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Why and when people working in organisations hide their knowledge has received considerable academic attention. However, little attention has been paid to knowledge hiding in academia itself, even though universities are known as places where knowledge is shared. This study aims to consider the dilemma faced by academics when undertaking research work: should they share or hide what they are doing?

Using empirical evidence drawn from 20 academics in a number of UK Business Schools, the authors carried out in-depth interviews to investigate the effects of strategic knowledge hiding (SKH) on research knowledge work. The authors argue that SKH can drive competitive individuals to establish research superiority.

The findings revealed that most respondents have, for strategic reasons, hidden their tacit and/or explicit knowledge from others during ongoing research processes, but have, at the same time, purposefully sought for knowledge from targeted colleagues.

The findings extend the previous literature by revealing not only the distinctive individual antecedents of SKH but also its positive outcomes. The findings illustrate a pioneering contribution of a systematic model of SKH among university business school academics.

The purpose of this paper is to explore a particular philosophical underpinning for Information Systems (IS) research – critical systemic thinking (CST). Drawing upon previous work, the authors highlight the principal features of CST within the tradition of critical research and attempt to relate it to trends in the Italian school of IS research in recent years, as exemplified by the work of Claudio Ciborra but also evident in work by, e.g. Resca, Jacucci and D'Atri.

This is a conceptual paper which explores CST, characterised by a focus on individual uniqueness, and socially‐constructed, individual worldviews as generators of human knowing.

The paper draws on work by Heinz Klein in which he elaborated three constitutive stages in critical research: interpretive, genealogical and constructive. The authors introduce a fourth, reflective stage and discuss five categories of critical research, reflecting different perspectives on emancipation, culminating in emergent expressionism, associated with Ciborra and the Italian school more generally.

This paper discusses approaches to CST and how they might have practical implications in IS development. The distinction between approaches founded in logical empiricism and those founded in hermeneutic dialectics are considered and the development of critical and systems strands are discussed.

The paper addresses CST as an approach to development of information systems. Such approaches enable users to explore their individually unique understandings and create a constructive dialogue with one another, which emancipates and empowers users to own and control their own development processes and hence build more productive and usable systems.

A focus on research which is oriented towards emancipation in the tradition of critical social theory.

The paper draws on extensive theoretical research carried out by the authors over a period of more than ten years in CST and synthesises the practical implications.

During discussions at the ASC 2013 Conference, the authors were stimulated to consider acting, learning and understanding in the context of organizational change, and in particular the relationship between organizational actors and external analysts. The purpose of this paper is to review from a cybernetic perspective how a socio-technical toolbox can help to facilitate organizational change, and to examine issues involved in use of such a toolbox by organizational actors supported by expert analysts.

The paper is conceptual and adopts a critical stance, i.e. to provide support for emancipation of individuals through ownership and control of their own analyses.

Drawing on work by e.g. Bateson, the authors consider organizations as dynamic and complex human activity systems, and how actors can be helped to develop a productive learning “spiral” of acting and reflecting by means of a proposed socio-technical toolbox. Acting and reflecting upon action can be seen to form a “double helix” of learning, leading to richer understandings of contextual dependencies. Engaged actors need support to surface their contextually dependent understandings, individual and collectively and engage in a “dance of change”.

Change is endemic in organizational life. When engaging with change activity that attempts to address complexity (as opposed to complicatedness), contextual experts need to be the key decision takers. This means a redistribution not only of responsibility and action but also decision-taking power.

The paper suggests augmentation of traditional socio-technical methods to address dynamic complexity.

The purpose of this paper is to present qualitative evidence on the processes and forces that shape school administrator career paths.

An embedded case study approach is used to understand more than 100 administrator career transitions within the Delaware education system. Semi‐structured interview data were collected from 48 principals and assistant principals. Coding and analysis occurred through an iterative process, revealing patterns in processes and forces influencing the careers of school administrators.

While some career decisions are self‐initiated, most are influenced in part or entirely by other actors in the system, described as recruiting/tapping, requesting, reassigning, passing over, and removing. In self‐initiated decisions to move or stay, a number of “pushes” and “pulls” are identified. Findings also suggest the decision to stay‐equilibrium is driven by relationships with students and by district support.

