Month: November 2017

Neue Studie: »Mögliche Wege zum Schulbuch als Open Educational Resources«

Ausschnitt des Studiencovers von Daniela Gnad, Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft m.b.H., unter Verwendung einer Abwandlung des OER Global Logos von Jonathas Mello (CC-BY 3.0)

Im Rahmen der „Schulbuchaktion“ werden in Österreich seit 1972 Schülerinnen und Schüler unentgeltlich mit Schulbüchern versorgt. Pro Schuljahr werden auf diesem Wege mehr als 100 Millionen Euro für über 8 Millionen Schulbücher verausgabt.

Kein Kriterium für diese substantielle öffentliche Investition sind bislang jedoch offene Lizenzen, die im Zeitverlauf zu einem kontinuierlich wachsenden Bestand an frei zugänglichen Lernunterlagen führen würden. Um die Möglichkeiten für eine Öffnung der Schulbuchaktion für offene Lehr- und Lernunterlagen (Open Educational Resources, OER) näher zu untersuchen, wurde deshalb Salzburg Research vom Bildungsministerium mit der Erstellung einer Machbarkeitsstudie beauftragt. Die von Sandra Schön, Katharina Kreissl, Martin Ebner und mir verfasste Studie ist seit kurzem auch offiziell auf der Webseite des Bildungsministeriums unter Creative-Commons-Lizenz zugänglich (PDF der Studie).

Book Review of »Organizational Wrongdoing« edited by Palmer, Smith-Crowe, and Greenwood

Earlier this year I was asked to serve as an Organization Studies book reviewer for ‘Organizational Wrongdoing’ edited by Donald Palmer, Kristin Smith-Crowe, and Royston Greenwood. My review has now been published in the most recent issue of Organization Studies. The final paragraph summarizes my reading of the volume as follows:

The final chapter of the volume (Chapter 16 by Chugh and Kern) then returns to the individual level in presenting suggestions on how to conceptualize and practice “ethical learning”. The chapter is a truly worthy conclusion, providing concrete suggestions for management practice. At the same time, it is also prototypical for the volume as a whole, focusing on reflection at an individual level instead of more collective and political processes of dealing with organizational wrongdoing. The latter perspective would not only put more emphasis on processes of subjectivation in the course of attributing “wrongdoing” to individuals, but might also arrive at different suggestions for practice such as ideas related to criminal law for corporations. This would reflect the, at least partially, emergent character of organizational wrongdoing. Given the importance of political processes and institutional contexts for organizational wrongdoing highlighted by several of the contributions in this volume, political organizing based on solidarity is probably as important as ethical learning by individuals.

The full text of the book review is available at the journal’s website. As usual, please send me an e-mail in case you are interested but your institution does not provide access to the journal.

 

Research Blog Recommendation (1): Orgtheory.net

This series points to other research blogs of potential interest for the Organization Studies Innsbruck Community.

Orgtheory.net is a multi-author blog run mostly by US scholars. All bloggers at orgtheory.net share a strong research orientation and they take organization theory seriously. The basic load of the blog is provided by hard blogging researcher Fabio Rojas, professor of sociology at Indiana University.  He has also authored over 40 posts on “grad school rulez”, explaining everything there is to know about US graduate education and PhD programs (see also the e-book version).

Above all, orgtheory.net is one of the oldest and continuously filled blogs in the realm of organization studies and therefore a worthy first entry in this series. Check back soon for more recommendations.

At a glance:

  • Orgtheory.net provides timely assessment of current debates in organization theory from a US perspective.
  • URL: orgtheory.net
  • Twitter/Facebook: –

 

Neue Studie: Perspektiven für Open Educational Resources in Nordrhein-Westfalen

Innerhalb der bestehenden Rahmenbedingungen verstärkt die zunehmende Digitalisierung von Lehrmaterial zwei bestehende Probleme an Schulen: Zum einen gefährdet die Verbreitung von minderwertigen oder tendenziösen aber kostenfreien Onlinematerialien das Neutralitätsgebot der schulischen Lehre. Zum anderen bewegen sich LehrerInnen und SchülerInnen im alltäglichen Umgang mit Material mehr und mehr in urheberrechtlichen Graubereichen. In einer kürzlich veröffentlichten Studie (PDF, PDF-Kurzfassung) für das Forschungsinstitut für Gesellschaftliche Weiterentwicklung (FGW) habe ich gemeinsam mit Leonhard Dobusch Vorschläge dazu entwickelt, wie beide Probleme durch eine Öffnung der Lernmittelfinanzierung für Open Educational Resources adressiert werden können.

Continue reading “Neue Studie: Perspektiven für Open Educational Resources in Nordrhein-Westfalen” →

Launch of the Blog »Organizing Openness: Concepts and Cases«

As Maximilian Heimstadt has announced earlier this week, we are currently working on a textbook on “Organizing Openness”. Given the topic of the book, we plan to also openly document the process of writing the textbook itself.

In the course of a kick-off meeting to launch the project in Vienna, we therefore started a blog on “Organizing Openness: Concepts and Cases” under O2C2.org (you can also follow the blog via Twitter at @O2C2project). In addition to continuous updates on the blog, we will also link to working documents for each of the chapters on the page “Textbook-in-Progress“, which will be open for anyone to comment.