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'Rethinking Leadership' is a conference in Lancaster June 2005. As there is no third conference on 'Management Theory at Work' I attempted to introduce a paper for this conference as it seems the most suitable. 'Management Learning' remains a common theme but the Department has moved from 'learning organisations' to 'leadership' as a focus. I have put some text about 'critique' on another page.

'Leadership' is not the topic I would choose to emphasise but it is one factor in how organisations work.

I still think the organisation is a context for leaderhip. I am now interested in e-learning and how this is introduced on various sites. I hope to attend the conference and learn more about leadership.

Proposal as suggested

"How learning centres adapt to work with the technologies around e-learning"

"Learning centres" can include any organisation concerned with learning. Leadership is one aspect of this, in the context of organisations and technology change.

The question is how leadership recognises the issues and influences the development of learning resources. These resources could take different forms over time. I would like there to be a workshop on this so these notes could be one contribution. There will be material online as background. e-learning can contribute to leadership training but probably as part of a blend.

My own experience is through working on quality so I tend to look at organisations as systems.

At previous conferences on 'Management Theory in Action' I contributed papers on ISO 9000 and on Deming. The work context has been in the printing industry and in web design, mostly with PDF. There has been rapid technical change in both areas. There will be related changes for libraries and educational organisations.

For most of the first 'Management Theory in Action' conference it was possible to talk about a 'learning organisation'. This is now mentioned less, but is still useful. Ideas such as 'followership' and 'distributed leadership' indicate that the wider context is still relevant.. Burgoyne and Jackson (1997) link 'the learning organisation' with 'total quality management' and 'business process re-engineering' as part of a 'rapid succession of...'fads',,'magic bullets'. The same sort of thing might happen in universities with 'critique' or 'leadership' as topics with their own timeline. The 'learning organisation' has been recently mentioned by Prolearn, an EU project looking at e-learning.

I think Deming emphasised the need for management involvement in a quality project because he did not want projects to be blocked once momentum had started.

The research that is most relevant for me is the area of Networked Management Learning

"Networked Management Learning takes a somewhat more circumspect view of learning than currently popular ideas of communities of practice. It is a view of learning in which dialogical construction of meaning is a basic characteristic within all communication. Collaboration and interaction supported by communications technology is probably the key-defining feature of networked management learning as a management learning and development approach."

Arguably 'dialogical construction of meaning' is only one part of management learning on the web. 'Networked Management Learning' seems to have been defined to limit it to a particular 'subjective' area. Exetreme has developed websites for the Centre for Evidence Based Social Services. Mostly this is fast access to advice documents with summaries of research. The forum aspect is little used, with almost no questioning of the advice offered.

However, it is the ‘collaboration’ features of software that are developing most quickly. Acrobat 7 makes some functions available for certain PDFs within the free Reader. I find ‘critique’ more interesting as a way of thinking about how learning happens when these sort of tools are used.

Previous text continuing some ideas

Communities of Practice and Network Publishing

This page is a draft / notes for a future paper / workshop. I once thought there would be a third 'Management Theory at Work' in 2005 but it now seems more likely that some similar issues will come up as part of a conference on Leadership. See PDF. The aim would be to relate work on quality to theory about learning. The content might be similar to previous attempts but there could be some development.

During the first two conferences, the main focus seems to have moved on from 'organisation' to 'leadership'. I am probably stuck in the past but I think the idea of a 'learning organistaion' still has something going for it. I can't see that just concentrating on leadership makes things any easier. A lot of the same problems still remain.

The first conference started with a keynote from John Burgoyne on how the 'virtual' ( internet etc.) changed the idea of a learning, knowledge-managing organisation. There was no conclusion as the discussion moved on to 'critique' by the end but I think this is an idea to come back to.

I would be interested in a workshop that looked at 'communities of practice' and then at what is happening in work areas described by Adobe as 'network publishing'. The original description of communities of practice seemed to assume that knowledge is more or less fixed. How do communities cope with change? For example as web and print workflows can be combined, are there examples of design teams that actually do this? My guess is that by 2005 related technology will relate to changes in libraries and academic publishing as well as in the print industry. 'Network publishing' is a concept that is socially constructed as people amend the original Adobe ideas. Originally intended as a description of 2004, Adobe now limit it to 'creative professionals' as they move on to offices and 'intelligent documents'.

The relevance for the Leadership and 'success for all' conference would be thtough the technology changes that are happening. e-learning is disruptive. How do institutions adapt? 'Leadership' strikes me as too limited a concept to cope, but is worth exploring.

Asian ideas are interesting as an alternative basis for criticising western philosophy and management. I am reading 'The Knowledge Creating Company' but can't get past chapter two on where western management ideas come from. I hope to get further during 2004. I have started to send reports to OhmyNews in South Korea so may get some feedback.

Adobe on Network Publishing
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressmaterials/networkpublishing/main.html

Emergent Industry Leadership and the Selling of Technological Visions : A Social Constructionist View
Michael Levanhagen, Joseph F. Porac, Howard Thomas
in Strategic Thinking, edited by John Hendry, Gerry Johnson and Julia Newton
Wiley 1993

Making Quality Critical
Wilkinson, A. and Wilmott, H.C. Routledge 1995

Making Sense of Management
Alvesson, M. and Wilmott, H.C. Sage 1996

The Virtual, Knowledge-managing, Learning Organisation?
John Burgoyne, keynote for Management Theory at Work Sept 2001

The Knowledge Creating Company
Nonaka I, and Takeuchi, H. Oxford 1995

NEW Jan 04

I have found a PDF through EQUEL that could be relevant

Joining Forces by Nina Tange looks at communities of practice and change, using "open source" as a case study.

Poster for discussions in Exeter (100k)

Bits and pieces from Exeter will be transferred here, for example these links found during Alt-C

Some material web captured to PDF

Pedagogical Advantages of Ubiquitous Computing in a Wireless Environment by Susana M. Sotillo

Towards a Philosophy of M-Learning Kristóf Nyíri:

more will follow later