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Using positive psychology theories, the authors build a model to test whether episodic fluctuations in strengths use coincide with changes in flow experiences and further predict risk-taking behavior and attentional performance.

A field study covering five working days was conducted among 164 Chinese employees; twice a day, they were asked to complete questionnaires regarding their strengths use and flow experiences during the previous hour (N = 938 observations). Immediately afterward, their risk-taking behaviors and attentional performance were tested using computerized tasks.

Multilevel analyses showed that when employees used their strengths more often in the previous hour, they also reported an increase in flow. Episodic fluctuations in flow were positively associated with risk taking and negatively related to attentional performance.

Employees should be encouraged to use their strengths more at work, as this might increase their flow experiences. At the same time, they should pay attention to the downsides of flow (i.e. less attention after flow) at an episodic level.

The authors add to previous studies by using a more objective approach, namely employing computerized tasks on risk-taking behavior and attention to capture the behavioral outcomes of work-related flow.

The main purpose of this research is exploring the tipping points for a radical shift in supplier (dis)satisfaction. This study identifies triggers and links them to consequences for the buyer–supplier relationship.

The Critical Incident Technique (CIT) was used to interview Dutch supplier representatives in the infrastructure sector, resulting in rich descriptions of 29 critical incidents, extracting first-hand information.

Safety issues, technical disputes and recruitment of supplier’s technical staff have been identified as tipping points for suppliers to become dissatisfied. Implementing performance-based contracting is another critical incident that caused irritation and disappointment. On a more operational level, dissatisfaction was provoked by tender errors and price discussions with the buyer. This study also identified tipping points by which dissatisfied suppliers abruptly turned into satisfied suppliers. The effect of a solution-oriented buyer intervention appears to be most powerful if this behaviour transcends prior expectations.

Consequences of misunderstandings and discussion between supplier and buyer may be manageable or repairable, depending on the causes and triggers that influenced a supplier’s dissatisfaction. An early warning system could prove its worth, so that buyers are not faced with unpleasant surprises.

Despite the growing number of studies, processes of how antecedents lead to supplier (dis)satisfaction are not well understood. Antecedents are predominantly investigated by cross-sectional survey data, giving little insights into micro-processes and actual interaction between buyers and suppliers. Although CIT has been applied in many disciplines, the technique is hardly used within the context of purchasing and supply management research.

The purpose of this paper is to deepen the understanding of adaptive governance, which is advocated for as a manner to deal with dramatic changes in society and/or environment. To re-think the possible contributions of organizations and organization theory, to adaptive governance.

Based on social systems theory this study makes a distinction between “governance organizations” and “governance communities.” Organizations are conceptualized as the decision machines which organize and (co-)steer governance. Communities are seen as the social environments against which the governance system orients its operations. This study considers the adaptive mechanisms of organizations and reflect on the roles of organizations to enhance adaptive governance in communities and societies.

Diverse types of organizations can link or couple in different ways to communities in their social environment. Such links can enhance the coordinative capacity of the governance system and can also spur innovation to enable adaptation. Yet, linking with communities can also slow down responses to change and complexify the processes of deliberation in governance. Not all adaptive mechanisms available to organizations can be used in communicating with communities or can be institutionalized, but the continuous innovation in the field of organizations can inspire continuous testing of small-scale adaptive mechanisms at higher levels. Society can thus enhance its adaptive capacity by managing the role of organizations.

The harnessing of insights in organization theory and systems theory for improving understanding of adaptive governance. The finding that both experiment and coordination at societal level are needed, toward adaptive governance, and that organizations can contribute to both.

This paper aims to explore how tensions and alignments between different actors’ needs in a transformative services network affect balanced centricity, which is an indicator of well-being. Balanced centricity describes a situation in which all network actors’ interests and needs are fulfilled simultaneously. In such cases, all actors are better off, which increases both individual actors’ and overall actor-network well-being.

The empirical study takes place in nursing homes in which in-bed baths represent co-created service encounters that affect the well-being of focal actors (i.e. patients), frontline service employees (i.e. nurses) and transformative service mediators (i.e. family members), who have potentially competing needs. Using a qualitative, phenomenological approach, the study inductively explores and deductively categorizes actors’ personal experiences to gain deep, holistic insights into the service network and its complex web of actor interdependencies.

The resulting conceptual model of balanced centricity identifies actors’ lower-order needs as different manifestations of the psychological needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness. If actors’ needs are aligned, their psychological needs can be satisfied, which facilitates balanced centricity. If actors exhibit competing needs though, balanced centricity is impeded.

This study establishes actors’ psychological needs as the origin of tensions/alignments in multi-actor networks that impede/contribute to balanced centricity. Transformative service providers should try to address all actors’ psychological needs when co-creating services to achieve network well-being.

This study adopts a novel, multi-actor perspective and thereby presents a conceptual model that contributes to the understanding of balanced centricity. Future research could test this model in other transformative service settings.

