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Intra‐organizational coordination is studied almost exclusively using a case approach, with the implementation of one specific coordinating method and evaluation of the effects of that method. By contrast, this study explores the daily use of five coordinating strategies in 30 Swedish schools. Furthermore, the relationships between coordinating strategies and co‐ordination problems in the schools and burnout among teachers are investigated. The most important coordinating strategy was “professional consideration”, followed by “striving for goals”. “Mutual adjustment” was perceived as important to a few, and hardly any teachers judged “following routines” and “following the boss” as important. The results showed that “striving for goals” was related to less frequent coordination problems and lower levels of burnout than was “professional consideration”.

The purpose of this paper is to explore urban mobilisation patterns in two post-Soviet cities: Vilnius and Moscow. Both cities were subject to similar housing and urban policy during Soviet times, and they have implemented urban development using neoliberal market principles, provoking grassroots opposition from citizens to privatisation and marketisation of their housing environment and local public space. However, the differing conditions of democratic Lithuanian and authoritarian Russian public governance offer different opportunities and set different constraints for neighbourhood mobilisation. The purpose is to contrast local community mobilisations under the two regimes and highlight the differences between and similarities in the activists’ repertoires of actions in two distinct political and economic urban settings.

The paper employs qualitative methodology using data from semi-structured interviews conducted with community activists and state officials, presented using a comparative case study design.

Although, citizens’ mobilisations in the two cities are reactions to the neoliberalisation of housing and local public space, they take different forms. In Vilnius they are institutionalised and receive formal support from national and local authorities. Moreover, support from the EU encourages organisational development and provides material and cognitive resources for grassroots urban mobilisations. In contrast, residents’ mobilisations in Moscow are informal and face fierce opposition from local authorities. However, even in an authoritarian setting, grassroots mobilisations evolve using creative strategies to circumvent institutional constraints.

Little attention has been paid to grassroots urban mobilisations in post-Soviet cities. There is also a lack of comparative attempts to show variation in post-Soviet urban activism related to housing and local public space.

This article aims to explore whether and how economic, political and demographic municipal conditions shape citizens' attitudes regarding decentralised social policies.

The authors analysed the 2018 wave of the Dutch Local Election Studies, which includes a novel survey item asking respondents whether they prefer local social policies to be primarily: (1) protection-based, (2) cohesion-building or (3) activation-based. The authors appended context indicators to that survey and performed multilevel logistic regression analyses (1,913 respondents nested in 336 municipalities).

At the individual level, these preferences are affected by gender, age, income, education and political inclination, as expected. However, preferences towards local social policies are not shaped by local economic, demographic or political conditions. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for future research.

By using unique data, including a newly developed survey item, this study is the first to explore whether and how municipal conditions shape preferences regarding local welfare. Understanding those preferences is increasingly important as many Western European countries have decentralised swathes of social policies from the national to the local level in recent decades.

Hydrogen fuel cells could play an important role in meeting the challenges of the Two Degrees Scenario. The purpose of this paper is to review the development of this technology in South Africa with the aim of understanding how the country can transform its existing socio-technical systems and act to support a hydrogen-based technological innovation system (TIS).

A mixed methods approach has been followed in this study. Secondary data analysis was used initially to build a profile of South Africa’s present energy system, followed by a stakeholder survey of the emerging hydrogen economy. Respondents were selected based on a convenience/snowball sampling approach and were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire, covering opportunities for South Africa in the global hydrogen economy; sources of competitive advantage; the present phase of development; the maturity of each function and the main weaknesses within the TIS; and finally the appropriate policy instrument to remedy the weakness and/or maximise opportunities for local companies.

The research has shown that the hydrogen economy is still at a pre-competitive level and requires ongoing government support to ensure an energy transition is realised. In particular, it is important that niche experimentation, a proven strategy in respect of successful sustainability transitions, is further pursued. Importantly, the net cost of hydrogen-based transportation, which is still several times larger than the cost of transport based on the internal combustion engine (ICE), must be reduced, especially in the key applications of public transport and underground vehicles. Furthermore, the development of digital technologies to manage supply fluctuations in energy grids must be accelerated.

The South Africa economy will be severely affected by the replacement of the ICEs with battery electric vehicles due to the country’s reliance on ICEs for platinum demand. Fuel cells represent a new market for platinum but the hydrogen TIS is still at a vulnerable point in its development; without policy support, it will not contribute to a successful socio-technical transformation, nor provide an alternative outlet for platinum.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the added value of philosophy in understanding and overcoming resistance to quality control.

The paper describes a case in which the philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd was applied to give advice on a standardisation project within a company. The authors evaluate the project and resistance to it after six years, using the same philosophical approach.

