Storytelling as a Tool for Vicarious Learning among Air Medical Transport Crews

2021 ◽  
pp. 000183922110584
Author(s):  
Christopher G. Myers
Keyword(s):  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Vicarious Learning ◽  
Multistage Process ◽  
Formal Knowledge ◽  
Work Settings ◽  
Future Challenges ◽  
Medical Transport ◽  
Collective Performance ◽  
Knowledge Intensive ◽  
Intensive Work

Learning vicariously from the experiences of others at work, such as those working on different teams or projects, has long been recognized as a driver of collective performance in organizations. Yet as work becomes more ambiguous and less observable in knowledge-intensive organizations, previously identified vicarious learning strategies, including direct observation and formal knowledge transfer, become less feasible. Drawing on ethnographic observations and interviews with flight nurse crews in an air medical transport program, I inductively build a model of how storytelling can serve as a valuable tool for vicarious learning. I explore a multistage process of triggering, telling, and transforming stories as a means by which flight nurses convert the raw experience of other crews’ patient transports into prospective knowledge and expanded repertoires of responses for potential future challenges. Further, I highlight how this storytelling process is situated within the transport program’s broader structures and practices, which serve to enable flight nurses’ storytelling and to scale the lessons of their stories throughout the entire program. I discuss the implications of these insights for the study of storytelling as a learning tool in organizations, as well as for revamping the field’s understanding of vicarious learning in knowledge-intensive work settings.

On Knowledge Management

2000 ◽  
pp. 170-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter H. Carstensen ◽  
Ulrika Snis
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Collaborative Work ◽  
Work Processes ◽  
Work Settings ◽  
Management Processes ◽  
Knowledge Intensive ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Intensive Work ◽  
Knowledge Management Processes

It is widely acknowledged that knowledge is one of the most important assets of today’s organizations. According to Davenport and Prusak (1998), knowledge is often a company’s greatest competitive advantage in a global economy. How to support the company’s knowledge-intensive work processes (e.g., quality support, product design or strategic planning) is therefore becoming a vital issue in many organizations worldwide. Identification, analysis and characterization of the knowledge-intensive work processes become essential in order to qualify a discussion of how to support knowledge management processes. This chapter presents, discusses and reflects upon findings from a study of how highly skilled actors manage information and knowledge, i.e., how information is gathered from a wide range of sources, structured according to needs and relevance for the users, and disseminated to the relevant suppliers in the organization. The aim of the chapter is two-folded: first, to contribute to the general empirical body of knowledge about knowledge-intensive work, especially focusing on the central characteristics of the knowledge management processes; secondly, to initiate a discussion of which overall requirements we must set up for how knowledge management processes could be supported by means of information and communication technology. Knowledge-intensive work processes often concern collaborative problem-solving and mutual support that require effective ways of handling information and knowledge between different people, both in short-term and long-term situations. The distributed and dynamic nature of knowledge management work also imposes a high degree of complexity involving many different actors with different conceptualizations, interpretations, perspectives, needs, etc. of the knowledge produced and approached. The various actors have different perspectives on the concept of knowledge. The work needed to articulate knowledge and make information and knowledge accessible becomes extremely demanding and complex. Often face-to-face interaction is required. However, in complex and collaborative work settings the problem of articulating knowledge by rich interaction and communication is obvious. The actors are distributed both geographically and temporally. There is a need for computer-based mechanisms for interaction and coordination of information and knowledge (cf. e.g., Carstensen and Wulf, 1998).

The Role of E-Services in the Library Virtualization Process

2010 ◽  
pp. 1763-1770
Author(s):  
Ada Scupola
Keyword(s):  
Service Organizations ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Electronic Networks ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
University Library ◽  
Provision Of Services ◽  
Future Challenges ◽  
The Government ◽  
Knowledge Intensive ◽  
Surface Mail

