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While more and more organizations commit to transformation projects with the aim of redesigning simultaneously their workspaces, work organization, and technologies, the design process supporting such projects remains largely understudied. This paper examines the political tensions that occur when such processes unfold as well as their implications for project management. By doing so, the paper counterbalances the prescriptive and normative literature on “New Ways of Working” which largely overlooks the political complexity of such projects.

The paper is based on a qualitative study of a triple design process in a media company. Data collection mainly consists of a nine-month process of non-participant observation of weekly meetings held by the strategic group in charge of the project. Semi-structured interviews with members of the executive committee have also been conducted.

The analysis illustrates how space, organization and technology are gradually designed and structured. Four interconnected and often concealed mechanisms that support triple design processes are identified: political tensions, unexpected twists, conflicting temporalities and arbitration measures.

The originality of the paper lies in breaking down the concept of design in three separate objects – organization, space and technology – and examining how these objects were conjointly problematized by an organization in transformation, whereas existing studies often investigate organization design, space design or technology design in isolation.

Several studies have recently documented projects of organizational transformation and modernization which, commonly clustered under the umbrella term “New Ways of Working” (NWoW), simultaneously entail material, technological, cultural and managerial dimensions. Academic contributions, however, have paid little attention to the mechanisms allowing such projects to progressively become legitimized in organizational discourses and practices. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the distinctive features of the legitimation process underlying the implementation of NWoW projects.

This paper relies on a longitudinal, three-year analysis of a large insurance company. Data were collected through qualitative methods including semi-structured interviews (48), periods of observation (3 months) and document analysis (78).

The paper develops a grounded and integrative framework of legitimation processes underlying “NWoW” change projects. The framework emphasizes four decisive operations of translation in “NWoW” design and implementation: translating material constraints into strategic opportunities; translating strategic opportunities into a quantitative business plan supported by the top management; translating compelling discourses around “NWoW” into an organizational machinery; and translating a transformation project into discourses of unequivocal success, conveyed by legitimate spokespeople within and beyond the organization.

Besides contributing to the understanding of a managerial fashion, which has received little academic attention so far, the paper also offers an original integrative framework to account for legitimation processes that combines two theoretical approaches – the sociology of translation and research on institutionalist work.

Increasingly, emerging information technologies such as shared software and continuous accounting are offering alternative ways to perform accounting tasks in a supposedly more efficient fashion. Yet, few studies have investigated how they affect the provision of accounting services, especially in the context of small accounting firms, which provide legal and tax services to entrepreneurs and businesses. Drawing on the service perspective, the paper critically examines how technological innovation challenges and reconfigures the co-production of accounting services in these firms.

The paper answers calls issued in prior studies to conduct empirical research on emerging information technologies for accountants. It focuses on the specific context of small accounting firms and draws on interviews with small accounting firms' managers (n = 20).

The study emphasizes five significant challenges that accounting firm managers face when using information technologies to support the provision of their services (ensuring reliability, factoring in their heterogeneous client base, repricing, training clients to use new technologies and promoting advisory services). Information technologies are shown to have a structuring role in the co-production of accounting services, as they lead to reconfigurations of the relationships between accountants and their clients. A range of four configurations is developed to highlight accountants' strategies to maintain collaborative relationships with their clients while integrating new technologies into their work practices.

By conceptualizing accounting services as a co-production process, the paper offers new insights into the implications of emerging information technologies for small accounting firms.

This paper aims to analyze the adoption process of human resource information systems (HRIS) from a supply-side perspective emphasizing the practices of HRIS vendors and consultants. It aims to counterbalance the existing literature on HRIS, which has overwhelmingly studied HRIS adoption from the customer organization's viewpoint, hence systematically downplaying the active role of vendors and consultants in adoption processes.

The research has been conducted on the HRIS market of the Benelux (Belgium–The Netherlands–Luxemburg) from a constructionist and exploratory perspective. The structure and dynamics underlying the market are gradually unveiled through open interviews with HRIS vendors and consulting firms (n = 22).

The paper reveals how the social shaping of HR innovations takes place and identifies nine types of pressures exerted by HRIS vendors and consultants on customer organizations: assessing, advising, advertising, case-building, demonstrating, configuring, accompanying, sustaining and supporting. Taken together, these pressures demonstrate the systematic presence and active role of external actors throughout the adoption process of HRIS within firms.

It is suggested that further supply-side studies of innovation diffusion processes of HRIS should be conducted to complement the existing, demand-side literature. In this view, emphasis should be set on technology providers and their ongoing interactions with customer firms.

The analytical precedence given to supply-side actors allows to conceptualize HRIS adoption as the dynamic result of negotiations between three groups of actors (HRIS vendors, HRIS consultants and customer firms), hence resulting in a more comprehensive and holistic view of HRIS adoption processes.

Recent studies on contingent workers highlight their boundaryless and protean nature, and depict them as free agents who reject organisational forms of career support. Going beyond such current view, this paper aims to shed light on the career support provided by labour market intermediaries (LMIs) to skilled contingent workers (SCWs), the latter known as freelancers and consulting firms' employees.

Using a qualitative stance and an inductive approach, the authors draw on 33 interviews to grasp SCWs' discourses on the career support offered by LMIs, and their account managers. The thematic analysis reveals two main themes: the career support delivered by LMIs to SCWs, and the expectations of SCWs regarding potential additional forms of career support from LMIs.

The authors show that SCWs are supported by LMIs in their career via a number of career management practices and operational support, and account managers a likely to play a key role in the careers of SCWs by providing transactional and relational career support. Moreover, the authors stress that SCWs are free agents, yet seeking for forms of support from LMIs.

The present paper addresses the roles of LMIs regarding non-standard population of workers through the lens of SCWs, what has barely been undertaken in recent research. This paper also enriches current debates on the organisational support SCWs are willing to accept and benefit from, despite the idiosyncratic nature of their careers.