Pradam Kaul, Chairman and CEO, speaks about how Hughes Communications, Inc. has become the global leader in providing broadband satellite networks and services for enterprises, governments, small businesses and consumers.
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Some may wonder why a concert violist would need a Ph.D. in Administration/Management, but for Madeline Frank, the two are a harmonious pair. Both have informed her career teaching children and adults how to overcome obstacles—from learning disabilities to social inhibitions—through music. Both have helped her hone her ideas about human intellectual and social development. And both have inspired her to put the breadth of her knowledge down on paper and publish her ideas in book form.
Frank, now 54, was born in Long Island, N.Y., and grew up in Newport News, Va. As a child, it was only after she began to study violin at age 8 that she developed a passion for reading—about the torrid lives of classical composers. She received her Bachelor of Music and Master of Music from the acclaimed Juilliard School in Manhattan and performed as a concert violist throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, South America, Australia, and New Zealand.
All the while, Frank was helping to manage a family-owned construction business. Seeking to become a more effective manager, as well as to enhance her base of knowledge as a teacher, she decided to pursue a Ph.D. in Administration/Management (now Applied Management and Decision Sciences) from Walden University, where she enrolled in 1991. “I realized that here in America, with so many children failing at school and dropping out, we were losing a base of workers. I wanted to do something about that, to help kids stay in school and succeed,” she says. “I talked with my former professor at Juilliard, William Lincer, who encouraged me to go into business. He felt I had an open, inquisitive mind and knew what I was trying to do.”
With two young children and tour dates to juggle, Frank says Walden was the perfect choice of university. “Walden is all about creating positive social change, and that resonated with me completely.” Frank felt that she had discovered a scientific link between studying (and listening to) musical instruments and academic and social success.
Her work at Walden taught her how to become an effective researcher and manager, as well as how to assess situations and envision possibilities for change. She discovered that, as a result, she had become a better and more multidimensional teacher. “Because of my new management skills, I was a more organized thinker,” she says. “I had new markers for how to bring about change for students. Without Walden, I wouldn’t have been able to advance my ideas.”
Frank has now been an educator for more than 25 years, helping countless adults and children overcome neurological, physical, and emotional difficulties through music. One 15-year-old girl was performing poorly in high school. Frank taught her to play scales, pieces, and etudes on the cello. After three months of musical studies, she was on the honor roll. “I helped her to think in a more organized fashion,” says Frank.
Another student of hers, a 6-year-old boy, was failing out of the first grade. “He couldn’t read, he couldn’t write, he couldn’t do the work,” says Frank. “His mother thought there was a problem. But there wasn’t a problem. I just had to get the light bulb to flip on.” Frank taught the boy the violin, turning the instructions into a game. Each week, as the boy progressed with his musical studies, his reading skills improved. Over a period of months, Frank says, he began to excel academically.
Frank has published two books, The Secret of Teaching Science & Math Through Music and Musical Notes on Math, techniques which explore her teaching philosophy and techniques as well as the links between mathematics and music.
She continues to run her family-owned construction and management business, based in Newport News, where she lives. And she continues to perform worldwide—having conducted the concert for the 400th anniversary of Bermuda, in February.
While Frank has been lauded as an educator—she is the winner of the Parent-to-Parent Adding Wisdom Award—she says her Walden coursework on business continues to enhance her teaching career. She is particularly grateful to her mentors, Dr. Aqueil Ahmad and the late Dr. Marty Gerstein, “two bright, thoughtful men who encouraged me to explore new possibilities,” she says. “Thanks to them and to Walden, I now know what questions to ask.”
Click here to view Dr. Frank's alumni lectures, "Ten Creative Ways to Inspire Students and Curb Teachers’ Burnout" and "Nine Management Secrets to Inspire Clients and Curb Health Care Professionals’ Burnout."
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‘The Al Capone of West Africa’
Charles Taylor “masterminded the civil war in Sierra Leone because of greed and corruption—he was responsible for the death, maiming, or mutilation of over 1.2 million people,” says Dr. Alan W. White, who earned his Ph.D. in Administration/Management (now Applied Management and Decision Sciences) from Walden in 1995.
At the end of 1989, warlord Taylor and his revolutionary group instigated a civil war in Liberia that lasted, with brief respites, until he fled to Nigeria in 2003. Driven by a desire to destabilize neighboring Sierra Leone—and profit from its diamonds—Taylor fomented civil war there in 1991. He also backed the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), with whom he hoped to form a sympathetic government. The 10-year conflict resulted in human-rights violations on a massive scale.
