Operationalising “Double-Loop” Learning in Service Organisations: A Systems Approach for Creating Knowledge

Learning organisation literature has widely discussed the connections between “double-loop” learning and its significance to organisational performance, but paying little attention to tools and systems that can operationalise “double-loop” learning in organisations. This paper investigates the impact of applying a systems approach for service operations design, expressed as the Vanguard Method (Seddon, Freedom from command and control: a better way to make the work work, 2003), in order to activate “double-loop” learning in service organisations. Two case studies were conducted in the banking mortgage operations and adults’ social care services in the UK, using the dimensions of the learning organisation questionnaire (DLOQ), semi-structured interviews, observations, and documents. The findings of the cross-case analysis support the link of applying the Vanguard Method with operationalising “double-loop” learning through three main factors, namely systematic-operations improvement, organisational capacity development, and outside-in mode of work; that are all embedded into the seven dimensions of the DLOQ. The value of this paper is the introduction of a service operations design tool that can activate “double-loop” learning performance in the fast changing knowledge era. It also provides an impetus for service organisations to creatively influence employees’ competencies to effectively improve internal systems.     

Systemic Development of Leadership: Action Research in an Indian Manufacturing Organization

This insider action research study differentiates between developing leaders and leadership, evolves a systemic leadership model, and intervenes on the human, social and processes dimensions for developing leadership. This is a real-time study and responds to the organizational reality of fast pace of change and its systemic nature. Consequently, the research too is fast to guide actions and influence positive changes in the organization. As the action research addresses a systemic reality, research and contributions are in multiple aspects, with new techniques having huge implications for theory building as well as improving practice. The study provides a structural solution to perceived lack of commitment in senior colleagues—a syndrome I acronym as HILE (High Intentions and Lukewarm Execution)–by re-designing organizational processes and making time available for its effective utilization in developing leadership. A new technique of triggering major changes in organizations termed “concept sublimation” distils concept from the statements of major stakeholder and sublimates it from lower to higher unit of analysis and to higher levels of positivity. Statistical simplification of a competency framework by applying concepts from Euclidian geometry and making it effective is yet a unique contribution of this action research study. The study adapts the competing values framework in developing a method of assessing cultural congruence of a candidate with the culture of the organization. The uniqueness of the study lies in bridging the gap in the literature by actually and systemically developing leadership in an organization and providing pragmatic insights on developing leadership while also creating knowledge for theory building.     

Using the ‘Engagement’ Model of Problem Solving to Assist Students in Capstone Learning

The engagement model for problem solving was developed as a response to soft systems methodology being difficult to implement in certain circumstances. In the years since the original paper was published, the model has developed into an iterative problem solving approach for the assessment, creation and implementation of new ideas in difficult problem situations. This case study paper exemplifies the kind of work undertaken through the use of the model and provides a practical scenario for how one might apply it. The case study takes place in a higher education environment and relates to the development of a capstone course for management majors. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research.     

Building Organizational Identity: an Insider Action Research from a Founder’s Viewpoint

This paper features the implementation of an extensive insider action research, exhaustively following the framework of Coghlan and Brannick (2010, 2014). It consisted of two action research projects - the thesis action research and the core action research - which were done in a parallel manner, both following the iterative cycles of constructing, planning, taking, and evaluating action. The thesis action research was aimed at developing a theory on building organizational identity from the viewpoint of an organizational founder. On the other hand, the core action research was focused on promoting the specific identity of the Institute for Integrality, Inc. Quality and rigor were observed in the implementation of the action research cycles. In the fieldwork, there were three main cycles undertaken – understanding organizational identity, fine-tuning the practice of this identity, and designing the integration of this identity in organizational culture. Thereafter, significant learnings were derived from meta-learning in the form of content, process, and premise reflections. Finally, through the critical reflection of the project in the light of the experience and theory, A-Founder’s Integrative Theory of Organizational Identity Building was derived.     

