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The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

Customer support, such as equipment maintenance and repair, is an essential element in the successful marketing of a wide range of products, from computer systems to domestic appliances. Consequently, companies need to establish and maintain appropriate channels for high‐quality customer support; either as a part of their own operations or through third parties. This paper describes an exploratory investigation of the distribution channels and customer support strategies of five manufacturing businesses, using case study methodology. The results show the key role that customer support plays in various industries and illustrate the types of decisions companies make on how to provide high‐quality support for their customers. These findings have implications for managers in all industries where customer support is important, as they provide insights on how different channels and strategies affect the quality and efficiency of customer support.

The aim of this study was to explore the experiences and outcomes for adults with complex needs over time, within and between two teams that delivered integrated care across different Councils' services. The teams' approach to integration included two key features: a “case lead” way of working and the team itself operating as a single point of access (SPA) for residents in given neighbourhoods with high deprivation.

The study was designed as evaluation research located in the realist tradition. Two teams acted as a case study to provide an in-depth understanding of how the case lead approach and SPA delivered the craft and graft of integrated working in the teams. Mixed methods of data collection included residents' ratings of their quality of life on five domains in an outcome measure over a six-month period. Residents and staff working in the teams also participated in semi-structured interviews to explore their respective experiences and receiving and delivering integrated care. The costs of care delivery incurred by residents were calculated based on their demands on public services in the year leading up to the teams' intervention and the projected costs for one year following this.

The relationship between team context, case leads' inputs and residents' outcomes was mediated through the managerial style in the integrated teams which enabled case leads to be creative and do things differently with residents. Case leads worked holistically to prevent residents being in crisis as well as giving practical help such as sorting debts and finances and supporting access to volunteering or further education. Residents rated their quality of life as significantly improved over a six-month period and significant savings in costs as result of the teams' support were projected.

The study used a multi-evaluation realistic evaluation methodology to explore the relationship between team context, case leads' inputs and residents' outcomes in terms that integrated services across different District and County Council Departments.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an “extended conceptualization of the business case” including both organizational characteristics and institutional conditions to analyse employer involvement in extra statutory childcare and leave arrangements. Special attention is given to Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries.

The (multi‐level) multinomial regression analyses included company‐level data on human‐resource practices of 2,865 firms nested in 19 countries, representing all European welfare state regimes.

The extended business case appeared fruitful in order to explain variations in employer involvement. Particularly, state support was found to be negatively related to employer involvement. In the liberal regime, employer involvement was high, but variations across organizations were significant. In CEE‐countries, employer involvement was lowest, and did not vary by organizational business‐case factors.

The paper used data from a cross‐sectional survey. To capture the long‐term trends, dynamics and nuances in employer involvement within and across various institutional contexts, a longitudinal in depth study is needed.

While state support in many CEE countries is declining, the analyses showed that employers will not automatically step in by providing additional work‐family arrangements. Social partners could use institutional pressure to stimulate a balance between state support and employer involvement.

The extended business‐case perspective contributes to the theory on the institutional embeddedness of decision making of employers. Moreover, it adds to the knowledge on employer involvement in institutional contexts which have hardly been studied before.

This paper aims to present a new methodology to optimize the support generation within the fused deposition modeling process.

Different methods of support generation exist, but they are limited with regards to complex parts. This paper proposes a method dedicated to support generation, integrated into CAD software. The objective is to minimize the volume of support and its impact on a part’s surface finish. Two case studies illustrate the methodology. The support generation is based on an octree’s discretization of the part.

The method represents a first solid step in the support optimization for a reasonable calculation time. It has the advantage of being virtually automatic. The only tasks to be performed by the designer are to place the part to be studied with respect to the CAD reference and to give the ratio between the desired support volume and the maximum volume of support.

In the case studies, a low gain in manufacturing time was observed. This is explained by the honeycomb structure of the support generated by a common slicing software, whereas the proposed method uses a “full” structure. It would be interesting to study the feasibility of an optimized support, with a honeycomb structure but with a preservation of the surface which is in contact with the part.

This solution best fits the needs of the designer and manufacturer already taking advantage of existing solutions. It is adaptable to any part if the withdrawal of support is taken into account. It also allows the designer to validate the generation of support throughout the CAD without breaking the digital chain.

This study seeks to test the researchers' theory that a leadership development intervention called “leader assimilation” for newly appointed leaders and their subordinates will facilitate feedback‐seeking and a leader‐team dialogue which will accelerate leader/team learning, leader adaptation, and relationship building between the new leaders and their teams.

Robert Yin's positivistic multiple case study research method was used. Four primary modes of data collection were used in each of the three cases: observation during the five steps of the intervention, documentation review after the intervention, a pre‐ and post‐survey, and individual interviews with the leader and the leader's direct reports approximately seven days after the last phase of the intervention.

The researchers found support for their theory from a leader and team perspective. The three leaders in the study experienced accelerated learning, adaptation, and they built relationships with their teams. The leaders' teams experienced new learning and they built relationships with their new leaders.

The generalizability of findings is limited by the number of cases studied and by industry, leader, and team variation across cases.

The study provides supporting evidence for the importance and effectiveness of leader assimilations in helping new leaders learn, adapt quickly, and build relationships with their teams early in their transition.