Data are limited to Delaware and represent the voices of principals and assistant principals only. Patterns evident in the data suggest a need to further investigate administrator career behavior qualitatively, as well as directions for future research.

There is a need to better understand and improve local human resource processes in terms of recruitment and assignment of administrators. Additional research is needed to better identify processes and forces related to career decisions in order to improve leadership recruitment and retention.

This research represents the first large‐scale qualitative study of administrator career behavior and is an important companion to recent quantitative analyses in this area.

The purpose of the editorial is to remember Professor Alessandro D'Atri, a pioneering Information Systems Scholar with whom the author collaborated for about 15 years. The main outcome of such collaboration is the conference Ethicomp 1999 in Rome. Following that conference the author has started elaborating a paper “Metaethics and the future of computer ethics” (Marturano) which was widely cited and quoted in the field. Thence the author has discussed its impact in the field and discussed some following papers dealing with similar topics. It emerged that such a paper is still a valid one for its perspectives but still not understood as for most of its ethical suggestions.

The paper is mainly philosophical and critical. It uses mostly critical analysis of papers dealing with the same topics.

The perspectives and the seminal ideas of the author's paper “Metaethics and the future of computer ethics” (Marturano) are still valid and, in some extent, are more fruitful than some following papers covering the same topics.

The value of this guest editorial is in remembering a very valuable and pioneering scholar – Alessandro D'Atri and comparing the author's paper's findings with other similar papers, which results in a better understanding of theoretical problems in the discipline.

This study aims to explore the ideas of Husserl and Gadamer as a possible basis of future soft systems methods of enquiry.

In Part one, the author has taken up the argument that soft systems is underpinned by Husserl’s phenomenology. The implication of this contention is an acceptance of subjectivity, and that our understanding the world is based upon personal experience. A consequence of this thinking renders predetermined models of the world to be deficient because each situation is unique. Instead of seeking a “solution”, the soft systems investigator engenders a cycle of learning as a means of gaining greater understanding. This means that a soft systems inquiry involves exploring the situation with those involved as a means of reaching an informed way forward. In this second paper, the author continues to explore Husserl’s phenomenology and also consider Gadamer’s ideas on hermeneutics and the importance of the “cycle of learning” that is central to any soft systems inquiry. The study concludes with a summary of points that, the author suggests, should be considered when undertaking a “soft” systems inquiry and in the development of any methodology that may enable it.

Both papers explore the phenomenological ideas of Husserl and the relationship to soft systems. In paper one, the basis of this exploration was Checkland's assertion that phenomenology could be the basis of soft systems. In the second paper, the author takes this further by exploring Gadamer's ideas on hermeneutics and reflect upon the possibility of blending them with Husserl's thinking.

I had some difficulty in tracking down the published work relating to the development of soft systems, notably the Journal of Applied Systems Analysis. This journal was published by Lancaster University and covered more than 20 years of debate and provides an important record of its development. The author managed to find what might be the only compete set at the University of Southampton. This allowed the author to gain some understanding of the development of the thinking. Since the late 20th century, the number of publications on soft ideas has been severely limited, seemingly reflecting the dominance of reductionist science. It seems timely for such a paper as this to help initiate further debate.

As indicated above – the difficulty is finding early journal publications where the ideas and their relationship to the action research programme emerged. Checkland himself, with whom the author has always enjoyed a close relationship, has, at the age of 90, withdrawn from academic activity; the early papers in the Journal of Applied Systems Analysis are probably the only “evidence” of the developing ideas at that time. Checkland has summarised the development (see references in the author’s two papers), but these early documents have the advantage of being written by a variety of scholars at the time rather than a single source.

The current crisis of the corona virus demonstrates the strength and the limitations of reductionist thinking. It is appropriate at this time that other methods and ideas of thinking about complexity are “visible”. Whilst there are many ideas, techniques, methods and so on in systems, these come from a common base, namely, to accept a world as tangible and easily modelled; adopting and alternative way of thinking can be challenging and healthy.

Soft systems thinking is 50 years old, but there has been virtually no progress since the soft systems methodology (SSM) emerged of Husserl and Gadamer in the 1970-1990s; such is the dominance of this methodology. This paper attempts to revisit the early thinking and consider what soft systems thinking means rather than focus on SSM.

