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Companies change their organizations continually. When such a change follows a change in company strategy, employees understand why it happens. However, organization changes occur much more frequently than strategy changes. Their seemingly haphazard nature breeds cynicism, while it shouldn’t: organization changes are perfectly normal, usually necessary and often for the better. The reason is that an organization design is never perfect. Designing an organization is a delicate exercise that considers diverging requirements, but at some point, you’ve got to decide, and go for the “least bad” design. The article lays out how to explain why such changes and cycles occur.

The authors draw on their long advisory experience to propose three premises about organization design. They then describe the implications of these premises for managers who need to make and explain organization design changes.

Premise 1: There is no one-size-fits-all organization. Implication: Beware of adopting organizational hypes thoughtlessly; tailor the design to the specific situation, possibly on the basis of an “organizational health-check”. 10;Premise 2: There are usually good reasons why an organization is as it is. Implication: Beware of following a slash-and-burn approach; consider a gradual approach as the default, possibly on the basis of causal loop diagrams. 10;Premise 3: Organization is more than “structure”. Implication: Beware of isolated, simple-minded changes; include “processes”, “people”, “technology” and “culture”, as explained by various frameworks.

Alfred Chandler famously wrote that “structure follows strategy”. This article demonstrates that “structure begets structure”. Hence it is important for managers not to bungle an organization design change. To that purpose, they should be clear about the desired time to see the impact of the change and about the risk of change-induced organizational chaos.

The article contributes to good management practice by enabling managers to explain well why an organization change, even in the absence of a strategy change, does make sense. Managers’ ability to explain the benefits of change, and employees’ acceptance thereof, is a mark of organizational maturity.

This case explores the turnaround and corporate renewal of the Chicago Blackhawks professional hockey team, which transformed from one of the worst-run organizations in all of professional sports in 2007 to one that won the Stanley Cup (the National Hockey League championship trophy) in 2010. W. Rockwell “Rocky” Wirtz was faced with making critical decisions shortly after inheriting the team from his father, who was the individual most associated with the organization's decline. The team faced financial trouble and had narrowly avoided missing payroll; the previous customer relations strategy (which included refusing to televise home games or to conduct effective marketing) had resulted in significantly diminished brand value; and management and player personnel were devoid of effective leadership. At its nadir, the team was named “The Worst Franchise in Professional Sports” by ESPN in 2004. After assuming control, Rocky embarked on an ambitious corporate renewal strategy that included the following components: leadership: install a new management team with clear goals and creative ideas about how to turn around the organization; culture: reward players for accomplishing their goals and establish a performance-based culture; financial: seek new corporate sponsorships and increase ticket prices once the team established a winning record; and brand and marketing: send a clear message that the team was intent upon winning the championship and design a customer-focused marketing strategy.

After analyzing the case, students should be able to: recommend strategic, financial, and operational changes needed to turn around the organization, and identify key leadership qualities that enable execution of a turnaround plan.

This research explores how to design service delivery systems to facilitate a customer experience that enables the realisation of prevention-oriented goals.

Case-based research is undertaken to inform the design of service delivery systems for prevention-oriented consumption goals. Data from multiple informants, from both the provider and customer perspective, in two in-depth case studies, provide empirical insights.

Drawing on customer and provider perspectives, a model of service design for prevention-oriented goals is presented. The model is informed through the identification of service delivery system characteristics (facility layout, staff service orientation, facility appearance and staff presence/appearance) and perceived experience quality dimensions (control, duration, privacy and reliability impressions) that contribute to the fulfilment of prevention-oriented consumption goals.

The research affirms that it is critical for organisations to comprehend the goals they want their service delivery systems to enable in the customer experience. Specific attention should be given to the design of facility layout, staff-service orientation, facility appearance, staff presence/appearance to positively impact perceived quality dimensions and to facilitate the realisation of customer prevention goals.

The main research contribution lies in the articulation of the design characteristics of the service delivery system that enables a customer experience supporting the fulfilment of prevention goals. The empirical study draws on both customer and organisational perspectives to identify prevention-oriented goals, and corresponding experience quality dimensions, to inform service delivery system design.

