After an intense two months of writing, the Findings chapters are now available and posted to my Valence Theory thesis wiki.
I have restructured the thesis into three parts: Ground (the invisible context), Figure (what is noticed), and Meaning (the interplay of figure and ground). These newly posted chapters comprise Figure, and tell the stories of the five participant organizations, as well as providing a summary of the characteristic differences between BAH and UCaPP organizations in seven categories: Change, Coordination, Evaluation, Impetus, Power dynamics, Sense-making, and View of people.
Of course, I would be interested in hearing your feedback and thoughtful reflections on my analysis. Organizations that are seeking to transform or gain insight into their current situations may find the results gleaned from others instructive.
For quick reference, direct links to specific organizations are:
Organization M, Organization A, Organization F, Unit 7, and Inter Pares.
As a reminder, Organizations M and A are BAH organizations. Organization F was transitioning from being mostly a UCaPP organization to becoming more BAH in nature. Unit 7 has been transitioning in the other direction, becoming more UCaPP. And Inter Pares is the archetypal UCaPP organization.
As always, the Conversation with Nishida chapters are intended to set an appropriate mindframe for the analysis to follow.
PDFs for the three posted Figure chapters, and for each of the Conversations, are available for downloading at the site.
[Technorati tags: valence theory | findings]
29 December 2009
21 December 2009
Assault and Aftermath
I was assaulted today. Not metaphorically assaulted—a guy punched and kicked me; there was a trip to Emerg, police report, witness statements, the whole nine yards. Without getting into the details, (except to say that the incident was unprovoked by me aside from what the assailant may have perceived that caused him to fly into a rage), I’m pretty shaken up by the entire incident. But more disturbing than the physical upset, the bruises, and the post-adrenaline drag is the question of the level of both latent and expressed rage that seems to be pervasive these days. This goes far beyond lack of civility and manners. It seems that many people become violent at almost no provocation, sometimes with tragic consequences. (In fact the circumstances of my assault this morning are strikingly similar to those of Mr. Skinner’s attackers—no pun intended.)
That the world has become stressful to an extreme is not news. That people believe that their individual concerns, schedules, work priorities, or the few seconds of travel time saved by driving through red lights and stop signs are more important than anyone else’s concerns is a significant problem: It seems to demonstrate a type of collective, pathological narcissism that does not bode well for the survival of our society. As a social animal, we humans require the rest of the “pack” to ensure both our collective and individual survival. Sociopaths destroy the material from which the fabric of society is sewn. As an increasing number of people transform from responsible fathers, mothers, wives, husband, business colleagues, charity volunteers, soccer coaches, and hockey moms into channels of unbridled violence at the slightest slight, ultimately that fragile societal fabric is ripped asunder, and we are all inevitably lost.
McLuhan famously said that violence is the quest for identity. Although that may be true – a threat to one’s identity is often met by degrees of violence acted out in any number of ways – it is time, I think, for each of us to reflect on our own pent-up frustrations and latent rage. To heal the world, we must first heal ourselves.
I know that the man who attacked me was apprehended and charged. I hope that he will be able to use the lessons of the process he is about to face to reflect on how he can heal himself for the good of people who care about him, and for the rest of us as well.
[Technorati tags: assault | violence | rage]
That the world has become stressful to an extreme is not news. That people believe that their individual concerns, schedules, work priorities, or the few seconds of travel time saved by driving through red lights and stop signs are more important than anyone else’s concerns is a significant problem: It seems to demonstrate a type of collective, pathological narcissism that does not bode well for the survival of our society. As a social animal, we humans require the rest of the “pack” to ensure both our collective and individual survival. Sociopaths destroy the material from which the fabric of society is sewn. As an increasing number of people transform from responsible fathers, mothers, wives, husband, business colleagues, charity volunteers, soccer coaches, and hockey moms into channels of unbridled violence at the slightest slight, ultimately that fragile societal fabric is ripped asunder, and we are all inevitably lost.
McLuhan famously said that violence is the quest for identity. Although that may be true – a threat to one’s identity is often met by degrees of violence acted out in any number of ways – it is time, I think, for each of us to reflect on our own pent-up frustrations and latent rage. To heal the world, we must first heal ourselves.
I know that the man who attacked me was apprehended and charged. I hope that he will be able to use the lessons of the process he is about to face to reflect on how he can heal himself for the good of people who care about him, and for the rest of us as well.
[Technorati tags: assault | violence | rage]
20 December 2009
The Future of Reading... Magazines
During the conversation the other evening on The Agenda about The Future of Reading, Bill Buxton of Microsoft Research (formerly a prof at U of T) described some very cool work on environmental interfaces, in which the wall of one's room, for example, might be variously a light source, a cinema screen, or an electronic, tactile-browsable bookshelf. Today's e-readers are relatively limited (especially by DRM!) and are not yet up to the capabilities required for what we on the panel envisioned for the future of reading, writing, and publishing. However, the work being done on the user interface for future devices is truly creative. Here's a look at some high-concept work on Mag+ from Bonnier R&D.