To hold Taylor accountable for his crimes against humanity, the United Nations and the government of Sierra Leone created the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL)—a hybrid international war crimes tribunal that blended international and national law—in 2002. White, formerly the director of investigative operations for the U.S. Department of Defense Inspector General, was brought on board as chief of investigations by David Crane, the SCSL prosecutor appointed by Kofi Annan, then the UN Secretary-General.
Leaving his wife and children behind, White arrived in Freetown, Sierra Leone, in mid-2002. Dangerous and disease-ridden, Freetown was ranked one of the worst places in the world to live, and the government of Sierra Leone had nothing to offer the office of the prosecutor in terms of facilities— nowhere to live, nowhere to work. White found a house in a walled compound that served as both home and office for the six members of the prosecutorial team for the first year: “The basement of our house was the control center,” he says. Finally, he had to pick four men from the Sierra Leone police whom he hoped he could trust to help with the investigation and with security.
White’s mission: “retributive justice,” the mechanism by which criminals are brought to trial, prosecuted, convicted, and punished. The team started criminal investigations in August of 2002, and within two weeks White had enough evidence to not only open the case against Taylor, but to indict him and 12 others for war crimes and crimes against humanity. But the case had to be airtight, so White would spend three more years based in Freetown, building up evidence of conspiracy.
Taylor’s 12 co-defendants included senior leaders of the Civil Defense Force, a state militia, who “started as the defenders of the nation and became the offenders,” White says. Unlike in many other civil war situations, he points out, Sierra Leone’s was unrelated to tribal or ethnic conflicts: “It was nothing more than an organized criminal conspiracy, and the evidence took us straight to Charles Taylor immediately—he was the Al Capone of West Africa.”
‘We Are—That Is Why You Are’
In early 2003, while White pursued his case, Lydia Apori-Nkansah, a former human rights adjudicator at the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice of Ghana, arrived in Sierra Leone to serve as the head of the Research Unit for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The TRC, established by the UN and the government of Sierra Leone after the end of the civil war, gave the Research Unit a mandate: facilitate restorative justice by documenting the human rights violations that had occurred during the civil war.
Restorative justice “allows both the victim and the perpetrator to come together, to have an exchange, and for the victim to have the truth about what happened and why the perpetrator did what he or she did,” says Apori- Nkansah, who earned her Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration from Walden in 2008 while working with the TRC. Apori-Nkansah and her team were to gather evidence “from every nook and corner of Sierra Leone” about the human rights abuses that took place during the conflict and to document in formal hearings the experiences of victims and perpetrators—and of the forcibly conscripted child soldiers who were both.
“My heart still goes out to them,” says Apori- Nkansah. “We didn’t call them perpetrators, we called them witnesses. By UN [rules], children are entitled to privacy, so we had closed hearings for them, and they would break down, because they simply cannot contend with the sort of things that they were made to do.” In restorative justice, the goal of gathering testimony is to give each party a voice so that healing can begin and victims’ needs can be addressed, rather than to convict the perpetrator.
Her task required an extraordinary amount of empathy. “If you don’t make the people the center, the process will not work at all,” Apori-Nkansah says. “They need to have faith in you.”
As an example, she cites her experience with amputees in Sierra Leone: “A lot of people—civilians— had their hands and their legs chopped off [during the civil war],” she explains. Rebel forces would raid a village and ask people if they wanted “short sleeves”—i.e., to have their arms cut off above the elbow—or “long sleeves”—to have their hands cut off. Collecting the testimony of these victims was critical, but the association of amputees issued a press release saying that they didn’t want to be part of the TRC process, and they refused Apori- Nkansah’s invitation to visit her office.
So she went to their camp, where she encountered a teenage amputee. Apori-Nkansah sat down next to the young woman, introduced herself, and told her about the TRC. She recounts the woman’s response: “You want to hear my story? For what? Look at me! My two legs have been cut off! My mother was beheaded in my presence. I was raped by seven men. I have no idea where the next meal is coming from. If I come and tell my story, would that give me food to eat?”
“Of course, [I couldn’t] give her the food she was looking for—that was not our mandate,” says Apori-Nkansah, “but I had to let her understand that I knew what she was going through. I pleaded with her to just give me the opportunity so we could talk about it, in order to address their needs.” Finally, after being won over by Apori-Nkansah’s empathy and patience, the woman agreed to give her testimony and also to convince the other amputees to share their stories.
“And the first person who testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was an amputee,” Apori-Nkansah concludes.