Liquidity dynamics around intraday price jumps in Chinese stock market

Using 4128 single jumps detected from high frequency data of 220 individual stocks in SZ300P index, this paper investigates the liquidity dynamics around price jumps in Chinese market. Some interesting empirical results are obtained and the corresponding explanations are given. The frequency of positive jumps is quite higher than that of negative jumps. The trading volumes and average trade sizes are all in a high level around positive jumps. The relatively low liquidities around negative jumps show that negative jumps may be generated and enlarged by poor liquidity provision. The price reversal after price jumps is significant, and price reversal lasts longer after positive jumps. Moreover, the size and direction of jumps are significantly correlated with the returns and trades in the post-jump trading time. These findings are believed to be associated with the high proportion of retail investors and their herding behavior for price trend chasing.     

Backstepping approach to the adaptive regulator design for a one-dimensional wave equation with general input harmonic disturbance

This paper considers the parameter estimation and stabilization of an unstable one-dimensional wave equation with matched general harmonic disturbance at the controlled end. The backstepping method for infinite-dimensional system is adopted in the design of the adaptive regulator. It is shown that the resulting closed-loop system is asymptotically stable. Meanwhile, the estimated parameter is shown to be convergent to the unknown parameter as time goes to infinity.     

The distributed representation for societal risk classification toward BBS posts

The risk classification of BBS posts is important to the evaluation of societal risk level within a period. Using the posts collected from Tianya forum as the data source, the authors adopted the societal risk indicators from socio psychology, and conduct document-level multiple societal risk classification of BBS posts. To effectively capture the semantics and word order of documents, a shallow neural network as Paragraph Vector is applied to realize the distributed vector representations of the posts in the vector space. Based on the document vectors, the authors apply one classification method KNN to identify the societal risk category of the posts. The experimental results reveal that paragraph vector in document-level societal risk classification achieves much faster training speed and at least 10% improvements of F-measures than Bag-of-Words. Furthermore, the performance of paragraph vector is also superior to edit distance and Lucene-based search method. The present work is the first attempt of combining document embedding method with socio psychology research results to public opinions area.     

Bell state preparation based on switching between quantum system models

For the preparation of any target Bell state under continuous quantum measurement, this paper proposes a method which achieves the control objective by switching between two different models or by switching between two control channels under one model. Proper control Hamiltonians are selected for the two system models, a switching strategy between the two models is designed, and the stability of the whole switching system is proved in theory. For a given target Bell state, the effectiveness of the proposed switching control strategy between different models is illustrated through simulation experiments.     

Positive observer design for positive Markovian jump systems with partly known transition rates

The paper is concerned with positive observer design for positive Markovian jump systems with partly known transition rates. By applying a linear co-positive type Lyapunov-Krasovskii function, a sufficient condition is proposed to ensure the stochastic stability of the error positive system and the existence of the positive observer, which is computed in linear programming. Finally, an example is given to demonstrate the validity of the main results.     

Fairness of extra-gain guilty in performance of supply chain and contract design

Considering a one-supplier and two-retailer supply chain setting in which the supplier makes contacts with retailers in sequence based on FCFS(first–come–first-service) principle, the authors investigate the marginal effect of extra-gain guilty fairness concerns of supply chain members on the contract design, supply chain's profit and profit distribution. When the supplier considers distributional fairness of loss aversion and extra-gain guilty, extra-gain guilty concern reduces the optimal wholesale and retail price, and improves supply chain performance. When the first or the second retailer considers distributional fairness and peer-induced fairness, extra-gain guilty concerns decrease the optimal wholesale and retail price but increase the profit of all supply chain members only when the level of loss aversion is large enough and the level of extra-gain guilty is less than 1/2. However, when the level of loss aversion is small and the level of extra-gain guilty is less than 1/2, extra-gain guilty has no influence on supply chain performance. The analysis reveals that the supply chain performance can be further improved by considering fairness of extra-gain guilty.