This article aims to provide an understanding of how utilitarian services can make the customer experience more hedonic.

The author performs an in-depth case study of a leading wealth management firm that is reinventing its business model to incorporate a hedonic perspective into experience design.

The findings reveal how a traditionally utilitarian firm integrates hedonic elements into the customer experience. The findings describe and expose how four experience design characteristics are interactively linked to form a customer journey model, from eliciting emotional engagement to trigger rapid enrolment through to individualising the experience to drive purchase.

This research takes the perspective of the firm to explore the research question. No customer data are collected.

The article provides evidence-based recommendations that can serve as a platform to develop an action plan for designing and deploying hedonic elements in the customer experience in utilitarian contexts.

This study challenges the dichotomy between utilitarian and hedonic services. It derives an empirically grounded understanding of an intended experience that combines design characteristics associated with both the utilitarian and hedonic model at different stages of the customer journey. The emergent conceptual framework describes and links these design characteristics to enact the customer journey. Together, these empirical insights extend and enrich existing knowledge and provide actionable recommendations for managers.

This study aims to offer a three-pronged reflection on overtourism in large cities such as Barcelona. The objective is to outline how technology can impact on overtourism and eventually, how to tackle the problem using technology.

The research design is based on secondary data (literature and online reviews) and a case study of Barcelona.

The most significant aspect is the rapid spread of comments and reviews about attractions and venues. Despite the interest in ICT generalisation, these new technologies have a dark side. Closely linked to fashion trends, some tourist destinations find themselves rapidly overbooked.

Unlike other studies, this paper reveals a dark side of technology and attempts to use technology to mitigate the impacts of overtourism.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how peer-to-peer word-of-mouth (PPWOM) conversations evolve over time because of the dynamic social nature of the community in which they take place.

This study analyzed PPWOM conversations in an online community website for new and expectant mothers. Two data collection phases were undertaken during a four-year period. In phase I, messages were collected for a one-month period from five different bulletin boards (i.e. cross-sectional data) and at two points in time (i.e. semi-longitudinal). In phase II, a full longitudinal study was conducted, and the complete text of all messages of a newly formed bulletin board was captured for a nine-month period. The corpus of messages was examined in line with the basic tools of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis.

This research developed a typology of PPWOM genres and showed that these genres change over the community lifespan. The findings confirmed that the levels of social cohesiveness and the interaction communicative motives are the main factors that distinguish different PPWOM genres.

This research has offered a new perspective into the study of PPWOM, and hopefully it will serve as a starting point for a broader dialogue regarding the social context in which PPWOM is exchanged.

In contrast to traditional word-of-mouth research, this study demonstrated that PPWOM conversations go much beyond the exchange of functional information, and instead serve numerous social and emotional goals.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the experience design phenomenon in the cultural sector. Specifically, it purports to articulate a set of design characteristics that support the alignment between an organisation’s design intention (i.e. intended experience) and the actual experience of customers (i.e. realised experience).

A single case study approach is adopted to explore the phenomenon from both the provider and customer perspectives simultaneously. A range of qualitative data, including 42 interviews with managers and customers as well as voluminous documentary evidence, are collected. Provider and customer data are analysed independently using a rigorous inductive analytical process to generate experience design themes and to assess possible gaps between intended and realised experience.

The findings reveal the design characteristics of touchpoints and the overall customer journey, which constitute the core experience, as well as the design characteristics of the physical and social environment, which support the realisation of the core experience, in a cultural context.

Limitations include difficulties in generalising the findings from a single case and in claiming that the set of design characteristics identified is exhaustive.

The paper makes several recommendations that are useful and relevant for customer experience practitioners in the cultural sector.

The paper’s contribution is to provide novel empirical insights into the four experience design areas of touchpoints, journey, physical elements and social elements in an experience-centric cultural context. On that basis, a conceptual framework for experience design in the cultural context is proposed.