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The purpose of this paper is to provide theoretical insights into an imminent problem of knowledge management. Through the reflection on the impact of subjectivity in knowledge production, the object‐subject divide is to be analyzed.

The starting point is that knowledge management is far from being management of objective truth. The paper shows how the transformation of information and signals into knowledge is affected by mind sets and how these mind sets may differ according to individual and cultural parameters. This means that any kind of diversity finds its expression in cognitive diversity and finally also in knowledge diversity. This paper is based on a review of the literature in the field of behavioral economics and where it overlaps with economics and psychology.

The probability of misunderstanding increases the overlap of individual mindsets. Even if there are sophisticated technologies which support the management of knowledge, the knowledge product by itself can neither be managed nor effectively be controlled.

The theoretical discussion gives room for empirical testing, i.e. in experiments.

The value of knowledge management depends on the accuracy of data gathering, but the probability of misunderstanding increases the overlap of individual mindsets.

The paper looks critically at a management tool that tries to manage the most important resource in the company and which is too often considered as a merely technological challenge.

The programme of market‐oriented reforms to the UK’s welfare state commenced during the 1980s with the implementation of the competitive tendering of certain defined activities in health and local authorities. This paper argues that mainstream economic analysis offers only a very partial analysis of this policy; merely reducing investigation to a comparison of costs across alternative governance arrangements. It is contended that the old institutionalist account of institutional change provides a richer anaytical vein. The paper concisely applies this in a survey of 21 authorities. Results indicate that the policy engendered change in the values correlating behaviour by partially supressing established welfarist values. There was also some deterioration in trust between parties with the formalisation of relationships, although this varied between health and local authorities. The new contracting environment and decline in staff morale may have contributed to increased rigidities.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is likely to have a significant impact on work. It will enhance, but also displace, some professions. This paper aims to look retrospectively at the impact that previous revolutionary computing technologies have had and the institutional values that have shaped the way workers were affected.

This historical investigation relies on academic, government and trade publications of earlier periods in the development of computer technology. The analysis relies on the literature on institutional economics to understand societal outcomes. Within this framework, this paper explores both the ceremonial values associated with tradition and the instrumental values associated with the pursuit of knowledge.

The AI revolution, like previous technological evolutions, will go through stages. Initial implementations will suffer from failures that will, however, generate employment; but, as the technology improves, the AI revolution is likely to enhance productivity but displace workers. Up to this point, the US Government has not been able to respond adequately to the challenge. This paper attributes this to the ceremonial values that public officials and society entertain about personal responsibility and small government.

Given the differences in values, this study recommends fending off negative effects though education but also experimenting with other solutions at the local level.

Through the lens of history, this study provides a glimpse of what may happen. It also provides a framework that helps understand the outcomes of earlier technological revolutions.

Prior institutional duality research asserts that ceremonial implementation of organisational practice protects multinational corporations’ subsidiaries. However, the temporal dynamics of the safeguarding function has been under researched. Public sector organisations have also been ignored. This research aims to explore how the safeguarding function is created, maintained and disrupted using the overseas offices (OOs) of a bilateral development agency (BDA) as a case.

A multi-case study, underpinned by neo-institutionalism, was conducted. Data obtained from in-depth remote interviews with 39 informants from the BDA OOs were analysed using the “asking small and large questions” technique, four analytical techniques, cross-case synthesis and theoretical propositions.

A three-phase process was identified. The first phase is the appearance of discrepancies due to institutional duality. The second is the emergence of ceremonial implementation as a solution. In the third phase, “the creation, maintenance and disruption of a safeguarding function” begins. When ceremonial implementation successfully protects the OOs, the safeguarding function is created. The OOs are likely to repeat ceremonial implementation, thus sustaining the function. Meanwhile, when conditions such as management staff change, ceremonial implementation may not take place, and the safeguarding function disappears.

The BDA OOs may not face strong host country regulative pressures because they are donors to aid-recipient countries. Hence, the findings may not directly apply to other public sector organisations.

Development cooperation practitioners should understand that ceremonial implementation is not exclusively harmful.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first institutional duality research that explores the temporal dynamics of safeguarding functions targeting public sector organisations.

