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This chapter focuses on spy action as a way to answer the question: where can we find queer female action heroes? The chapter will identify three films – D.E.B.S. (Advocate, 2005), Atomic Blonde (David Leitch, 2017) and The Spy Who Dumped Me (Susanna Fogel, 2018) – worth attention to highlight the potential and problems of the queer female hero in spy action. This chapter examines how each of these spy action films contributes to the ongoing yet uneven development of the female hero as a queer figure in post-millennial action cinema. The chapter will consider to what extent these queer female-led action films may pose a challenge to some of the dominant standards and conventions associated with the action hero, gender roles and the representation of sexuality, but also reinforce others. Some comparisons will be made to James Bond in recognition that the Bond franchise has played an important role in the spy action genre.

In this paper, we draw attention to the influence of the institutional logic of family upon a broad range of organizations, and argue that their significance has not been fully realized within the realm of institutional theory and research. Drawing on extant literature, publicly available documents, and interview data, we highlight the prominence of the family logic in the Italian legal sector, where there is a dearth of family firms and the existence of a competing professional logic that interacts with the familial logic. Our research suggests that, even in a setting where logics of capitalism and profession dominate, the organizational form and practices of Italian law firms are significantly influenced by the family logic: firms remain small, resistant to mergers and forms of internationalization, and have successfully resisted the encroachment of invading foreign legal practices. We discuss the significance of the family logic and its manifestations in organizations, and map out future research directions about how multiple logics interact and reinforce each other in national settings.

In this paper, we draw attention to the influence of the institutional logic of family upon a broad range of organizations, and argue that their significance has not been fully realized within the realm of institutional theory and research. Drawing on extant literature, publicly available documents, and interview data, we highlight the prominence of the family logic in the Italian legal sector, where there is a dearth of family firms and the existence of a competing professional logic that interacts with the familial logic. Our research suggests that, even in a setting where logics of capitalism and profession dominate, the organizational form and practices of Italian law firms are significantly influenced by the family logic: firms remain small, resistant to mergers and forms of internationalization, and have successfully resisted the encroachment of invading foreign legal practices. We discuss the significance of the family logic and its manifestations in organizations, and map out future research directions about how multiple logics interact and reinforce each other in national settings.

It’s been thirty years since the original articulation of “Appreciative Inquiry in Organizational Life” was written in collaboration with my remarkable mentor Suresh Srivastva (Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987). That article – first published in Research in Organization Development and Change – generated more experimentation in the field, more academic excitement, and more innovation than anything we had ever written. As the passage of time has enabled me to look more closely at what was written, I feel both a deep satisfaction with the seed vision and scholarly logic offered for Appreciative Inquiry, as well as well as the enormous impact and continuing reverberation. Following the tradition of authors such as Carl Rogers who have re-issued their favorite works but have also added brief reflections on key points of emphasis, clarification, or editorial commentary I am presenting the article by David Cooperrider (myself) and the late Suresh Srivastva in its entirety, but also with new horizon insights. In particular I write with excitement and anticipation of a new OD – what my colleagues and I are calling the next “IPOD” that is, innovation-inspired positive OD that brings AI’s gift of new eyes together in common cause with several other movements in the human sciences: the strengths revolution in management; the positive pscyhology and positive organizational scholarship movements; the design thinking explosion; and the biomimicry field which is all about an appreciative eye toward billions of years of nature’s wisdom and innovation inspired by life.

This article presents a conceptual refigurationy of action-research based on a “sociorationalist” view of science. The position that is developed can be summarized as follows: For action-research to reach its potential as a vehicle for social innovation it needs to begin advancing theoretical knowledge of consequence; that good theory may be one of the best means human beings have for affecting change in a postindustrial world; that the discipline’s steadfast commitment to a problem solving view of the world acts as a primary constraint on its imagination and contribution to knowledge; that appreciative inquiry represents a viable complement to conventional forms of action-research; and finally, that through our assumptions and choice of method we largely create the world we later discover.

