Collaborative Transformation

What does it take to make real change toward sustainability in international trade? IDH and its partners have spent the last 10 years learning the art of collaborative transformation, accumulating tacit knowledge on what works and what doesn’t to make change within the complexity of international trade. This book distills their insights, presenting 5 key dimensions that are critical for stakeholders to attend to while working toward sustainability. The relational dimension involves building and convening different stakeholders into strong and effective coalitions. Through the discursive dimension coalitions must forge a framework for a common future out of diverse interests and concerns. Collaborative transformation also involves an institutional dimension, as a variety of formal and informal structures lend critical support to the coalition’s efforts. And those involved must continually learn by critically inquiring into their ongoing work together: this is the reflective dimension. The fifth dimension concerns implementation: change only happens when tangible shifts are happening at many different levels – in the field, along the value chain, in business practices and in policy. To break down this complexity and to make it concrete, IDH gives examples from their partnerships involving a wide range of industries: from cotton to tea to cocoa. They show that collaborative transformations are not only possible: they hold the key to our shared future.

Collaboration in organizations and group cultures is changing the way we think about leadership as well as individual, social and global transformation. Change is inevitable and the transformations which occur through group synergy are reshaping the world in which we live in every area of community life. We are becoming a more collaborative society. Leaders who understand how to facilitate collaboration are better able to improve performance and motivate people to learn, develop, share and adapt to c hanges at home, at work and throughout the global community. The transformations which occur through this process help each individual and group to reach their highest potential and in the process generate benefits for society and the environment. This book is a blueprint for leaders and individuals to understand this collaborative process and learn how to work together better to create higher levels of synergy and performance in every group effort.

Virtual teams are work arrangements where team members are geographically dispersed and work interdependently using electronic communication media to accomplish one or more organizational tasks. Over the past several decades, there has been an explosive growth in organizational use of virtual teams to organize work. In the competitive market, virtual teams represent a growing response to the need for faster time to market, low cost, and rapid solutions to complex organizational problems. Organizations are increasingly investing in virtual teams to enhance their performance and competitiveness. However, there are unsolved issues of design and implementation of collaboration technologies for virtual teams and their collaborative convergence. Collaborative Convergence and Virtual Teamwork for Organizational Transformation is an innovative collection of research that analyzes and discusses successful organizational transformation that requires a holistic understanding of the issues linked to team and workplaces, communication and integration, technological barriers, and sociocultural factors. The chapters highlight topics such as collaboration technologies in virtual teamwork, collaboration technologies’ impact on organizational transformation, as well as web-based tools, collaborative learning tools, group decision support systems, workflow automation systems, and more. This book is ideally intended for business professionals, managers and practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students looking for the latest research in virtual teamwork and its impact on organizational transformation.

A school-wide model for addressing individual needs The greatest goal of education is to ensure equity while enhancing learning and academic success for all students. And yet, it is impossible for one teacher to meet the extensive needs of all students in his or her classroom. The traditional schooling model cannot provide for this complexity and leaves educators perplexed. The solution is a collaborative approach where “every child deserves a team” to surround them with supports that recognize their strengths and challenges. Collaborative Response offers a school-wide model for addressing students’ individual needs. The three fundamental components of the model are: collaborative structures and processes; data and evidence; and continuum of supports. In this book, readers will find: Entry points for beginning this work Potential pitfalls of the approach Case studies from schools that have adopted the model Access to a website with tools, templates, case studies, and more With a focus on quality classroom instruction, this book shares examples from schools and districts that have transformed how they respond to the needs of all learners.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 19th IFIP WG 5.5 Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises, PRO-VE 2018, held in Cardiff, UK, in September 2018. The 57 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 143 submissions. They provide a comprehensive overview of identified challenges and recent advances in various collaborative network (CN) domains and their applications, with a strong focus on the following areas: blockchain in collaborative networks, industry transformation and innovation, semantics in networks of cognitive systems, cognitive systems for resilience management, collaborative energy services in smart cities, cognitive systems in agribusiness, building information modeling, industry 4.0 support frameworks, health and social welfare services, risk, privacy and security, collaboration platform issues, sensing, smart and sustainable enterprises, information systems integration, dynamic logistics networks, collaborative business processes, value creation in networks, users and organizations profiling, and collaborative business strategies.

Collaborative Projects - An Interdisciplinary Study presents research in disciplines ranging from Education, Psychotherapy and Social Work to Literacy and anti-poverty Project Management to Social Movement studies and Political Science. All the contributions are unified by use of the concept of 'project'. 'Project' is 'leading activity' for Child Development, whilst 'life project' may play a crucial role in personal development and Psychotherapy; the social fabric of a community can be understood as woven from projects which may be sustained by NGOs, or develop from social movements to institutions. Giving concrete content to the concept of 'project' in each domain of research, opens a prospect of a genuinely interdisciplinary human science. Contributors are: Igor Arievitch, Michael Arnold, Lynn Beaton, William Blanton, Andy Blunden, Michael Cole, Brecht De Smet, Natalia Gajdamaschko, Virginia Gordon, Manfred Holodynski, Naja Berg Hougaard, Vera John-Steiner, Elena Kravtsova, Gennadiy Kravtsov, Ron Lubensky, Morten Nissen, Jennifer Power, Mike Rifino, Keiko Matsuura, Francisco Medina, Anna Stetsenko, Greg Thompson, Chiel van der Veen, Eduardo Vianna, Lynne Wolbert, and Helena Worthen.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 20th IFIP WG 5.5 Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises, PRO-VE 2019, held in Turin, Italy, in September 2019. The 56 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 141 submissions. They provide a comprehensive overview of major challenges and recent advances in various domains related to the digital transformation and collaborative networks and their applications with a strong focus on the following areas related to the main theme of the conference: collaborative models, platforms and systems for digital revolution; manufacturing ecosystem and collaboration in Industry 4.0; big data analytics and intelligence; risk, performance, and uncertainty in collaborative networked systems; semantic data/service discovery, retrieval, and composition in a collaborative networked world; trust and sustainability analysis in collaborative networks; value creation and social impact of collaborative networks on the digital revolution; technology development platforms supporting collaborative systems; collective intelligence and collaboration in advanced/emerging applications; and collaborative manufacturing and factories of the future, e-health and care, food and agribusiness, and crisis/disaster management.