Key to the restorative justice process is, when possible, reconciling the victims and the perpetrators so that the community can become whole again. In African culture, Apori-Nkansah says, the worldview is, “We are—that is why you are.” If one person commits an abuse, “the community is no longer intact,” and so that person needs to be reconciled with the community, if possible. She explains that, after each side gave their testimony around a given situation, and the perpetrator had asked for forgiveness, the commission would consult with the community elders and traditional religious leaders, asking them, “What does it take, within your culture, your own beliefs, for you to say that now the community can come together?”
There might be a cleansing ceremony for a woman who had been raped or a reconciliation ceremony at the site of a murder. Whether or not the perpetrator would be forgiven “all depended on whether the community felt that a person has spoken the truth and that he has shown remorse,” Apori- Nkansah says. “Then they were prepared to forgive.”
Finally, her work with the TRC of Sierra Leone included focusing on the future as well as the past, through the development of measures for institutional reforms. The TRC “engaged the whole Sierra Leonean community, [asking] ‘What do you want to see in Sierra Leone?’” she says. “We even engaged children and wrote a child-friendly report for them. And we put all of that together for the reforms.”
Apori-Nkansah believes that “with or without prosecution, it is always necessary to find out about the causes of a conflict, address the needs of victims, get the version of perpetrators, and put institutional measures in place to avoid reoccurrence.” Amnesia—pretending that nothing happened—is unacceptable, she says. “Even if it is difficult to open the wound, let’s open it and dress it properly so that when it heals, it heals.”
In Pursuit of Justice
Although his path never crossed with Apori- Nkansah’s, White was also dedicated to collecting testimony about abuses, though to a different end. He pursued his investigation of Taylor and his cohorts like an organized criminal conspiracy case—traveling to Europe, the United States, and throughout Africa to gather testimony and intelligence information. “We were also trying to trace the money, which literally took us around the world,” says White. “Nobody knew what we were doing because we were very independent.”
The SCSL indicted Taylor in the spring of 2003. His challenge was overruled by the appeals chamber and, under pressure from the international community and besieged by rebel groups, Taylor finally stepped down as president and accepted asylum in Nigeria. There, “he continued his criminal conspiracy by money-laundering and harassing witnesses,” White says. After the indictment, White continued to work “nonstop,” collecting evidence to shore up the case and seeking the support of authorities in Europe and in the United States, as well as informing the people of Sierra Leone of the SCSL’s mandate to prosecute those who bore the greatest responsibility for the war in Sierra Leone.
White and his team traveled to the 13 states of Sierra Leone, holding town hall meetings to tell the people what they were doing. “We made it clear that we did not intend to prosecute any children for their crimes, period,” says White. A notable aspect of the case was that, for the first time, forced marriage and child conscription were charged as war crimes. “This was international jurisprudence, so these are binding for other tribunals as well,” explains White.
Three years of investigation took their toll on White. He got typhoid and almost died from cerebral malaria. And periodic trips back to the United States didn’t make up for the time away from his wife and daughters. But he has no question that it was worth it: “It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make a difference, to reestablish the rule of law,” White says. “You can’t have peace without justice; you can’t have stability without accountability.”
Finally, in early 2006, the new Liberian president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, and President George W. Bush prevailed upon Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo to give Taylor up. Taylor tried to escape to Cameroon, but was apprehended and taken by helicopter first to the SCSL, and then to The Hague to await trial. White, who had “lived and breathed [the case] 24/7” for three years, went home. Back in the United States, although he was officially retired, he continued to develop the sources and report the information to the authorities. “I did it on my own,” he says. “I was obsessed with doing this—had we not brought Taylor to justice, the court would not have been a success.”
White’s work on the Taylor case was a highlight of his career directing major law enforcement operations. He credits his experience at Walden with helping equip him to work in Sierra Leone— his first time in Africa—by giving him flexibility, and, through the residencies, exposing him to a broad international community.
Theory into Practice
For Apori-Nkansah, her early work with the TRC of Sierra Leone intensified her desire for a framework to understand and resolve the issues she was handling. A Ph.D. was the next step, but as a wife and as a mother of two young daughters and busy with her work with the TRC, she needed to find a school that would allow her to maintain her other responsibilities. Inspired by Walden’s scholar-practitioner philosophy that combines academic theory with practical solutions, she enrolled in the Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration program in the fall of 2003.
“Everything I studied is relevant,” she says of her Walden experience. “I got grounded in the theoretical and conceptual bases of transitional justice, [and] I learned that the socioeconomic, cultural, and political dynamics dictated the kind of policy options employed by transitional democracies in pursuit of justice.”
In addition to using her Walden experiences to inform her practice, Apori-Nkansah was also able to draw from her TRC experiences for her Walden work: she received the 2008 Harold L. Hodgkinson Award, Walden’s outstanding dissertation honor, for her dissertation, Transitional Justice in Postconflict Contexts: The Case of Sierra Leone’s Dual Accountability Mechanisms, which examined the complementary role of the TRC and SCSL.