It’s been nearly 30 years since the original articulation of Appreciative Inquiry in Organizational Life was written in collaboration with my remarkable mentor Suresh Srivastva (Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987). That article generated more experimentation in the field, more academic excitement, and more innovation than anything we had ever written. As the passage of time has enabled me to look more closely at what was written, I feel both a deep satisfaction with the seed vision and scholarly logic offered for Appreciative Inquiry (AI), as well as well as the enormous impact and reverberation. Following the tradition of authors such as Carl Rogers who have re-issued their favorite works but have also added brief reflections on key points of emphasis, clarification, or editorial commentary we have decided to issue a reprint the early article by David L. Cooperrider and the late Suresh Srivastva in its entirety, but also with contemporary comments embedded. To be sure the comments offered are brief and serve principally to add points of emphasis to ideas we may have too hurriedly introduced. My comments – placed in indented format along the way – are focused on the content and themes of furthermost relevance to this volume on organizational generativity. In many ways I’ve begun to question today whether there can even be inquiry where there is no appreciation, valuing, or amazement – what the Greeks called thaumazein – the borderline between wonderment and admiration. One learning is that AI’s generativity is not about its methods or tools, but about our cooperative capacity to reunite seeming opposites such as theory as practice, the secular as sacred, and generativity as something beyond positivity or negativity. Appreciation is about valuing the life-giving in ways that serve to inspire our co-constructed future. Inquiry is the experience of mystery, moving beyond the edge of the known to the unknown, which then changes our lives. Taken together, where appreciation and inquiry are wonderfully entangled, we experience knowledge alive and an ever-expansive inauguration of our world to new possibilities.

This article presents a conceptual refiguration of action-research based on a “sociorationalist” view of science. The position that is developed can be summarized as follows: For action-research to reach its potential as a vehicle for social innovation it needs to begin advancing theoretical knowledge of consequence; that good theory may be one of the best means human beings have for affecting change in a postindustrial world; that the discipline's steadfast commitment to a problem solving view of the world acts as a primary constraint on its imagination and contribution to knowledge; that appreciative inquiry represents a viable complement to conventional forms of action-research; and finally, that through our assumptions and choice of method we largely create the world we later discover.

This chapter explores the innovative founding and legacy of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). This chapter contends that HBCUs have been on the forefront of curriculum development and adoptability. Early curriculum models focused on preparing students for better employment and for leading in racial uplift work. This chapter asserts that the HBCU needs to maintain a cultural relevancy in the twenty-first century by developing a strong entrepreneurial class and an employable Black labor force; it also needs to stand steadfast in its commitment to train leaders of the next generation. Lastly, listening to students and incorporating their perspectives in the institutional planning process is vital to maintaining cultural relevancy in the twenty-first.

This chapter examines the impact of adopting a global strategy upon leaders’ roles and identities in an engineering consultancy firm. Drawing upon process and social practice perspectives on leadership; our results explain leaders’ resistance to changing practices despite major process changes as due to the threats to their identity caused by the new role requirements to implement a global strategy. Our emerging process and social practice model of leadership highlights the complementary nature of process and practice change, creates a distinction between good and malign ambiguity in professional services firms and has implications for regulating the pace and timing of major changes which impact upon professional identities.

Journal articles and books on Toyota's competitive advantage abound. More recent analyses tended to focus on Toyota alone (Coriat, 2000; Liker, 2004) while earlier literature examined the competitive advantage of the Japanese automobile industry as a whole (Asanuma, 1989; Womack, Jones, & Roos, 1990; Fruin, 1992; Dyer, 1994, 1996a, 1996b). Intensive analysis on the Toyota Production System (TPS) notwithstanding, what exactly constitutes the system's inimitability remains elusive. This paper contributes to existing literature by examining how a post-war industrial policy might have given rise to Toyota and Nissan adopting two different strategic logics (or governance structures) as each had a unique set of resources and competences. Different governance structures however, did not appear to contribute to inter-firm performance variance between the two competitors for at least 15 years. What then could be the source of Toyota's competitive advantage and its inimitability? This paper unravels how causal ambiguity might have confounded Nissan, Toyota's only significant domestic rival for the second half of the last century.