Strategies for Student Chapter Success  

Students from the Cedarville College chapter of STC present seven factors that make their chapter successful. The Cedarville College chapter of STC received a Chapter Achievement Award at the 46th Annual Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Overturf, Jason and Sarah Flenar. STC Proceedings (2000). Articles>Collaboration>Management>STC

Streamlining the Decision Cycle Through Collaborative Decision Management  

Over the last 20 years, management philosophy has shifted from 'command and control' to a more distributed and enabled management philosophy.

Frid, Randy and Randall Eckel. KMworld (2001). Articles>Management>Collaboration

A Structured Approach to Selling

High-value goods and services are not impulse purchases. Both the purchaser and vendor may need to invest significant time in the purchasing process. When I first started working for myself, I wasted much time. Now I make the process as efficient as possible, both for myself, and for enquirers.

Unwalla, Mike. IEEE PCS (2008). Articles>Project Management>Collaboration

Sustaining Communities of Practice in the Workplace: A Case Study  

The expanding definition of technical communication requires an organization with a multidisciplinary set of skills (ranging from editing to visual design to user interface design to usability testing to programming) to meet the new demands. While the members of such a multidisciplinary organization have common goals, they also have unique and specialized needs for education, communication, and shared practices based on their specific skills. Nurturing, developing, and sustaining these distinct skills requires an infrastructure that supports divergent communities of practice, yet still encourages cross-pollination of ideas and integration of processes toward a common goal.

Fisher, Lori H. STC Proceedings (2004). Articles>Collaboration>Management>Workplace

Teamwork and the Product Documentation Process

Get to know your new teammates. Get to know your audience. Define the product's features. Create a mockup of the user interface. Begin to document the features and interface.

Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Geoff-Hart.com (1997). Articles>Documentation>Project Management>Collaboration

Ten Sure-Fire Ways to Fail as a Change Agent

In an effort to be less than constructive, here are ten sure-fire ways to alienate and de-motivate your team on your change journey. Hit-or-miss approaches don't go far enough; this is your chance to use the best methods of corporate torture and humiliation developed by dictators, steamrollers and other "tough guy" change agents.

Paulson, Terry L. Communication World Bulletin (2003). Articles>Management>Collaboration

Usability Team Structures

There are two basic alternatives for structuring a usability/UCD group within an organization: members of the group can be centralized in a single department, or, members can be distributed among development teams.

. Usability Body of Knowledge (2007). Articles>Usability>Project Management>Collaboration

The Value of Employee Participation in Strategic Planning    

A strategic planning and measurement planning project was undertaken by an 800-employee Maintenance department of a major Canadian gas transmission company to establish a stable direction and performance guide. Employee morale was so diminished from six years of constant reorganization and downsizing that the newly appointed vice-president was skeptical that the department would be able to meet its new goals unless a highly participative process was used. The project therefore was designed to use an input-reaction process between employees and managers to create a shared vision, strategic plan, and measurement system. Past projects of this nature had involved management personnel only and often goals were not achieved because few employees felt motivated by the "top-down" directives. This process produced a motivating vision, a highly doable performance plan, and a well-accepted measurement system within the allotted project schedule.

Holbrook Mort, Gail M. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2001). Articles>Management>Collaboration

Visualization Strategies for Team-Oriented Problem Solving, Analysis, and Project Planning    

This article describes visualization methods used by many international organizations in the design of development projects. In this context, development projects means projects that are designed to improve the quality of life for people living in a developing country. During the project design workshop essential elements of a discussion and subsequent analysis are visualized as the discussion takes place and displayed to the participants. This visual record is kept in view through the whole period of the discussion. The visual methods of identifying, analyzing and structuring a problem dramatically improves the efficiency and effectiveness of the problem solving process and the quality of the final solution. The techniques enable a large amount of knowledge available within the group of participants to be collected quickly and allows complex problems to be taken through several steps of analysis.

Lewis, Paul. Technical Communication Online (1998). Articles>Collaboration>Project Management>Rhetoric

What to Do When the Boss Says No

It's an undisputed fact. Some CEOs refuse to acknowledge that their communication skills could use a tune-up. Someone in your organization -- quite possibly you -- needs to assume responsibility for sharpening your CEO's communication skills. If your leader neglects this part of her leadership toolkit, it's time to offer some frank advice on how she can improve. You must also be prepared to deal with the sensitive matter of how to encourage the boss to accept the benefits of learning from a communication training workshop.

