A framework for senior charge nurses (SCNs) who want to plan their career development, or enhance their levels of knowledge and skills, has been launched on the NHS Education for Scotland website.

Learning and Development

This study developed and tested a model of job uncertainty for survivors and victims of downsizing. Data were collected from three samples of employees in a public hospital, each representing three phases of the downsizing process: immediately before the announcement of the redeployment of staff, during the implementation of the downsizing, and towards the end of the official change programme. As predicted, levels of job uncertainty and personal control had a direct relationship with emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction. In addition, there was evidence to suggest that personal control mediated the relationship between job uncertainty and employee adjustment, a pattern of results that varied across each of the three phases of the change event. From the perspective of the organization’s overall climate, it was found that levels of job uncertainty, personal control and job satisfaction improved and/or stabilized over the downsizing process. During the implementation phase, survivors experienced higher levels of personal control than victims, but both groups of employees reported similar levels of job uncertainty. We discuss the implications of our results for strategically managing uncertainty during and after organizational change.

Job uncertainty and personal control during downsizing: A comparison of survivors and victims

Organizational learning to manage sustainable development

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between organizational structure and performance, especially through organizational learning and innovation, based on evidence from Austria and China.Design/methodology/approach – Based on the literature and hypothesis, a theoretical, conceptual and structural equation model is set up through a questionnaire survey and sample of about 90 Austrian and 71 Chinese samples. Partial least squares were used in the analysis and the results are tested by bootstrap methods.Findings – The findings reinforce the important infrastructure position of organizational structure on performance. First, organizational structure has more effects on organizational learning than on innovation, organizational learning has an indirect effect on performance through innovation, except the direct effect of structure on performance. Second, managers in Austria think structure has a more important effect on performance; both managerial and technical innovation inf...

How does organizational structure influence performance through learning and innovation in Austria and China

For small economies, as the case of Lithuania, export is substantial in sustaining growth and vitality. Export development has contributed significantly in terms of capital inflows, employment, expansion of industry and widening the production base. Export has also allowed domestic industries to achieve some economies of scale, which otherwise would not have been possible due to the limited domestic market size. Nowadays the results, changes and dynamics of foreign trade are best indices to evaluate capabilities of national companies to compete in open global economy.

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Lithuanian Export Competitiveness: Comparison with other Baltic States

Today organization is the constantly changing, flexi-ble, entrepreneur or similarly titled organization having the peculiar feature – the constant learning in individual, group or organizational level. Constant learning changes not only the enterprise but the employee and the staff as well. The employee should be acknowledged with the phi-losophical provisions of learning and the enterprise must ensure its staff suitable communication, self-realization and motivation system. Learning in individual, group and organizational level is the object of the research of many scientists (Wiegand, Senge, Nanoka, Levit, March et al (see Al-Laham, 2003)). The importance of individual and organizational culture for learning is especially stressed (Barney J.B., 1986;Sackmann S., 1992, much attention has been given to designing of motivation systems and other questions. But learning and the progress related with it, and changes proceed in specific surroundings where the per-son-organization is the main character but his/her activ-ity is limited or stimulated by the specific enterprise and the surrounding atmosphere. Every enterprise is organ-ized for some special technological process and this cre-ates some special structure based on labour functional division and specialization. This includes both production and service processes. This is the so called hard structure that often conflicts with requirements raised to learning-changing organization. The hard part of the organization is inert and it changes very slowly. Due to this the con-tradiction between the propagated theory and the actu-ally existing practice exists – the theory development does not find the necessary medium. One of such hard factors is the enterprise organiza-tional structures. Mintzberg H.(1976, 1983) paid consid-erable attention to their theoretical and practical aspects, new organizational structures were also investigated by Lithuanian authors such as Seilius A., (1988) et al. But this problem is very often analyzed separately when the structural issues are revealed one-sidedly. This work discusses the development possibilities of organizational structures with the requirements of the quickly changing learning organization in mind.

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Interaction of Learning Organization and Organizational Structure