In April of 2005, after completing her work with the TRC of Sierra Leone, Apori-Nkansah went to Liberia to train members of the Transitional Legislative Assembly on legislative processes in anticipation of the elections (Taylor was by now in Nigeria, and a transitional government was in place in Liberia). However, she says, “I found the legislature engaged with a bill that sought to establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I realized that unless the issues about the proposed bill were dealt with, the training I was to deliver would not be possible.”
Continuing the Walden mandate to be a change agent, Apori-Nkansah told the training coordinator of her expertise on the topic of TRCs, and offered her services. She was asked to speak off-the-cuff about the importance of passing the bill. In her speech—which was broadcast on national television and radio—she used metaphors, symbols, rituals, and stories to talk about the goals of the commission and of restorative justice: “I said, ‘Look, our children have been maimed. Our daughters have been raped. Even though the guns are silent, the trauma lingers on. We have to have a forum that would let us know what happened to our sons and to our daughters, and why those who took up arms against us did what they did.’”
After Apori-Nkansah’s speech—which helped turn the tide in favor of the bill—she was asked to serve as an international expert advisor to the Legislative Joint Committee on the TRC bill and the Committee on the Peace Process and National Reconciliation. In this role, she helped resolve issues raised by the public, revised the bill, and carried out an awareness campaign through interviews and press releases. The bill was passed into law, Apori-Nkansah says, and “in the first week of January 2006, the newly elected members of the parliament of Liberia were brought to my institute—the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA)—for orientation, where I had the opportunity to train them in governance.”
Two Types of Justice
What determines whether retributive justice, restorative justice, or a combination of the two is appropriate in a given civil war situation? There are a number of factors that go into making that judgment, including the relative strength of the country’s government, the international political landscape, and whether or not the threat of international criminal courts may deter war criminals from ending the war. The motivation in choosing either type of justice, says Apori-Nkansah, is to have peace: “Is this the approach which will give us the peace we are looking for?”
The case of Sierra Leone represented the first time that a war crimes tribunal and a TRC operated in a country concurrently. Apori-Nkansah’s dissertation found that, in the case of Sierra Leone, because the two institutions for justice “were not planned and coordinated as different parts of the same tool, they were pitched against each other, undermining their respective mandates and creating tensions in their efforts to implement their plans.” The dissertation recommends that “the policy choice, design, and packaging of restorative and retributive mechanisms for post-conflict transitional justice should […] link seamlessly to the strategic goal of peace and stability.”
Epilogue
The trial of Charles Taylor is continuing, visit the SCSL site for the latest information. Alan White is optimistic about the outcome: “So far, everyone we indicted [whose] trial has been concluded has been found guilty.” White retained his development consulting business, Alan White Associates, LLC, and now works as the director of international business development—focused primarily on Africa—for L-3 Communications, a government services company. Lydia Apori-Nkansah teaches at the Graduate School of Governance at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) in Accra. She is working on a book about her experiences in Sierra Leone and intends to continue her work in restorative justice. “I believe that a nation that has suffered civil conflicts can be rebuilt, no matter the devastation that they may have endured,” she says. “I believe that there can be genuine healing for the victims as well as the perpetrators. My sub-region is engulfed in pockets of civil conflicts and my passion is to be prepared to offer a hand in rehabilitation as and when the occasion demands.”
Dr. Caroline Bassett, who has served at Walden since 1982, is a faculty member in The Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership and director of the Wisdom Institute, which supports the development of wisdom in people, organizations, and communities through education, research, and consultation. She’s also a certified master gardener, a student of Argentine tango dancing, and a board member of a Tony Award-winning regional theater. Here, she talks about the role of wisdom in social change, the importance of reflection, and how learning the tango can make us wiser.
What is wisdom? I call it a special kind of thinking applied to produce positive results in human life, and all that supports it. It has cognitive, active, and reflective components—it’s a combination of being discerning, of respecting others, of acting with moral courage, and of being reflective.
How does the study of wisdom relate to Walden’s mission of social change? Wisdom serves as the backbone for positive social change. Wisdom helps us to understand the complex intermingling of relationships or events and to work with them ethically and respectfully. For example, one Walden graduate, who works with nursing students, noticed her students’ negative attitudes toward the elderly. So she restructured the curriculum to build in more exposure to the elderly so that the students’ discomfort would be reduced, thereby improving the quality of the care that these people receive.