The networked ICT technologies (such as the Internet) are having a dramatic effect on how services and especially knowledge services are innovated, designed, produced and distributed. In addition ICT-networks such as the Internet have created the basis for the development of new types of services. E-services are defined here as services that are produced, provided and/or consumed through the use of ICT-networks such as for example Internet-based systems and mobile solutions. E-services can be used by both consumers and businesses, and can be accessed via a wide range of information appliances (Hoffman, 2003, p.53). E-services include also selling of physical goods on the Internet as for example an airline ticket that is purchased online, but delivered by surface mail to the buyers or government services offered on the Internet or e-government. There are three main characteristics of e-services: • The service is accessible across the Internet or other electronic networks • The service is consumed by a person across the Internet or other electronic networks • There might be a fee that the consumer pays the provider for using the e-service, but that might not always be the case as for example in some e-services offered by the government. Normally the production, provision or consumption of a service requires the interaction between the service provider and the user of the service. Traditionally this has been based on personal interactions, most often face-to-face interactions. In e-services, the production, consumption and/or provision of services takes place through the intermediation of an ICT-network such as Internet-based systems or mobile solutions. Examples of e-services are e-banking, e-library services, e-publishing, airline tickets, e-government, information and location services. The advent of e-commerce and e-services has raised a number of challenges for knowledge intensive service organizations such as consulting companies, libraries and publishers, as well as for companies selling physical goods. The purpose of this study is to investigate the challenges that e-services are posing and will pose for research or academic libraries. The study has focused on the issues that Roskilde University Library (RUB) has had to deal with as a result of e-services adoption as well as the future challenges that e-services provide for RUB. The study is based on a number of interviews with RUB management, other secondary material provided by Roskilde University library and information provided on the Web page.

Introduction—Minoan Built Environment: Past Studies, Recent Perspectives, and Future Challenges

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quentin Letesson ◽  
Carl Knappett
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Monumental Architecture ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Architectural Patterns ◽  
Future Challenges ◽  
Residential Quarters ◽  
And Function ◽  
Intensive Work

Architecture and urbanism have been of constant interest to Minoan archaeologists since the beginning of the twentieth century. While there is some scholarly bias to this, with the field deeply affected by Sir Arthur Evans’s focus on the monumental architecture of Knossos, Minoan Crete continues to yield abundant evidence for a substantial built environment. Focusing on urban and architectural remains creates a strong bias in favour of one block of time, the Neopalatial period, which produced the largest amount of wellpreserved settlements and buildings. Yet, in general, the evidence we now have on the Minoan built environment is an undeniable resource, one that continues to grow thanks to ongoing studies of pre-existing remains as well as new excavation and survey projects. As is clear in Evans’s magnum opus, The Palace of Minos at Knossos, the large-scale excavations typical of the dawn of the last century were heavily directed towards the urban cores of the largest Minoan sites (e.g. Boyd Hawes et al. 1908; Hutchinson 1950). The bulk of what we know about the Minoan built environment comes from the first half of the twentieth century, initially through the intensive work of the foreign schools at Malia, Phaistos, Palaikastro, Gournia, Mochlos, and Pseira, later joined by countless excavations by Greek archaeologists. Yet, synthetic treatments really only began with the work of James Walter Graham, in the form of numerous papers published in the American Journal of Archaeology (see Letesson 2009 for a detailed review), and especially his Palaces of Crete (Graham 1962). Nonetheless, his comparative analyses, which also dealt with non-palatial buildings, were largely focused on polite architecture. With a particular interest in form and function, he built on Evans’s insights to be the first to identify, across a large sample of buildings, recurring architectural patterns in the Minoan built environment (e.g. Piano Nobile, residential quarters, banquet halls). His studies also included an innovative quantitative component, emphasizing the existence of a unit of length that builders would have used to lay out the palaces and some of the so-called ‘villas’.

Introduction

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob Cross ◽  
Andrew Parker
Keyword(s):  
New Product Development ◽  
Flexible Structures ◽  
Knowledge Work ◽  
Informal Networks ◽  
Work Processes ◽  
Knowledge Intensive ◽  
Management Advice ◽  
Intensive Work ◽  
Work Done ◽  
Second Wave

