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The purpose of this paper is to compare the implementation of 12 different organisation and management innovations (OMIs) in Swedish healthcare, to discover the generic and specific factors important for successful healthcare improvement change in a public health system.

Longitudinal cross‐case comparison of 12 case studies was employed, where each case study used a common framework for collecting data about the process of change, the content of the change, the context, and the intermediate and final outcomes.

Clinical leaders played a more important part in the development of these successful service innovations than managers. Strategies for and patterns of change implementation were found to differ according to the type of innovation. Internal organisational context factors played a significant role in the development of nearly all, but external factors did not. “Developmental evolution” better described the change process than “implementation”.

The 12 cases were all of relatively successful change processes: some unsuccessful examples would have provided additional testing of the hypotheses about what would predict successful innovation which were used in the case comparison. The cross‐case comparative hypothesis testing method allows systematic comparison if the case data are collected using similar frameworks, but this approach to management research requires considerable resources and coordination.

Management innovations that improve patient care can be carried out successfully by senior clinicians, under certain circumstances. A systematic approach is important both for developing and adapting an innovation to a changing situation. A significant amount of time was required for all involved, which could be reduced by “fast‐tracking” approval for some types of change.

This is the first empirical report comparing longitudinal and contextualised findings from a number of case studies of different organisational and management healthcare innovations. The findings made possible explanations for success factors and useful practical recommendations for conditions needed to nurture such innovation in public healthcare.

Questions where and for whom action learning might not work and seeks to find the limits of the method. Suggests that by better understanding the situations in which action learning works least well, its more effective use will be more fully understood.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand the development and implementation of shared leadership in multi‐generational family firms. Shared leadership or family top management teams involve multiple family members in the top management and ownership of family firms.

A qualitative case study approach was employed, using in‐depth interviews of the top managers of four family businesses. Each case was analyzed separately, and emergent themes found in each case; and then generalizations were made across the four cases in the cross‐case analysis.

Eight factors or conditions were examined that affect shared leadership in multi‐generational family firms according to the respondents – long‐term orientation, close communication and shared understanding, resistance to change, succession planning, failure to release control, reporting relationship confusion, increased decision time, and higher decision quality. The result of this study is the production of eight propositions to build theory concerning shared leadership, which is an under‐researched area for family business studies.

This paper is rich in qualitative detail, but with all such case study research, its limitations regarding sample size are recognized.

This paper views shared leadership as a growing phenomenon that incumbent family business leaders should consider as a viable alternative to primogeniture or the choice of a single successor.

The study described in this paper is groundbreaking in that it examines shared leadership or the development and implementation of top management teams in family firms in depth and detail. The paper contributes a balanced view of the implementation of shared leadership in family firms, exploring both the positive and negative aspects.

Time pressure impacts the information that emerges in a group discussion. Executives need help managing the challenges posed by time pressure to arrive at the best decisions. In particular, we address two common biases that impact the group decision making process: the confirmation bias and the common information effect. Strategies are presented for overcoming these two biases, particularly the advantage of privately collecting information from group members within a meeting to surface unique information and disconfirming information. We also acknowledge that an executive’s goal may not always be to surface information; rather, an individual may be attempting to use a group meeting to push through a particular decision. We discuss the role of time in accomplishing this objective as well.

Private company investors operate in unique environments. Seed equity investors, which generally include venture capitalists and angel investors, often have the particularly unusual role of becoming involved in the oversight of the investee company. This continuing involvement with the investee firm introduces conflicting interests: the desire to maximize the profit from the investment, but also the desire to maintain a positive relationship with the entrepreneur(s) (consistent with the theory of upper echelons/strategic management). We discuss in detail this unusual investment context and the role that accounting disclosures can have in this environment. We predict that accounting disclosures can influence the tradeoff between the profit motive and the relationship motive. Using 64 experienced angel investors as participants in a realistic experimental setting, we find that disclosures indicating conservatively biased accounting choice and lower account risk (variance) lead to angels increasing the valuation of the target firm and forgoing higher profits. Increasing the valuation serves to foster the relationship with the entrepreneur(s). Our findings have implications for entrepreneurs making choices about discretionary disclosures and for standard setters; we also inform theory related to overcoming anchoring.

The purpose of this paper is to explore an important management aspect of business relationship dynamics, namely, the reactivation process of previously ended buyer–supplier relationships.

A processual case study approach focusing on a single in-depth case has been used. The case is based on longitudinal data from a number of sources concerning one reactivation failure.

Grounded in previous research and based on this study’s case findings, the authors have designed a model of analysis for relationship reactivation processes. Using the model on this study’s particular case, the authors show how the structural properties of network embeddedness and resource ties worked in favor of the process, whereas the social bonds and the lack of them led to mistrust that disturbed the negotiation and, hence, worked against the reactivation process.