Why does the world need a Wisdom Institute? Wisdom is so contrary to most of our culture right now, with our emphasis on young and fast. Wisdom is slow and difficult. It’s a lifetime—it’s not 10 easy steps. The Wisdom Institute provides resources for people who want to explore and develop their own wisdom.
What is the best way for people to share their wisdom with their colleagues, children, students, and others? A good way is to wait until you’re asked. Another way is to make observations without insisting that they take your advice, or take it right away, or take it as you give it.
You went to Buenos Aires for two weeks to study Argentine tango. What wisdom have you gained from tango? I’ve learned patience with myself, and forgiveness, humility, and perseverance. The goal in tango is for two to move together as one. It’s a metaphor for being in life, good or bad—moving with it.
If you could make one suggestion for what people could do to become wiser, what would that be? So much of how we see something is how we want it to be, and often that isn’t the case. Wisdom is being able to look at a situation and separate out how you want it to be from how it “really” is.
Long before President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package committed billions of dollars to bring medical records into the digital age, officials at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center in Long Beach, California, decided to eliminate the reams of paper their system generated, aiming to improve patient care via reducing medical errors and the duplication of services.
It took six years of intense preparation, but in July 2008, “in the flip of a switch we went from paper to paperless overnight,” says Dr. James Leo, associate chief medical information officer. “It was sort of like ripping off a Band-Aid.”
While many hospitals and health care providers might not go for such a drastic approach, the $19 billion in federal stimulus money is designed to help create electronic health records for most Americans by 2014, and as a result, improve health care. Financial incentives for hospitals and physicians who make the transition are intended to ease the process along.
A Rand Corporation study released in 2005 found that despite the high initial costs, a nationwide switchover to electronic medical records would save about $81 billion annually, primarily from a decrease in redundant care, improved safety, and expedited patient care.
Other obstacles remain, ranging from a lack of information technology experts to get the systems up and running to concerns over electronic health records’ privacy and security.
First step is wooing doctors
The first step is getting buy-in from the health care providers involved. According to a recent survey published in the New England Journal of Medicine, only 1.5% of hospitals have a comprehensive electronic records system in place and 7.6% more have a basic system, while about 17% of all doctors in private practice have electronic medical records systems.
Acceptance depends on the culture of an organization, as well as its willingness to change, says Dr. Michael Mirro, a cardiologist in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and head of health care information technology for the American College of Cardiology.
At Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, part of the MemorialCare system in the Los Angeles area, it was the key stakeholders who powered the decision along, driven by the desire to reduce medical errors, cut down on the duplication of services, ensure the consistent application of evidence-based care, and create a reliable method to track information both inside and outside the hospital, Leo says.
“There is a tremendous amount of waste in health care,” Leo says. Tests might be done twice if there is no way to track if they already have been performed. A patient might receive “unnecessary care, duplicative care, or wrong care.”
Finding the right system
But finding the best electronic health records system for a particular practice is no easy process. Todd Johnson, president of Salar, a Baltimore company specializing in electronic documentation systems for hospitals, cautions health care providers should have “no expectations they can just buy a product off a shelf and it will automatically work for them.”
Because each doctor’s office or hospital has unique needs, it takes time to select the right system. Doctors looking for stimulus help need to know that under the stimulus provisions, whatever system is selected has to come from a certified vendor and meet a “meaningful use” provision, which has yet to be defined.
At Long Beach Memorial, a committee studied three different systems in great detail, doing a test run with each and providing feedback on the results. They overwhelmingly voted for the Epic system, which allows a great deal of customization. Leo describes it as “using an Epic chassis, with a specific bus built on top of it.”
Each user had to undergo extensive training before the system was up and running. “This was a commitment all of us made, some willingly, some grumbling,” Leo recalls.
The costs of establishing electronic medical record systems also can give health care providers pause. For the MemorialCare system, which encompasses Long Beach Memorial and four other hospitals, the project cost about $55 million.
Cost is a barrier
Even smaller-scale systems can be pricey. Dr. John Dormois, a cardiologist in private practice in Tampa, Florida, began the switchover to electronic health records in 2001, but was not completely digitalized until 2007. His proprietary system cost $12,000, which was at the low end of systems he’d looked at, with some ranging up to $50,000.
Dormois, like many other health care providers, started out with small changes, like having patients email their questions to him and set appointments online, before investing in a major system.
Today his office is completely digitalized, which makes finding patient records a breeze. One benefit that he can now offer patients is informing them when the Food and Drug Administration recalls certain medications. Prior to installing the system it would have been a struggle to find out who has been prescribed the drug. “Most physicians’ offices can’t possibly find that information,” Dormois says.
At his office, a few keystrokes tell him everyone who uses that medication, and he can immediately have his staff email or call all of them.
