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This paper aims to describe how a sustainability-focused program in higher education can provide training and key experiences for implementing transdisciplinary approaches. The case is a fieldwork-based training course called the Global Field Exercise (GFE) at the Graduate Program in Sustainability Science, The University of Tokyo. The GFE is a methodological training course that emphasizes generating locally relevant research questions on sustainability.

This research is a case study regarding how a sustainability science program can offer a fieldwork-based training course that focuses on a transdisciplinary approach. Five students from diverse academic disciplines and cultural backgrounds participated in the GFE in QwaQwa where they conducted semi-structured interviews with six local entrepreneurs to identify the challenges and opportunities of entrepreneurship. The authors investigated the learning process and outcomes of the students through participatory observation in preparatory meetings, daily reflection sessions during fieldwork and a content analysis of feedback reports.

Four learning outcomes of the students were suggested: the reexamination of assumptions, managing misunderstanding and miscommunication, mutual learning and being empathic toward the local people.

This paper suggests three key opportunistic experiences for the transdisciplinary approach: discuss the normative dimension of sustainability; build intersubjectivity among team members and adopt methodological pluralism; and become empathetic to diverse stakeholder groups to facilitate the cogeneration of knowledge.

How to design training on a transdisciplinary approach in educational programs remains an area for further exploration. This study addresses this knowledge gap by establishing a link between sustainability education and sustainability in practice.

While the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and visions for sustainability education apply to many methods, they can be hard to put into practice. This study aims to concern an undergraduate geography course designed not only to teach geographical methods but also to engage with the multi-scalar nature of the SDGs and apply them to various local urban sustainability issues in a real-world context.

By means of a mixed-method approach, the authors examine a fieldwork course that invites students into learning situations in which they combine critical thinking with entrepreneurial solutions to local sustainability challenges. The authors examine the learning material from the students’ cases and explore the geographical knowledge the students’ practise.

Fieldwork helps students contextualise the multi-scalar nature of the SDGs and thereby apply them to analyses in a local context. Students learn first-hand how their planning proposals can be seen as counterproductive by some local stakeholders while remaining attractive to others.

Student tasks are developed in collaboration with a local municipality and students present their findings to local politicians and stakeholders. Presenting and localising the SDGs within a local community not only encourages students to undertake a local community analysis but also provides new perspectives to local stakeholders.

In an effort to encourage more probing studies of organizational learning and the learning organization (OL/LO), this paper aims to highlight the value of extended periods of fieldwork and suggest priorities for future fieldwork-based research into OL/LO.

The paper draws on the author’s research and consultancies in the OL/LO field and on systematic reviews of OL/LO literature.

Evidence is presented to justify the following four priorities for future fieldwork-based studies of OL/LO: to obtain trustworthy data, to bring the role of time and place into sharp focus, to explore the relationship between organizational learning and interests and to identify strategies for improving organizational learning in particular contexts.

The paper suggests priorities for a research approach that is not often used to study organizational learning and the learning organization, namely, to undertake extended periods of fieldwork in individual organizations or parts of organizations, gathering trustworthy data and interpreting it with the help of extant OL/LO theory.

To further develop research methodologies for multi-species ethnographic fieldwork, based on researcher's experiences with multi-species fieldwork in private wildlife conservancies in South Africa and inspired by San tracking techniques.

Reflections on methodological lessons learnt during multi-species ethnographic fieldwork in South Africa. The approach is rather “Maanenesque” in telling various types of tales of the field. These tales also implicitly show how all-encompassing ethnographic fieldwork and its accompanying reflexivity are; there is never time for leisure in ethnographic fieldwork.

That developing fieldwork methodologies in multi-species ethnographic research confronts researchers with the explicit need for and training in multi-sensory methods and interpretations, inspired by “the art of tracking” of the San.

Comes up with a concrete suggestion for a sequence of research methods for multi-species ethnography based on the trials and tribulations of a multi-species ethnographer's experiences in South Africa and inspired by San tracking techniques.

