THEMES

Overall Theme 2006: Knowledge Organisations, Knowledge Economy, Knowledge Society

Theme 1: Learning for the New Economy
  • Reconceptualising ‘economy.’ What is knowledge? What is the role of learning? What is the ‘knowledge economy’?
  • New types of organisation: what do you need to learn today?
  • Transforming personal knowledge into common knowledge.
  • Blurring the boundaries: informal learning, training and education.
  • New economy: what is appropriate education for the new work order?
  • Knowledge work: defining the competencies and capabilities.
  • ‘Wisdom’ in the knowledge economy.
  • Mentoring: where leadership means knowledge transfer.
  • Collaboration as a personal capacity and organisational resource.
  • The making of a 'knowledge worker'.
  • Towards leadership: management education and training.
  • Educational institutions as knowledge managers.
  • The dynamics of Adult Education.
  • Lifelong learning.
  • Beyond knowledge management: the nature of knowledge processes.
  • Globalisation: its impacts on work and education.
Theme 2: Knowledge and Technology
  • The changing role of information and communications technologies in knowledge-based economies.
  • Technologies and organisational change.
  • Data, information and their electronic means of creation, storage, access and communication.
  • eBusiness in a networked world.
  • Information and communication technologies as means of production, means of knowing and means of communicating.
  • More than information: knowledge as a process.
  • Building intellectual capital and maintaining intellectual property.
Theme 3: Organisational Cultures
  • What is organisational culture? Organic, community, complexity and other metaphors.
  • Networks, clusters, alliances.
  • Building collaborative organisational cultures.
  • Decision-making and leadership.
  • Building a culture of innovation.
  • Teams and the dynamics of collaboration.
  • Productive diversity: capitalising on human differences.
  • Women at work and women in management: what are the different ways of working?
  • Developing sustainable organisational cultures: government, community and NGOs.
  • Capacity development: building knowledge locally,
  • Globalisation, internationalisation and organisational change.
  • Mass customisation: recognising market and customer differences.
  • Navigating complexity: the dynamics of organisational change.
  • Business ethics.
Theme 4: Tangible Outcomes from Managing Intangibles
  • Knowledge and culture as factors of production.
  • Putting a tangible value on intangibles.
  • New performance indicators for new economies.
  • The conditions of innovation.
  • The business case for knowledge management.
  • Agonies of change: working with order and chaos; regularity and complexity.
  • Being close to customers: identifying trust and loyalty in customer relations.
  • Vision, strategy and leadership: measuring the effects.
  • Beyond competition: creating efficiencies through improved supply chain relationships.
  • Addressing the divides: digital, development, social.
  • Virtual enterprises in a networked world.