Mirro suggests organizations start with electronic prescribing to ease into the digital age. That will give physicians the opportunity to test a system and vendor, without making a major investment.
Though the stimulus money provides $44,000 per doctor who adopts electronic medical records, health care practices run the risk of selecting a vendor, then finding it doesn’t meet their needs, says Mirro, who serves on the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology, which is charged with certifying system vendors.
Another incentive—those who don’t make the switch and serve Medicare and Medicaid patients could lose that funding. Will Crawford, director of the informatics solutions group at Children’s Hospital in Boston, says of the financial incentives, “It’s a big carrot, but honestly not much of a stick.”
Experts are at a premium
Once a system is selected, there are still hurdles to overcome and concerns to address.
The first is finding experts to get the systems up and running. Crawford says anywhere from 70,000 to 200,000 information technology experts are expected to be needed. “This will continue to be a huge growth area.”
Children’s Hospital, which is part of the Harvard University system, has been using electronic health records since the 1990s, and Crawford, who used to work for the Department of Health and Human Services in this field, has seen the benefits as well as the challenges.
Among the positives are e-prescribing, which allows health care providers to easily see possible interactions with other medications. “It’s potentially a huge safety benefit,” he says.
In addition, if patients can access their own health records at the push of a button, providers have found they are “more engaged in the management of their own health.” Such systems can also help Medicare patients find the plan that makes the most financial sense for them.
On the downside, Crawford thinks it will be a challenge to get health care organizations to share data. For hospitals, “there’s not much in it for them, other than altruism.”
Making it all work together
Dr. James Pierce, chair of the Bioinformatics and Computer Science Department at University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, is even more vocal with his concerns. Each vendor uses their own proprietary technology, and under the new electronic medical records provisions, health care organizations are supposed to be able to share data. “Which company is going to give up its secrets?” Pierce asks.
Another issue is the limited amount of electronic data storage. But for procedures like CAT scans and MRIs, “the memory requirements are quite significant. It’s not easy to move terabytes” yet the health care records are supposed to be portable, he says. Potentially, “our ability to generate data might overtake our ability to store it and manage it.”
Research is now under way on how to best address the issue, Pierce says. Some health care providers have turned to medical archive solutions provided by companies such as IBM and HP, which sell storage capacity into the terabytes. A complete cardiology workup could require 2 gigabytes of storage space, Pierce says, while just an X-ray or CAT scan can require at least 35 megabytes of space.
Pierce also is concerned about the privacy and security of electronic records. Anything found in there “lives forever. That defines you as a person, as a patient, as you go forward.”
While some have expressed concerns about potential security breaches, Dormois says with the system he uses, everything is encrypted. “It’s just as safe as any bank.”
Leo believes electronic records are even safer than paper charts. Before, anyone could walk up and read a chart left outside a patient’s room. Now anyone who accesses records has to sign into the system, and records of VIPs are flagged with a special warning. Anyone who accesses them needs to have a good reason because the system creates an audit trail. In California, anyone who breaches the system can face hefty fines. “It creates a wonderful disincentive.”
To read more case studies, visit Think+Up.
You are invited to join us for Walden University's upcoming online Walden Forum on Tuesday, July 14, at 7 p.m. Pacific time. The topic, “Is a Doctorate Right for You?” will be presented by Dr. Terry O'Banion, author and faculty member of Walden’s Community College Leadership Program.
This forum is designed for professionals who want to explore new career opportunities in the community college field, as well as those already in this exciting area who would like to grow beyond their current roles. Dr. O’Banion will discuss community college leadership and Walden's degree programs for community college professionals, including the
Ph.D. in Education with a specialization in Community College Leadership
Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) with a specialization in Higher Education and Adult Learning
Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A.)
You will also have to opportunity to speak with Dr. O’Banion, Walden alumnus Dr. Laura Weidner of Anne Arundel Community College, and Walden representatives to discuss your degree options and gain a better understanding of the time commitment involved in earning your degree online.
Reservations are on a first-come, first-served basis, and space is limited, so register today. After you register, please review the technology requirements for the phone and Web interface used for the Walden Forum. We look forward to your participation on Tuesday, July 14th, at 7 p.m. Pacific.
About the Speaker
Dr. O’Banion was president of the League for Innovation in the Community College for more than 20 years and was named president emeritus in 1999. He has written 135 articles and 12 books on community colleges, including A Learning College for the 21st Century. He has consulted for more than 800 community colleges in the United States and Canada, and is one of the nation’s leading experts on the Learning College educational model. He has been honored by the National Institute for Leadership Development, the American Association of Community Colleges, and the College Board. He received an honorary doctor of humane letters from Walden in 2005.
by Ivonne Chirino-Klevans, Ph.D., Program Director, International Programs, Walden University
Downsizing has become a frequently used strategy for surviving the most recent economic crisis, whether to reduce costs, improve efficiency or increase profitability.
