My Shot: Inspiration for Organization Development From Hamilton: An American Musical

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-379
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Meyer

How can organization development be more innovative? In what ways can organization development professionals do more inspired work? Using inspiration provided by Hamilton: An American Musical, this essay explores connections between Alexander Hamilton, the founding father of American Democracy, and Kurt Lewin, the founding father of organization development. These connections are then examined for insight into ways of sustaining energy and relevance in organization development over time and across successive generations.

Clotho ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-100
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Jerzak

The humanist tradition developed in the Renaissance that not only cultivated the human spirit but applied its knowledge for the purpose of improving society across various humanist and scientific disciplines is not altogether extinct. Using the erudite Swiss physician and botanist Anton Schneeberger (1530–1581) as a founding father of sorts of modern humanist medicine confronted with war, I discuss the recuperation of humanism in the twentieth century, first in the thought of psychologist Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) who, under war circumstances, produced a work whose analytical acumen can still be used today, and subsequently in the creation of the discipline of narrative medicine that, unwittingly perhaps, echoes Schneeberger’s insight into the imperative of inserting storytelling into the practice of both patient- and physician-centered medicine. In the background of the argument is the existence of a new society, a martial society that functions as if there were war despite its ostensible state of peace.


Organizational contradictions and process studies offer interwoven and complementary insights. Studies of dialectics, paradox, and dualities depict organizational contradictions that are oppositional as well as interrelated such that they persistently morph and shift over time. Studies of process often examine how contradictions fuel emergent, dynamic systems and stimulate novelty, adaptation, and transformation. Drawing from rich conversations at the Eighth International Symposium on Process Organization Studies, the contributors to this volume unpack these relationships in more depth. The chapters explore three main, connected themes through both conceptual and empirical studies, including (1) offering insight into how process theorizing advances understandings of organizational contradictions; (2) shedding light on how dialectics, paradoxes, and dualities fuel organizational processes that affect persistence and transformation; and (3) exploring the convergence and divergence of dialectics, paradox, and dualities lenses. Taken together, this book offers key insights in order to inform persistent, contradictory dynamics in organizations and organizational studies.


Brazil constitutes a globally vital but troubled economy. It accounts for the largest GDP in Latin America and ranks among the world’s largest exporters of critical commodities including iron ore, soya, coffee, and beef. In recent years Brazil’s global economic importance has been magnified by a surge in both outward and inward foreign direct investment. This has served to further internationalize what has been historically a relatively closed economy. The purpose of this Handbook is to offer real insight into the Brazil’s economic development in contemporary context, understanding its most salient characteristics and analyzing its structural features across various dimensions. At a more granular level, this volume accomplishes the following tasks. First, it provides an understanding of the economy’s evolution over time and the connection of its current characteristics to this evolution. Second, it analyzes Brazil’s broader place in the global economy, and considers the ways in which this role has changed, and is likely to change, over coming years. Third, reflecting contemporary concerns, the volume offers an understanding, not only of how one of the world’s key economies has developed and transformed itself, but also of the ways in which this process has yet to be completed. The volume thus analyzes the current challenges facing the Brazilian economy and the kinds of issues that need to be tackled for these to be addressed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 122 (1) ◽  
pp. 681-699 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Tattershall ◽  
G. Nenadic ◽  
R. D. Stevens

AbstractResearch topics rise and fall in popularity over time, some more swiftly than others. The fastest rising topics are typically called bursts; for example “deep learning”, “internet of things” and “big data”. Being able to automatically detect and track bursty terms in the literature could give insight into how scientific thought evolves over time. In this paper, we take a trend detection algorithm from stock market analysis and apply it to over 30 years of computer science research abstracts, treating the prevalence of each term in the dataset like the price of a stock. Unlike previous work in this domain, we use the free text of abstracts and titles, resulting in a finer-grained analysis. We report a list of bursty terms, and then use historical data to build a classifier to predict whether they will rise or fall in popularity in the future, obtaining accuracy in the region of 80%. The proposed methodology can be applied to any time-ordered collection of text to yield past and present bursty terms and predict their probable fate.


Author(s):  
M. Luisa Navarro-Pérez ◽  
M. Coronada Fernández-Calderón ◽  
Virginia Vadillo-Rodríguez

In this paper, a simple numerical procedure is presented to monitor the growth of Streptococcus sanguinis over time in the absence and presence of propolis, a natural antimicrobial. In particular, it is shown that the real-time decomposition of growth curves obtained through optical density measurements into growth rate and acceleration can be a powerful tool to precisely assess a large range of key parameters [ i.e. lag time ( t 0 ), starting growth rate ( γ 0 ), initial acceleration of the growth ( a 0 ), maximum growth rate ( γ max ), maximum acceleration ( a max ) and deceleration ( a min ) of the growth and the total number of cells at the beginning of the saturation phase ( N s )] that can be readily used to fully describe growth over time. Consequently, the procedure presented provides precise data of the time course of the different growth phases and features, which is expected to be relevant, for instance, to thoroughly evaluate the effect of new antimicrobial agents. It further provides insight into predictive microbiology, likely having important implications to assumptions adopted in mathematical models to predict the progress of bacterial growth. Importance: The new and simple numerical procedure presented in this paper to analyze bacterial growth will possibly allow identifying true differences in efficacy among antimicrobial drugs for their applications in human health, food security, and environment, among others. It further provides insight into predictive microbiology, likely helping in the development of proper mathematical models to predict the course of bacterial growth under diverse circumstances.