This study makes a contribution to the field of relationship dynamics by exploring relationship reactivation processes. The designed model shows how reactivation can be understood as an interplay between structural properties and (re)building activities and contributes new knowledge on factors that affect this process.

Independent travelers are those vacationers who have booked only a minimum of their transportation and accommodation arrangements prior to departure on the vacation. Independent travel is an important and growing sector of worldwide tourism. Choice of vacation itinerary for the independent vacation represents a complex series of decisions regarding purchase of multiple leisure and tourism services. This chapter builds and tests a model of independent traveler decision-making for choice of vacation itinerary. The research undertaken employs a two-phase, inductive–deductive case study design. In the deductive phase, the researcher interviewed 20 travel parties vacationing in New Zealand for the first time. The researcher interviewed respondents at both the beginning and the end of their New Zealand vacations. The study compares pre-vacation research and plans, and actual vacation behaviors, on a case-by-case basis. The study examines case study narratives and quantitative measures of crucial variables. The study tests two competing models of independent traveler decision-making, using a pattern-matching procedure. This embedded research design results in high multi-source, multi-method validity for the supported model. The model of the Independent Vacation as Evolving Itinerary suggests that much of the vacation itinerary experienced in independent travel is indeed unplanned, and that a desire to experience the unplanned is a key hedonic motive for independent travel. Rather than following a fixed itinerary, the itinerary of an independent vacation evolves as the vacation proceeds. The independent traveler takes advantage of serendipitous opportunities to experience a number of locations, attractions and activities that they had neither actively researched nor planned.

Informed decisions about sampling are critical to improving the quality of research synthesis. Even though several qualitative research synthesists have recommended purposeful sampling for synthesizing qualitative research, the published literature holds sparse discussion on how different strategies for purposeful sampling may be applied to a research synthesis. In primary research, Patton is frequently cited as an authority on the topic of purposeful sampling. In Patton’s original texts that are referred to in this article, Patton does not make any suggestion of using purposeful sampling for research synthesis. This article makes a unique contribution to the literature by examining the adaptability of each of Patton’s 16 purposeful sampling strategies to the process of qualitative research synthesis. It illuminates how different purposeful sampling strategies might be particularly suited to constructing multi‐perspectival, emancipatory, participatory and deconstructive interpretations of published research.

To reexamine the Weber Thesis pertaining to the relationship between ascetic Protestantism – especially Calvinism – and modern capitalism, as between an economic “spirit” and an economic “structure,” in which the first is assumed to be the explanatory factor and the second the dependent variable.

The chapter provides an attempt to combine theoretical-empirical and comparative-historical approaches to integrate theory with evidence supplied by societal comparisons and historically specific cases.

The chapter identifies the general sociological core of the Weber Thesis as a classic endeavor in economic sociology (and thus substantive sociological theory) and separates it from its particular historical dimension in the form of an empirical generalization from history. I argue that such a distinction helps to better understand the puzzling double “fate” of the Weber Thesis in social science, its status of a model in economic sociology and substantive sociological theory, on the one hand, and its frequent rejection in history and historical economics, on the other. The sociological core of the Thesis, postulating that religion, ideology, and culture generally deeply impact economy, has proved to be more valid, enduring, and even paradigmatic, as in economic sociology, than its historical component establishing a special causal linkage between Calvinism and other types of ascetic Protestantism and the “spirit” and “structure” of modern capitalism in Western society at a specific point in history.

In addition to the two cases deviating from the Weber Thesis considered here, it is necessary to investigate and identify the validity of the Thesis with regard to concrete historical and empirical instances.

The chapter provides the first effort to systematically analyze and distinguish between the sociological core and the historical components of the Weber Thesis as distinct yet intertwined components.

The paper revisits the intellectual roots of grounded theory and aims to analyze the consistency of the method used in grounded theory research in accounting. About 23 papers are identified and analysed.

The paper is an analytical review of the research literature. It uses four fundamental canons of grounded theory to analyze accounting research.

Some accounting researchers who have used the label “grounded theory” for their research have misunderstood or not applied the core canons of grounded theory established by Glaser and Strauss and developed with diversity in other disciplines. Most claim to follow the specific approach of Strauss and Corbin, but the published research shows limited explication of method.

Since Parker and Roffey in 1997, there has been no analysis and re‐evaluation of the burgeoning academic accounting literature using grounded theory. While celebrating the growth of this research, the paper does raise concerns about the lack of consistency of grounded theory research in accounting with the central canons of grounded theory, and it provides some directions for future grounded theory research by encouraging accounting researchers who wish to use grounded theory to engage more strongly in understanding the method and providing transparent explanations of their data collection and analysis methods.