3rd International Conference on Management and Organization
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING
SAM 2014 Conference Highlights
The 3rd International Conference on Management and Organization »KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING« was organized by The Slovenian Academy of Management on June 12–13, 2014. It took place at the Hotel Brdo, in the beautiful surroundings of Brdo pri Kranju, Slovenia. 28 participants from Universities from Slovenia, Sweden, Croatia, Hungary, Switzerland and USA as well as some large Slovenian companies attended the conference. At the conference 21 papers were presented in 7 sessions, discussing the topic of the conference from different perspectives, taking several different approaches like human resource management perspective, organizational perspective, dynamic relationships management approach, systems approach, innovation and creativity perspective, education perspective, social network perspective, project management perspective and many more. Each session was chaired by one of the members of the program committee of the conference.
The conference was opened on the June 12th 2014 by the chair of the Slovenian Academy of Management Rudi Rozman and the chair of the organizing committee of the conference Aleša Saša Sitar with some introductory words about the theme of the conference »KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING«, followed by some practical information.
In the first session, which was moderated by Tomislav Hernaus, the key-note speaker Samo Roš, Head of Human Resources and Member of the Board of Management, Lek, d.d. emphasized that People are the main source of company development in Lek d.d. and introduced the approaches used in the company to assure the development of key organizational capabilities: innovation, change agility, high work engagement, passion, energy for work and cross-functional cooperation and flexibility of all employees. Presentation by Jon Aarum Andersen followed, in which the author presented the paper called Organisational learning: Theoretical shortcomings and practical challenges, discussing different aspects on knowledge and organizational learning found in the literature, which may lead to the confusion when interpreting the phenomena. Instead the research should focus on emphasizing the importance of the outcome of organizational learning and knowledge and how it is contributing to organizational goal attainment. The last presentation of the first session was about A practice-oriented approach to organizational learning and knowledge management, presented by Rudi Rozman. In his presentation the author addressed the question how learning becomes organizational and explained the phenomena of learning by connectivity. He argued that joining the organizational design and organizational learning research would provide further insight into discussion on how and why learning is different when observing it in organizational context.
In the second session, moderated by Matej Černe, Tomislav Hernaus first presented the paper titled Towards superior organizational performance: Interaction between horizontal integration and organizational learning practices, co-authored by Nataša Rupčić and Ana Aleksić Mirić. In the paper the authors discussed how organizational knowledge relates to superior performance outcomes and recognized that knowledgeable employees, intra-organizational learning mechanisms and knowledge-enriched jobs together lead to superior organizational performance. The presentation by Milena Alič followed, emphasizing the Importance of quality in our schools and business. According to the author, there is a growing need for younger employees skilled at quality management in Slovenia, thus schools at all levels of education should stimulate young people to be improvement oriented by offering them more quality management programs and including the content in the curricula, and thereby enabling them to gain the necessary quality management knowledge. Then Michael Stankosky presented the paper Mosaic of management – enterprise management engineering & integration: A systems approach to creating a unifying theory of management. In his visionary presentation the author addressed the need for combining theory and practice in the field of management and stimulated a discussion about the ways how to create a unifying definition of management.
The third session was moderated by Vlado Dimovski and included the presentation of Melita Balas Rant talking about Creation of distinct organizational competencies. In the paper the author discussed the three types of competitive advantage of organization: product leadership, customer intimacy and operational excellence, and recognized that they are all built from only four organizational competences (operational competence, competence to manage risks, competence to influence stakeholders and competence to innovate) which are developed by similar knowledge creation processes. According to the author, the distinctive ways of competing come from different ways of combining these competences into cohesive architectures. The second presentation by Sabina Bogilović followed, explaining how to approach to Creatively generating new knowledge: Cultural intelligence and knowledge hiding as antecedents to individual and team creativity. In the paper co-authored by Matej Černe and Miha Škerlavaj cultural intelligence is recognized as the salient contingency in knowledge hiding-creativity relationship. In fact, in the case of knowledge hiding behavior, individual creativity remains higher when an individual possesses high cultural intelligence, than in the case of low cultural intelligence. The presentation by Ingrid Molan followed presenting the paper Epistemological beliefs and their effect on motivation and actual participation in workplace training co-authored by Eva Boštjančič. In the presentation the author argued that epistemological beliefs of the employees about the nature of knowledge and knowing effect the motivation of employees to participate in the workplace training. The paper titled Human capability development through educational and training processes, written by Milena Sedovnik took a practical perspective towards human resource development and discussed the development of employees through competency system, Business Academy and other training programs at company ACH d.d.. The paper was regrettably not presented at the conference, due to absence of the author because of medical reasons. The last paper of the session was presented by Mark Bračič and Nina Ivančič, co-authored by Eva Boštjančič, explaining the Expertise, a new approach in human resource management. In the presentation the authors clarified expertise as a psychological construct and an appropriate instrument to identify experts in organizations. They highlighted the importance of expertise as a measure of individuals’ success in domains, where it is hard to numerically point out when and why an individual is successful at his or her work.