[Technorati tags: magazine | e-reader | user interface | bonnier]
[Technorati tags: magazine | e-reader | user interface | bonnier]
16 December 2009
The Future of Reading and The Empire of the Word
I’ve been invited once again to participate on this evening’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin (20:00 on TVO). The conversation tonight will be on The Future of Reading, the last segment of TVO’s highly recommended, four-part, documentary series, The Empire of the Word. As I’ve watched the first three episodes, I’ve been pondering the larger, and perhaps more fundamental question, why do we read? What is the role that reading plays in our culture that may transcend particular technological advances; therefore, what is the future of reading?
There is the old cliché of an infinite number of monkeys set to bang on an infinite number of typewriters – Gutenbergian versions of word processing software – producing all the works of Shakespeare. (I suppose it would be a somewhat less romantic gedankenexperiment to observe that they would also produce every blog post, Facebook status update, Twitter tweet, and—well, LOLcats is pretty passé now, isn’t it?) But in that trite postulate lies a fundamental truth: writing produces worlds. Written language provides a civilization the ability to create any number of possible existences, be they feasible for physical incarnation or not. Descartes has nothing on anyone who is literate: the French philosopher and mathematician thought and therefore he was. A writer thinks and writes and therefore a world as fantastical or as real as one would care to know is born, lives, and occupies not a physical space, but the space of our minds.
And those whose minds are inhabited by the creations of any number of writers have the opportunity to cast themselves into those realms. Readers have the ability to contextualize their lived experiences in the physical and social worlds with respect to these sometimes-fictional-and-sometimes-not creations, and thereby make meaning of their unique and respective existences. It is from that meaning that the Self is created as an inhabitant of the world provided by the writer. The writer may play Zeus in being lord over the worlds s/he brings into existence; it is the reader who fills the role of Prometheus, filling it with life and igniting that world with the fire of insight, reflection, and thought.
That reading in contemporary North American culture has become, variously, a banal chore, the surfing of snippets of information, or a cargo-cult fetish – witness the explosion of sales for Get a Grip on Physics when it was discovered in the rear seat of Tiger Wood’s SUV – is not to be blamed directly on technological advances like the World Wide Web, Google, Kindle, or iAnything. I cast my accusing eye towards school curricula and unmindful pedagogues who seem to have collectively devised a cynically calculated method for inculcating youth with a life-long aversion to instrumental reading through their insipid content tests, involving who-said-what-to-whom-in-which-scene. That many people today have lost the art of reading in depth is not surprising given the nearly two decades of training in reading to find a specific answer desired by an authority figure.
So what of the future of reading? I (and many others) have said that the private mind – and hence, a sense of self that is distinct and individual, that is, one’s identity – emerged from the ability to read silently, to take a world created by another and inhabit it, thereby gaining a better understanding and appreciation of one’s place in the society we all share. But in today’s ubiquitously connected and pervasively proximate world, identity is collaboratively constructed. We each contribute artefacts and contexts to each other through a variety of interconnected means. A person’s identity emerges from amidst this collection of diverse artefacts and contexts. To borrow from Bernie Hogan, we become, in a sense, curators of our Self—multiple Selves, actually, depending on the locale, the contexts, and the particular artefacts that we care to display. If reading has always been about recreating the writer’s world and literally/literarily making it our own, then the roles and practices of contemporary writers and readers must necessarily change. Writing and reading, I think, become collaborative endeavours. Thus, the distinction between the two roles blurs somewhat, realizing James Joyce’s perhaps not-so-rhetorical query from Finnegans Wake, “my consumers are they not my producers?”
A future writer will indeed appear to be more like a producer, creating environments of engagement among multiple future-readers who participate with the writer in constructing, inhabiting, and bringing meaning to both fantastical and more prosaic experiences. This means that new and different skills will have to be added to our educational curricula. No longer will variations on See Dick Run; Run Dick Run (with its obligatory and corresponding content test—What Did Dick Do?) be sufficient for contemporary schools. Instead, students will need to learn how to create environments of engagement among multiple people who each bring multiple contexts grounded in diverse histories, cultures, and life experiences. The budding “wreader” will learn to facilitate reflexivity among her/his audience so that each participant in the book-of-the-future will see, experience, and understand their piece of the world-in-relation with perhaps just a little more clarity than before.