Episodic mood disorders are often associated with alcohol dependence. Few studies have explored the contribution of episodic mood disorders to length of stay among those hospitalized with alcohol dependence syndrome. Filling this research gap could improve care for patients while minimizing hospital utilization costs. This study was a cross-sectional analysis of the National Hospital Discharge Survey. ICD-9-CM diagnosis codes were used to identify those admitted to a private or non-profit hospital with alcohol dependence syndrome, and a co-morbid diagnosis of an episodic mood disorder (n=358). Descriptive statistics were used to highlight differences in key demographic and hospital variables between those with and without episodic mood disorders. Negative binomial regression was used to associate episodic mood disorders with hospital length of stay. Incidence rate ratios were calculated. Co-morbid episodic mood disorders ([.beta]=0.31, P=0.001), referral to a hospital by a physician ([.beta]=0.35, P=0.014), and increasing age ([.beta]= 0.01, P=0.001) were associated with longer hospital stays. Hospital patients with an admitting diagnosis of alcohol dependence syndrome were 36% more likely to have a longer hospital stay if they also had a co-morbid diagnosis of an episodic mood disorder (IRR=1.36, CI=1.14-1.62). Patients admitted to a hospital with alcohol dependence syndrome should be routinely screened for episodic mood disorders. Opportunities exist for enhanced transitional care between acute, ambulatory, and community-based care settings to lower hospital utilization.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how legitimacy is gained, maintained or repaired through direct action with salient stakeholders and/or through external reporting, by using a number of empirical case vignettes within a single case study organisation.

The study investigates a foreign affiliate of a large multinational organisation involved in an environmentally sensitive industry. Data collection included semi-structured interviews with 26 participants, organisational reports and participation in the organisation’s annual environmental management seminar and a stakeholder engagement meeting.

Four vignettes featuring environmental issues illustrate the complexity of organisational responses. Issue visibility, stakeholder salience and stakeholder interconnectedness influence a company’s action to manage legitimacy. In the short-term, environmental issues which affected salient stakeholders resulted in swift and direct action to protect pragmatic legitimacy, but external reporting did not feature in legitimacy management efforts. Highly visible issues to the public, regulators and the media, however, resulted in direct action together with external reporting to manage wider stakeholder perceptions. External reporting was used superficially, along with a broad suite of communication strategies, to gain legitimacy in the long-term decision about the company’s future in New Zealand.

This paper outlines how episodic encounters to manage strategic legitimacy with salient stakeholders in the short-term are theoretically distinct, but nonetheless linked to continual efforts to maintain institutional legitimacy. Case vignettes highlight how pragmatic legitimacy via dispositional legitimacy can be managed with direct action in the short-term to influence a limited range of salient stakeholders. The way external reporting features in legitimacy management is limited, although this has predominantly been the focus of prior research. Only where an environmental incident damages legitimacy to a larger number of stakeholders is external reporting also used to buttress community support.

The concept of legitimacy is comprehensively applied, linking the strategic and institutional arms of legitimacy and illustrating how episodic actions are taken to manage legitimacy in the short-term with continual efforts to manage legitimacy in the long-term. Stakeholder salience and networks are brought in as novel theoretical extensions to provide a deeper understanding of the interrelationships between these key concepts with a unique case study.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the marketization of domiciliary care, its consequences for employment practice, specifically fragmented time, and the implications for care quality.

Focus groups and face-to-face or telephone interviews were conducted with care commissioners, service providers and care workers across Wales. There were 113 participants in total.

These demonstrate fragmented time’s negative consequences for service providers, care workers and, ultimately, care quality.

No care recipients were interviewed and care quality was explored through the perceptions of other stakeholders.

For policy makers, tensions are evidenced between aspirations for high-quality care and commissioning practice that mitigates against it. Current care commissioning practices need urgent review.

The research extends the definition of fragmented time and integrates with a model of care quality to demonstrate its negative consequences. Links between employment practice and care quality have only previously been hinted at.

This paper aims to explore controls within an inter-organisational relationship involving outsourced management accounting services from the contractor’s perspective.

Qualitative data from within the relationship are analysed in a legitimacy-theory framework, illustrating how controls within the relationship are intended to build the contractor’s legitimacy and what kinds of implications the controls have in relation to conflicts between interests inherent in the relationship.

The legitimacy perspective clarifies that while controls are aimed at ensuring efficiency for the client, they may also provide symbolic displays of the appropriateness of the contractor’s actions both at an inter-organisational level for the client and at an individual level for the contractor’s employees. While the contractor intends to build legitimacy with the client by demonstrating utility in the form of efficiency, the process also gives the client influence and allows the disposition in terms of shared values to be demonstrated. However, this process has some negative consequences for the contractor’s employees as it is insufficient for serving the boundary-spanning employees’ interests connected with the nature of their work. Hence, the same controls need to yield benefits and fair outcomes for employees. The controls simultaneously foster interconnections that contribute to permanence and formalise the outsourcing of complex services, thereby rendering such processes comprehensible and transferable to other settings, which can be seen to serve the contractor’s continuity interests.

The paper contributes to academic research by illustrating how controls within inter-organisational relationships not only steer boundary-spanners’ work to conform to a client’s needs but may also help to build legitimacy via symbolic properties in the presence of conflicting interests at both an inter-organisational and individual level. It specifically highlights the important role of boundary-spanners lower in the organisational structure, who both affect and are influenced by the intentions to build legitimacy with the client.