Leading Change
Asynchronous Session
Institutional Intangibles and Climate Mitigation
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Michael K. Green
Humans self-organize by assimilating input from senses and drives, evaluating them emotionally and cognitively, and then acting. Social interaction produces institutions that are objectifications of human characteristics. Objectified actions create institutional norms. Cognitive interaction creates an intersubjective reality consisting of perceptions and rationalizations. This objectification creates a set of "facts" and rationalizations that support the institution. Finally, emotional interaction creates the emotional, intangible, substrate of an institution. The emotional substrate of "facts" and rationalizations is expectation and surprise. Rigorous and sustained scientific research aims to reveal the objective reality of a situation by testing expectations in search of surprises. Intersubjective rationalizations maintain expectations. Cognitively, the country is divided into two epistemic regimes (Fox News etc.--Mainstream media). A capitalist economy is based on a confidence-fear polarity. Confidence leads to a flow of capital, labor, and entrepreneurial activity into an area. Fear leads to a withdrawal of these. Confidence is high in green investments, but this could evaporate in a bust and boom cycle. Political institutions are based on either fear-confidence (authoritarian) or anger-contentment (democratic). Anger is predominant on the coasts while contentment is in the Midwest and South. However, contentment overall with the current state is high because around 70 percent hold that climate change will not impact them individually. The fear-based political systems are divided with some (Russia and Saudi Arabia) still committed to fossil fuels and some (China) not as much. Climate change mitigation is inherently dependent upon a host of intangibles that make the process volatile and unpredictable.
Leadership Competencies in Saudi Nonprofit Organizations
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rola Younis Masoud Mohammed
To attain Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 goal to develop leadership, it is necessary to understand the key issues that have emerged in the context of preparing leadership skills in nonprofit organizations to prepare for management positions as soon as possible. This study provides interested parties with an understanding of the characteristics of competent nonprofit organization leaders. The research question is: What leadership competencies are required for all non-profit organization Executive Directors and why should they be adopted? Qualitative methodology is used in this case study of non-profit organizations. Fifteen leaders participated in interviews, the results of which were analyzed qualitatively. The findings suggest that leaders in different nonprofit leadership organizations should possess six categories of competencies to overcome internal and external challenges effectively
Knowledge in a Changing Organization
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lea Clara Frömchen Zwick
How does an organization acquire, use, and secure knowledge? The empirical work of my Ph.D. project focuses on this central question, in which I interpret data from a changing business organization intending to reconstruct organizational knowledge practices. This is relevant because organizational knowledge is usually understood and examined as the personal knowledge of its members and my work understands knowledge as a shared practice instead. In doing so, I also consider organizational learning, for which three dimensions are distinguished in organizational pedagogy: Learning in, from, and between organizations. My work focuses on the learning of organizations, whereby learning is also a perspective of organizational change or, in terms of systems theory, leads to lasting changes in organizational structures (Zech 2018: 181f). For my work, I analyze qualitative data collected in the DFG research project OLGEPRA which consists of participant observations of natural meeting situations, narrative interviews, and documents. I interpret all of them using the documentary method (Bohnsack 2021), based on the praxeological sociology of knowledge (Bohnsack 2017). In this paper, I present my theoretical and empirical concepts and the initial results of my qualitative analyses. The central insight is that knowledge in organizations goes beyond the individual members and is therefore a common practice of the changing organization. [References: Bohnsack, R. (2017). Praxeologische Wissenssoziologie. Opladen: Barbara Budrich.; Bohnsack, R. (2021). Rekonstruktive Sozialforschung. 10. Edition. Opladen: Barbara Budrich.; Zech, R. (2018). Systemtheoretische Grundlagen der Organisationspädagogik. Göhlich, M./Schröer, A./Weber, S. (Ed.). Handbuch Organisationspädagogik. Wiesbaden: Springer, p. 175-186.]