The book itself has been obsolesced as an instrumental medium. Instead, it becomes an aesthetic objet d’art, an academic talisman, an artefact in contemporary fetish rituals presided over by the likes of Oprah, Harry Potter, or Tiger at Twilight. Writers, editors, and publishers become, to various degrees, creators of experiential environments in the context of what literacy has always been when considered relative to individual and collective identity. The reader likewise continues, not merely as consumer, but as collaborative producer of Self and the World that Self inhabits.
The Agenda with Steve Paikin airs this evening at 20:00 on TVO. The full video of the conversation is posted on the episode page.
[Technorati tags: the agenda | steve paikin | future of reading | future of the book | empire of the word]
There is the old cliché of an infinite number of monkeys set to bang on an infinite number of typewriters – Gutenbergian versions of word processing software – producing all the works of Shakespeare. (I suppose it would be a somewhat less romantic gedankenexperiment to observe that they would also produce every blog post, Facebook status update, Twitter tweet, and—well, LOLcats is pretty passé now, isn’t it?) But in that trite postulate lies a fundamental truth: writing produces worlds. Written language provides a civilization the ability to create any number of possible existences, be they feasible for physical incarnation or not. Descartes has nothing on anyone who is literate: the French philosopher and mathematician thought and therefore he was. A writer thinks and writes and therefore a world as fantastical or as real as one would care to know is born, lives, and occupies not a physical space, but the space of our minds.
And those whose minds are inhabited by the creations of any number of writers have the opportunity to cast themselves into those realms. Readers have the ability to contextualize their lived experiences in the physical and social worlds with respect to these sometimes-fictional-and-sometimes-not creations, and thereby make meaning of their unique and respective existences. It is from that meaning that the Self is created as an inhabitant of the world provided by the writer. The writer may play Zeus in being lord over the worlds s/he brings into existence; it is the reader who fills the role of Prometheus, filling it with life and igniting that world with the fire of insight, reflection, and thought.
That reading in contemporary North American culture has become, variously, a banal chore, the surfing of snippets of information, or a cargo-cult fetish – witness the explosion of sales for Get a Grip on Physics when it was discovered in the rear seat of Tiger Wood’s SUV – is not to be blamed directly on technological advances like the World Wide Web, Google, Kindle, or iAnything. I cast my accusing eye towards school curricula and unmindful pedagogues who seem to have collectively devised a cynically calculated method for inculcating youth with a life-long aversion to instrumental reading through their insipid content tests, involving who-said-what-to-whom-in-which-scene. That many people today have lost the art of reading in depth is not surprising given the nearly two decades of training in reading to find a specific answer desired by an authority figure.
So what of the future of reading? I (and many others) have said that the private mind – and hence, a sense of self that is distinct and individual, that is, one’s identity – emerged from the ability to read silently, to take a world created by another and inhabit it, thereby gaining a better understanding and appreciation of one’s place in the society we all share. But in today’s ubiquitously connected and pervasively proximate world, identity is collaboratively constructed. We each contribute artefacts and contexts to each other through a variety of interconnected means. A person’s identity emerges from amidst this collection of diverse artefacts and contexts. To borrow from Bernie Hogan, we become, in a sense, curators of our Self—multiple Selves, actually, depending on the locale, the contexts, and the particular artefacts that we care to display. If reading has always been about recreating the writer’s world and literally/literarily making it our own, then the roles and practices of contemporary writers and readers must necessarily change. Writing and reading, I think, become collaborative endeavours. Thus, the distinction between the two roles blurs somewhat, realizing James Joyce’s perhaps not-so-rhetorical query from Finnegans Wake, “my consumers are they not my producers?”
A future writer will indeed appear to be more like a producer, creating environments of engagement among multiple future-readers who participate with the writer in constructing, inhabiting, and bringing meaning to both fantastical and more prosaic experiences. This means that new and different skills will have to be added to our educational curricula. No longer will variations on See Dick Run; Run Dick Run (with its obligatory and corresponding content test—What Did Dick Do?) be sufficient for contemporary schools. Instead, students will need to learn how to create environments of engagement among multiple people who each bring multiple contexts grounded in diverse histories, cultures, and life experiences. The budding “wreader” will learn to facilitate reflexivity among her/his audience so that each participant in the book-of-the-future will see, experience, and understand their piece of the world-in-relation with perhaps just a little more clarity than before.
The book itself has been obsolesced as an instrumental medium. Instead, it becomes an aesthetic objet d’art, an academic talisman, an artefact in contemporary fetish rituals presided over by the likes of Oprah, Harry Potter, or Tiger at Twilight. Writers, editors, and publishers become, to various degrees, creators of experiential environments in the context of what literacy has always been when considered relative to individual and collective identity. The reader likewise continues, not merely as consumer, but as collaborative producer of Self and the World that Self inhabits.
The Agenda with Steve Paikin airs this evening at 20:00 on TVO. The full video of the conversation is posted on the episode page.
