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Several studies have recently documented projects of organizational transformation and modernization which, commonly clustered under the umbrella term “New Ways of Working” (NWoW), simultaneously entail material, technological, cultural and managerial dimensions. Academic contributions, however, have paid little attention to the mechanisms allowing such projects to progressively become legitimized in organizational discourses and practices. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the distinctive features of the legitimation process underlying the implementation of NWoW projects.

This paper relies on a longitudinal, three-year analysis of a large insurance company. Data were collected through qualitative methods including semi-structured interviews (48), periods of observation (3 months) and document analysis (78).

The paper develops a grounded and integrative framework of legitimation processes underlying “NWoW” change projects. The framework emphasizes four decisive operations of translation in “NWoW” design and implementation: translating material constraints into strategic opportunities; translating strategic opportunities into a quantitative business plan supported by the top management; translating compelling discourses around “NWoW” into an organizational machinery; and translating a transformation project into discourses of unequivocal success, conveyed by legitimate spokespeople within and beyond the organization.

Besides contributing to the understanding of a managerial fashion, which has received little academic attention so far, the paper also offers an original integrative framework to account for legitimation processes that combines two theoretical approaches – the sociology of translation and research on institutionalist work.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the historical factors that influenced the design and construction of modern National Hockey League and National Basketball Association arenas between 1990 and 2018. Additionally, this paper seeks to index the characteristics of those modern arenas while forwarding reasonable, informed propositions for future multipurpose arena design.

The historical methodology was applied to the design and construction of modern multipurpose arenas between 1990 and 2018. Modernization theory was utilized as an organizing construct to understand the intentional managerial actions to capitalize on consumer expectations by responding to economic and technological changes.

Sport managers responded to decreased median family incomes during the period of the study by building arenas with increasingly commodified spaces and amenities targeting wealthy and corporate customers. New technologies were adopted within facilities to meet the needs and expectations of in-venue and remote consumers.

In addition to demonstrating the practical utility of modernization theory and applied history for sport management scholars and practitioners, particularly in the Western context, the present study provides a series of propositions for future sport managers to consider to maintain or establish institutional advantage in the arena marketplace.

The paper contributes to the sport management literature by demonstrating the utility of modernization theory and applied history for sport management. In examining the design history of modern multipurpose arenas, the paper identifies the characteristics of modern multipurpose arenas while demonstrating the importance of understanding context and intentionality in managerial decision making.

This issue of Library Hi Tech contains a series of articles about the TULIP materials science journal access project, an unprecedented cooperative undertaking involving Elsevier Science Publishing and a number of major universities in the United States.

This paper aims to investigate business network activity patterns and how they change when actors experience tensions.

Four tensions, developed from previous literature, are considered in relation to how they influence activity patterns. A longitudinal case study focusing on the modernization of an international airport illustrates how tensions experienced by actors influence changes in activity patterns.

Results highlight that when tensions in relation to network position are experienced activity patterns are more likely to break and form new patterns. When multiple tensions are experienced within the same period, an old activity pattern is more likely to be broken and the new activity pattern develop.

Contributions in relation to interdependencies between activities heighten the impact of changes leading to the breaking of existing patterns, particularly the importance of coordination activities. These findings are context specific because activity patterns vary according to the industry.

Practical implications indicate that understanding network interdependences within the change process is important, particularly for co-ordination activities. The study informs practitioners about possible outcomes while tensions are experienced. This study found that when actors are experiencing multiple tensions, breaking of activity patterns is more likely to occur while experience less tensions extending existing activity patterns becoming more likely.

Contributions are made in relation to gaps in investigating the business network activity layer and their changes in relation to tensions.

This paper uses the ideas and concepts of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and aims to to examine how accounting works in the context of international development.

A case study approach within El Salvador is used. Data sources include archival documents, 35 semi‐structured interviews with field participants, and participant observations. The focus is on the activities of the Inter‐American Development Bank (IDB) and the United Nations Development Agency (UNDP) in the country of El Salvador, showing how complex assemblages of people, technologies such as accounting, and discourses such as accountability come to claim or “territorialize” particular physical and discursive spaces.

The analysis highlights how accounting and its associated actors further the development aspirations of loan beneficiaries; yet at the same time contribute to the “over‐organization” of these actors' social space.

The paper illustrates that the concepts of Deleuze and Guattari – assemblage, desire, Bodies without Organs, and lines of flight to name a few – open up for consideration and analysis a series of field‐specific processes that have previously been largely un‐explored within the accounting literature.

