Action research in workplace innovation and regional development / edited by Werner Fricke, Peter Totterdill.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Fricke, Werner.

Totterdill, Peter.

Series:

Dialogues on work and innovation ; v. 15.

Dialogues on work and innovation, 1384-6671 ; v. 15

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Organizational change--Europe.

Organizational change.

Organizational change--Scandinavia.

Regional planning--Europe.

Regional planning.

Regional planning--Scandinavia.

Physical Description:

x, 356 p.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam [Netherlands] ; Philadelphia, PA : J. Benjamins, 2003.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The past is an increasingly unreliable guide to the future. European workplaces and the regions in which they are located face unprecedented pressures and challenges. Whereas in recent decades incremental adaptation has largely been sufficient to cope with external change, it is no longer clear that this remains the case. Globalisation, technological development and dissemination, political volatility, patterns of consumption, and employee expectations are occurring at a rate which is hard to measure. The rate of change in these spheres is far outstripping the rate of organisational innovation in both European enterprises and public governance, leading to a serious mismatch between the challenges of the 21st Century and the organisational competence available to deal with them. In this context, there is no clear roadmap. The contributors to this volume address these issues and demonstrate that building the knowledge base required by actors in this volatile environment requires continuous dialogue and learning - a context in which social partners, regional policy makers and other participants share diverse knowledge and reflect on experience rather than seeking and imitating any notion of 'best practice'. Action Research has a crucial role to play, embedding shared learning within the process of innovation.

Contents:

Action Research in Workplace Innovation and Regional Development

Editorial page

Title page

LCC page

Dedication page

Table of contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Regional innovation in the global economy

Action research in the context of regional development

A framework for the renewal of workplaces and regions

Building regional competence

Notes

I. Key themes

Participation and local organisation

Innovative organisation

Participation and the challenges of industrialisation

The agreement on development

The first decade: Scattered discourses

The next initiative: Industry programmes

The emergence of smaller networks

Conversational networks and the use of research

Diffusing the idea of networking

The formation of regional partnerships

Organisational challenges

a. The work group

b. The network

c. The network-generating context

Regions and governance

Concluding remarks

References

Workplace innovation as regional development

The high road of workplace innovation

Arenas of organisational change

Beyond `best practice'

A model for interpretation

The characteristics of new forms of work organisation

Knowledge, innovation and creativity

Workplace partnership, involvement and participation

Job design and teamworking

Integrating teamwork, partnership and organisational knowledge

Resourcing and sustaining organisational innovation

Public policy measures and workplace innovation

Regions as a focus for workplace innovation

Gaps in the public policy framework

Challenges

II. Building coalitions

Participation and enterprise networks within a regional context

The network partners.

From informal to formal networking and the network as a ``quasi-enterprise''

Employee participation

Networking between enterprises

Diffusion

The role of research

Planning from without or developing from within?

The background to change in the health care sector

The project

History and duration

Research collaboration

Project funding

The vision and process of patient involvement

Project vision: Health care from an innovation perspective

The role of action research

The organisation of the development coalition

The first dialogue conference

Developmental activities in the learning networks

Concluding reflections

Note

The development of the French technopoles and the growth of life sciences

Innovation, a motor of the contemporary economy

From the American science parks to the technopoles

The loss of the technological autonomy of companies

The main ingredients in the fabric of the technopole

The Evry Génopole, a French avant-garde model of technopole

A governmental project

The biotechnology network

A new conception of scientific work

New collaborative relations between partners whose interests sometimes diverge

Fundamental public research, the central issue for the State

Génoplante, an ambitious political project

The end of the classical research paradigm

The researcher-entrepreneur as a point of linkage between the private sector and the public sector

Genopole and employment

Start-ups, the typical companies on the site

Activity orientated particularly towards the outside world

A hybrid model

III. Capacity building

The third task

The significance of dynamic local and regional settings

An illustrative case, the biotec cluster of Uppsala

The third task as a set of means.

The scholar's exemption

Academic entrepreneurship and commercialisation of scientific ideas

Industrial research institutes and the so-called CONNECT

Science parks

Offices of collaboration

The third task as interactive knowledge formation

Action learning

Action research

Criticism of action research

Conclusions

Linking workplace innovation and regional development

1. Introduction

2. Regions as focal points for innovation

3. The workplace as a site of innovation

Problems of innovation

The limitations of consultancy

4. Companies within their regional context

Networking as public policy

5. Towards the stakeholder university

Resourcing regional innovation

Constraints

6. Conclusions

Obstacles to organisational learning in Trade Unions

2. Regional and national policy development

3. Internal dynamics and union competence development

4. Analysis

Building up internal union networks

Developing and using external networks

Competences of regional union officers

Globalisation and regionalisation

1. Theoretical premises, method, empirical basis

2. Origin and structure of regional networks

3. Globalisation, economic development and cluster formation - An inter-regional comparison

3.1. Regional development aid in practice

3.2. Limitations of regional economic development aid

3.3. Regional economic development aid and the role of the Trade Unions

4. Radical structural change, employment relations and the Trade Unions' representation crisis

5. What are social scientists able to achieve?

Moving beyond rhetoric

A dramatic change in the workplace?

Why does the curtain come down early on change processes?

Theatre as metaphor: Performing a script or writing the play?.

Theatre for organisational transformation

Forum theatre

Improvisation - The organisation's `instant coffee' for idea generation?

From actor to film-maker - Other methods of stimulating dialogue and change

Performing regions?

Some conclusions on the application of creative methods

IV. The policy framework

Regional workplace forums for the modernisation of work

Initiatives

The lack of capacity

a. Limited awareness amongst policy makers and social partners

b. Too few opportunities to share good policy practice between member states

c. Weak policy frameworks at national and/or regional levels

d. A lack of appropriate institutions capable of designing and delivering appropriate measures

e. Poor networking between key actors

f. Underdeveloped roles and responsibilities of social partners, universities and business support organisations

The missing link

Identifying gaps

a. The UK

b. France

c. Other member states

Recommendations

a. Raising the profile of the European Employment Strategy

b. New forms of work organisation

c. Diffusion mechanisms

d. Regional workplace forums

Appendices

Annotated bibliography

Integrating workplace development policy and innovation policy: A challenging task

2. Comparison of the FWDP and Finnish innovation policy

2.1. Finnish Workplace Development Programme (FWDP)

2.2. Finnish innovation policy in the 1990s

2.3. Pursued innovation

2.4. Innovation policy approach

2.5. Innovation strategies

3. From project-level learning to learning networks

4. Discussion

The UK Work Organisation Network

Introduction: The legacy

New beginnings

Towards an eventual national policy framework?

Conclusion

Index.

The series DIALOGUES ON WORK AND INNOVATION.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612160530

9781282160538

1282160532

9789027295620

902729562X

OCLC:

313023688