[Technorati tags: the agenda | steve paikin | future of reading | future of the book | empire of the word]
02 December 2009
Identity and Organization Change
From the emerging thesis draft:
[Technorati tags: organization change | identity]
Among the dominant effects of the Industrial Age were the concentration and importance of capital. As the modern BAH organization emerged amidst the effects of that environment, it is understandable that the Economic-valence relationship became situated as the primary driving force among modern organizations. The modern understanding of organization dynamics according to the instrumental, managerialist discourse has, at its core, a primary concern for economic considerations. On the other hand, the emerging humanist, relational organizational discourse of the 20th century – the line of reasoning that leads to the contemporary UCaPP organization – is arguably based on situating the individual simultaneously in relation to other individuals and in relation to organization as a distinct entity in itself. I suggest, therefore, that in a UCaPP societal environment the dominant driving force shifts from the extrinsic instrumentality of the Economic-valence relationship to the intrinsic relationality of the Identity-valence relationship.
In suggesting this profound shift in conception, I am not denying the ongoing importance of the Economic-valence relationship. The fact remains that many people can be induced to enact certain behaviours (including working at otherwise dehumanizing jobs) through direct financial incentive. Even among anti-capitalists, barter and exchange – non-monetary manifestations of Economic-valence relationships – still remain important forms of interaction. Economic gain, one’s salary, possessions, and other material displays of wealth are often proxy markers for social status and reinforcements of psychological self-worth – all material, external expressions of identity relative to any particular cultural conceptions of social location. Nevertheless, my previous research (Role*: A reconception of role and relationship in the workplace) confirms and extends Herzberg’s conclusion that economic compensation, beyond a certain level, becomes for the most part an issue of hygiene, rather than motivation.
I have argued elsewhere (No Educator Left Behind) that identity – the location of oneself in relation to one’s society at the time – has always been important, and indeed directly defines the role of education in a society. In the contemporary UCaPP world, however, identity being collaboratively constructed in the context of multiple, massively-interconnected networks of social relations takes on an even greater importance: the preservation or enhancement (or both) of identity becomes a critical consideration in effecting organizational change, be it as simple as a rearrangement of an organization chart, or as complex as transitioning from being a BAH organization to enacting a UCaPP organization. As was clearly demonstrated by Aaron in Organization F as it is transitioning to become more BAH, and by many departing individuals of various ranks in Unit 7 as it transitioned to become more UCaPP, a perceived threat to identity, a felt diminishment of Identity-valence relationship, is sufficient reason to seek employment elsewhere. The clichéd resistance-to-change is not a resistance to change per se, but rather a resistance to a change in identity. Conversely, it follows that the optimal strategy to effect organizational change of any sort is to first understand and account for the requisite change in Identity-valence, and then facilitate the changes among the other valence relationships.
[Technorati tags: organization change | identity]
01 December 2009
It's About Time
The Ontario Ministry of Education has announced that it will be revamping the K-8 curriculum to focus less on rote learning of facts, and more on creating connections, understanding context, considering complexity, and making connotation, or meaning. Seems they've been listening (in fact, they have, as I've been tracking hits from the provincial government and TDSB on my blog to the video of No Educator Left Behind).
While they're at it, they may also want to have a look at an Adult Educator's Manifesto, since adult education isn't just for adults.
[Technorati tags: education | curriculum | adult education]
While they're at it, they may also want to have a look at an Adult Educator's Manifesto, since adult education isn't just for adults.
[Technorati tags: education | curriculum | adult education]
25 November 2009
Quote of the Day On, What Does an Organization Trust?
From the emerging thesis draft:
[Technorati tags: organization | trust]
A BAH organization trusts its systems, not its people.
[Technorati tags: organization | trust]
24 November 2009
The Fundamental Difference Between BAH and UCaPP Organizations
From the emerging thesis draft:
[Technorati tags: complexity | complication | organization change]
BAH organizations replace the complexity of human dynamics in social systems with the complication of machine-analogous procedures that enable individual independence, responsibility, and accountability. UCaPP organizations encourage and enable processes of continual emergence by valuing and promoting complex interactions even though doing so necessitates traditional, legitimated leadership ceding control in an environment of individual autonomy and agency, collective responsibility, and mutual accountability.
Neither approach is universally appropriate; nor should an organization fall blindly into one or the other without understanding the ramifications and desirability of becoming less (BAH) or more (UCaPP) consistent with contemporary society.
[Technorati tags: complexity | complication | organization change]
18 November 2009
Is Technology Ruining Our Lives? Join Us for a Discussion This Saturday
Ontario Science Centre has invited me to participate in this month's Café Scientifique. These are conversations in which a couple of "experts" kick off the musing on the theme of the day with their brief contemplations, and then the audience has at it. The theme for this month is the question, "Is technology ruining our lives?" My short take at the answer: Yes, and it's about time! The theme is an opportunity to explore the nature of our lives in a very large historical, sociological, and cultural context, and to contemplate the possibilities for collectively recreating our lives in today's UCaPP context.
