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To advance the learning of professional practices in teacher education and medical education, this conceptual paper aims to introduce the idea of representational scaffolding for digital simulations in higher education.

This study outlines the ideas of core practices in two important fields of higher education, namely, teacher and medical education. To facilitate future professionals’ learning of relevant practices, using digital simulations for the approximation of practice offers multiple options for selecting and adjusting representations of practice situations. Adjusting the demands of the learning task in simulations by selecting and modifying representations of practice to match relevant learner characteristics can be characterized as representational scaffolding. Building on research on problem-solving and scientific reasoning, this article identifies leverage points for employing representational scaffolding.

The four suggested sets of representational scaffolds that target relevant features of practice situations in simulations are: informational complexity, typicality, required agency and situation dynamics. Representational scaffolds might be implemented in a strategy for approximating practice that involves the media design, sequencing and adaptation of representational scaffolding.

The outlined conceptualization of representational scaffolding can systematize the design and adaptation of digital simulations in higher education and might contribute to the advancement of future professionals’ learning to further engage in professional practices. This conceptual paper offers a necessary foundation and terminology for approaching related future research.

Scepticism about organizations has become an integral part of the field organizational theory. This article aspires to develop through historical analysis a taxonomy of organizational scepticism. Though scepticism of all types have generic traits, there are three distinct types of scepticism: premodern, modern and postmodern scepticism. Premodern scepticism attacks the modern organizational by stressing concepts grounded in nature and tradition. Modern sceptics attack the optimism of managerialism about organizations. Postmodern sceptics stress that technological developments, economic self interest, and irrationality will be the eventual undoing of modern organization. Organizational scepticism is now so pervasive that it should be treated as an integral part of the field.

The field, currently termed “accounting”, constitutes a confused mix of accounting theories, accounting techniques, and accounting practices. This confusion is clearly reflected in accounting curriculum. Parallel to this confusion is a confusion at the sociological level, where the roles of academicians and those of practitioners are confusingly interchanged. These confusions represent conceptual and practical barriers to the ongoing efforts to develop the discipline.

Argues that the way work organization in lean production environments is assessed depends heavily on the choice of the variables that are adopted to ascertain the degree of innovation in the workplace. Many studies evaluate the change in work organization observing only those elements which are functional for the just‐in‐time production principles while excluding crucial dimensions that characterize the working situation from the worker’s perspective. Moreover, besides the choice of the variables employed to ascertain the degree of innovation in work organization, the method adopted for measuring these variables would seem to be critical if one wishes to bring to light what is hidden behind the popular terms like team, empowerment, problem‐solving groups, quality circles, etc. Suggests that only a research approach which is able to give “thick descriptions” of workplaces can reveal the “reality of working” within lean production systems.

This article highlights the ambiguities and debates surrounding the meaning, application, purpose and concomitants of the concept of empowerment presented in the service management literature and argues that these flow from the attempt to reconcile the need for control to secure employee compliance with the need to cede a degree of autonomy to secure co‐operation and initiative. It shows how empowerment is conceived primarily in terms of “choice” ‐ increase discretion over how work if performed ‐ rather than “voice” ‐ greater involvement in organizational decision‐making ‐ and is increasingly regarded as a particular and contingent management strategy in which control via regulation and supervision is replaced by more indirect controls. A study of five‐star hotels in Amsterdam is reported which shows that, despite managerial rhetoric, there was little “empowerment” in practice and what there was amounted to increased employee responsibility rather than greater choice over how work was done or more voice in organizational decisions and that supporting forms of recruitment, training and remuneration were mostly absent.

This chapter highlights the personal side of research methods. We begin with an overview of Hans-Georg Gadamer's insights into the general problem of method in the social sciences and hermeneutics. This is followed by an overview of Michael Polanyi's explanation of the practice of scientific investigation. The second half of the chapter considers implications of the personal side of methods for how we conduct management research. This section discusses critical realism as a philosophy of science consistent with the assumptions of our field, the reasons for methodological pluralism and possible responses, and management research as a social practice.