Digital Commons Network^™

Using Mixed Methods To Evaluate The Role And Contribution Of Disciplined Innovation Processes (Dips) For Start-Up Growth And Development., Saad Ahmed, Anthony Paul Buckley, Francis Behan

Conference papers

According to Ohr and Frank-Mattes (2017), there appears to be limited knowledge or appreciation of disciplined innovation frameworks, tools or techniques for the scale-up phase of commercialisation, especially from those with technical backgrounds.

The research questions in this study therefore asks: Can a more disciplined approach to the innovation process make a positive contribution to improved commercialisation outcomes for start-ups and corporate venturing? Additionally, it asks if this disciplined process can be configured into a reliable and repeatable process across multiple contexts?

For complex research questions such as this, quantitative or qualitative research approaches alone cannot adequately address these questions. …

University Interactions: Forms, Peculiarities And Tensions, Nkechinyem Omeife, Conor Horan

Conference papers

Interactions between university and industry or society mainly occur in the form of transfer and/or collaborations. However, both forms have mostly been discussed as transfer thus, the underpinnings of both forms are not often discussed. As a result, the tensions (contradictions, dialectics and paradoxes) embedded in the interactions are also overlooked (not explored). This paper proposes to explore the underpinnings of the both forms of interaction and the tensions therein. Transfer is often linked with incubation and acceleration with concerns around absorption and diffusion of knowledge and through channels such as publications, conferences, teaching and pedagogy, joint research and knowledge …

The Persistence Of Omniscience In Knowledge Management: Implications Or Future Research, Conor Horan, Conor P. Horan, John Finch

Conference papers

Abstract: This paper demonstrates the persistence of omniscience in Knowledge Management (KM) research. Omniscience as a concept has two dimensions ubiquity and utility. This idea of ubiquity is more prevalent when the management goal focuses on processing or transferring pre-existing knowledge efficiently to those who can make use of it. Ubiquity assumes that knowledge is freely available within the firm i.e. is omnipresent, waiting for it to be processed or transferred. The idea of utility assumes that knowledge and its relevance is fully understood by the firm. The firms and its managers are assumed to know the value and quality …

Austerity For All Seasons: Communicating On The Economy In Ireland, Brendan O'Rourke, John Hogan, Joseph K. Fitzgerald

Conference papers

What is clear is that in Ireland it has been a good crisis for economists, in the sense that the status and power of the profession has increased, especially in public discourse and state bureaucracy. This is not to deny that the academic critique and public questioning of the status of economics, that has followed the failure of the profession internationally prior to the crisis. It would be interesting to see if the rise of economists status has taken place in other countries and if there is a pattern to the profession’s fortunes in its different fields across, for example …

An Exploratory Study Of The Role And Contribution Of University Knowledge Transfer Offices (Ktos) In Knowledge Transfer And Value Creation, Anthony Paul Buckley, Paul Maguire, David Gardiner

Conference papers

Developed European countries place emphasis on innovation as an important growth driver. Higher educational institutions, within these developed countries, actively participate in regional economic initiatives to proactively transfer and commercialise knowledge to business and society. This knowledge transfer is now performed in a more direct way than heretofore and the commercialization remit is now regarded as the Universities 3rd mission. This is in addition to its traditional remits of education and research. This study explores the effectiveness of the University knowledge transfer process and the contribution that knowledge transfer offices play in knowledge transfer and commercialisation (Value creation).

This study …

A Model For Spurring Organizational Change Based On Faculty Experiences Working Together To Implement Problem-Based Learning, Shannon Chance, Gavin Duffy

Conference papers

This research paper provides a case study of experiences of engineering faculty members at a large public university in Ireland working together to transform their teaching methods. We investigate eight teachers’ experiences of a faculty-led learning community designed to help individuals transform their courses. This small collection of faculty met regularly to discuss ways to facilitate and assess students working in groups. Outside the group’s meetings, participants brought important issues to the forefront of formal and informal discussion with colleagues. Participation in the learning group encouraged, supported, and helped sustain change. This case study seeks to provide insight and a …

Using Insider Action Research In The Study Of Digital Entrepreneurial Processes: A Pragmatic Design Choice?, Kisito Futonge