So if you're available in Toronto on Saturday, November 21, from 16:00 to 18:00, join me and Bryan Karney, Professor in the Environmental Section of U of T's Department of Civil Engineering, at the Rivoli at 334 Queen Street West (just east of Spadina on the north side of Queen).
(Click for larger image)
[Technorati tags: cafe scientifique | rivoli | technology]
So if you're available in Toronto on Saturday, November 21, from 16:00 to 18:00, join me and Bryan Karney, Professor in the Environmental Section of U of T's Department of Civil Engineering, at the Rivoli at 334 Queen Street West (just east of Spadina on the north side of Queen).
(Click for larger image)
[Technorati tags: cafe scientifique | rivoli | technology]
06 November 2009
Seeking Female Research Participants in Hierarchical Organizations
No, not for me - one PhD research project is quite enough, thank you. This posting is for a colleague where I was a few years ago. But if you are a woman in a large, hierarchical organization, please read on!
So if you have a couple of hours to spare and would like to help out a PhD candidate with her research (I can tell you that all of my participants really enjoyed the process and each learned something new about themselves and their individual situations), please contact Tammy Chan directly. Many thanks - recruiting is often the hardest part of the research process!
[Technorati tags: tammy chan | research | women | hierarchical organization]
WOMEN AND LIFELONG INNOVATIVE LEARNING:
ENGAGEMENT AND OPPORTUNITIES IN HIERARCHICAL ORGANIZATIONS
Despite their proportion of participation in the workplace, women particularly those from the ethnic minority groups have been disproportionately underrepresented in senior positions in hierarchical organizations. Most of these women are concentrated in low-paying and low-status occupations in these organizations regardless of their education and experience. Various structural and cultural constraints are ubiquitous in hierarchical organizations which limit their engagement and opportunities and compromise their career mobility. This study will investigate how learning in a self-directed and innovative way during the life course can be a constructive intervention for these women in overcoming obstacles arising directly or indirectly from the structure and culture of hierarchical organizations to their career. It further explores if learning through their experience at work will support these women in building new knowledge to improve their career opportunities and in becoming lifelong innovative learners. The study design includes discussions with women who are interested in this study and are able to share their experience relating to their experience in hierarchical organizations and their career development as well as their approach to learning.
If you are a member of the study population, i.e. women who have worked in an organization with over 50 employees for over five years and are interested in participating in this study, we would like to have an interview with you. Your participation in this study will enrich our understanding of the research questions with findings that may be instrumental in developing coping strategies to manage the careers of women and in promoting lifelong innovative learning as a constructive intervention.
The study is being conducted by Tammy Chan, a doctoral student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, under the supervision of Professor Peter Sawchuk.
If you wish to participate in the study, you will be interviewed at a time and place convenient to you. The interview will be conducted in two phases by the doctoral student personally and will take approximately two hours and, if necessary, a follow up discussion on any outstanding issues after reflection either in person or over the phone. Dialogues during the interviews will be audio-taped to enhance interpretability relating to the structural and cultural constraints experienced by participants, their career development and approaches to lifelong learning. All the information relating to the research questions collected during the interview will be kept in strict confidence which will only be used for the preparation of the thesis. If you would like to continue your discussion about your experience after the interviews, we will be able to refer you to other professional workers in the related areas.
Your name and name of your organization or any other information that may disclose your identify will not be used in the study. To maintain confidentiality, a pseudonym will be used for the report of the findings from your participation. All information about the organization that is discussed at the interview will be kept in confidence. The audio tapes and all related written records from the interviews will only be kept until the completion and approval of the thesis.
Your participation is completely voluntary and you may withdraw from the study without further obligations at any time up until the write up of the final analysis begins. Although there will be no financial compensation in participating in this study, we would like to recognize your contribution with a small token of a book certificate. A copy of the final analyses can also be provided to you upon request when available. Please fill in your contact information below if you would like to have a copy.
If you have any questions about the study at any time, you may contact us at the numbers below. Thank you for considering your participation in this study. I would also appreciate if you would forward this letter to others who might be interested in this study. Thanks again.
So if you have a couple of hours to spare and would like to help out a PhD candidate with her research (I can tell you that all of my participants really enjoyed the process and each learned something new about themselves and their individual situations), please contact Tammy Chan directly. Many thanks - recruiting is often the hardest part of the research process!