Barks, Edward J. Communication World Bulletin (2003). Articles>Business Communication>Management>Collaboration

Whikibility Cultural Key Drivers: Quickness

The fact that a Workplace could be considered 'quick' is not properly linked with the easiness to find information or with the speedy level of the communications: in this context it is linked to the Wiki feature of assuring a real-time updating access to contents and resources (data, information or knowledge and physical resources).

Cammarata, Vincenzo. Grow Your Wiki (2007). Articles>Content Management>Collaboration>Wikis

Whose Team? Managing and Participating in Non-Traditional Work Teams  

The non-traditional team environment is an evolution in our way of doing things. Virtual, blended, and multi-located team structures provide solutions to a myriad of complications that arise from traditional teaming—such as economic feasibility and skill-set cause and demand. It allows clients access to talent and skills they would not otherwise have, and enables specialists greater flexibility and availability. Professionalism and integrity are key in the non-traditional environment. Team members must be able to work isolated and/or with individuals who represent other companies. Managers must be equitable and be able to maintain strong lines of communication.

D'Larenti, Chantal, Connie Davis, Alan Cross, Everett Puckett. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Project Management>Collaboration

Why Smart People Defend Bad Ideas

We all know someone that's intelligent, but who occasionally defends obviously bad ideas. Why does this happen? How can smart people take up positions that defy any reasonable logic? Having spent many years working with smart people I’ve catalogued many of the ways this happens, and I have advice on what to do about it. I feel qualified to write this essay as I’m a recovering smart person myself and I’ve defended several very bad ideas.

Berkun, Scott. ScottBerkun.com (2006). Articles>Management>Collaboration

Why You Must Lead or Follow

Something curious happens when we confront things we don’t like. Instead of the useful choices of taking action to improve things or accepting things as they are, we often just sit on our asses, point fingers and complain. We’ve developed the passive habits of spectators, rather than the active roles of creators and supporters.

Berkun, Scott. ScottBerkun.com (2006). Articles>Collaboration>Management

Wikibility Cultural Key Drivers: Collaboration

The true collaboration occurs when people have the possibility to co-work on the same sub-task, activating a mechanism of new knowledge creation. Collaboration is not so obvious if is not clearly supported: the risk is to exchange this 'together' learning process with a simple cooperation process, producing not new knowledge but only a simple addition of individual regress knowledge.

Cammarata, Vincenzo. Grow Your Wiki (2008). Articles>Content Management>Collaboration>Wikis

Wikibility Cultural Key Drivers: Openness

Strictly linked with transparency concept, openness is at the base of the principle that people work better if they have access to the right information and possibility to assume that all over the organization. The simple access to other group member data or the possibility to know activities scheduled also in other groups are normal operations in a mature context such as is allowed to look to other team solutions or results in order to decide something for the own team.

Cammarata, Vincenzo. Grow Your Wiki (2008). Articles>Content Management>Collaboration>Wikis

Wikibility Cultural Key Drivers: Peering

A common element between Wiki philosophy and innovation successful case histories, is the partial or total absence of structure or, saying better, of hierarchy. The possibility, in fact, to contribute in the same way, indifferently at which level you are involved in the organization, is one of the first steps towards the reduction of barriers to collaboration, participation and involvement in the organizational life.

Cammarata, Vincenzo. Grow Your Wiki (2008). Articles>Content Management>Collaboration>Wikis

Wikibility Cultural Key Drivers: Sharing

The possibility of sharing improves an effective distribution of common resources (meeting room, projector, corporate car...). In a more general acceptation of the term, the availability to ideas or previous solutions useful for different use is an advantage that make co-creation of new knowledge and a healthy circulation of knowledge possible.

Cammarata, Vincenzo. Grow Your Wiki (2008). Articles>Content Management>Collaboration>Wikis

Women's Technologies, Women's Literacies: Sewing and Computing Across the Years    

This article compares the historical and contemporary clothing industry with the current microelectronics industry. It argues that the development of paper patterns, along with the perfection of the sewing machine as a technology in the 1870s, democratized fashion for lower and middle class women just as the development of the World Wide Web and Web-making software has democratized publishing for authors before unable to gain access to an audience for their writing. Comparing the businesses of three groups of women using the World Wide Web, this article finally problematizes these historical and contemporary democratizing technologies the sewing machine and the computer by pointing out both obvious and more subtle socioeconomic realities which undercut some utopian promises of publishing in Cyberspace.