Conference papers

This paper proposes that insider action research (IAR), with its iterative and emergent form of inquiry, presents a pragmatic design choice for understanding the nature of uncertainty surrounding the digital entrepreneurial process. Since entrepreneurship in the digital context is a highly dynamic and fluid process, IAR appears well-suited for use in researching it. Yet, the paucity of application in entrepreneurship research in general, and less so in the emerging digital space, is rather puzzling. Thus, using a ‘live’ case study in the e-learning domain, this paper contributes by shining light on how this design choice might be set up and …

Understanding The Everyday Designer In Organisations, Ciaran O'Leary, Fredrick Mtenzi, Claire Mcavinia

Conference papers

This paper builds upon the existing concept of an everyday designer as a non-expert designer who carries out design activities using available resources in a given environment. It does so by examining the design activities undertaken by non-expert, informal, designers in organisations who make use of the formal and informal technology already in use in organisations while designing to direct, influence, change or transform the practices of people in the organisation. These people represent a cohort of designers who are given little attention in the literature on information systems, despite their central role in the formation of practice and enactment …

A Discursive Institutionalist Approach To Understanding Policy Change: Ireland And Mexico In The 1980s, John Hogan, Brendan O'Rourke

Conference papers

Employing the critical juncture theory (CJT), a discursive institutionalist approach, this paper examines the nature of the changes to Irish industrial policy, and Mexican macroeconomic policy, during early the 1980s, a time when both countries went through economic crises. Did these policy changes constitute transformations, or were they simply continuations of previously established policy pathways? The CJT consists of three elements – economic crisis, ideational change, and the nature of the policy change – that must be identified for us to be able to declare with some certainty if the policy changes constituted critical junctures. Our findings will help explain …

Understanding The Dynamic Behaviour Of Three Echelon Retail Supply Chain Disruptions, John Crowe, Mohammed Mesabbah, Amr Arisha

Conference papers

It is often taken for granted that the right products will be available to buy in retail outlets 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. Challenges in achieving this continued on-shelf availability range from recession hit demand patterns to cost reduction driven strategies. Irish government initiatives to brand the country as a sustainable, reliable provider of food retail supply chains has resulted in increased importance on decision maker accuracy. The vulnerability of retail supply chain’s (RSC) to disruption is another catalyst in the complexity of the decision making process and a more robust understanding of disruption behavior is needed. …

The Pain Of (Organisational) Change, Philomena Hanlon

Conference papers

Abstract

Ireland is the third most globalised nation in the world - Ernest and Young 2013 report

This reflective paper addresses key drivers of organisational change (including globalisation as referred to in the quote above) and what this means at the level of the organisation and at the level of the Lacanian subject[1] (individual employee). It looks at strategies organisations are adopting to survive in a hyper competitive environment and how these strategies are interpreted / responded to by the subject. The paper utilises a Freudian / Lacanian lens to interrogate subjective responses to organisational change. For some subjects …

The Power Of Words In Tension: Enterprise/Strategy As A Dilemma In Neoliberalism’S Persistence., Brendan O'Rourke

Conference papers

We address how enterprise is related to, another important discourse, strategy. From a discourse analysis of the talk of small firm owner-managers, emerges a view of strategy and enterprise as a single, integrated entity, bound together by some commonalities but more importantly by paired opposites reminiscent of ideological dilemmas (Billig, Condor, Edwards, Gane, Middleton & Radley, 1988). This dilemmatic nature of enterprise/strategy discourse adds to explanations for the persistence of the neoliberal form of enterprise, with the entrepreneur as the heroic saviour of all, based on the entrepreneur as an empty signifier (Jones & Spicer, 2009; Kenny & …

The Vital Role Of Ideas In Industrial Policy Changes In Ireland During The 1980s, John Hogan, Brendan O'Rourke

Conference papers

Employing a discursive institutionalist approach in the form of the critical juncture theory (CJT), this paper examines the nature of the changes to Irish industrial policy in the mid 1980s, a time when the country went through one of its worst economic crises. Did these policy changes, ushered in by the Telesis Report of 1982, constitute a transformation in industrial policy, or a continuation of a previously established policy pathway, and if so why? To answer this question the paper explores the roles played by various change agents, and their ideas, in altering the industrial policy that had been established …