The study is one of the first to report on the outcomes of an early leadership development intervention to help new leaders transition from one leadership role to another.

Agile methodologies are widely used to manage the technical complexity of software development, and project governance can provide feasible means of organizational support for complex project success. The purpose of this paper is to: analyze the project governance practices of public sector organizations, illustrate what kind of impact these practices have on agile software projects and describe the tensions of agile project governance.

The research is based on qualitative research strategy and applies elaborative logic with analyses of three case projects in the Finnish public sector.

The findings of the research describe how project governance practices can be categorized into six dimensions: business case, contracting, controlling, steering, decision-making and capability building. The results illustrate how these practices either support or detract the performance of agile projects. The results also show that there are two interfaces to agile project that create most tensions to governance – the public sector and technology.

The study contributes to both project management and information and communication technology theories by combining technical aspects of agile methodologies with micro-level project governance practices. The study also adds original value to academics by introducing the new concept of “agile project governance.” The results of this study will allow public sector project organizations to design appropriate governance mechanisms for agile projects, and to identify the challenges and tensions that need to be considered and managed in the process.

This paper illuminates the distinction between individual and organizational actors in business-to-business markets as well as the coexistence of formal and informal mechanisms of coordination in multinational corporations. The main questions addressed include the following. (1) What factors influence the occurrence of personal contacts of foreign subsidiary managers in industrial multinational corporations? (2) How such personal contacts enable coordination in industrial markets and within multinational firms? The theoretical context of the paper is based on: (1) the interaction approach to industrial markets, (2) the network approach to industrial markets, and (3) the process approach to multinational management. The unit of analysis is the foreign subsidiary manager as the focal actor of a contact network. The paper is empirically focused on Portuguese sales subsidiaries of Finnish multinational corporations, which are managed by either a parent country national (Finnish), a host country national (Portuguese) or a third country national. The paper suggests eight scenarios of individual dependence and uncertainty, which are determined by individual, organizational, and/or market factors. Such scenarios are, in turn, thought to require personal contacts with specific functions. The paper suggests eight interpersonal roles of foreign subsidiary managers, by which the functions of their personal contacts enable inter-firm coordination in industrial markets. In addition, the paper suggests eight propositions on how the functions of their personal contacts enable centralization, formalization, socialization and horizontal communication in multinational corporations.

Blockchain possesses the potential to disrupt and reshape a plethora of industries in the next decade. However, blockchain adoption rates in technology developed countries, such as Ireland, are relatively low. Motivated by blockchain’s potential to transform sociotechnical systems, the lack of systematic inquiry pertaining to blockchain studies from an information system perspective, the authors propose the following research question: “How do organizational factors influence blockchain adoption in organizations based in a developed country?” Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to elucidate the impact of organizational factors on the adoption of blockchain and the adoption of blockchain in companies based in Ireland.

A comprehensive literature review was conducted, and the methods of qualitative content analysis were used to identify the most important technology–organization–environment (TOE) blockchain adoption factors. Organizational factors are often viewed as the most significant determinants of IT innovation adoption in organizations. Consequently, using a multiple-case study of 20 companies based in Ireland, the authors investigate how the top three organizational factors identified from the blockchain literature affected these companies decision to adopt or not adopt blockchain.

The literature review on blockchain adoption identified specific technological, organizational and environmental factors. Furthermore, the case study findings identified three patterns: top management support and organizational readiness are enablers for blockchain adoption, and large companies are more likely to adopt blockchain than small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The authors explain these patterns by examining the nature of blockchain and the characteristics of Ireland as a developed country. Practical and scientific contributions are also presented.

This study makes several important scientific contributions. First, the findings revealed that top management support and organizational readiness are significant enablers of blockchain adoption. Ireland is recognized as a technology developed country; however, the findings in relation to top management support contradict existing IT adoption literature pertaining to developed countries. Second, previous IT innovation adoption literature suggests that organizations size has a positive influence on a company’s IT innovation adoption process. This study demonstrates that large organizations are more likely to not only adopt blockchain but are also more likely to conduct increased levels of blockchain research and development activities. Finally, and most significantly, the authors identified several patterns, which relate specifically to Ireland as a developed country that influenced the findings. These findings could hold particular relevance to governments and organizations of other developed countries in terms of accelerating blockchain adoption.

The findings about the low level of blockchain awareness and the lack of information pertaining to viable business use cases indicate that the Irish government could play a more significant role in promoting the benefits of blockchain technologies. Further, the findings could also encourage IT providers to formulate enhanced strategies aimed at disseminating information pertaining to blockchain technologies. Second, the positive influence of top management support and organizational readiness, particularly about core competencies, on blockchain adoption suggests that equipping managers with the requisite knowledge and skills will be crucial in adopting these IT innovations. Finally, organizations who adopted blockchain used cloud-based blockchain platforms and tools to overcome the constraints of their initial low levels of organizational readiness.

This is one of the first studies to identify specific TOE blockchain adoption factors. Further, the authors examine how the three most identified organizational adoption factors impact organizations decisions to adopt blockchain. Finally, the authors discuss how the resulting three patterns identified by examining the nature of blockchain and the characteristics of Ireland as a technology developed country.