Academic leaders face particular challenges when they assume formal leadership roles in higher education. For the most part, they have had little prior engagement with the political, economic and strategic context of their institution and limited leadership networks on which to draw. The University of Western Australia has trialled a number of…

Organisations are continuously challenged to become more strategic, productive and cost-effective. As a result, quality management has become increasingly important to achieve desired organisational performance outcomes. Quality management considers leadership an important component to implement and sustain quality products and services to…

The article reports results from a research facilitated learning project carried out in an engineering department in an oil and gas company. The objective of the project was to enhance an awareness of and the ability to use, dialogue and reflection-based learning approaches. The results document that the project-based engineering setting induces…

Modern managers expect staff to accept more responsibility. However, not all of them want to take more responsibility. Others complain of not having enough responsibility entrusted to them and expect more autonomy and decision-making. In this paper, responsibility is defined as being accountable and fulfilling one's duty while being in charge.…

Knowledge workers in software firms solve client problems in sequential and cyclical work processes. Sequential and cyclical work takes place in the value configuration of a value shop. While typical examples of value chains are manufacturing industries such as paper and car production, typical examples of value shops are law firms and medical…

In recent years, strategic management concepts seem to be gaining greater attention from the academicians and the practitioner's alike. Balanced Scorecard (BSC) concept is one such management concepts that has spread in worldwide business and consulting communities. The BSC translates mission and vision statements into a comprehensive set of…

Within a difficult social setting the starting point for change is the personal learning experiences of those struggling for the change. The learning experiences of people belonging to a community of underprivileged in Brazil are presented in this article in order to recognise how sustainable change is rooted in personal learning experiences. The…

In two consecutive papers, we will be exploring the relevance of taking a complexity perspective on innovation processes. In this first part, we discuss why there is a need for novel perspectives in this research field and why the theoretical and methodological approach of the "complex responsive processes perspective" is relevant in meeting these…

In this second part of the papers, exploring innovation processes from a complexity perspective, we present an empirical example to strengthen further the relevance of the approach. The example draws on a longitudinal research initiative conducted in cooperation with the Norwegian petroleum company Statoil ASA. We conducted our research into the…