Marilyn Laiken

Associate Professor
Ph.D. (Toronto)

Department of Adult Education, Community Development
and Counselling Psychology
Workplace Learning and Change Specialization

Telephone: (416) 923 - 6641 ext. 2349
Fax: (416) 926 - 4749
email: mlaiken@oise.utoronto.ca

Address:

AECDCP
OISE/UT
252 Bloor Street West
Toronto, Ontario
M5S 1V6

Research Interests

I combine an interest in adult education and organizational change through research, teaching and field development in such areas as organizational learning and renewal, system design and transformation, work team development, participative leadership, and experiential, transformative adult education.

My primary focus in all of these areas is to help create organizational environments which are respectful, life-enhancing and supportive of continuous learning and creativity. My work is based on the belief that traditional organizations have been characterized by job monotony, under-utilization of intellectual skills and an alientation of employees from the total job or production process. My intention is to support adult educators in working within organizations to address these issues through structural redesign and culture change which helps to access the greatest potential of both the social and the technical systems.

Courses:

AEC1141H Organizations and the Adult Educator: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on Organization Development

AEC1130H A Participant-directed Seminar: Learning in Organizations

AEC1107H Developing and Leading High Performing Teams: Theory and Practice

AEC1135H Practicum in Organization Development

Publication titles representative of my research include:

Alternatives to Hierarchy in Feminist Organizational Design (1999; in Success Stories for Feminizing Canadian Institutions;in press, Fernwood Publishing)

Missionaries, Martyrs or Change Agents?: Ethical Issues in the Professionalization of African O.D. Practitioners (1999; South Asian Journal of Management, in press)

Performance Management Systems as an Enabler of Organizational Learning (With Nancie Evans, 1998, HRPAO Quarterly, in press)

Collaborative Processes for Collaborative Organizational Design (1997, Organization Development Journal, 15 (4), 35-42)

Experiential Graduate Education: An Experiment in Transformative Learning(Award of Excellence - CAUSE, 1998; Canadian Journal of UniversityContinuing Education, 23 (1), 61-80)

The Anatomy of High Performing Teams: A Leader's Handbook (U. of TorontoPress, 1998, 3rd edition)

Field activities

include work with such varied organizations as The Trillium Foundation (work team development, training and process consultation); the Department of National Defense (four-month project to build a new adult education strategy for the Staff Officers' College); SCIEX (division of MDS - medical research);(strategic planning with middle and senior management; skill development for all staff in the areas of high-performing teams and conflict management in the workplace).