Author(s):  
Giovanni R. Ruffini

Nubian texts provide valuable insight into Nubian social and economic history. Accounts reveal economic priorities both secular and sacred. Documentary evidence hints at the nature of state centralization and the movement of goods and coins in and out of Nubia. Magic reveals Nubia’s deep-seated hopes and fears. Literature shows innovative theology and Nubia’s sense of its place in world history. Funerary inscriptions record the careers of the elite and their sense of their own place in the cosmos. But much is missing from the Nubian textual record as well, suggesting that major literary genres never indigenized in Nubia the way they did in Egypt or Ethiopia. Other genres ebb and flow over time, hinting at the economy of Nubian literacy and the processes through which it ultimately dies.


Author(s):  
Narges Kasiri ◽  
G. Scott Erickson ◽  
Gerd Wolfram

Radio frequency identification (RFID) has been viewed as a promising technology for quite some time. Initially developed a couple of decades ago, the technology has been accompanied by predictions of imminent widespread adoption since its beginnings. A majority of retailers and other users are now using or planning to use the technology. This paper employs a combination of the technology-organization-environment (TOE) model and the 3-S (substitution, scale, structural) model to analyze the long journey of RFID adoption in retail. Top retail executives in the US and Europe were interviewed to investigate RFID adoption patterns based on differences in technological, organizational, and environmental circumstances. As the retail industry is moving into a post-adoption era, these results demonstrate the current stage of retail RFID adoption, identify factors playing important roles over time as motivators or impediments, and provide some insight into the slow pace of adoption.


2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-29
Author(s):  
Ellie Dworak ◽  
née Laura Suzanne Hudson

Pivot-RP is a source of research funding opportunities, facilitating research collaborations, and offering insight into the funding landscape as well as internal benchmarks. Pivot-RP addresses the needs of researchers and research development professionals alike.


2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 446-460 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley Barnwell

This article explores how wider national narratives facilitate families’ choices about what information to keep secret over time. I argue that attention to the ways family secrets operate reveals how social and moral codes are both sustained and challenged on an intimate scale. The article also makes an argument for using life writing and literature to explore the often-illusive contours of family secrets. To illustrate, I examine Lynette Russell’s memoir A Little Bird Told Me: Family Secrets, Necessary Lies and Richard Flanagan’s novel Death of a River Guide. Anchoring the analysis within the transition from colonial to postcolonial societies, these texts lend insight into the collective practices families use to manage secrets and to construct socially sanctioned identities. The discussion foregrounds the enduring impact of colonial policies upon the intimate formation of families, and the role families play in reproducing and challenging these legacies via collective secret-keeping and silences.


Author(s):  
Е.Ю. Лебедева ◽  
А.Ю. Сергеев

В статье представлены результаты археоботанических исследований в Московском Кремле и обсуждается проблема использования растений жителями города с особым акцентом на потреблении зерновой продукции. Материалы рассматриваются по двум хронологическим выборкам (XII - перв. пол. XIII в. и втор. пол. XIII - XV в.), что позволяет проследить динамику изменения археоботанических спектров. Выделяются три специфические черты, характеризующие коллекцию зерновых в Москве. Во-первых, высокая насыщенность зерном культурного слоя во-вторых, стабильно высокий показатель доли ржи на протяжении столетий (ок. 70 ) и, в-третьих, остающийся непонятным факт сокращения на 10 доли овса в поздней выборке. Последнее, по мнению авторов, противоречит логике развития города, требующей увеличения фуражных запасов для лошадей - основного транспортного средства средневековья. Авторы приходят к выводу, что при отсутствии или скудости находок экзотических растений, выступающих маркерами элитного питания в европейских городах, в средневековой Руси в этом качестве могут интерпретироваться обычные зерновые культуры, в частности - мягкая пшеница. The paper presents the results of archaeobotanical studies in the Moscow Kremlin and discusses the use of plants by the city residents with a focus on consumption of crops. The analysis is based on two chronological selections (the 12th - first half of the 13th centuries and the first half of the 13th - 15th centuries) it gives an insight into the changes over time of archaeobotanical spectra. Three specific features characterizing the crop grains in Moscow are singled out. Firstly, abundance of crop plants in the occupation layers secondly, consistently high values of the rye share in total crops throughout centuries (around 70 ) and, thirdly, the reduction in the share of oats by 10 in the later sample for some inexplicable reasons. In the view of the authors, the latter fact contradicts the logical development of the city that required increase in forage reserves for horses which was the main animal for transportation in the medieval times. The authors come to the conclusion that in the absence or scarcity of exotic plant finds used as markers of luxury food in European cities, common grain crops such as bread wheat can be used as elite food indicator in Medieval Russia.


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