[Technorati tags: tammy chan | research | women | hierarchical organization]
05 November 2009
Leadership, Reward, and Contrary Compensation
From the emerging thesis draft:
[Technorati tags: leadership | collaboration | teamwork | compensation]
“If the spotlight is on you, then you’re not doing your job, especially in a leadership role…” says Roger, one of my research participants from a UCaPP organization. Given that the UCaPP organization ideally does not privilege one group or class over another, the espoused leadership concept of personal success only being achieved through group success permeates throughout all organization members, irrespective of their nominal position, role, or tenure with the organization. When considering more traditional organizations, the converse is perhaps more important: collaboration or teamwork that might be expected among the workers cannot be contradicted, neither by the otherwise well-intentioned actions of management, nor the formal and informal compensation and recognition systems in the organization.
Reward and recognition are often constructed as rivalrous resources based on the premise of there being beneficial value in creating internal competition in a BAH organization. However, the tacit but clear message received by organization members is that they are always and continually competing for their respective offices unless one has job security via a collective agreement, tenure, or other, similar arrangement. Teamwork becomes necessary in this environment, among other reasons, to establish concertive control in the absence of legitimated and explicit coercion.
The collaborative culture of a UCaPP organization decouples reward and status from contribution. In an environment of organization-ba – especially in the presence of strong Socio-psychological-ba and Identity-ba – organization members will contribute not only because it aligns with their personal values to do so, but because they feel valued - strong Economic-ba in doing so.
[Technorati tags: leadership | collaboration | teamwork | compensation]
03 November 2009
Cory Doctorow on the Implications of the Secret Copyright Negotiations
I don't often quote entire posts directly, but this one from Cory is incredible:
This is write your Member of Parliament time, ladies and gentlemen.
[Technorati tags: acta | negotiations | michael geist]
The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says:Michael Geist, as usual, is on top of it with more details (thank you, thank you, thank you, Michael).
* That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.
* That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.
* That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.
* Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)
This is write your Member of Parliament time, ladies and gentlemen.
[Technorati tags: acta | negotiations | michael geist]
Organizational Impetus
From the (emerging) thesis draft:
[Technorati tags: organization | impetus]
Every organization has an intrinsic motive force – the ideation which provides the impetus for the organization to move. For many organizations, its impetus is expressed by its mission statement that nominally captures its overall goals and objectives. For others, the impetus emerges from its members’ deeply held values that unify in the body of the organization. Regardless of its origin, impetus defines the processes of direction-setting and decision-making, and therefore informs and provides guidance to the mechanisms of management throughout the organization.
[Technorati tags: organization | impetus]
Organizational Effectiveness Homework Assignment
From the emerging thesis draft (well, the idea, anyway):
[Technorati tags: organizational effectiveness | evaluation]
Setting and meeting objectives is considered important for organizational effectiveness. However, how those objectives are set relates to what we mean by effectiveness. Is it better to set objectives that create visibility for the intended effects and continual reflection on the values of an organization, but may not be quantifiable (and thus, cannot be conventionally measured); OR to set objectives that are quantifiable and therefore can be designed to be accomplished as set, but may not actually achieve the desired or intended effects?
Hint: One way is consistent with the practices of UCaPP organizations, the other with BAH organizations.
[Technorati tags: organizational effectiveness | evaluation]
02 November 2009
Evaluation in the Contemporary Organization
From the (emerging) thesis draft (I expect these excerpts will be posted in a chapter in early December-ish):
[Technorati tags: organization | evaluation | effectiveness]
With respect to evaluation in a UCaPP environment, the organization itself must be considered to be a distinct actant in relation with the individual and thus is, as well, a subject of evaluation along with the individual. It cannot be take as axiomatic that the organization is always correct in its often arbitrary selection of goals and objectives, and thus, individual goals and objectives derived via functional decomposition may well be contestable; indeed, in a UCaPP organization, they must be contested and negotiated. The fundamental evaluative concern of the UCaPP organization thus changes from that of the typical BAH organization, asking a different question: In what ways did the individual contribute to enabling and creating the organization's intended effects, and how well did the organization respond?
[Technorati tags: organization | evaluation | effectiveness]
29 October 2009
Organizational Culture Change
From the (emerging) thesis draft:
[Technorati tags: organization | culture | change]
Effecting cultural change in an organization must necessarily be a discursive undertaking, literally changing the vocabulary of attitudes, behaviours, characteristics, determinants, and ethos that create individual identity with respect to the organization, and organizational identity with respect to its members. The social and psychological location of this change is manifest in the valence relationships, and particularly with respect to enacting (or suppressing) the ba-forms of those relationships. The place of that enactment - the culture change venue - literally creates metaphysical "place" in the organization - basho.
[Technorati tags: organization | culture | change]
Bureaucracy, Complexity, and Complication
From the (emerging) thesis draft:
[Technorati tags: organization | bureaucracy | administration | hierarchy]
Bureaucracy, administrative control, and hierarchy fragment natural interpersonal interactions, thereby interrupting naturally occurring complexity in human social systems. As in the fashion of a Newtonian clockwork universe, that complexity is replaced by the complication of BAH procedures in an attempt to replicate an organic system of humanity with the equilibrium of non-human machinery.