To design, develop and construct specific garment designs for use in Croatia as academic gowns using advanced engineering principles.

The synergism of historians, designers, engineers, clothing technologists and textile finishers using specialised equipment has been employed in this project.

Using interdisciplinarity can yield good results.

The research targets specific products, but its methodology may be used for any other products/end users also.

Gowns have been designed, made and used in academic ceremonies successfully.

Design/technology approach to new product development.

This study aims to analyse the role of circuits of power in institutionalising competitive tendering in public sector organisations and effects on accountability among public decision makers.

The study used intensive field research data based on interviews, meeting observations and document analysis in a city, referred to as Sunset City, in Finland from 2008 to 2013.

The relationship between institutionalisation of competitive tendering and accountability for total costs of public services depends on how public officials use management accounting and control systems to limit procurement risks and how political decision makers hold public officials to account. This study uses the concept of organisational outflanking within the circuits of power to analyse and explain the finding of ceremonial accountability.

Empirical findings cannot be generalised to other situations, but the theoretical framework used in this study can be applied elsewhere.

It is advisable to avoid institutionalising macro-institutional market-based mechanisms, such as open competitive tendering in public health care organisations and municipalities in the EU, the consequences of which in terms of total costs, quality of services and accountability among organisational actors at local levels cannot be foreseen, minimised or controlled.

This study uses the framework of circuits of power to extend the Burns and Scapens institutional framework to accountability for using public funds in outsourcing services during the ongoing financial crisis.

The purpose of this study is to provide the conditions for governance effectiveness and explain why the same rules often result in not the same norms.

The author proposes a “corporate governance culture” concept explaining the differences within corporate governance institutions and making it possible to measure their effectiveness. Based on a literature review that included 186 research studies published in the corporate governance field, the author found that most (160) concern structural numerical variables. Only 26 refer to behavioural and cultural issues, and they support the idea of an interdisciplinary approach to governance problems.

A significant contribution of this paper is that it proposes an integrative framework that operationalises psychological, sociological and philosophical issues that influence corporate governance mechanisms. The proposed concept can reanimate the debate about the need for tight governance regulations or leaving room for a loose governance regime.

The idea of “corporate governance culture” explains the divergences identified in studies on corporate governance mechanisms, pointing out behavioural and cultural issues as crucial aspects of governance bodies.

Aims to describe and to explicate the economic thought of two creative and profound scholars who are in the tradition of institutionalism: Clarence Edwin Ayres and John Kenneth Galbraith. Analyses the major scholarly works of each of these insightful interpreters of the contemporary social and political economy and compares and contrasts them in such a manner as to reveal the similarities and differences between their respective systems of economic thought. Divides into five parts: the introduction, a section on the theories of Ayres and one on the theories of Galbraith, a comparison of the respective works of Ayres and Galbraith in which the similarities and differences are specified, and the conclusion.

This paper builds a system‐dynamics model of the Mexican economy and tests several propositions regarding policy and income inequality. It concludes, among other things, that one of the most significant developments over the past twenty years has been the declining wage paid to those in the manufacturing export sector. As a consequence, policies aimed at increasing developing states participation in the internationalization of production have been less helpful than supposed.

This paper is an initial attempt to discuss the American institutionalist movement as it changed and developed after 1945. Institutionalism in the inter-war period was a relatively coherent movement held together by a set of general methodological, theoretical, and ideological commitments (Rutherford, 2011). Although institutionalism always had its critics, it came under increased attack in the 1940s, and faced challenges from Keynesian economics, a revived neoclassicism, econometrics, and from new methodological approaches derived from various versions of positivism. The institutionalist response to these criticisms, and particularly the criticism that institutionalism “lacked theory,” is to be found in a variety of attempts to redefine institutionalism in new theoretical or methodological terms. Perhaps the most important of these is to be found in Clarence Ayres’ The Theory of Economic Progress (1944), although there were many others. These developments were accompanied by a significant amount of debate, disagreement, and uncertainty over future directions. Some of this is reflected in the early history of The Association for Evolutionary Economics.