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1 – 10 of over 2000Richard Allister Mills and Stefano De Paoli
The purpose of this paper is to further the debate on Knowledge Artefacts (KAs), by presenting the design of WikiRate, a Collective Awareness platform whose goal is to support a…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to further the debate on Knowledge Artefacts (KAs), by presenting the design of WikiRate, a Collective Awareness platform whose goal is to support a wider public contributing to the generation of knowledge on environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance of companies.
Design/methodology/approach
The material presented in the paper comes from the first-hand experience of the authors as part of the WikiRate design team. This material is reflexively discussed using concepts from the field of science and technology studies.
Findings
Using the concept of the “funnel of interest”, the authors discuss how the design of a KA like WikiRate relies on the designers’ capacity to translate general statements into particular design solutions. The authors also show how this funnelling helps understanding the interplay between situativity and objectivity in a KA. The authors show how WikiRate is a peer-production platform based on situativity, which requires a robust level of objectivity for producing reliable knowledge about the ESG performance of companies.
Originality/value
This paper furthers the debate on KAs. It presents a relevant design example and offers in the discussion a set of design and community building recommendations to practitioners.
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Arturo E. Osorio, Banu Ozkazanc-Pan and Paul F. Donnelly
While entrepreneurship may be driven by personal interests and lifestyle choices, entrepreneurial actions are not only economically driven opportunity-searching processes but also…
Abstract
While entrepreneurship may be driven by personal interests and lifestyle choices, entrepreneurial actions are not only economically driven opportunity-searching processes but also enactments of social transformation that may or may not lead to socioeconomic benefits. We advance that exploring these entrepreneurial processes can inform a theory of the firm that may explain how socioeconomic processes shape the socioeconomic environment of communities while serving individuals. This article discusses several understandings of the firm, as theorized in extant literature. Guided by these different conceptualizations, we present a case study of an artist and artisan cluster in Western Massachusetts to demonstrate various understandings of entrepreneurial processes. By way of conclusion, we develop the idea of the firm as a geographically embedded relational understanding aiding entrepreneurs to achieve personal goals while coconstructing their local environment.
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Arash Najmaei and Zahra Sadeghinejad
Inclusive leadership is exhibiting signs of an emerging field of theory and practice. The purpose of this research is to systematically map this emergence and its various facets.
Abstract
Purpose
Inclusive leadership is exhibiting signs of an emerging field of theory and practice. The purpose of this research is to systematically map this emergence and its various facets.
Design/Methodology
Citation information from 91 records on inclusive leadership were extracted from Scopus and analyzed using a series of citation and co-word techniques.
Findings
We identified six clusters of keywords that underpin the current state of research on inclusive leadership. We also unraveled a trend that suggests research on inclusive leadership is moving from a simple approach to leadership on healthcare and education to become a universally desirable style of leadership in parallel with the global increase in the importance of diversity and inclusion.
Originality/Value
This study is the first attempt to develop a complete map of the domain of inclusive leadership. It also provides management researchers and practitioners with a tool for evaluating inclusive leadership publications and provides a systematic and objective means of determining the relative importance of the field in the development of the inclusive leadership research.
Paper type
Bibliometric literature review (Meta analytic review)
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Kjell Tryggestad, Lise Justesen and Jan Mouritsen
The purpose of this paper is to explore how animals can become stakeholders in interaction with project management technologies and what happens with project temporalities when…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how animals can become stakeholders in interaction with project management technologies and what happens with project temporalities when new and surprising stakeholders become part of a project and a recognized matter of concern to be taken into account.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on a qualitative case study of a project in the building industry. The authors use actor‐network theory (ANT) to analyze the emergence of animal stakeholders, stakes and temporalities.
Findings
The study shows how project temporalities can multiply in interaction with project management technologies and how conventional linear conceptions of project time may be contested with the emergence of new non‐human stakeholders and temporalities.
Research limitations/implications
The study draws on ANT to show how animals can become stakeholders during the project. Other approaches to animal stakeholders may provide other valuable insights.
Practical implications
Rather than taking the linear time conception for granted, the management challenge and practical implication is to re‐conceptualize time by taking heterogeneous temporalities into account. This may require investments in new project management technologies.
Originality/value
This paper adds to the literatures on project temporalities and stakeholder theory by connecting them to the question of non‐human stakeholders and to project management technologies.
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The purpose of this paper is to challenge some taken-for-granted practices related to organizational change in order to understand how organizational change as practice is…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to challenge some taken-for-granted practices related to organizational change in order to understand how organizational change as practice is conditioned by mundane assumptions.
Design/methodology/approach
A critical analysis of the taken-for-granted assumptions revealed by a literature review was conducted utilizing practice theory approach in which human behavior and social context are intertwined. Hence, the analysis of this theoretical paper focuses on practices, praxis and practitioners in organizational change.
Findings
The results suggest that certain elements that are believed to be universal in organizational change are, in fact, particular within context. The key finding and message of this research is that organizational change in practice is a manifestation of particularity. The conclusion is that certain mundane assumptions condition organizational change practices by ignoring the importance of power, phronesis and paradox, which lie in human interaction within social context.
Research limitations/implications
The proposal that the dominating discourse on organizational change involves some taken-for-granted assumptions, challenges scholars to question the ways organizations are currently studied, and perhaps draws more attention to power, context and particularity in future research.