To apply Williamson's six dimensional typology of asset specificity as a theoretical framework for appraising the nature of outsourcing activities in hotels.

Interviews with senior managers in large hotels.

Site specificity and brand capital appear to be the most pertinent dimensions of asset specificity in the sample investigated. Most observations support the transaction cost economics (TCE) prescription that high asset specificity results in insourcing.

This study suffers from the normal shortcomings associated with fieldwork based on a limited sample of observations. Rather than attempting to make generalisable assertions, the study provides an exploration of the ways that asset specificity might manifest itself in hotel outsourcing decision making.

Asset specificity represents an important construct that should be considered when considering whether to outsource. It also provides a valuable context when considering the motivations of parties entering into a subcontracting arrangement.

No study applying either the asset specificity notion or the broader TCE theory has been found in the hospitality management literature. Also, there is a lack of prior research concerned with outsourcing in the hotel sector.

The purpose of this paper is to develop the operational definition of the concept of internalization of ISO 9001, a theoretical construct which until recently had not received the attention it deserves in research on quality management.

Extensive exploratory fieldwork based on both in‐depth interviews of general managers, middle managers and employees – 65 in total – as well as on intensive participant observation – e.g. 139 direct field‐consults and 240 documents analyzed – was carried out in eight Spanish organizations that adopted the standard a long time ago.

A set of specific factors and subfactors aimed at operationalizing the ISO 9001 internalization construct are proposed. Moreover, it has been ascertained that the concept of internalization is a clearly relevant one, as in previous works found in the literature in other countries, the conclusion is drawn that organizations do not adopt ISO 9001 homogeneously.

The conclusions may be of interest both for academic and professional spheres of activity. For managers, the key aspects of a substantive adoption of ISO 9001 are highlighted. For academics, certain specific categorization elements are proposed for a relevant construct so that these may be used in subsequent works.

This is a new exploratory work for its field of research. On the one hand, most works to date have tended to assume the principle of homogeneous adoption of ISO 9001. On the other, they tend to be based solely on managers' opinions without giving voice to employees or using participative observation.

This study aims to investigate the complex interaction of different resource sets and capabilities in the process of performance creation within the context of resource-based theory.

An inductive case study approach that included multiple data collection methods such as in-depth interviews, observation and documentation was utilized.

Organizational culture, reputational assets, human capital, business processes and networking capabilities were found as the most important determinants of firm performance within the context of Ülker case study.

Although large-scale empirical studies can be used to explore the direct resource–performance relationship, these quantitative methods bypass the complex and embedded nature of intangibles and provide only a limited understanding of why some resources are identified as strategic but others are not, what their roles are, and how these resources are converted into positions of competitive advantage. However, understanding of complex nature of resources that are embedded in organizations designates the need for more fieldwork-based qualitative studies. This study aims to address this gap by providing a thorough understanding about the managerial and organizational processes through which the resources become valuable.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the underlying drivers for the development and subsequent discontinuation of stand-alone corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting in a multinational subsidiary in Bangladesh.

The research approach employed for this purpose is a case study using evidence from a series of in-depth interviews conducted during the period 2002-2010. Interview data are supplemented by examining other sources of information including annual reports, stand-alone social reports and relevant newspaper articles during the study period.

It appears that the stand-alone CSR reporting process was initiated to give the subsidiary a formal space in which to legitimise its activities in Bangladesh where both tobacco control regulation and a strong anti-tobacco movement were gaining momentum. At the start of the process in 2002 corporate interviewees were very receptive of this initiative and strongly believed that it would not be a one off exercise. However, in the face of subsequent significant national policy shifts concerning tobacco control, irreconcilable stakeholder demands and increasing criticism of the CSR activities of the organisation at home and abroad the process was brought to an abrupt end in 2009.

The paper has a number of implications for policy makers concerning the future prospects for stand-alone social/sustainability reporting as a means of enhancing organisational transparency and accountability. In addition the paper discusses a number of theoretical implications for the development of legitimacy theory.