Economic goals of quality control were achieved without any substantial employee resistance by addressing non-economic aspects. Apparently, social needs are not necessarily detrimental to economic goals. On the contrary, it is difficult to achieve economic goals if the social aspects are not being addressed.

Though based on one case study only, the findings suggest that a multi-aspect approach to quality management is very promising.

The approach is not just a TQM tool but rather a way of addressing various aspects in a systematic and balanced way. Familiarising managers with this approach should help them to balance financial and other aspects without making those other aspects instrumental to achieving financial targets.

The paper presents a new multi-aspect approach to quality management, based on philosophy in business research. It seems that the value of this approach reaches beyond the area of quality management and can be important to organisation studies in general.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the impact of political risk on the German solar energy industry. The authors analyze the period from 2006 to mid-2011, when the technological development of this sector was remarkable while the whole industry is depending on political support and subsidies.

The authors apply an EGARCH model assessing potential changes in conditional volatility response of solar industry stock returns following political risk events.

The results document major changes in political support of the solar industry drive capital market risk. Whereby favorable political news significantly decrease volatility response and unfavorable political news do not affect volatility response. Moreover, the authors find that the volatility response varies with the exposure to political risk. Companies with higher exposure to political risk show more significant volatility response.

Political risk affects the cost of capital of companies in this sector. Thus, managers are able to time equity measures in a way that they can determine periods when the investor's required return is low due to a reduced risk premium. The authors suggest risk reducing public policy facilitates investments in those industries and thus fosters the development and diffusion of immature technologies.

The paper helps policy makers, managers, and investors to assess the impact of political risk on the overall risk of the German solar energy sector and in a broader view of immature or high-tech industries that depend crucially on governmental support.

It is a common observation that new technology introduced into Third World countries frequently fails to yield the expected results. Despite the availability of adequate finance, willing donor and recipient organisations and a congenial political climate, the imported equipment is often under‐utilised, used less productively and, at the end of its useful life, the users may look forward to a fresh induction, indicating thereby that the technology provided has not been absorbed.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze the role of requirement managers in new product development projects.

This paper is based on a case study of an industrial platform project. Sixty-eight persons were interviewed and project prerequisites and requirement specifications documents were studied. The roles of specific individuals and their formal role as requirement managers are reported.

The requirement manager's role fulfillment is performed through five major activities described as developing, anchoring, re-organizing, routinizing, and positioning. These activities are essential in order to manage working with a large flagship project.

Because the research was based on a single case study, there are of course limitations. The findings in this study may therefore not be generalized, but merely suggest other areas of research.

This paper argues that functional roles should not be taken for granted. Even though significant efforts may have been performed in order to establish a new role within a project management setting, the process of establishing new work practices is complex. Managers should therefore investigate inter-functional integration on ongoing bases.

This paper provides important insights into aspects of requirement manager's ongoing project activities.

The purpose of this paper is to understand projectification processes of the global organization, based on the example of the Catholic Church’s activities. The Catholic Church is the oldest and the largest international organisation to be assessed also from the longue durée perspective. The Church as both a large and supranational organisation and a religious community has carried out a lot of social tasks. A part of its activity relating to the Church’s basic mission is carried out in these days in the form of various projects. In this paper, the authors demonstrate that seemingly unchanging structure, such as the Catholic Church, based on a determined hierarchy, strict principles and rules of conduct, is affected by the projectification processes.

The authors chose the method of a single case study. To analyse the projectification processes in the Church, the authors focussed on flagship mega-events of WYD programme, from which the following were selected: Rome (1985), Manila (1995), Sydney (2008), Rio de Janeiro (2013) and Krakow (2016).

The study demonstrates that organisational projectification processes can have a real impact on the strategic changes in the global organisation. Under the influence of significant projects, organisations can change internally and also redefine their way of interacting with the stakeholders. Projectification at the same time is a change and leads to it. The research also shows that projectification of a global organisation can intensify internal learning processes. On the one hand, “projectification agents” transfer project practices to various regions of the world, and, on the other, draw on local practices. Therefore, the projectification process is not simply transplanting the project “virus” into new places, but also a process of change and adaptation to the stimuli flowing from the environment.

The particularities, the distinctiveness of the projects of the Catholic Church can be an inspiration for others realizing projects. The experience of the Catholic Church in the implementation of WYD can be valuable for organisations implementing other projects that require involvement and activation of many, diverse stakeholders, for example, charitable projects or the so-called community engagement projects implemented by large international organisations, such as the World Bank, UNICEF, the UN, the Red Cross or humanitarian projects organised by NGOs in different parts of the world.