Thoughts for Cathie .... Successful e-Learning in Corporations

Chen, E (2008), Successful e-Learning in Corporations, Communications of the IIMA, Vol 8, Issue 2, Article 5

The following strikes me, when reading the article ....

I like the direction of questioning around, what do the organisations / SMT think about e-learning as a complement or alternative to more traditional training methods.

I'd suggest extending the reasons outlined by Ettinger et al., (2006a). The following video gives a slightly different perspective (only need to watch the first few minutes on the why)



There is a statement about the hybrid approach - this resonates with ideas around effective deployment through a blended / flipped model. The reference by Leet et al., 2007 can be used to explore the intended learning outcomes of the design and delivery.

This would feed into a general comment on the paper, where there is little recognition around e-learning being a very broad church in terms of the types of activities.

The limitations section makes no attempt to which is the most important factor, as opposed to a simple list. I think the two most important (and inter-related) are motivation and resistence. Again a really good opportunity to undertake a stakeholder analysis around what motivates people (workers) to complete training, and their thoughts around e-delivery, and those up the food chain around resistence within the workplace.

The ideas around motivation and resitence (or culture, visions etc.,) have been modelled by Collis et al., (4 E;s model) w.r.t why a person would use e-Learning within their teaching design.

This might also dovetail with the discussion in the return on investment section. It has been really difficult to evaluate the return on investment of e-learning with HE, given it is often an individual learner development activity. So what is the criteria for impact?

I'd imagine the impact for the organisation of e-learning on staff (especially as it becomes more individual, informal and granular ... aka people using MOOCs etc.,) is even more intangible. There is a really nice connection with my area of interest (knowledge management within learning organisations) where you can explore the bigger impact on knowledge creation, sharing and storage)

Technology deployment process model

Title

Technology deployment process model

Type of resource

Journal Article

Authors

Baskarada, S., McKay, T., & McKenna, T.,

Summary

The study adopts a qualitative, interpretive research paradigm.

It discussed what is interpretive research? what is qualitative interpretive research? and gives background to ethnographic research methodologies within an technology diffusion context.

Gives a good sense of the outcome ... "the enthographic study resulted in the identification of 61 activities thought to be necessary and sufficient or effective deployment of generic technologies, which we then used to develop a normative technology deployment process model" pg 109

Notes

Interesting article given it uses an ethnographic methodology to answer, what is necessary and sufficient for an effective deployment of a technology within an organization.

Thoughts and Reflections

Follow up with articles:

1. Crabtree et al.,
2. Klein, HK
3. Orlikowski et a.,

Quote

Role of organizational vision and adaptability in knowledge management (km)

Title

Role of organizational vision and adaptability in knowledge management (km)

Type of resource

Journal Article

Authors

Shahzad, K., Sia, S., Aslam, M., Syed, A., & Bajwa, S.,

Summary

n/a

Notes

knowledge based view of the firm declares knowledge as a most strategic resource and the significant source of sustainable competitive advantage for the firms (Kogut & Zander, 1992).

effective exploration and exploitation of knowledge has been recognised as a key to competitive organizational performance (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995).

KM processes are:

• knowledge creation - an organizations ability to produce useful novel ideas in order to develop business solutions. Organizations with high levels of knowledge creation perform better in terms of developing new markets and products, high customer satisfaction and bringing in advanced technologies (Nonaka, 1991)
• knowledge sharing - intra- knowledge sharing encompasses the transfer o knowledge between and within members and departments (Bhatt, 2001). Help enhance productivity by transferring best practices and ideas from one individual/department to another. it is a vital source of creativity and innovation (Leiponen, 2006)
• knowledge acquisition - gained from customers, competitors, and other external agencies. Has a direct positive impact on creativity, innovation and performance (Fabrizio, 2009) 
• knowledge codification / documentation - the process in which created, shared and acquired knowledge is converted into organisation knowledge. Availability of effecient systems is necessary for this stage

In spite of having sophisticated technologies and systems in place many organisations have not still been able to successfully exploit their knowledge resources (Kim & Yukl, 1995)

knowledge emerges when information is processed and contextualised by a person (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995).

people-orientated approach focuses on the role of people and views them as primary drivers of knowledge management in organizations. People willingness and ability is required to create and share knowledge with others (Karmara, Anumba and Carrillo, 2005)

Gold, Malhota and Segars (2001) assert that successful knowledge management initiatives enhace an organizations ability to be more creative and innovative by increasing its members' capacity to be more adaptive to environmental  changes and opportunities, and to produce new products and business solutions through better coordination and cooperation.

the world is full of complexities, and is non-linear in nature. what is important is how such humans and systems adapt

organizational learning ... Dodgson (1993) defines it as, the way firms build, supplement and organize knowledge and routines around their activities and within their cultures, and adapt and develop organizational effeciency by improving the use of the broad skills of their workforce

an employees ability to explore and acquire new knowledge that will enable an organization to quickly meet its ever changing environment needs has been viewed as the most important and critical factor. This requires employees to constantly stay in contact with external environment, screen out relevant information, share and convert the information into new knowledge, and use this new knowledge to create new ideas and eventually new value.

knowledge creation is a dynamic process

employees have to learn new skills and must be willing to bring changes in their attitudes and behaviours as new knowledge can bring changes in any part of the organisation, ie., products, processes, procedures, technology etc., if employees don't learn or acquire new skills and capabilities chances are lesser that organization will succeed.

innovation is viewed as a natural outcome of knowledge creation and sometimes these two terms are used interchangeably.

Proposition 1: a strong vision characterised by brevity, clarity, future orientation, stability. challenge, abstractness and ability to inspire will increase employees' willingness and motivation to effectively participate in knowledge creation, intra-knowledge sharing, eternal knowledge acquisition and knowledge documentation

Proposition 2: employees's adaptive behaviours will increase their ability to effectively create, share, acquire, and codify organziational knowledge that will increase the effectiveness of prevalance of knowledge management practices in an organization.

Thoughts and Reflections

n/a

Quote

n/a

Vision or Psychic Prison

Title

Vision or Psychic Prison

Type of resource

Journal Article

Authors

Shahzad, K.,

Summary

n/a

Notes

Morgan (1986) further explains that these preconceived realities become unconscious traps for people that eventually force them to think in certain favoured ways, prevent them to look at the other possible worlds and thus lead them to a psychic prison mentality. These imprisoned mentalities can be observed in organisational decisions making process where narrowed strategic directions result in the failure of organization to adapt to the wider and multiple direction seeker environment.

in order to ensure growth and sustainability organisations need to understand the differences between positive and negative visions (Senge, 1990), as well as the differences between strong and weak visions (Rafferty and Griffin, 2004)

Parik and Neubauer (1993) "unlike a traditional strategic planning approaches a vision is a future to be created and not a forecast". Synder & Graves (1994), vision is a discussable image of the future (target) towards which organisation/leader aims its whole resources and energies (strategies, structures, processes and technologies)

vision as a psychic prison depicts a natural outcome of organisational vision that is a result of unconscious prices yet uncontrollable by nature.

Thoughts and Reflections

Quote

Reading targets .... 22nd October

Some reading to get me going ...

• Appelbaum, S.H., Habashy, S., Malo, J. & Shafiq, H. 2012, "Back to the future: revisiting Kotter's 1996 change model", The journal of management development, vol. 31, no. 8, pp. 764-782.
• Shahzad, K. 2012, "Vision or Psychic Prison", Business Intelligence Journal, vol. 5, pp. 207-213.