The last session of the first day, moderated by Jon Aarum Andersen, started with a virtual presentation of the second keynote speaker Kevin Desouza, titled Ideas, Knowledge Management, and Innovation Walk into a Bar: An Incomplete Theory of Intrapreneurship. In his speech, the author addressed the areas in the fields of knowledge management, innovation and organizational learning, that have not been adequately researched thus offering several opportunities for future research. Such opportunities are how to balance openness to security, tying knowledge management processes to competitive advantage, idea advocacy and development, sustaining a culture of ideation, experimentation and innovation, learning from samples of “one”, unlearning etc. Lidija Breznik then presented her paper titled Exploiting knowledge through R&D and technological capability: A dynamic capabilities perspective, discussing dynamic capabilities in organizations which should be divided into three different classes: sensing capability, seizing capability and reconfiguring capability, all being crucial for organizational success. The last presentation of the first day was about Hi-tech innovation through circuits of knowledge, presented by Darija Aleksić. The paper that was prepared in co-authorship with Matej Černe and Miha Škerlavaj and highlighted an important finding, that in order to have a successful hi-tech innovation story, there is a need for simultaneous implementation of technological and non-technological innovation. In fact, in the hi-tech context, technological innovations spur the need for new non-technological solutions to enable superior innovation exploitation.
After the fourth session of the conference the social program of the conference started and the participants gathered in the friendly atmosphere of hotel restaurant for gala dinner. During the evening excellent food was accompanied by gentle music of the zither, playing Slovenian national folk songs. The first day of the conference ended with discussions about plans for future research and possible collaboration.
On the second day of the conference, June 13th 2014, three sessions followed. The first session was moderated by Michael Stankosky and three papers were presented. First Judita Peterlin presented the paper called Leading and motivating students to engage in planned learning activities: Communication and organizational learning, talking about the appreciative inquiry as a method, a pedagogical tool, designed in order to awake students’ intrinsic motivation for studying/learning. Learning about motivational drivers of the students can help us understand how to best design the learning organizations in order to reach individuals’ full learning potential. The paper was prepared in co-authorship with Vlado Dimovski, Barbara Grah, Miha Uhan and Sandra Penger. Then Aleša Saša Sitar in the paper titled Creativity by learning: Examining the relationships between individual learning styles and creativity, prepared in co-authorship with Katarina Katja Mihelič, Matej Černe and Darija Aleksić, discussed about ways to stimulate creativity in business education, recognizing that students preferring independent learning realize their creative potential due to high self-efficacy belief whereas students preferring collaborative learning discover creative solutions to the problems partially due to high enjoyment in group activities, discussions and joint problem solving. The session ended by presentation of Robert Kaše, presenting the paper called In the eye of the beholder: Misalignment of dyadic knowledge transfer perceptions in organizations, prepared in co-authorship with Eric Quintane. In the paper authors took a social network approach to knowledge transfer and talked about misalignments of the perception whether knowledge transfer has in fact taken place and the conditions where misalignments are more or less frequent. The authors found out that knowledge transfer perceptions’ misalignments are more common in practice than alignments; that salience of the knowledge transfer partners and strong ties characterized by mutual trust are key factors that facilitate alignment in dyadic knowledge transfer perceptions; and that differences in informal status of knowledge transfer partners predict misalignments.
In the second session, which was moderated by Robert Kaše, Miran Mihelčič first presented his paper titled Organizational learning: Some basic questions and answers. In the paper the author addressed the definition of the term learning organization, from the perspective of extended definition of organization, as the intertwining of the dynamic relationships and, alongside them, the related contents between members of the FSU, emphasizing that the true goal of organizational learning is to increase knowledge about organization, to solve organizational problems easier. Then Vojko Toman presented the paper titled Vision and learning, discussing the influence of the vision on the learning process. The influence is threefold: through vision content, through vision creating process and through vision enforcement process. The author emphasized that learning and knowledge are both required when creating vision and that vision encourages usage of existing knowledge as well as creation of new knowledge, which must be aligned with the vision. The last paper of the session titled Analysis as the basic method of cognition and its connection to organizational learning: Case of absenteeism of employees in University Psychiatric Hospital, Ljubljana was presented by Rudi Rozman and Jožica Peterka Novak, and co-authored by Srečko Devjak. The authors discussed the analysis, a cognitive process/method about a subject, as a formal and methodic process of learning to get the cognition of analyzed subject by dividing it into parts and recognizing how they are connected. The authors shared with the participants the result of the empirical analysis of gaining cognition/knowledge about factors behind absenteeism on a single case study.
In the last session of the second day, which was moderated by Rudi Rozman, the last two papers were presented, connecting the theme of the conference to project management. Viktória Horváth first talked about Implications of analyzing the success of a university-based grant application project, explaining a multi-criteria project success evaluation, based on the hierarchical approach and introducing the implications of understanding the attitude of the stakeholders toward the beneficiary changes achieved by an university development project. Then Mihály Görög, in the last presentation of the conference titled The real contextual features of project marketing, highlighted those factors which shape project marketing and the perceived competitive position of the typical project-based organizations. Particularly the project implementation strategy, the type of contract deployed by the client, determines the required level of capabilities and the required level of client involvement in the project management process. The conference ended on June 13th 2014 in a very nice atmosphere by concluding remarks by Rudi Rozman and Aleša Saša Sitar thanking all the participants for their papers and presentations, with special thanks to reviewers of the papers and members of the organizing and program committees of the conference and with discussion about the possible topics for SAM 2016 conference. The more informal discussion then continued over lunch, held at the hotel restaurant.
All abstracts of the papers presented at the conference are available following the link SAM 2014 Abstracts, whereas full papers are published in the conference proceedings. Some selected papers will also be published in the future issues of the two Slovenian Academy of Management Journals Dynamic Relationship Management Journal and Management Challenges.