Practical implications
The analysis demonstrates that the social aspect of organizational realities is crucial in organizational change, and should not be underestimated by the practitioners in the process. This realism of practice complexity indicates that the pitfalls of organizational change are more context dependent and thus, more numerous than generally is assumed.
Originality/value
This research contributes to both theory and practice by offering a critical view on some of the taken-for-granted organizational change practices. This paper also demonstrates originality by introducing the concept of “organizational change as practice” in analogue of “strategy as practice” (SAP).
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Keywords
– The purpose of this paper is to examine how discursive practices are involved in organizational change.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine how discursive practices are involved in organizational change.
Design/methodology/approach
This research scrutinizes organizational change by combining discourse and practice approaches. A case study at a public university hospital is conducted with a narrative analysis method.
Findings
The key finding of this research is that discursive practices are involved in organizational change through discourse phronesis. Discourse phronesis is a socially and contextually developed phenomenon, and hence discursive practices are particular within context. The case study revealed four particular discursive practices as examples of discourse phronesis: field practices, mandate practices, priority practices and word practices.
Practical implications
The results of this research advance awareness of the concealed power within discursive practices and, more importantly, invite practitioners to pursue the intellectual virtue of discourse phronesis while implementing organizational change. Discourse phronesis may be utilized as a gateway to advance change goals and to translate various discourses and actions that otherwise might remain unexplained.
Originality/value
Although extensively studied, organizational change has not previously been directly approached through discourse phronesis, and by doing so this empirical research provides novelty value to both organizational change research and discourse analysis. By introducing the concept of discourse phronesis, this research offers scholars an alternative lens, the intellectual practicality lens, through which to approach organizational change and perhaps to develop new understandings of the great challenges that organizational change complexities usually generate.
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High rates of failure in organizational change efforts call attention to the need to identify and address persistent problems that threaten success. This chapter outlines issues…
Abstract
High rates of failure in organizational change efforts call attention to the need to identify and address persistent problems that threaten success. This chapter outlines issues that frequently hinder progress in various stages of the change process and offers advice to consultants and their clients in overcoming these issues. While models to guide intervention have advanced and the field has progressed, more attention still needs to be paid to the issues outlined here in order to enhance success rates in major change initiatives. New directions for research are suggested that would aid the field in continuing its evolution.
Jan Pries-Heje and Richard Baskerville
The purpose of this paper is to use translation theory to develop a framework (called FTRA) that explains how companies adopt agile methods in a discourse of fragmentation and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to use translation theory to develop a framework (called FTRA) that explains how companies adopt agile methods in a discourse of fragmentation and articulation.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative multiple case study of six firms using the Scrum agile methodology. Data were collected using mixed methods and analyzed using three progressive coding cycles and analytic induction.
Findings
In practice, people translate agile methods for local settings by choosing fragments of the method and continuously re-articulating them according to the exact needs of the time and place. The authors coded the fragments as technological rules that share relationships within a framework spanning two dimensions: static-dynamic and actor-artifact.
Research limitations/implications
For consistency, the six cases intentionally represent one instance of agile methodology (Scrum). This limits the confidence that the framework is suitable for other kinds of methodologies.
Practical implications
The FTRA framework and the technological rules are promising for use in practice as a prescriptive or even normative frame for governing methodology adaptation.
Social implications
Framing agile adaption with translation theory surfaces how the discourse between translocal (global) and local practice yields the social construction of agile methods. This result contrasts the more functionalist engineering perspective and privileges changeability over performance.
Originality/value
The use of translation theory and the FTRA framework to explain how agile adaptation (in particular Scrum) emerges continuously in a process where method fragments are articulated and re-articulated to momentarily suit the local setting. Complete agility that rapidly and elegantly changes its own environment must, as a concomitant, rapidly and elegantly change itself. This understanding also elaborates translation theory by explaining how the articulation and re-articulation of ideas embody the means by which ideas travel in practice.
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Colleen E. Mills and Faith Jeremiah
This study presents an original empirically based conceptual framework representing mobile microbusiness founders' experiences when converting to a franchise business model that…
Abstract
Purpose
This study presents an original empirically based conceptual framework representing mobile microbusiness founders' experiences when converting to a franchise business model that links individual-level variables to a sociomaterial process.
Design/methodology/approach
An exploratory interpretive research design produced this framework using data from the enterprise development narratives of mobile franchisors who had recently converted their mobile microbusinesses to a franchise business model.
Findings
The emergent framework proposes that franchisor’s conversion experience involves substantial identity work prompted by an identity dilemma originating in a conflict between role expectations and franchising operational demands. This dilemma materializes during franchise document creation and requires some degree of “identity undoing” to ensure business continuity. By acting as boundary-objects-in-use in the conversion process, the franchise documents provide a sociomaterial foundation for the business transition and the development of a viable franchisor identity.
Research limitations/implications
There is scant literature addressing the startup experiences of mobile microbusiness franchisors. The study was therefore exploratory, producing a substantive conceptual framework that will require further confirmatory studies.
Practical implications
By proposing that conversion to a franchise business model is experienced as an identity transformation coupled to a sociomaterial process centred on system documentation, this original empirically based conceptual framework not only addresses a gap in the individual-level literature on franchise development but also provides a framework to direct new research and discussions between intending franchisors and their professional advisors about person–enterprise fit.
Originality/value
The conceptual framework is the first to address franchisors' experience of transitioning any type of microbusiness to a franchise business model.
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