Peak performing organisations

The literature on organisational performance is riddled with measurement problems that cannot easily be solved. In contrast we argue that elite theory in terms of performance can be more easily measured by the win record of sports organisations. Accordingly, this article argues that certain organisational peak practices are key to understanding how peak performance is sustained. Through data collected from the top ten sports organisations in the world we introduce the embryonic theory of Peak Performing Organisations (PPO). Sustained PPO practices offer more robust outcomes than the genre of High Performing Organisations.     

The making of 'Home Improvements - tools for working with families in Aotearoa/ New Zealand'. Reflections on creating a video resource for teaching purposes

In this article, two social work practitioners explore, with all the wisdom of hindsight, the joys and pitfalls of venturing into video production as a medium for creating a teaching and learning resource. Their discoveries are organised under a number of key themes beginning with an idea and leading into commitment to a project involving a crew, a cast and a steep but captivating learning curve on the use of audio visual technology. Other practitioners similarly interested in the potential of this medium but without much experience, will find this article of great benefit in providing practical tips and insights, and demystifying the tasks and terminology associated with video production.     

The Institutionalization of Third Stream Activities in UK Higher Education: The Role of Discourse and Metrics

In this paper we examine the institutionalization of a new organizational practice around third stream activities in UK higher education from 1994 to 2008. Employing a longitudinal research design, involving archival, survey and contemporary interview data, we show how a new organizational practice diffused through the use of discourse and metrics around commercialization but over time was threatened on pure economic criteria. In response to the threat we explore how actors worked to institutionalize the new practice, reshaping both discourse and metrics to ensure that they were robust so that they could align with the interests and values of major stakeholders. In addition, actors worked to align discourse and metrics, as any misalignment between the two would have undermined the institutionalization of the new organizational practice.     

Similarities and Differences between Leadership and Management: High‐Performance Competencies in the British Royal Navy

This paper describes the research, analysis and development of a model clarifying the similarities and differences in competencies and personality factors 1 associated with effective Leadership and Management in the Royal Navy. A questionnaire study was conducted on a sample of 261 Officers and Ratings (Sailors). Their performance was rated through the organization's rigorous appraisal process, whilst competency and personality data were gathered through the Occupational Personality Questionnaire and the Leadership Dimensions Questionnaire. The results identify the common and unique relevance of specific competencies and personality factors and so provide an illuminating insight into the differences between the constructs of leadership and management. The critical factors related to effective leadership and management performance are also identified.     

Home‐start and the delivery of family support

The publication of Child Protection: Messages from Research (Department of Health, 1995) and of the ‘Supporting Families’ Green Paper (Home Office, 1998) have both highlighted the importance of developing family support services, in keeping with the word and the spirit of the Children Act, 1989. This article presents some of the findings of a three year study of a voluntary organisation, Home‐Start, which offers support to mothers with children under five through volunteer home visiting. The article makes connections between the activities of Home‐Start and the wider debate about family support in the United Kingdom. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Archiving cultures

This paper argues that to understand the legitimacy of a culture we need to investigate its relation to the archive, the site for the accumulation of records. Archive reason is a kind of reason which is concerned with detail, it constantly directs us away from the big generalization, down into the particularity and singularity of the event. Increasingly the focus has shifted from archiving the lives of the good and the great down to the detail of mundane everyday life. One implication here is that rather than see the archive as a specific place in which we deposit records, documents, photographs, film, video and all the minutiae on which culture is inscribed, should we not seek to extend the walls of the archive to place it around the everyday, the world? If everything can potentially be of significance shouldn't part of the archive fever be to record and document everything, as it could one day be useful? The problem then becomes, not what to put into the archive, but what one dare leave out. Some of the implications of these questions were considered by Georg Simmel, in his argument that there has been a build up and overload in the production and circulation of objective culture. This is now beyond our subjective capacity to assimilate and order, given the finite limits of the human life course we all face. It is something which confronts the individual with irresolvable dilemmas over selectivity, with each particular choice amounting to a wager which inevitably closes off others. Related questions about the difficulties of handling cultural completeness, were also addressed by Jorge Luis Borges in his discussion of the Library of Babel and the Aleph. Yet both could hardly have anticipated the full implications of the electronic archive: the development of new technologies for storing, searching and communicating information through the Internet with its databases and hypertext links. The electronic archive offers new possibilities for speed, mobility and completeness of access to cultures which have become digitalized, which raise fundamental questions about ownership, intellectual property rights, censorship and democratic access. The implications for culture are clear: the new electronic archives will not only change the form in which culture is produced and recorded, but the wider conditions under which it is enacted and lived as well.     

The model of human occupation: understanding the worker who is injured or disabled

This paper discusses application of the model of human occupation to the worker with an injury or disability. Concepts from the model of human occupation (MOHO) are used to frame potential work-related strengths and weaknesses. Using MOHO as a framework to understand the worker with an injury or disability provides a more complete and holistic understanding of the many factors which can affect a worker. In particular, the model illuminates how factors of capacity, motivation, lifestyle, and environment inter-relate in determining a worker's success or failure. Implications for using the model to achieve a more effective work-related practice are discussed.     

Women's Employment in Transition, 1992–4: the Case of Poland

Since the early 1990s the Polish economy has, in the move towards a market economy, undergone substantial economic reforms which resulted initially in a severe recession and notably in widespread unemployment. In a country where women have traditionally played a major role in the workforce it is pertinent to ask how their role has been affected during the early years of transition to a market economy, what factors explain this, and what their employment prospects are likely to be in a free market economy. After sketching the key features of women's employment in Poland pre-transition the article then addresses these questions using data drawn mainly from the Labour Force Surveys of 1992 and 1994. It finds that women's labour market position has been changing and in 1994 could be said to be mixed: while on the one hand it seems to be deteriorating (rising rates of inactivity and unemployment, the feminization of part-time work), on the other women seem to have been relatively protected from the worst effects of marketization and are in a better position than men according to some unemployment indicators. Prospects for women's employment under a free market economy also appear to be mixed, with much depending on whether the Polish government introduces a framework of national measures to support and encourage women who enter into paid employment.