A Model For Transforming Engineering Education Through Group Learning, Shannon Chance, Gavin Duffy, Brian Bowe, Mike Murphy, Tony Duggan

Conference papers

Electrical engineering educators at Technological University Dublin (DIT) have successfully implemented pedagogical change. They now use group-based, student-centered and inquiry-driven approaches to teach emerging engineers. The objective of this was to foster students’ personal as well as professional skills (i.e., teamwork, communication, self-directed learning, etc.). This paper explores how such change was achieved and provides graphic models that draw from prior phenomenological studies and incorporates aspects of Rogers’ (1962) product adoption curve and Lowe’s (2012) interpretations of it.

Discourse At The Edge: Enterprise Discourse In Ireland, Brendan O'Rourke

Conference papers

Ireland is an economy, society and culture at the edge. It is at the edge of Europe and at the edge of both USA/UK and more mainland European or EU variants of capitalism. More recently it has been at the edge of economic crisis. Yet enterprise discourse is still central in Ireland. Enterprise discourse in Ireland is influenced by global and European Union (EU) developments. However, Irish enterprise discourse is not merely a ‘local adoption’. For example, high Irish economic growth rates during the ‘Celtic Tiger’ period have coincided with the development of the EU’s enterprise policy, thus giving the …

Exploring Sustainability Practices And Reporting At Musgrave Group: A Case Study Of An Irish Private Company., Rebecca Maughan, Brendan O'Dwyer

Conference papers

The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of a case study of a large Irish company, Musgrave Group, which has been engaged in sustainability practices and reporting since the late 1990s. In doing so the paper provides an in-depth account firstly of the internal motivations for the company’s engagement with sustainability practices and reporting and secondly of the process through which the sustainability practice gained internal support and began to be integrated into the day to day activities of the company. The case study of the company involved a series of interviews with key participants in the …

Organizational Paths: History, Process And Ireland’S Industrial Development Authority, Paul Donnelly

Conference papers

Taking issue with the largely ahistorical and aprocessual character of much organizational theorizing, and following calls for ‘building path-oriented organization research on a rigorous path theory’ (Sydow, Schreyögg and Koch, 2005: 2), I argue for knowing the organizational as an ongoing process. Through the contributions of path dependence theory, and with Ireland’s Industrial Development Authority (IDA) as empirical focus, this paper will also seek to address: the historicity and evolution of the organizational; the role of initial, external conditions on the emergence and subsequent development of the organizational; the dynamics of path building and the development of path dependency; and …

The Nomination And Motivations Of Irish Non-Executive Directors Of Listed Companies, Anna Egan, Rebecca Maughan, Joseph Coughlan

Conference papers

This paper reports the preliminary findings of an empirical investigation into the process of appointing non-executive directors and their motivations behind the adoption of the position. While research into the board of directors has been extensive, little deliberation has been given to the motives of non-executives who choose to sit on boards (Roberts, 2002). Given that the board of directors has been charged with much more responsibility in recent years and is being held to a higher level of accountability than would historically be expected (Donnelly and Kelly, 2005), the choice of non-executives to continue to take up roles on …

A Comparative Study Of Organisational Commitment Of Bank Employees In Ireland And China, Helen Chen

Conference papers

Organizational commitment is a complicated concept. However it is primarily regarded as an attitudinal construct dealing with the perceived utility of continued participation in the employing organization (Hrebriniak & Alutto, 1972). In a similar vein, it has also been described, according to Buchanan, (1974), as a partisan, affective attachment to the goals and values of an organization, to one’s role in relation to goals and values of an organization, and to the organization for its own sake; or according to Porter et al. (1974), as a strong belief in and acceptance of the organization’s goals and values, a willingness to …

A Comparative Study Of Organisational Commitment Of Bank Employees In Ireland And China, Helen Chen

Conference papers

Organisational commitment has been extensively researched in the Western and non-Western contexts. However, little has been conducted to approach it from a cross-cultural perspective. This paper sets out to fill in the gap by examining bank employees’ organisational commitment in Ireland and China. Data was collected in two American banks, one in Ireland and the other one in China in June 2008. Research results showed interesting and dynamic differences of the three dimensions of the Irish and Chinese bank employees’ organisational commitment with regards to the effects of income, gender and tenure. Implications for managers in Ireland and China are …