Although each organization may have very specific criteria for keeping its employees (for example, based on the importance of their job), there are three key areas that managers look at when deciding who will be laid off:
The social exchange process, or being able to create effective teams, has been used to explain why organizations sometimes terminate top performers. One study, "Determinants of voluntary turnover and layoffs in an environment of repeated downsizing following a merger: An event history analysis" as reported in 2000 in the Journal of Management by Roderick Iverson and Jacqueline Pullman, found that employees with excellent attendance records and acceptable performance but with little co-worker support were more likely to be laid off than those with the same characteristics but with strong co-worker support.
This sociological determinant—getting along with others—impacts how an employee's performance is perceived and how the employee's effectiveness on the job is evaluated.
The Leader-Member exchange theory also helps us to understand the importance of getting along in the workplace and how getting along with others affects who and who is not needed in the organization.
This theory focuses on the quality of the interactions between a leader and his/her co-workers and those who report directly to him/her. It is this exchange of interactions, not performance, that will determine the positive or negative relationship between the leader and his/her team. So the quality of the working relationship between the leader and his/her team will determine organizational outcomes.
In this theory, where time and resources are limited, leaders who want to be more effective must form a close-knit group of people they can trust. This group, in exchange, receives special attention, support and career advancement opportunities. These are "high quality in-group" relationships, implying that there is an "out-group" relationship, too. The relationship with this (usually small) in-group is quite close, continuous and strong, and employees who are part of this group are less likely to be laid off.
It is in this light that understanding how these "in-groups" are formed becomes important. According to George B. Graen and Terri A. Scandura in their 1987 article, "Toward a Psychology of Dyadic Organizing" in Research in Organizational Behavior, these close relationships form quickly following more or less the ensuing process:
1. Role Taking
In this stage, a new member joins a team. The leader assesses the new member's abilities and skills by assigning him/her tasks and (usually informally) evaluating the performance. A wealth of knowledge and understanding of each other's work styles is exchanged during this phase.
2. Role Making
Next formal and informal communication happens. A role is negotiated for the new member, creating loyalty and dedication to the group and the leader, as a result of a tacit understanding of the power that has been given to the new member. In this phase, building trust is essential, and it is tested on several occasions. At the end of the day, leaders need to be sure that they have a strong team that they can rely on. It is also in this stage that potential in-group members may not make it into the group. More often than not, leaders choose the member to oust based on how similar he/she is to the leader.
3. Routinization
Since a trust relationship has already been created, continuous social exchange happens between the leader and the member. The various members have learned how each prefers to interact among themselves. It is in this stage that the members of this in group will receive more information, more autonomy and experience more empowerment, thus becoming essential and indispensable members of a team.
However, the question remains: How does an employee become part of the in-group?
L. Dionne in the 2000 research paper, "Leader-member exchange (LMX): Level of negotiating latitude and job satisfaction," has identified several skills that are helpful in achieving in-group status, if that is compatible with your professional goals.
In times of economic uncertainty, job security is not a given. We need to be prepared to start over at any time. By being able to create a strong relationship between yourself, your leader and your co-workers, you may increase the likelihood of being part of a new and advantageous in-group.
Source:
F. Dansereau, G. Graen, & W.J. Haga (1975). "A vertical dyad linkage approach to leadership within formal organizations: A longitudinal investigation of the role making process" in Organizational Behavior and Human Performance.
The Walden University Alumni Association Blog is taking time off for the holiday, Friday, July 3, 2009 - Monday, July 6, 2009, and returning on Tuesday, July 7, 2009. This is the perfect opportunity for you to explore the blog and catch up on past posts.
Best wishes for a fun and safe Independence Day.
As school districts and states across the country seek practical and meaningful ways to measure teacher performance in the classroom, new findings from a previous study confirm the connection between graduates of Walden University’s M.S. in Education program with a specialization in Elementary Reading and Literacy and student outcomes in reading fluency.
Linking Teacher Learning to Student Success, a study conducted by Arroyo Research Services in conjunction with Tacoma Public Schools, compared the reading fluency of students taught by Walden-master’s educated teachers with those students taught by non-Walden-master’s educated teachers. The study, sponsored by Walden University, evaluated three years of data, including test scores involving 35 teachers and 712 students.
