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This article describes a system that produces web based learning modules as a by‐product of regular classroom teaching. The lecturer uses a pen sensitive display in place of the traditional chalkboard. In addition to drawings, the electronic chalkboard handles a range of multimedia elements from the Internet. The system records all actions and provides both a live transmission and a replay of the lecture from the web. Remote students follow the lecture looking at the dynamic board content and listening to the recorded voice of the instructor. Several use cases of the system as well as a systematic evaluation in two universities are presented.

Project marketing is the specific activity of companies selling projects-to-order. Interpersonal practice is known to be important in this type of marketing. While this interpersonal practice has been little studied, some previous research suggests that changes in the institutional macro environment have affected it. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to study today’s interpersonal practice in project business and how the institutional environment conditions it.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with marketing managers at project-based firms in different business sectors in France and Sweden. Data collection and analysis was informed by grounded theory.

The paper identifies three types of interpersonal practice in project marketing, referred to as the transactional, the work-based and the socializing. Changes in these are explained in relation to the three institutional logics identified in the data: the market institutional logic of business ethics, the corporate institutional logic of rationalization and the family institutional logic of gender equality.

Future studies can continue and broaden this work as it regards how the institutional conditioning of interpersonal practice varies with context.

By clearly categorizing the three types of interpersonal practice and their relative role today, companies can orient the activities of salespeople, business developers and other project marketers.

The paper highlights how business ethics and gender equality have changed interpersonal practices in project marketing.

The paper contributes to the current debate on project marketing by identifying three types of interpersonal practice and by illustrating how institutional logics condition and change these. The paper shows that extra-business activities are needed less than previous research has argued with regard to maintaining customer relationships in-between projects.

Analysis of organizational decline has become central to the study of economy and society. Further advances in this area may fail however, because two major literatures on the topic remain disintegrated and because both lack a sophisticated account of how social structure and interdependencies among organizations affect decline. This paper develops a perspective which tries to overcome these problems. The perspective explains decline through an understanding of how social ties and resource dependencies among firms affect market structure and the resulting behavior of firms within it. Evidence is furnished that supports the assumptions of the perspective and provides a basis for specifying propositions about the effect of network structure on organizational survival. I conclude by discussing the perspective’s implications for organizational theory and economic sociology.

Interest in developing institutional explanations of political and economic behavior has blossomed among social scientists since the early 1980s. Three intellectual perspectives are now prevalent: rational choice theory, historical institutionalism and a new school of organizational analysis. This paper summarizes, compares and contrasts these views and suggests ways in which cross‐fertilization may be achieved. Particular attention is paid to how the insights of organizational analysis and historical institutionalism can be blended to provide fruitful avenues of research and theorizing, especially with regard to the production, adoption, and mobilization of ideas by decision makers.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the literature on how actors manage competing logics in an organizational field. The authors do so by introducing the concept of organizational irony to the literature on how to manage competing logics, and analyze a collaborative cultural project encompassing actors subjected to competing institutional logics.

The case study is built on qualitative data from in-depth interviews, newspaper articles and observations.

The authors describe and analyze a cultural project encompassing actors subjected to competing institutional logics and show how they responded to institutional pressures in their environment with the use of organizational irony. Thereby, the actors could collaborate with actors subjected to a competing institutional logic and still maintain adherence to their respective institutional logic.

Most studies of how to manage competing logics asserts that one logic will prevail over a competing one, either through “battles” or gradual dominance (Reay and Hinings, 2009). This study supports and adds to Reay and Hinings’ (2009) finding that actors also can collaborate and maintain adherence to their respective logic under such circumstances. In particular, it supports two identified mechanisms of how this can be achieved, namely, to separate decisions and to jointly innovate in experimental sites. It also adds to these mechanisms by showing that this can be done through the use of organizational irony. The authors only study one cultural project in one organizational field. It remains unclear if these findings are common in other cultural projects or in other organizational field, and the authors therefore encourage other researchers to extend or challenge the findings of this study.

The authors believe that the analysis and findings can be useful for politicians to take into account and address either to minimize the risk of organizational irony or on the contrary encourage it as a source of reflexive critique of society and cultural politics. The authors also believe that the response of organizational irony to institutional pressures broadens the acting space of cultural actors, provide media and critics with an analytical tool to analyze and deconstruct practices that otherwise would risk to be silenced or neglected. Finally, the authors believe that an analysis of organizational irony has the potential to make people attend to contradictions and multiple meanings in the artworks under study in a novel way.

The paper provides an intriguing and complex empirical case to demonstrate how actors manage competing logics in an organizational field through the production of organizational irony. The authors believe that its theoretical contributions and practical implications can inspire future research on how paradoxes can be managed through the use of organizational irony in other projects and organizational fields.

Analysis of organizational decline has become central to the study of economy and society. Further advances in this area may fail however, because two major literatures on the topic remain disintegrated and because both lack a sophisticated account of how social structure and interdependencies among organizations affect decline. This paper develops a perspective which tries to overcome these problems. The perspective explains decline through an understanding of how social ties and resource dependencies among firms affect market structure and the resulting behavior of firms within it. Evidence is furnished that supports the assumptions of the perspective and provides a basis for specifying propositions about the effect of network structure on organizational survival. I conclude by discussing the perspective's implications for organizational theory and economic sociology.

Old age is a complex and dynamic phenomenon. The relationship between old age and transport is also very complex due to the heterogeneity within this age group. Yet what is certain is that with age, a person’s functional abilities change. This chapter provides a summary of how older people can be vulnerable within the road environment. Using an established framework for understanding old-age vulnerabilities, this chapter explains the common exposure factors and threats that several older people face in the transport environment. These primarily deal with individual physical and cognitive characteristics, medical conditions as well as the appropriateness (or not) of infrastructure. Subsequently, common difficulties for older drivers, pedestrians and public transport users are discussed. The main vulnerabilities that result from such difficulties are related to an over-representation of older people in accidents and to a lower quality of life due to mobility inefficiencies. Yet, using the same framework, the compensation techniques that older people often adopt to minimise such limitations are also highlighted. Reference is also made to the issues related to the lack of awareness in old age and the corresponding inability to compensate. The review concludes by suggesting a way forward for further studies on transport vulnerability in later life.

In the last 10 years or so, a growing body of research has highlighted the importance of social movements as the mechanism through which fields change or new fields emerge. This article contributes to this body of research by studying how an organization was able to promote institutional change from the center of a field by channeling the legitimacy generated by local religious movements. Data comes from the archives of a special commission within the Catholic Church that developed rules for adjudicating miracles performed by candidates to sainthood. The social movement is composed of candidates and their supporters who mobilized local communities using miracles. The period of the analysis was the aftermath of the Protestant Schism, when long-established practices and beliefs were fundamentally challenged. By approving miracles that created ties between individuals that spanned across kinship and social status boundaries, the commission was able to channel legitimacy into the wounded core of the Church. At the same time, receiving Rome’s approval reduced the competition the candidate’s supporters faced from other religious activists. The noncontentious interaction that occurred between the two actors gave birth to the field of modern sainthood. The main implication for organization theory is that, even in the absence of conflict, a new environment and ideology can emerge endogenously from the center of a field and transform both the organization and the social movement.