A Narratives’ Exploration Of Non-Traditional International Assignees Locally Resident And Employed In The South Of France, Marian Crowley-Henry

Conference papers

Contemporary publications in international human resource management call for the pluralisation of international assignees beyond the widely described expatriate. This paper presents an under-explored category of international assignees: highly educated, non French, Western (first world) individuals who reside indefinitely in the South of France, maintaining their professional careers while resident in the host country. A sample of over thirty individuals meeting these criteria was interviewed in France in depth over a three year period. These individuals are not migrants as by their own descriptions they consider migrants to have to move internationally (economic migrants) while their decisions to move to …

Organizations Revisited: Human And Technological Agency In Networks Within Organizational Theory, Carina Rohr

Conference papers

The concern of this paper is twofold: It acknowledges the contribution of the actor-network theory (ANT) (Callon, 1986; Law, 1991; Latour, 1993; Latour, 1997; Bloomfield & Vurdubakis, 1999; Lee & Hassard, 1999; Latour, 1999; Law, 1999; Amin & Cohendet, 2003; Collins, 2004; Latour, 2005) in offsetting common opposites, such as humans and technology or structure and agency, which are applied in order to categorize organizational literature. ANT was adopted in organizational theory (OT) due to offering a distinctive view on boundaries of organizations in developing a network approach. While networks are constituted by acting and consisting of relations of heterogeneous …

Women’S Careers Internationally: A Qualitative Study Of Female Western Knowledge Professionals Living In The South Of France, Marian Crowley-Henry

Conference papers

This paper is founded on a qualitative PhD study researching the careers of individuals who live outside their home country on a potentially permanent basis in the South of France. It interprets the careers of the females in the sample, and the findings highlight both the personal nature of careers and the permeable career/life boundary with the females ‘morphing’ their careers over time, as circumstances dictate and opportunities facilitate. The phenomenon of ‘morphing careers’ is identified in the literature as the protean career. Specific elements from the work/life trajectory influence women’s career choices at varying points in their life and …

Rethinking The Organisational: From ‘Form’ To ‘Forming’, Paul Donnelly

Conference papers

The organisational theory literature has identified the emergence and evolution of organisational forms as a critical issue to be addressed, yet new ways of looking at organisational form have yet to be addressed and there are concerns about the largely ahistorical and aprocessual character of much organisational theorising. Most “new” theories that have been put forward continue to view form as something already formed, as an essence, with the attention focused on what constitutes form. Further, extant organisational theories, from the original Weberian ideal type through all other theories, be they in appearance ahistorical (i.e., contingency) or historical (i.e., ecological) …

Exploring The Discourses Of Small Enterprise Proprietors, Brendan O'Rourke, Martyn Pitt

Conference papers

Over the last three decades the discourses of strategy and enterprise have developed significantly in the context of large corporate organizations and increasingly within and for the public sector. The discourses of strategy and enterprise have developed in relationship with each other and are generative of various attributes and dilemmas for the identity of the strategist/entrepreneur. This study looks at how these important discourses are deployed by small enterprise proprietors in periodical publishing in Ireland as they construct their business identities with one of the authors. Interview data from one proprietor is subjected to a discourse analysis drawing particularly on …

Organizational Forming In Amodern Times: Reinserting The Dynamic Into The Organizational, Paul Donnelly

Conference papers

While there is an obvious concern that “new organizational forms” are appearing, and despite the topic receiving increased attention, scholars, as yet, have been unable to theorize, grasp or account for these new forms adequately. In continuing to look for the ‘new’ with ‘old’ lenses, we are seeing neither real departure from Weberian conceptualizations other than oppositional approaches still in search of an essential entity, nor much consideration given to the possibility that the paradigmatic approach to form is also part of the problem. In light of this, I posit that thinking within a modernist epistemological framework has served to …

Ict Adoption And Impact On The Italian Logistics Service Providers’ Performance, Pietro Evangelista, Riccardo Mogre, Alessandro Perego, Antonino Raspagliesi, Edward Sweeney

Conference papers

No abstract provided.