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Action Research in Workplace Innovation and Regional Development Edited by Werner Fricke and Peter Totterdill Institute
for Regional Cooperation, Wieren, Germany / The Work Institute, Nottingham
Trent University, UK
The past is an increasingly unreliable guide to the future. European workplaces and the regions in which they are located face unprecedented pressures and challenges. Whereas in recent decades incremental adaptation has largely been sufficient to cope with external change, it is no longer clear that this remains the case. Globalisation, technological development and dissemination, political volatility, patterns of consumption, and employee expectations are occurring at a rate which is hard to measure. The rate of change in these spheres is far outstripping the rate of organisational innovation in both European enterprises and public governance, leading to a serious mismatch between the challenges of the 21st Century and the organisational competence available to deal with them. In this context, there is no clear roadmap. The contributors to this volume address these issues and demonstrate that building the knowledge base required by actors in this volatile environment requires continuous dialogue and learning - a context in which social partners, regional policy makers and other participants share diverse knowledge and reflect on experience rather than seeking and imitating any notion of 'best practice'. Action Research has a crucial role to play, embedding shared learning within the process of innovation. Table of contents Acknowledgements
ix
I. Key themes Participation
and local organisation
Workplace
innovation as regional development
II. Building coalitions Participation
and enterprise networks within a regional context: Examples from South-West
Norway
Planning
from without or developing from within? Collaboration across the frontiers
of Health Care: Collaboration across
The
development of the French technopoles and the growth of life sciences:
The example of the Evry génopole
III.
Capacity building
Linking
workplace innovation and regional development: Towards new roles for the
university sector
Obstacles
to organisational learning in Trade Unions: The case of the Dutch 'industribution'
project
Globalisation
and regionalisation: Will networking help trade unions to shape change
in traditional industrial regions?
Moving
beyond rhetoric: Creativity, organisations and performance
IV.
The policy framework
Integrating
workplace development policy and innovation policy: A challenging task:
Experiences from and reflections on
The
UK Work Organisation Network: A national coalition for working life and
organisational competence
About
the authors 347
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©
WIFO
Editor:
Sabine
Manning
First
set up: 17/08/2004
Latest
update: 17/08/2004