Undoing Culture or Continuous Learning in Organizations individual Group and Organizational Perspectives

Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity, Vol. 39

Author: Mike Featherston

"This is a worthwhile discussion of postmodernity and modernity that overlaps theoretically with Chris Rojek's Decentring Leisure. Excellent Bibliography and Index." --Choice What is the relationship between culture and postmodernism? How has globalization influenced our understanding of culture? This shrewd book, written by one of the most accomplished and authoritative writers in the field, is a major contribution to rethinking culture. Mike Featherstone examines how culture is produced, reproduced, challenged, and transformed under current social conditions. Undoing Culture provides a guide to the dramatic changes that everyday life is currently witnessing and also suggests ways of analyzing these changes in theoretically meaningful ways. It explores the meaning of ordered life, the heroic life, revolutionary myth, symbolic power, and forms of consumer culture. What emerges is a highly original and significant attempt to ground culture in the context of globalization and postmodernism. Written with the customary clarity and judicious style that readers have come to expect from this author, Undoing Culture will be essential reading for students in the sociology of culture and cultural studies.

Go to: The Good Treats Cookbook for Dogs or The Bartenders Guide

Continuous Learning in Organizations individual, Group, and Organizational Perspectives

Author: Valerie Sessa

There is already considerable literature on learning at the individual level and a growing body of literature on group and organizational learning. But to date, there has been little attempt to bring these literatures together and link learning at all three levels. Continuous Learning in Organizations targets learning at each of the three levels and demonstrates how processes at one level impacts learning at other levels. At the heart of the work is the idea that individuals, groups, and organizations are living systems with internal learning mechanisms that can be activated and supported or stymied and thwarted. Once activated, systems can learn adaptively by reacting to a change in the environment; they can learn by generating new knowledge and conditions; and/or they can transform by creating and applying frame-breaking ideas and bringing about radically new conditions. Individuals, groups, and organizations are nested within each other forming an increasingly complex hierarchy of intertwined systems. From this point of view, the book describes the interactions between the levels and how developmental processes at one level affect learning at other levels.

The text appeals to both the scientist and professionals alike in the fields of human resource development, training, management and executive education, coaching, and organization change and development. It is also for executives who establish directions for learning and need to convince others that continuous learning is the key to on-going success of their enterprise.

Table of Contents:

1	The meaning of continuous learning	1
2	Understanding individual continuous learning	17
3	Individual characteristics affecting continuous learning	37
4	Facilitating individual continuous learning	73
5	Understanding group continuous learning	112
6	Facilitating group continuous learning	133
7	Understanding organizational continuous learning	160
8	Facilitating organizational learning	178
9	Future directions	202
App. A	Online discussion of continuous learning with subject matter experts	226
App. B	Personal reflections on the meaning of continuous learning	249