The Oxford Review Encyclopaedia of Terms provides short definitions and longer articles about terms found in leadership, management, human resources, organisational development and change, learning and development and coaching.
What is informal learning? Research definition of informal learning: Informal learning is defined as “learning from experience that takes place outside formally structured, institutionally sponsored, class-room based activities” (Macià & García, 2016). Informal learning applies to the process of acquiring knowledge, skills and attitudes outside of formal, structured education or training programmes. It can happen […]
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Organisational valence What is organisational valence? Organisational valence refers to how much an individual values a particular outcome or reward within an organisation. In other words, it’s the extent to which someone sees a particular outcome as good or bad. When we talk about valence, we’re talking about whether someone thinks an outcome is positive […]
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What is a Blame Culture? A blame culture refers to an environment where people, or groups/teams of people, are frequently singled out and blamed, criticised and fault is apportioned for mistakes and errors. This tends to result in a situation where people are reluctant to accept responsibility for their actions and mistakes, because they are […]
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What is frugal innovation? Frugal innovation refers to low-cost new products, methods and designs that have been created for or come out of what is known as the bottom of the pyramid or the unserved lower end of the mass-market. The bottom of the pyramid The idea of the bottom of the pyramid or unserved […]
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What is authoritarian leadership? Authoritarian leadership refers to any situation where a leader keeps hold of as much power and authority as possible. Also known as coercive or dictatorial leadership, authoritarian leaders, tend to keep all the decision-making authority to themselves and make the decisions about policies, procedures, tasks, structures, rewards and punishment themselves. The […]
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What is an entrepreneur? The word entrepreneur actually originates from the 13th century French word ‘entreprendre’ which means to undertake or to do something. By the 16th century this had become the noun entrepreneur, taken to mean someone who undertakes a business project or speculation. This is an important point to make. We are talking […]
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What is a MOOC? A MOOC is a type of online learning course. MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course. MOOCs are publicly available online learning courses made freely available or open to anyone with internet access. MOOCs can have thousands or even millions of learners from all around the world all following the same […]
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Leadership Humility Leadership humility is becoming recognised as a key leadership trait in many (but not all) situations. Whilst confidence and certainty in a leader can be an attractive trait it is possible to overdo it (overconfidence) particularly in uncertain and rapidly changing contexts. There is a fine balance between a leader displaying confidence […]
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What are organisational improvisational capabilities ? Organisational improvisational capability refers to the “ability of an organisation to spontaneously reconfigure resources to build new operational capabilities to address urgent, unpredictable and novel environmental situations”[i]. Improvisational capabilities v dynamic capabilities Improvisational capabilities are different from dynamic capabilities[ii] in that dynamic capabilities tend to be organisational capabilities […]
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