Transformational Leadership and Not for Profits and Social Enterprises

Well, my last blog post was about this book I was editing – and here is a sneak preview of the flyer for it.  Ken, Aastha and I have enjoyed working with the authors a great deal.  

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From the blurb on the book, which is in the Routledge Studies in the Management of Voluntary and Non-Profit Organizations series:

This book addresses the leadership challenges and strategies required when Not for Profits embrace new models of working such as Social Enterprises . It covers both concepts, and case studies of successful Not for Profits, and is very suitable for professional development programs .

And this is the table of contents:

Part I: The Leadership Journey

1. Leadership Concepts and Approaches; Kenneth Wiltshire
2. Three Schools of Nonprofit Thought: Evolution of the Field and Implications for Leadership; Aastha Malhotra
3. The Journey of a Social Leader: Leading and Transforming Organisations For Social Impact; Anna Krzeminska, Andreas Heinecke, and Christian Koch

Part II: Shaping the Journey

4. Stakeholder Partnerships and the Delivery of Services; Stephen Jones
5. Corporate Social Responsibility, Government, and the Balancing Act; Kenneth Wiltshire
6. Financial Sustainability Through Leadership; David Knowles and Chris Wilson
7. Your People, Your Volunteers; Amanda Roan
8. Non-Profit Marketing Strategy; Jay Weerawardena
9. Leadership and Governance Issues in Faith Based Organizations; Susan Dann
10. Leading Through the Jungle of Legislation, Regulation and Reporting; Paul Paxton-Hall Part III: New Journeys, New Horizons

Part III – New Journeys, New Horizons

11. Innovation Leadership; Mark Dodgson
12. Strategy, Leadership and Team Building; Karina Collins
13. Successful Nonprofit Leadership in an IT World; Micheal Axelsen

Fun times. 

Intelligent Decision Aids and the Accounting Professional

Last Wednesday evening (25th May 2011) I was invited to present to the CPA Australia discussion group for Information Technology.  The topic was to do with my research, and is all about intelligent decision aids and the accounting professional.  Thanks to John Halliday of BDO in Brisbane as the discussion group convenor for his suggestion that I present.  I am recording this output as TTD

This is the session outline I provided to CPA Australia (note:  I was a bit concerned when I showed up at 4:30pm to see signs everywhere saying I was presenting on Sharepoint – no way am I going to do that, although we could always workshop it 🙂 ):

Ever since the pocket calculator replaced the adding machine and the slide rule, accountants have been debating whether today’s accountant is less skilled than those that went before.  The increasing reliance upon legislative compliance and ‘best practice frameworks’ has ensured that the modern professional must rely on the computer to carry out their tasks.  

This session presents preliminary results from Micheal’s research into whether the sophisticated use of computers (‘intelligent decision aids’) to assist with accounting and audit reduces the professional’s judgment capability – their ‘know-how’.  Micheal’s research draws upon interviews with 59 public sector auditors to identify whether this ‘deskilling’ is occurring.

The session identifies the driving forces behind this ‘deskilling effect’ (‘technology dominance), outlines recent research into the phenomenon (and in fact whether it exists or not), and identifies risk factors that may be at play in deskilling yourself and your staff if you rely on computers too much. Potential strategies to reduce this deskilling effect are also outlined and discussed.

This session should be of interest to any professional that relies upon a computer to help them with their professional tasks.

The session in my humble view went quite well.  It’s really good to see that John and CPA Australia have a discussion group that is going quite well on an infamously ‘non-core’ topic.  Feedback from audience members that I saw was also reasonably upbeat.  At any rate, the Powerpoint I presented is given below:
Hopefully you find this interesting – it is after all my thesis so be a little kind :).
Thanks:  Micheal Axelsen

 

Data management strategies

On 14th October 2009, I will be presenting at CPA Congress in Melbourne to the topic ‘Data Management Strategies’.  Apparently CPA Australia didn’t like my originally suggested title ‘The devil is in the detail – which is why the Lord of the Nine Hells should never be your DBA’, which I blogged about earlier.  I think the new title is rather bland, don’t you.

The session overview is below:

Micheal Axelsen FCPA Director
Applied Insights Pty Ltd

As accountants, we prepare the information that a business uses to make its important decisions. Sometimes though, the data we use seems to be impossible to track down – and when we do find it, who knows whether it’s actually useful or not?

In this entertaining presentation, Micheal looks at some of the practical pitfalls and case studies of working with data – from rampant spreadsheets to the DBA nightmare – that Micheal has seen, with practical advice you can use to help your business escape its database nightmare.

Anyway, it promises to be fun, although it would have been much more fun if I could have brought theology into the debate of DBAs vs rational people.

Image from Flickr User Lessio. Some Rights Reserved.

Decision Support Systems And The Professional

Today I presented for the INFS332 class for Dr Sophie Cockcroft of the University of Queensland as a guest lecturer.  The class has been discussing decision support systems and how fantastic they all are; my role was to temper that enthusiasm a bit with a bit of balance, particularly with my work around the theory of technology dominance.

My presentation is given below:

The mother of all demos – and ‘intellectual workers’

Wowsers.  Saw on http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/11/engelbart_celebration/ this video:  ‘the mother of all demos’ by Doug Engelbart in 1968: 

I haven’t seen all of it yet – you’ll need to set aside a chunk of time – but it promises to be really, really interesting.  Considering that this is back in the day when you wrote your own OS for every computing machine you bought, it’s very futuristic (and some of it ain’t here yet).  Admittedly it is in the tradition of demos where some of it is smoke and mirrors (‘backed up by 30 people at Stanford University’). 

I love how in the first word or two he comes up with ‘intellectual worker’.  I’m all done with being a knowledge worker – from now on I’m an ‘intellectual worker’.