The purpose is to explore the role of international financial institutions (IFIs) during public financial management reform in a transitional economy. In particular, the study focuses on interaction between external enablers and local actors.

The paper is based on a qualitative study of public financial management reform in Ukraine during 1991–2014. This period is divided into stages corresponding with two projects financed by the World Bank: “Treasury System” and “Public Finance Modernization.”

First, IFIs supported a Ukrainian economy weakened by financial crisis and insisted on a comprehensive reform of public financial management to facilitate recovery. By strategically addressing local challenges, eliminating local uncertainties and maintaining stable interactions, IFIs gained support from the central government. Local actors continued the reform by negotiating with other actors and getting quorum support. In the second stage, IFIs could not implement planned changes. Even though the change was well-perceived at the beginning, developed tensions between local actors were overlooked by IFIs, which resulted in loss of commitment of the State Treasury representatives. The continuous political instability in Ukraine constrained interaction between IFIs and the Ministry of Finance and reduced political will for conducting reforms.

The study contributes to the debate on the adequacy of externally driven public management reforms in developing countries by exploring actions and interactions of global and local actors during the change in public sector practices.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that the application of social policy in the North East of England is often characterised by tension and conflict. The agencies and professionals charged with implementation of Westminster driven policies constantly seek to deploy their knowledge of local conditions in order to make them both practical and palatable.

This paper examines the region via established literature from history, geography, sociology and social policy. The paper gives illustrations via empirical work which has evaluated initiatives to improve the health of long term health-related benefit recipients and to sustain individuals in employment in the region.

Central to the paper’s argument is the notion of “biographies of place”. The core of this idea is that places have biographies in the same way as individuals and possess specific identities. These biographies have been shaped by the intersections between environment, history, culture and economic and social policy. The paper identifies the region’s economic development, subsequent decline and the alliance of labour politics and industrial employers around a common consensus that sought economic prosperity and social progress via a vision of “modernisation” as a key component of this biography.

The paper argues that an appreciation of these spatial biographies can result in innovative and more effective social policy interventions with the potential to address issues that affect entire localities.

Since 2009, e-government has been high on governmental agenda in Bangladesh. Seen as a vehicle for improving governance and service delivery, it is also presented as a key to fighting poverty and achieving the millennium development goals. Thus, the goals of e-government remain broad and ambitious. Can a developing country such as Bangladesh realize its e-government vision? The purpose of this paper is to explore this and other related questions seeking to draw lessons that the Bangladesh experience may offer.

The paper draws primarily on secondary information, complemented by primary data gathered from various sources. In addition to an extensive review of secondary sources, necessary information was derived from websites of relevant government departments/agencies and through interviews and conversations with selected government officials having intimate knowledge on e-government projects at the field and local levels.

The paper demonstrates the ways in which various e-initiatives have transformed traditional administrative systems and practices, notwithstanding the nation’s limited overall e-development. It also shows how e-innovations have helped tackle some complex challenges, thereby adding to convenience and benefits to service users. A major conclusion of the paper is that although e-government is yet to make a breakthrough in governance and service delivery, it has set the wheels of change in motion.

E-government must be seen as a long term project, it must attract high-level political support and it requires fruitful collaboration between the public, private and non-governmental actors.

This paper adds to the limited knowledge in the field. Lessons learned from the Bangladesh experience have much relevance to other developing countries with similar socioeconomic circumstances. The policymakers and practitioners are expected to benefit from the insights of the paper.

This book is about risk management in the public sector, in general, and particularly risk management in public sector organisations. Risk management in the public sector is a much broader topic than risk management in public sector organisations because it touches on many issues of a public nature that are not the direct or sole responsibility of any specific public organisation. Sometimes a public organisation must deal directly with such risks, but often laws and regulations can adequately address broader public risk issues, governments can participate indirectly and behind the scenes, or participation can be in collaboration with private and non-profit organisations. In some cases, government organisations play no role at all.

This chapter focusses on an important contextual issue; the environment in which risk management is practised in the public sector and in which public risks arise. In much of this book, the unique or unusual attributes of the public sector are shown to profoundly affect risk and the forms and functions of risk management. This chapter introduces some of these attributes and highlights their likely impact on risk management. The public environment is one with movable boundaries, and it essentially encompasses any action or object that a society considers public. Over time, attitudes can change about publicness, but a key point is that while government entities occupy part of the public environment, they are not its only inhabitants.