[Technorati tags: organization | bureaucracy | administration | hierarchy]
27 October 2009
Understanding the Context of Education
It may be news to the so-called Internet generation that history did not begin only fifty years ago. That's why I ground my own research into contemporary organizations in 3,000 years of history. There is also an underlying existential, epistemological, and ontological foundation for the things we do today. That's why I introduce a philosophical frame to provide reasoned guidance to Valence Theory. Together, history and philosophy provide the context that enables meaning to be made, even (especially) in a contemporary context that has been tremendously influenced by the follies of post-modernist thought.
Believe it or not, education as well has a history, and a philosophy that allow today's practitioners to make sense of the circumstances that inform their pedagogical practices. Or, to put it simply, teachers and educators need to understand from whence we came to comprehend where we should be going.
This very simple lesson seems to be lost on the Chief Educators at the largest graduate faculty of education in the world, namely the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education - OISE - at University of Toronto. The Dean, Jane Gaskell, in conjunction with Brian Corman, the Dean of Graduate Studies and Vice-Provost of Graduate Education for U of T's School of Graduate Studies, announced that they are shutting down the doctoral program in the History and Philosophy of Education in the Theory and Policy Studies department at OISE.
Nominally, the Ontario Council for Graduate Studies states their reason for recommending that the program be shut down as:
How easy it is to say that there is not academic critical mass when the requisite supplementary mass has been repeatedly refused by the Dean. It's not as if there was a long-standing tacit plan to shut down the program, right? After all, it's only 85 students we're talking about.
It may appear that History and Philosophy of Education are not immediately relevant to the corporate view of instrumental education. It may be that H&P don't get the paying bums in the seats - after all, most of us are nothing more than BUs (Basic Units) to the bean-counters on OISE's 12th floor - the same ones that have repeatedly told us there would be no negative impact to increasing enrolment, decreasing tenured faculty, decreasing adjunct stipends, and preventing part-time students from taking more than one course per semester (tell that to the person whose salary depends on completing her M.Ed.). These are the same bean-counters that wanted to introduce the concept of indentured servants to the funded cohort at OISE ("no impact," they said, even though it means that a student would be tied to a professor they have never met for the duration of their degree) because that's the way they do it in many science faculties.
Without doctoral research in History and Philosophy of Education (which, of course, attracts the Master's research before it) the understanding of educational context withers and dies. Thus, that which creates meaning to current practices goes by the wayside, and most important, what fundamentally enables us to query and probe why we are doing what we are doing, and whether it's still relevant, vanishes. Perhaps the status quo is acceptable to Dean Gaskell - after all, people are still paying to be taught how to be good 19th-century schoolmarms, albeit with fancier tech. But (and this is where it gets personal) were it not for a doctoral thesis produced by graduate of H&P at OISE (on Plato, of all things), I wouldn't have been able to state No Educator Left Behind (that has garnered attention among thousands of educators throughout North America), and quite literally, the foundational work that led to Valence Theory of Organization would not have existed, and thus, neither would my thesis. How about that? What I hope will be the Next Big Thing in business had its humble beginnings in the History and Philosophy of Education.
Yes, Dean Gaskell, it is a complex world - what you might perceive as a relatively inconsequential budget saving may indeed have implications far into the future that none of us can yet perceive.
Sign the petition to Save History and Philosophy of Education.
[Technorati tags: history | philosophy | education | oise | jane gaskell]
Believe it or not, education as well has a history, and a philosophy that allow today's practitioners to make sense of the circumstances that inform their pedagogical practices. Or, to put it simply, teachers and educators need to understand from whence we came to comprehend where we should be going.
This very simple lesson seems to be lost on the Chief Educators at the largest graduate faculty of education in the world, namely the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education - OISE - at University of Toronto. The Dean, Jane Gaskell, in conjunction with Brian Corman, the Dean of Graduate Studies and Vice-Provost of Graduate Education for U of T's School of Graduate Studies, announced that they are shutting down the doctoral program in the History and Philosophy of Education in the Theory and Policy Studies department at OISE.
Nominally, the Ontario Council for Graduate Studies states their reason for recommending that the program be shut down as:
The staffing levels for the program are extremely low and will be exacerbated by imminent retirements. The Committee was not convinced that a critical mass of Faculty is associated with the program to ensure the necessary intellectual climate for a doctoral program. In addition, there is no commitment for hiring at an appropriate level to ensure program viability.However, there are no imminent retirements (two professors who are approaching the former mandatory retirement age aren't retiring), and the 7 tenured faculty in the program are augmented by 17 associate faculty who are paid by other U of T departments. What is true is that Dean Gaskell seems to have been starving this program of academic renewal for six years, apparently refusing to hire a new professor even though the TPS department unanimously agreed that the next TPS hire should be for H&P (the unanimity has been since 2007).
