Alberto Felice De Toni

The decision to incrementally improve existing processes and products or introduce breakthrough innovations depends on the context a company is facing. In situations where problems are known, it is better to incrementally improve, while in complex situations where problems are not known, a probe-sense-respond approach based on experimentation and the exploration of new solutions is preferable. Lean management adapts well to the first type of context, while agile management fits the second type of context. However, organizations must increasingly consider both approaches and become ambidextrous by introducing incremental improvements and breakthrough innovations simultaneously. This requires embracing the paradox between exploiting and exploring, adopting a new leadership mindset, and dual strategic, organizational, and behavioral models. This paper proposed a framework to implement lean and agile approaches simultaneously using the paradox theory to justify and manage this co-existence. This framework is threefold. First, managers need to differentiate between lean and agile, finding ways of keeping the two approaches separated. Second, lean and agile should be integrated so that synergies between the two approaches can be generated. Finally, managers need to achieve a dynamic equilibrium over time between lean and agile. Contributions to the theory and practice of this approach were discussed.

This paper addresses the subject of organizational paradoxes through the lens of complexity theory. The first part of the study focuses on the formalization of the key elements in order to better understand the concept of organizational tension through the presentation of related constructs, i.e., dilemmas, dialectics and paradoxes. The second part of the paper introduces the key to interpreting complexity theory, highlighting how the characteristic of emergence in complex systems makes it possible to identify two different levels: that of organizational elements and that of organizational forms, both of which are impacted by tension. That reflection leads the authors to postulate that metamorphosis is the process by which organizations, constantly crossed by tension, regenerate the organizational forms’ level on the basis of evolving tensions between organizational elements.

This chapter opens with a review of the literature on the subject of scholastic self-organization. Among the topics dealt with: weak ties, distributed control, distributed leadership, communities of practice and collaborative management. The authors then conceptualize the capabilities and focus on the articulation of the capabilities of self-organization in order to build a framework for measuring them in the school environment. The proposed framework of self-organization is based on the activation of four macro capabilities (interconnection, redundancy, sharing and restructuring) expressed in 19 meso-capabilities and incorporates the concepts emerged in the literature on scholastic self-organization. A specific questionnaire for the assessment of the capabilities is also provided. Finally, attention is placed on who the actors of self-organization are (groups of students, parents’ associations, groups of teachers and technicians, networks of teachers and technicians, networks of school principals and networks of schools) and what the styles of leadership in self-organized schools are (laissez-faire schools, hierarchical authoritarian schools, enlightened hierarchical schools and self-organized schools).

This chapter presents the results of the research carried out in 14 educational institutions, 7 of which were high schools, 5 comprehensive schools, 1 junior high school, and 1 primary and nursery school. Two associations are also described – along with their related projects – which work to reintegrate the students who have left school and which represent particularly innovative learning environments in the sense indicated by the authors. The authors show the relationship between the results of the analysis of the innovation of learning environments and the analysis of the capabilities in the 14 schools considered. It is possible to notice that there is a good correlation between the innovation of the learning environments and the organizational capabilities typical of self-organization: that is, the greater the school’s self-organization, the greater the possible innovation of its learning environment. The chapter includes an analysis of the most active players in the processes of self-organization in the 14 case studies (principals, teachers, teacher networks, students, parents) and the investigation of the role of external players (schools, territorial bodies, national or international companies and institutes) in such processes. The chapter also covers the limits to and the prospects for the research.

The introduction sets the context of the research: the rapid development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is shifting the boundaries of educational possibilities, the growing importance of online learning, the spread of homeschooling experiences and Self-Organized Learning Environments of great educational effectiveness. These phenomena give the school system new unprecedented challenges. This work aims at studying and empirically verifying how to foster the development of an innovative learning environment, how it is implemented and what its level of innovation is compared to traditional methods. The authors investigate the organizational variables of learning environments, the factors that make them innovative and to what extent. In particular, they investigate whether the introduction of a learning environment is favored as an alternative by top-down approaches or bottom-up approaches. The book is divided into three parts: Part One is about learning environments; Part Two deals with self-organization in schools; Part Three concerns field research.

This chapter deals with the literature concerning innovative learning environments. Fifteen significant contributions are described and five international case studies are analyzed as examples of best practice. The authors then identify 22 key variables of innovative learning environments, divided into four categories: actors, organization, learning and tools. The 22 variables (each with its own structure and relative measure) represent the basis for the construction of the framework proposed to measure the degree of innovation of learning environments. The framework is accompanied by a questionnaire for the measurement of a learning environment. The challenge is therefore the construction of learning environments that involve a multiplicity of actors, based on a flexible organization, designed on the key variables of learning and characterized by a high profile of technologies and equipment. The reader may also take advantage of a focus on the classes of the personalization of learning (standard, individualized and personalized), of the formalization of learning (formal, non-formal and informal), and a focus on the characteristics of teaching and learning in terms of objectives, levers, actions and processes.

Luigi Berlinguer writes at the conclusion of his “Preface” to this volume: In other words, we propose another kind of school, not the one managed so far by the apparatus in Viale Trastevere (the seat of the Italian Ministry of Education); a truly autonomous, self-organized school, the true school of autonomy, which is able to understand and value the contribution of artistic experience, creativity, work culture, their full formative nature for the cultural and social formation of the citizen, in a truly democratic country.

Self-Organised Schools: Educational Leadership and Innovative Learning Environments describes the results of the research we carried out at fourteen Italian schools that highlight how there is a positive correlation between the capabilities of school self-organization and the innovativeness of learning environments: in other words, the more self-organized schools are, the more innovative learning environments are. The results of this work are part of the strand of research of bottom-up emergency and self-organization, an extremely fruitful trend as shown by Sugata Mitra, the founder of the Self-Organized Learning Environments, according to whom, "education is a self-organized system where learning is an emerging phenomenon". This book gives new insights on self-organization studies, and most of all, to the idea that change - organizational and educational innovation - sparks from the bottom. This book is aimed specifically at school principals of all levels, scholastic reformers, educational scholars, organisation and management consultants who want to innovate learning and management of learning. These actors will benefit drawing useful examples from more than thirty different learning environments worldwide, fourteen examples of schools that self-organize, two frameworks - and two ready-to-use questionnaires - measuring the innovativeness of a learning environment, and the capability of a school to self-organize. Self-organization is the most fascinating future of innovative principals