Spend some time in most any organization today and you are sure to hear of the importance of networks, in one form or another, for getting work done. In this age of increasingly organic, flat, and flexible structures, many managers and scholars are using networks as a central organizing metaphor for twenty-first-century firms (e.g., Dimagio, 2001; Nohria & Ghoshal, 1997). In large part, this focus seems a product of two trends. First, over the past decade or so initiatives such as de-layering, TQM, reengineering, team-based structures, and outsourcing, to name a few, have been undertaken to promote organizational flexibility and efficiency (Hirschhorn & Gilmore, 1992; Hammer & Champy, 1993; Mohrman, Cohen, & Mohrman, 1995; Kerr & Ulrich, 1995). One outcome of these restructuring efforts is that information flow and work increasingly occur through informal networks of relationships rather than through channels tightly prescribed by formal reporting structures or detailed work processes. Along with the drive to more organic structures in organizations we have also seen a rise in the prevalence and value of knowledge-intensive work (Quinn, 1992; Drucker, 1993). Early initiatives to support knowledge workers focused heavily on databases and organizational processes to ensure the capture and sharing of lessons and reusable work products (e.g., Stewart, 1997; O’Dell & Grayson, 1998; Ruggles, 1998; Davenport, Delong, & Beers, 1998). However, these investments rarely, if ever, had the intended impact on the effectiveness and efficiency of knowledge work. As a result, a “second wave” of knowledge-management advice is coming forth that pays a great deal more attention to knowledge embedded within employees and relationships in organizations (e.g., Brown & Duguid, 2000; Cross & Baird, 2000; Dixon, 2000; Von Krogh et al., 2000; Cohen & Prusak, 2001). Among other things, this work has illustrated the importance of trust and informal networks for knowledge creation and sharing within organizations. We suggest that in today’s de-layered, knowledge-intensive settings, most work of importance is heavily reliant on informal networks of employees within organizations. For example, networks sitting across core work processes, weaving together new product development initiatives or integrating strategic initiatives such as alliances or mergers can be critical to organizational effectiveness.

Knowledge Management

2009 ◽  
pp. 552-561 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dariusz Jemielniak ◽  
Jerzy Kociatkiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Identity Creation ◽  
Management Literature ◽  
History Of ◽  
Knowledge Intensive ◽  
Intensive Work ◽  
Current Business

Knowledge management and knowledge-intensive work are two of today’s hot buzzwords, though both already have a history of managerial usage. While some authors claim that knowledge is the most important organizational asset in contemporary society, others retort that much of knowledge management literature and practical solutions are just perfunctory and propagandist and many, if not most, managerial polices rely on manipulation of emotions and identity creation. This chapter aims to capitalize on this fascinating and timely research area. We want to present the current business fad of knowledge-management in terms of excess and forgetful repetition of ideas. We look at knowledge management as an idea of highly suspect utility, and search for explanations for and possible counterbalances to its ubiquity.

Partizipation und Belastung von Unternehmensberatern - Empirische Befunde zu den Risiken und Nebenwirkungen „wissensintensiver“ Arbeit / Participation and strain of consultants – empirical findings about risks and side effects of knowledge-intensive work forms

Arbeit ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Striewe ◽  
Markus G. Schwering
Keyword(s):  
Side Effects ◽  
Knowledge Intensive ◽  
Intensive Work

AbstractDie Nutzung des Wissens und die Aktivierung des Lernpotenzials von Beschäftigten gelten als Schlüssel zur Sicherung dauerhafter Wettbewerbsvorteile von Unternehmen. Vor diesem Hintergrund rücken partizipative Gestaltungsüberlegungen stärker in den Mittelpunkt arbeitswissenschaftlicher Untersuchungen. Gilt aus arbeitspsychologischer Sicht die Selbstregulation der Arbeit seit langem als Kernelement einer persönlichkeitsförderlichen und humanen Arbeitsgestaltung, deuten inzwischen empirische Befunde auf eine Reihe von Problemen hin, die für die Beschäftigten in wissensintensiven Arbeitsformen mit einem hohen Partizipationsgrad einhergehen. In diesem Beitrag wird der Zusammenhang von Partizipation und Belastung am Beispiel von Beschäftigten in Beratungsunternehmen empirisch untersucht.

Supporting knowledge-intensive work in public administration processes

2003 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 164-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giorgos Papavassiliou ◽  
Spyridon Ntioudis ◽  
Andreas Abecker ◽  
Gregoris Mentzas
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Knowledge Intensive ◽  
Intensive Work
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