Using the lens of legitimacy the paper theorises the circumstances leading to the initiation and subsequent cessation of CSR reporting in the organisation concerned. As far as the authors know this is the first study which theorises and provides significant fieldwork-based empirical evidence regarding the discontinuation of stand-alone social reporting by a multinational company operating in a developing country. Thus, it extends previous desk-based attempts at using legitimacy theory to explain a decrease (or discontinuity) in CSR disclosures by de Villiers and van Staden (2006) and Tilling and Tilt (2010).

In this article, the authors explore the emotional dimension of the strategies that researchers carry out to foster collaboration within research groups in science.

The authors have carried out fieldwork based on semi-structured interviews with members of high-performance research groups, supported by the analysis of ethnographic observations in the local work contexts of several of these groups.

As a result, the authors start from the representations of the principal investigators interviewed about collaboration, as a dynamic between the individuals involved and the group, to describe two forms of leadership strategies: ego-centered or group. Hence, the authors highlight that the emotional work of IPs consists of combining both strategies by activating and deactivating affection, warmth and spontaneity in interactions. The authors conclude by reviewing the contributions and some potential lines of study.

The main contributions and conclusions must be regarded considering several limitations of our work. First, the authors have focused on high-performance groups, so it would be expected that the research groups that do not have the support of European Research Council (ERC) do not present the observed dynamics. Concerning the analysis, the authors have focused on the link between situational (personal interaction) and organizational scales. Although the authors have attended social factors that imply the structure and changes of the professional sector of science (Whitley, 2000, 2014), future publications will allow the authors to delve into relationships on a broader scale, associating collaboration patterns and discursive positions. The authors will focus on (1) roles and social profiles and (2) features of scientific culture and its recent configuration.

The authors affirm that the emotional field is key to understanding how groups and individuals respond to these profound changes. In their work, scientific professionals do not only act based on rational and instrumental criteria but also driven by habits, affective networks and inertia of their organizational cultures. In this paper, the authors provide theoretical and practical keys to understand the complexity that collaboration creates within research groups as a contradictory reality that consists of a constant movement of individuals and the group.

As many of the interviewees expressed, there are no adequate spaces to learn and reflect on leadership and collaboration in science. The authors are science workers who are responsible for imagining and deciding how the authors want their research groups to function. Institutions must ensure the means so that this task can be carried out. Hopefully, this article will contribute to this irrevocable project.

The authors’ aim is to understand how well-known groups operate in their field, with a high level of resources and productivity, in order to identify and promote cutting-edge strategies in different scientific branches. Moreover, the authors want to recognize the importance of institutional infrastructures. For this reason, giving them a place in the framework of management studies allows to submit this issue to public debate for a wide audience of social scientists. Moreover, this permits to inquire about cross-disciplinary subjects, such as social and organizational psychology, sociology of work, studies about science and management studies.

Voluntary corporate social responsibility reporting has developed into an everyday activity for many commercial organizations, and scholarly interest in these practices continues to increase. This paper focusses on one subset of these disclosures, namely the figures relating to environmental expenditures and investments published by various organizations. The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into the nature, role and significance of such financial environmental information. Despite their seeming accuracy and preciseness, little is known about how such financial environmental information is constructed and subsequently used in organizational settings.

The paper is based on a qualitative case study focussing on a Finnish energy company. The authors build the investigation primarily on 26 semi-structured interviews with employees at all organizational levels, which the authors supplement with various documentary sources. The interpretation draws on the notion of loose coupling, which the authors use as a method theory to provide a better understanding of this complex organizational practice.

The authors highlight the ambiguous and imprecise nature of the outwardly accurate figures provided by the company. The authors argue that disclosed financial environmental information is only loosely coupled with various dimensions, including the organization’s actual activities, its environmental impacts and organizational decision making.

The findings contrast with those of some prior research, which has considered financial environmental information highly valuable. As for broader implications, the paper discusses the accuracy of public records based on such ambiguous organizational figures.