Today's companies are experiencing significant pressures from increased levels of competition, rapidly changing market requirements, higher rates of technical obsolescence, shorter product life-cycles and the heightened importance of meeting the needs of increasingly sophisticated customers. Many companies realize that in order to provide value and win customers they now need to quickly and accurately identify changing customer needs, develop more complex products to satisfy those needs, provide higher levels of customer support and service, and utilize the power of information technology to provide greater functionality and performance. Consequently, greater focus is being placed in having new product development frameworks that achieve an optimized balance of internal execution effectiveness, coupled with an ability to delight customers (Shepherd, Ahmed, 2000). Learning and accumulation of (new) knowledge in an organization always start with the individual. An individual’s personal knowledge has to be transformed into information that other members of the organization can use in their accumulation of knowledge in order to apply it to create (new) values for the organization. Learning and accumulation of new knowledge in an organization always require two transformation processes: one transformation process from data to information and another from information to (new) knowledge. This is so because only information, and not knowledge, can be shared and spread among the members of the organization. This paper emphasizes the importance of learning on new product development and demonstrates that learning is a critical component of such development. Learning in new product development process is cited as being vital in today’s competitive, uncertain and turbulent environments. In this study we present three general learning styles and two main categories of Non-Duetero and Duetero learning, emphasizing their performance in new product development process. It is also given a multi - dimensional learning framework in new product development which is best conceived with nine correlated but distinct elements: information acquisition, information dissemination, information implementation, unlearning, thinking, improvisation, intelligence, sense-making, and memory. Akgun, Lynn and Reilly (2002) affirm, that organizational learning is not just information acquisition or information implementation, it is a combination of many cognitive components. Because fierce market, customer needs and technological environments make learning a standard requirement for organizations competitiveness, they can be successful in their new products only if they learn more quickly than their competitors. The results of scientific literature analysis showed that Duetero learning is more: knowledgeable about the factors that drive successful and failed products; inclined to establish business goals and employ balanced measures when benchmarking new product development. All this suggests that organizational learning should be considered as a critical component in new product development.

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The Three-loop Learning Model Appliance in New Product Development

An increase of employees role in organization is determined by the set of changes of activity environment. Restructuring of the country‘s economy, perfection of technology, development of information society, changes in structure of organizations, globalization and internationalization make organizations change the attitude to the personnel. An increasing role of employee inside organization changes a standing attitude to employee‘s training, motivation, demand satisfaction and forces to look for the new possibilities to satisfy personnel interests. Modern career formation could be considered as complex measures that ensure coordination of interests of personnel and organization. Career integrates a set of partial possibilities of personnel interests satisfaction (motivation system, innovative methods of work organization, planning of individual career for all employees in organization, etc.). Modern organizations supporting a model of modern career are being formed under the influence of up-to-date changes. Therefore in order to realize a modern career model effectively we primailly need to research the interests of organization‘s personnel. The performed research showed that employees highlight the social psychological interests more than material ones. The results of the research proved that the tendencies of personnel interests in Lithuanian organizations are close to those of western countries. Judging on results of the research, appropriate measures of interests satisfaction should be applied in the enterprises. It should be noted that personnel interests profile formed during the investigation can‘t be considered a typical interests profile of employees of Lithuania. This requires research of a wider extent.

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Influence of Personnel Interests on Formation of Modern Career

The paper points out the construct of the model of crisis situation diagnosis in a company, emphasizing the importance of crisis situation diagnosis for a company's successful performance. Applying a systemic analysis of the variety of crisis situation concepts, the authors generalize the different crisis situation definitions found in the scientific literature and define the conception of crisis situation in a company. Though a crisis situation is often described as a negative phenomenon, however, the authors emphasize its positive influence on the further company's performance focusing on the importance of the diagnosis of a crisis situation in its primary stage. It shows the complexity of the scientific research object. Obviously discussed object brings meaningful input to the analysis of crisis features in a company. In the paper crisis situation diagnosis has been defined as the application of different methods to unfold the features of the diagnosing phenomenon. The importance of crisis situation diagnosis in a company's management system is huge because it lets estimating the state of a company and making decisions for further its performance. The paper aims at presenting the model of crisis situation diagnosis in a company (CSDC). The realization of the model involves three stages: analysis of the factors determining crisis situation in a company; crisis diagnosis and its depth estimation; analysis of the crisis causes, and the definition of further company's goals and decision making. The CSDC model describes a general crisis situation diagnosis process in a company, emphasizing the necessity of a new method integrating artificial neural network (ANN) application together with the widely known traditional methods. The presented CSDC model unfolds additional advantages in a crisis diagnosis process: it enables to evaluate crisis depth in a company, to estimate crisis diagnosis results in dynamics, to use the dynamic rates which estimate internal and external environment changes and to do calculations quickly and in details. The interpretation - positivistic methodological approach has been chosen to solve the described problem what enables to reveal the subjective assessment of the phenomenon and point out the researchers' attitude to the analyzed problems. The results of the model application have been summarized and further application perspectives as well as its improving possibilities have been pointed out. Having carried out the theoretical research and empirical analysis on the model of crisis situation diagnosis in a company, its advantages and disadvantages were emphasized. http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ee.22.3.515

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Algimantas Sakalas

Papers

Interaction of Learning Organization and Organizational Structure

The Three-loop Learning Model Appliance in New Product Development

Influence of Personnel Interests on Formation of Modern Career

Construct of the Model of Crisis Situation Diagnosis in a Company

Evaluation of Human Capital Role in the Value Creation Process