How easy it is to say that there is not academic critical mass when the requisite supplementary mass has been repeatedly refused by the Dean. It's not as if there was a long-standing tacit plan to shut down the program, right? After all, it's only 85 students we're talking about.
It may appear that History and Philosophy of Education are not immediately relevant to the corporate view of instrumental education. It may be that H&P don't get the paying bums in the seats - after all, most of us are nothing more than BUs (Basic Units) to the bean-counters on OISE's 12th floor - the same ones that have repeatedly told us there would be no negative impact to increasing enrolment, decreasing tenured faculty, decreasing adjunct stipends, and preventing part-time students from taking more than one course per semester (tell that to the person whose salary depends on completing her M.Ed.). These are the same bean-counters that wanted to introduce the concept of indentured servants to the funded cohort at OISE ("no impact," they said, even though it means that a student would be tied to a professor they have never met for the duration of their degree) because that's the way they do it in many science faculties.
Without doctoral research in History and Philosophy of Education (which, of course, attracts the Master's research before it) the understanding of educational context withers and dies. Thus, that which creates meaning to current practices goes by the wayside, and most important, what fundamentally enables us to query and probe why we are doing what we are doing, and whether it's still relevant, vanishes. Perhaps the status quo is acceptable to Dean Gaskell - after all, people are still paying to be taught how to be good 19th-century schoolmarms, albeit with fancier tech. But (and this is where it gets personal) were it not for a doctoral thesis produced by graduate of H&P at OISE (on Plato, of all things), I wouldn't have been able to state No Educator Left Behind (that has garnered attention among thousands of educators throughout North America), and quite literally, the foundational work that led to Valence Theory of Organization would not have existed, and thus, neither would my thesis. How about that? What I hope will be the Next Big Thing in business had its humble beginnings in the History and Philosophy of Education.
Yes, Dean Gaskell, it is a complex world - what you might perceive as a relatively inconsequential budget saving may indeed have implications far into the future that none of us can yet perceive.
Sign the petition to Save History and Philosophy of Education.
[Technorati tags: history | philosophy | education | oise | jane gaskell]
Contemporary Organizational Effectiveness
From the (emerging) thesis draft:
[Technorati tags: organization | effectiveness]
To change the fundamental premise upon which organizations are constructed necessitates a change in our collective understanding of what it means to be effective. Simply put, to be effective in a ubiquitously connected and pervasively proximate world is to be cognizant of the effects one intends to create, and that one actually brings about in both the social and material - both natural and physically constructed - environments. As effects are substantially distinct from goals and outcomes, an organization concerned first and foremost with its effects must maintain a heightened awareness of its interactions amidst the social and material environments in which it participates. This logic brings an organization to having as its primary concern the relationships it creates, out of which intended effects emerge, followed by the goals, objectives, and outcomes towards which it strives.
[Technorati tags: organization | effectiveness]
23 October 2009
Zichron L'vracha: Soupy Sales, 1926-2009
Childhood was so different in the 1950s and early '60s. It was a simpler time, and television then was not television now (two distinctly different media). And television personalities were different as well, hearkening from the tradition of vaudeville and the infamous borscht belt that influenced generations of American comedians. Soupy Sales was one of the greats in children's entertainment - not the least for this child. He passed yesterday at the age of 83.
I remember his shtick with the pies-in-the-face, and the mostly off-screen puppets, and the joy of pure silliness. In retrospect, and now seeing some of his clips with the eyes of an adult somewhat versed in media theory and the ideas of Marshall McLuhan, I can see the sophistication and the sly asides to any parents who might have happened to be watching along with their kids (something that rarely happened back then). Soupy Sales was cool - his gags needed the participation and completion of the audience, and he spoke to the child-sensibilities in us all. Even in his latter years of declining health, he always respected and had great regard for his audience and fans. Here's hoping there will be a great big heavenly cream pie waiting for you upstairs.
[Technorati tags: soupy sales]
I remember his shtick with the pies-in-the-face, and the mostly off-screen puppets, and the joy of pure silliness. In retrospect, and now seeing some of his clips with the eyes of an adult somewhat versed in media theory and the ideas of Marshall McLuhan, I can see the sophistication and the sly asides to any parents who might have happened to be watching along with their kids (something that rarely happened back then). Soupy Sales was cool - his gags needed the participation and completion of the audience, and he spoke to the child-sensibilities in us all. Even in his latter years of declining health, he always respected and had great regard for his audience and fans. Here's hoping there will be a great big heavenly cream pie waiting for you upstairs.
[Technorati tags: soupy sales]
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