This article presents the results of a study involving 261 domestic violence researchers representing a variety of professional disciplines. The purpose of this study was to identify researchers' perceptions of the connections between research and practice in domestic violence. The study builds on previous literature that identified a gap between research and practice in domestic violence. Through a factor analysis of the Domestic Violence Research‐Practice Perceptions Scales: Researcher Form, a new instrument developed for this study, a four‐factor conceptual framework for understanding the domestic violence research‐practice gap was identified. The four factors identified were labelled as follows: (a) personal practice orientation, (b) beliefs about practitioners, (c) beliefs about researchers, and (d) beliefs about a research‐practice gap. Researchers were shown to differ in their scores on the first factor subscale based on whether they had prior experience of providing services to clients affected by domestic violence and whether domestic violence is the primary focus of their research agenda. Implications of the findings for integrating research and practice in domestic violence are then discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between Husserl’s phenomenology and soft systems. An important idea arising from the action research programme at the University of Lancaster is the notion of soft systems. The concept of soft systems, that distinguished it from other systems (holistic) thinking of the time, was the conscious link between soft systems thinking and phenomenology. Phenomenology is that the realm of intentional consciousness that enables the phenomenologist to develop a radically unprejudiced justification of his (or her) basic views of the world and of himself and explore their rational interconnections. Similarly, in soft systems, it is acknowledged that reality is formed by sensation and fashioned by experience. It is not exclusively a process of thought (although this may shape how we process our experience), for us the world exists as the result of a subjective appreciation of it. In Part 1, the author explores how phenomenology informs soft systems theory and practice through the work of Husserl and some of those that influenced him and were influenced by him. In Part 2, the author explores a possible relationship between Husserl and Gadamer as a possible intellectual grounding for organisational inquiry.

The research was conducted by examining published material relating to the development of soft systems ideas and Husserl's phenomenology.

An analysis of the ideas within the material suggests that phenomenology can be considered as a underpinning the notion of soft systems

There is difficulty tracking down important papers that recorded the development of soft systems (i.e. 1970–1990) as Lancaster University had disposed of all issues. However, the author tracked down a source and was able to use this material as part of the research. In addition to helping research the origins of the idea, it also provides a paper trail for other researchers interested in these ideas.

Tracing the published material relating to soft systems necessitated visits to several universities as many of the important papers where no longer held by the University of Lancaster library.

It seems apposite that the ideas behind soft systems are resurrected as they offer an alternative way of thinking about complexity – which the modern world seems increasingly creating

There is a lack of research into soft systems as the publications describing the Lancaster research programme have centred around soft systems methodology (SSM). Checkland remarked a decade or so ago that said SSM should be taken as given and other ideas explored. There is little evidence that the soft ideas have been explored outside variations of SSM, this paper is intended to encourage more research into ‘soft’ systems.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate an instrument that can measure distributed leadership (DL) as employees’ active participation in DL tasks. The authors designate this as the distributed leadership agency (DLA).

Data were collected throughout all departments and occupational groups at a merged centralized hospital setting in Denmark. A total of 1,774 employees from 24 hospital departments and 16 occupational groups completed our survey. Structural equation model and confirmatory factor analyses were applied to identify appropriate items and a test for measurement invariance, predictive, discriminant and convergent validity, and ANOVAs were applied to analyse group differences in DLA.

The identified unidimensional questionnaire consists of seven items, as it is different from, but associated with, empowering leadership, organizational influence, attitude to participation and trust in management. As theoretically predicted, DLA is positively related to self-efficacy, job satisfaction and innovative behaviour. Chief physicians, permanent employees and employee representatives scored higher on the scale than the rest of their respective counterparts.

The survey offers a method to assess a distribution of leadership agency in hospital organizations. Such assessment may provide a basis for organizational and leadership development.

The present study provides a reliable and valid quantitative instrument that measures how much employees at all hierarchical levels are involved in concrete leadership activities in the hospital context. Taking a normative perspective the authors could show that DL – measured with the DLA-questionnaire – has positive effects on employees’ behaviour.