Corporate sustainability confronts managers with tensions between complex economic, environmental, and social issues. Drawing on the literature on managerial cognition, corporate sustainability, and strategic paradoxes, we develop a cognitive framing perspective on corporate sustainability. We propose two cognitive frames—a business case frame and a paradoxical frame—and explore how differences between them in cognitive content and structure influence the three stages of the sensemaking process—that is, managerial scanning, interpreting, and responding with regard to sustainability issues. We explain how the two frames lead to differences in the breadth and depth of scanning, differences in issue interpretations in terms of sense of control and issue valence, and different types of responses that managers consider with regard to sustainability issues. By considering alternative cognitive frames, our argument contributes to a better understanding of managerial decision making regarding ambiguous sustainability issues, and it develops the underlying cognitive determinants of the stance that managers adopt on sustainability issues. This argument offers a cognitive explanation for why managers rarely push for radical change when faced with complex and ambiguous issues, such as sustainability, that are characterized by conflicting yet interrelated aspects.

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Cognitive Frames in Corporate Sustainability: Managerial Sensemaking with Paradoxical and Business Case Frames

サイアート, マーチの「A Behavioral Theory of the Firm」

Abstract : A study is reported of the variations in organizational commitment and job satisfaction, as related to subsequent turnover in a sample of recently-employed psychiatric technician trainees. A longitudinal study was made across a 10 1/2 month period, with attitude measures collected at four points in time. For this sample, job satisfaction measures appeared better able to differentiate future stayers from leavers in the earliest phase of the study. With the passage of time, organizational commitment measures proved to be a better predictor of turnover, and job satisfaction failed to predict turnover. The findings are discussed in the light of other related studies, and possible explanations are examined. (Modified author abstract)

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Organizational Commitment, Job Satisfaction and Turnover Among Psychiatric Technicians. Technical Report No. 16.

Powershift: Knowledge, wealth and violence at the edge of the 21st century

Knowledge sharing in public services has not yet received much attention in the research literature. This paper investigates knowledge sharing in one public service context and identifies factors that influence the readiness of an organization to share knowledge effectively. Using participant observation, document analysis, interviews n=30 and a survey n=132, data are presented to highlight antecedents to effective knowledge sharing in healthcare service delivery. Through factor analysis and regression modeling, we have isolated six factors that are significant predictors of effective knowledge sharing. Our research is broadly consistent with previous findings that an innovative culture, a capacity to learn from failure and good information quality are strong predictors of successful knowledge sharing. However, we also identify factors associated with change management, and a predisposition to confront performance indicators, that significantly influence the knowledge sharing process. While we argue that our six-factor model may be equally relevant to private sector firms, we suggest that the peculiar nature of the public sector environment poses unique challenges for healthcare managers who seek to develop a knowledge sharing capability.

Organizational Readiness for Successful Knowledge Sharing: Challenges for Public Sector Managers

Knowledge management initiatives enable an organisation to learn from its successes and mistakes. The nature of knowledge and learning processes means that in seeking to improve the way the organisation learns, knowledge management also has to pay attention to the learning of individuals. In most organisations, other functional specialists also have responsibility for individual learning. This exploratory qualitative research has examined the ways that planned learning initiatives generated by knowledge management and human resources management functions can be integrated more effectively. A survey of the planned individual and organisational learning activities and processes in ten large organisations was undertaken. Eleven examples of initiatives that integrate individual and organisational learning were also identified from within these organisations. These were evaluated and the issues associated with implementation explored through an expert panel and interview process with knowledge managers and human resource managers. Factors that positively influence integration were found to include widespread recognition of the business value of both individual and organisational learning, high level sponsorship that acts as a bridge across functional boundaries and line managers adopting an integrating approach to learning in managing their people and the tasks they undertake. Factors that negatively impact the adoption of an integrated approach were found to include the lack of mechanisms to coordinate across functions and a culture in which functional managers feel unable to change practices. This research has generated a model that appears to be useful in organising the analysis of the planned learning initiatives that are being undertaken by different functions. Together with the examples of integration and its enablers and barriers, knowledge managers and human resource managers can use this to proactively move forward with a more “joined up” approach to learning.

Integrating individual and organisational learning initiatives: working across knowledge management and human resource management functional boundaries

Exploring e-collaboration space

Knowledge management (KM) is difficult to pin down. It means different things in different organisations. The deliberate use of metaphors has been used to communicate what KM is about. This metaphorical communication can be even more enriched using visual as well as language mechanisms: ”a picture paints a thousand words” suggests we can capture more resonances of a complex subject like KM through visuals than through a description alone. In addition, visuals are perceived to transcend the limitations of language, which can be an obstacle to communication. Yet, no method currently exists that we can use to identify KM metaphors used in visuals. This paper describes our search for a method to analyse metaphors used in visuals about knowledge management. Our objective was threefold: 1) identifying new metaphors for KM in visuals that can enrich KM theorizing, 2) developing a way to identify which visuals are the most powerful in
communicating KM theory, and 3) improving the use of visuals as a way of assessing students studying KM. We found that analysing metaphors used in KM visuals is possible using a method that focuses on the dominant metaphors in a visual.

Pictures of knowledge management: developing a method for analysing knowledge metaphors in visuals

Following criticism that, in business and management, metaphor is largely verbal and primarily used to convey similarity, this paper explores how visual metaphors can communicate the anomalous and the paradoxical aspects of KM more concisely than words, whilst simultaneously presenting more tacit associations to stimulate creative thinking. It considers a series of 30 assessed posters that aimed to re-present six basic KM paradoxes through imagery that captures both the analogous and the anomalous. We found six categories of radial metaphors able to convey paradoxical complexity in a concise way. This has implications for organizations thinking about how to engage people with both the familiar and the strange. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Beyond words: Visual metaphors that can demonstrate comprehension of KM as a paradoxical activity system

Any form of partnership depends on knowledge sharing to fulfill its promise and deliver business value. However different types of partnership need different mechanisms to support the process. In t...

Jane McKenzie

Papers

Integrating individual and organisational learning initiatives: working across knowledge management and human resource management functional boundaries

Exploring e-collaboration space

Pictures of knowledge management: developing a method for analysing knowledge metaphors in visuals

Beyond words: Visual metaphors that can demonstrate comprehension of KM as a paradoxical activity system

Creating successful partnerships: the importance of sharing knowledge