By Kristian Serge Skov-Larsen
ksl@adm.au.dk
The day this newspaper is published is exactly one month before 17 June – the date the university board will make a decision about the new structure of Aarhus University. And the work involved in the decision-making process is now approaching the finishing straight.
So the university’s main academic areas, departments and individual members of staff are now wondering how the big decisions that lie ahead are going to affect their daily lives. And many of them are doing all they can to influence the final plan in one way or another.
This is only to be expected, says one ASB researcher.
“People will always fight to defend their positions in any organisation. What happens in processes of change like this one is that people fight for their jobs – after all, they risk being transferred to another department or even being fired. And we work for an organisation that’s characterised by high levels of expertise, full of highly intelligent people with plenty of resources who are used to thinking strategically. So obviously there’ll be even more problems here. People like us don’t just sit around waiting for things to happen,” says Helle Kryger Aggerholm. She is an assistant professor at the Department of Language and Business Communication at the Aarhus School of Business (ASB); and one of her research areas is how organisations communicate with their staff when people have to be fired or when restructuring is necessary.
We need a bit of guidance
So far she thinks that the management have handled the task of communication in connection with the development process very well, playing their cards with an open hand. And the management should not allow the public debate (about the independent status of the School of Business and the School of Education, for instance) to influence their determination.
“The process continues until 17 June, and the best thing the management can do is ensure the quality and quantity of their communication. In other words, as members of staff we need access to all the documents involved in the process – but we also need a bit of guidance, something which is known as ‘sense-giving’ in the literature. We need to hear what the management are thinking: how do they interpret the documents in the process, and what do they think we should be noticing in particular,” she says. “The alternative to this course of action would be to deal with the increasing debate by finishing off the process in a hurry. And that would be seriously undemocratic,” says Helle Kryger Aggerholm.
Pollution from traffic increases risk of lung cancer
A new study concludes that air pollution caused by traffic increases the risk of contracting lung cancer.
10 per cent of the people taking part in the study who lived in the areas of highest air pollution had a 45 per cent higher risk of contracting lung cancer than the other half involved in the study – people living in the areas of lowest air pollution. The National Environmental Research Institute (NERI) at Aarhus University produced the model on which the study was based, and was also responsible for doing the sums. The study involved researchers from the Danish Cancer Society, the University of Copenhagen, Bispebjerg Hospital and (representing Aarhus University) NERI and the School of Public Health.
Seminar about Africa and sport
While we wait for the World Cup in football to start, the Department of Sport Science is holding a one-day seminar on the theme of “Africa and Global Sport”.
The seminar will be held on 20 May at 10 am-4.30 pm, and it has been divided into two sessions. The theme of the first session is “African Sport and Colonialism and Postcolonialism”, while the session after lunch is entitled “Africa and Contemporary Issues in Global Sport”. All are welcome, and the seminar is free of charge.
