a dynamic construct that reflects a repertoire of potential behaviour. The purpose of this developmental paper is to examine how better learning behaviours in semi-autonomous teams improves the level of team adaptability and performance. The discussion suggests that…

The typical conference consists of a series of PowerPoint presentations that tend to render participants passive. Students of learning have long abandoned the transfer model that underlies such one-way communication. We propose an alternative theory of conferences that sees them as a forum for learning, mutual inspiration and human flourishing. We…

Nowadays we are experiencing profound economic and social changes, which cause new and different migratory fluxes in the search for better living conditions. In this manner, the human tissue that composes societies is getting diverse. Therefore we can now find new minorities originating from immigration, whose members possess ethnic, religious,…

This paper presents results of two research works, the first approaches non-formal education and the second addresses formal education. In both studies in-depth interview techniques were used. There were some points of convergence between them on aspects such as the implementation of learning environments and the integration of ICT. The interview…

Cooperation between disseminated actors is a key factor in improving new product development (NPD) performance. In the last years, numerous CSCW software applications have been introduced in the industry to support NPD with a low success rate. This is partly due to the limited insight of the organisational and human factors influencing user…

This paper shows the implementation of "5S"--a Japanese concept of housekeeping--through action research methodology. The organisational issue it tackles is the cultural inhibition among the Indian population against cleaning. It uses soft systems methodology (SSM), action science and Schein's idea of clinical enquiry to bring about an enduring…

Companies make concerted efforts to survive in a radically changing global society with the advent of a highly-networked and information-rich society that is featured by intense market competition. Manufacturing industries in particular have a tendency to rely on technological development strengths as a means of survival in a highly globalised and…

Organisational defensive patterns, including skilled incompetence, organisational defensive routines and fancy footwork, are considered to be a hindrance to effective learning and innovation capacity building in all organisations. The purpose of this research is to investigate: 1) the perceptions of the influence of organisational defensive…

Notwithstanding the emancipation and advancements of women all over the world in 21st century, women continue to be under-represented in management positions. The role of women as managers encompassed even those areas of work, which were earlier considered to be strongly man's domain like the police organisation. The objective of the study was to…

Communicating evidence-based practices to the providers and users of health services can enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of these services. However, this knowledge is not consistently conveyed to either cohort. To address this issue, this paper identifies didactic methods that facilitate knowledge transfer to providers and users of health…

Using multiple constituencies approach, variances in competencies in human resource leadership have been studied as this is becoming highly significant in India's globalisation efforts. Previous research in leadership orientation focused on localisation of human resource competencies rather than its globalisation. For this, human resource…

This paper aims at testing a conceptual model connecting variables of the internal and external work environment to ITES/BPO employee turnover. Based on the gaps identified from the literature that no single model explains in a comprehensive way as to why, people choose to leave and the lack of turnover studies on call centers located in India.…

Orthodox theories of consultancy address power relations between the consultant and their contractors. However, they can suggest that either the consultant should manipulate those they work with "for the good", or they should give up their power "for the good". This article offers an ethical critique of these points of view and argues for an…

In today's business thinking, innovation is commonly equated with progress, indicating an underlying assumption that company management have the power to choose a specific future and control the way into it. Drawing on examples from a longitudinal research initiative in the Norwegian petroleum company StatoilHydro, this article raises some of the…