“Our district was very interested in supporting the researchers at Walden University who contracted with Arroyo Research Services to study the link between Walden-master’s educated reading teachers and the effects on increasing student performance,” said Pat Cummings, director of Research and Planning with Tacoma Public Schools. “The study yielded a number of positive findings in early literacy performance of students being taught by Walden graduates. The research appears to help shed light on the link between good teaching and student learning, especially in the area of acquiring skills in early reading.”
Key findings in the study showed
“Student success is the ultimate demonstration of effective teaching, and the ultimate goal of Walden’s education programs is fostering effective teachers. We believe studies such as this one illustrate the difference a Walden master’s degree can make and the impact that Walden-educated teachers have in the classroom,” said Victoria Reid, vice president of The Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership at Walden University.
Details of Linking Teacher Learning to Student Success are here.
by Ivonne Chirino-Klevans, Ph.D., Program Director, International Programs, Walden University
Consider this scenario: Brian, one of the people in charge of payroll at a large company, is laid off. He was an expert in a database system that processed payments for the whole organization. His co-worker, Sandra, is put in charge of the whole payroll system, but she has little knowledge of the database. During the first pay period that she oversees, Sandra has to do the payroll twice. Once, she miscalculated some severance packages, costing the company several thousand dollars, as well as some media exposure and embarrassment. The company must invest in training to get her up to speed, and make up for the knowledge capital that Brian took with him when he left the company.
Does this sound familiar?
Nearly 300,000 people were laid off in February 2009, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as companies try to stay afloat in turbulent times. Workers are also leaving their jobs as they age: By 2020 a member of the baby boomer generation will leave the workforce every 20 seconds (Beazley, Boenisch, and Harden, 2002). When they leave, they, like Brian, take with them the knowledge and expertise each has accumulated throughout his or her working life. Taken together, the struggling economy and changes in workforce demographics are leaving companies with a huge loss of knowledge capital, which will affect productivity.
What exactly is "knowledge capital"? One definition describes it as the wealth of information and skills that are collectively accumulated within an organization; each employee carries with him or her some part of this knowledge. Knowledge capital, also known as intellectual capital, represents a competitive advantage for organizations, and as an asset it should be operationally defined, measured, and enhanced. Only when the impact of losing or gaining talent can be measured is it possible to identify preventive measures and incorporate such measures into policies and practices.
The problem with measuring an intangible concept such as intellectual capital is that no consistent standards exist in organizational management science. It is clear, however, that knowledge that is not stored, retrieved, transferred, and used in decision-making is lost knowledge. Re-learning such knowledge every time an important decision must be made is like reinventing the wheel—or having to do payroll twice in one pay period.
The challenge is how to capture knowledge capital or, as Kankanhalli and Tan (2004) define it, how to capture organizational memory. This memory includes knowledge related to the individual and his/her particular expertise and experiences.
One way to do so is to use Organizational Memory Information System (OMIS), which captures knowledge by codifying it. Take, for example, introducing a new product in the European Union marketplace. OMIS provides a blueprint where the individual in charge of the project stores information such as: knowledge needed before entering the market (e.g., tax laws, barriers to entry, how to market to the different EU countries, etc.); cultural dimensions that influence negotiation (e.g., concepts of time, decision-making processes); successes (e.g., a narrative of how a new price was agreed on), failures (e.g., a narrative of how a deal was lost); best practices; outcomes; and even personal memories from the project (e.g., "In Spain, be prepared to eat dinner at 10 p.m.").
This organizational memory system can be classified by project or by product so that the next person involved in the process can access the information and better understand how decisions/policies came to be. Information sharing does not depend on an individual and his/her availability. Instead, information can be accessed by anyone who might participate in the project in the future or is interested in entering a similar market. The use of OMIS requires commitment and discipline, but the benefits of keeping this knowledge within the organization far outweigh the effort in storing it.
If organizations are forced to lay off staff, they must bear in mind the impact that such loss of knowledge capital carries. Implementing an organizational memory system can help organizations retain knowledge capital, because each employee's competencies and know-how are the key to successful organizational performance.
Sources
-- Beazley, H., Boenisch, J., and Harden, D. (2002). Continuity Management: Preserving Corporate Knowledge and Productivity When Employees Leave. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley and Sons.
-- Kankanhalli, A., Tan, B. (2004). "A Review of Metrics for Knowledge Management Systems and Knowledge Management Initiatives." Proceedings of the 37th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.
-- Massingham, P. (2008). "Measuring the Impact of Knowledge Loss: More Than Ripples on a Pond?" Management Learning, 39 (5), 541–560.
-- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2008). Mass Layoffs in February 2009, on the Internet at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/mmls.nr0.htm (viewed online March 26, 2009)