Rohan, Liz. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2001). Articles>Knowledge Management>Collaboration>Gender

Managing SMEs - Part 2: Selling the Concept to Management

Focusing on your professionalism could be the key to successfully managing your working relationships with SMEs.

Rastocny, Philip. TechCom Manager (2007). Articles>Management>Collaboration>SMEs

Managing SMEs - Part 1: A Primer for Success

Just the thought of dealing with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) can create stress in the life of any documentation manager. Some SMEs can be self consumed, preoccupied, distant, and even rude. But why do these behaviors exist? This article briefly describes how to interact with people who might be difficult to motivate and how to work with people who have priorities different from yours.

Rastocny, Philip. TechCom Manager (2007). Articles>Management>Collaboration>SMEs

Look at it Another Way

Seeing the same thing from different perspectives is much praised but little practiced. We don’t often realize what we can gain by seeing another scene in the picture.

Young, Indi. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Project Management>Collaboration>Information Design

The Effects of Socio-Technical Enablers on Knowledge Sharing: An Exploratory Examination    

Recently, the need for knowledge management has been drastically increasing so organizations may meet the high level of dynamic, complex business change and uncertainty. In particular, knowledge sharing has been recognized as a critical process through which organizational knowledge can be utilized. For successful knowledge sharing, companies need to capitalize on various socio-technical enablers. The primary objective of this paper is to provide a better understanding of how these enablers can affect knowledge sharing intention and behavior, and explore practical implications for knowledge sharing. For this purpose, the paper proposes a theoretical model to investigate these enablers from a socio-technical perspective. PLS (Partial Least Square) analysis was employed to validate the model. This field study involves 164 users. Furthermore, interviews with experts were investigated for practical implications. Our analysis reveals that social enablers such as trust and reward mechanisms are more important than technical support in isolation for facilitating knowledge sharing.

Choi, Sue Young, Young Sik Kang and Heeseok Lee. Journal of Information Science (2008). Articles>Knowledge Management>Content Management>Collaboration

Demystifying Chinese Guanxi Networks: Cultivating and Sharing of Knowledge for Business Benefit    

Guanxi referrals help identify potential business partners. Through guanxi networks, businesses can establish favourable and mutually beneficial relationships vital to business success. Guanxi carries assumed knowledge of trust and facilitates business references. It is the construct of `face' that underpins this trust. The high degree of trust in guanxi networks facilitates the flow of strategic information and knowledge, further adding value to business. This article illustrates through case studies how guanxi relationships are formed and how knowledge in guanxi networks can benefit business. The case studies are drawn from experiences of three Europe-based Chinese business directors.

Chan, Ben. Business Information Review (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Knowledge Management>Collaboration

Moving Beyond Tacit and Explicit Distinctions: A Realist Theory of Organizational Knowledge    

This paper challenges the popular notions of tacit and explicit organizational knowledge and argues that its philosophical underpinnings derived from Gilbert Ryle are problematic due to their logical behaviourist perspective. The paper articulates the philosophical problem as the neglect of any role for the mind in organizational activity and the representation of mental activity as purely a set of behaviours. An alternative realist philosophy is advanced taking into account the potential of adopting a number of competing philosophical perspectives. The paper forwards a realist theory of organizational knowledge that moves beyond the surface behaviours of tacit and explicit knowledge and argues that collective consciousness and organizational memory play primary and deeper roles as knowledge processes and structures. Consciousness is not a Hegelian world spirit but rather a real process embedded in people's brains and mental activity. Further, the paper argues that organizational routines provide the contingent condition or `spark' to activate organizational knowledge processes. The implications of this model are explored in relation to the measurement of intellectual capital. The theory developed in this paper represents the first attempt to provide a coherent philosophically grounded framework of organizational knowledge that moves organizational theory beyond neat conversion processes of tacit and explicit knowledge.

Jashapara, Ashok. Journal of Information Science (2007). Articles>Knowledge Management>Organizational Communication>Collaboration