Nancy Dixon

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor Emeritus at George Washington University

Dialogue holds the promise of changing the culture of an organization so that employees can speak honestly and openly about their concerns, talk respectfully to each other and meet together to solve the organization’s toughest challenges. A case illustration from the Virginia Department of Corrections illustrates the generative possibility of dialo...

We translate a theory into the practice of intelligence assessments. Following Karl Weick’s (1993) retrospective approach, the translation relies on previously published evaluations of intelligence assessment practices. Intelligence assessments are used in organizations to inform leaders of threats and opportunities. The theory we apply describes h...

Purpose Research suggests that teaming routines facilitate learning in teams. This paper identifies and details how specific teaming routines, implemented in a virtual team, support its continual learning. The study’s focus was to generate authentic and descriptive accounts of the interviewees’ experiences with virtual teaming routines. Design/met...

Consulting skills can be developed and improved through the use of a unique case format and method of case analysis. The format and methodology, developed by Argyris, is based in his theory of action. Argyris argues that consultants function out of two theories, one which they espouse and another which actually guides their words and actions, their...

Although patient safety experts have focused on event reporting and on the role of sensemaking and human factors in learning from events, there has been little study of how these factors are received and used by frontline hospital workers. Consequently in 2003, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services—in collaboration with patient safety expert...

In order for organizations to become learning organizations, they must make sense of their environment and learn from safety events. Sensemaking, as described by Weick (1995), literally means making sense of events. The ultimate goal of sensemaking is to build the understanding that can inform and direct actions to eliminate risk and hazards that a...

The Mission of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has been to support and conduct health services research and to disseminate those research findings. Recently the Agency has changed its mission to: “Improving the quality, safety, efficiency and effectiveness of health care for all Americans.” For agency personnel working with th...

Organizational learning refers to learning at the system rather than individual level. The changing nature of work, global competitive challenges, and everpresent change require that human resource professionals focus on this higher level of learning. The literature on organizational learning can be classified into five areas: information acquisiti...

In many organizations, the responses to participant reaction forms are the only data managers use when they decide to offer or revise a training course. Is this appropriate? To address this question the author studied the relationship between posttests (tests taken after the course is finished) and the responses on participants' forms for 1,200 tra...

Purpose â–“ In the telecommunication industry, companies gain a competitive edge through the competence of their employees, making issues of learning critical. The study aims to identify specific learning processes necessary when working at the edge both of one's own knowledge and of that of the branch. Design/methodology/approach â–“ This research...

A change is occurring in how people think about who in the organization has credible and valuable knowledge that the organization can use to solve its difficult problems. This shift is a movement away from the idea that knowledge is found only in a select group of experts or “best” practitioners and toward the idea that useful knowledge is distribu...

As organizations move toward organizational learning the responsibilities of members change. Organizational members, themselves, should be giving consideration to what these new responsibilities should be, rather than leaving this task to management. Six possible responsibilities are suggested here to begin such a discussion. These responsibilities...

Action learning, as it is often implemented in the U.S., differs little from a typical cross-functional task force. Those characteristics of action learning that originated with Reginald Revan's work and that have such potential to change both organizations and participants are often absent in the Americanized version of action learning. Outlined h...

General Motors uses action learning to develop global capacity in its potential executives. Called Global Task Teams, they bring together 8–10 high-potential employees from sites around the globe to form an international action learning team. The team is assigned a significant operating challenge to work on, full-time, for three months. The teams a...

A study of five companies with the best training evaluation practices identified the following success factors: measuring customer requirements, translating them into meaningful standards, testing performance, measuring what clients need and will pay for, and not evaluating merely to justify training. (SK)

Responding to the growing sense that organizations and the people that make them up are "in over their heads," this monograph looks at the relationship between talk and development in organizations, noting the ways that developmental talk--or, as it is often referred to, dialogue--differs from the skilled talk that goes on all the time. It also sum...

The learning organization makes new intellectual demands on managers. Managers are being asked not just to carry out their assigned tasks but to use the skills of analysis, interpretation and synthesis to help the organization learn its way out of the novel problems it increasingly faces in a time of rapid change. Traditional management development...

Managers frequently experience difficulty in implementing skills they learn in management development courses owing to two obstacles; (1) the conflict between the skills being taught in the course and the manager's current skills which may be so well learned as to be automatic; and (2) the conflict between the skills being taught and the manager's...

Once there was a man who lost his legs and was blinded in an accident. To compensate for his losses, he developed great strength and agility in his hands and arms, and great acuity in hearing. He composed magnificent music and performed amazing feats. Others were so inspired with his achievements that they had themselves blinded and their legs ampu...

Four major considerations must be taken into account when planning a training program: content, external constraints, skills and preferences of faculty, and learning styles of participants. Understanding differences in learning styles can significantly affect the outcome of training. (JOW)

CompanyCommand is a professional forum through which soldiers who have been given command of a company (about 150 soldiers) learn from each other in the mess hall, over the hood of a Humvee in Iraq, and online at http://companycommand. army.mil. CompanyCommand has been heralded by the army as its premier professional forum, notwithstanding its gras...

Traducción de: Common Knowledge: How Companies Thrive by Sharing What They Kwos Contenido: Introducción; Creación y fortalecimiento del conocimiento común; transferencia en serie; Transferencia cercana; Transferencia lejana; transferencia estratégica, transferencia experta; Examen de los cinco tipos de transferencia del conocimiento; Construcción d...