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The current push for small firms to be “wired up to the digital marketplace” is evidenced by the number of initiatives targeting small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) to promote this activity. Like other governments worldwide, UK Online’s SME targets (together with the supporting DTI adoption ladder) exemplify the “conventional wisdom” view of a homogeneous small business sector, within which firms take an ordered, sequential progression on the route to Internet technology adoption. This approach is questioned by grounding the official rhetoric in the reality of organisational and operational complexity of this important sector of the UK economy. These initiatives are compared and contrasted with similar models of small firm development, most of which neglected to address the diverse nature of small firm needs. The authors recommend a more discriminant approach, focused upon factors such as firm size, age, managerial structure and information and communications technology adoption stages.

This paper aims to use (in)visibility as a lens to understand the lived experience of six women managers in the headquarters of a large multinational organization in the UK to identify how “gender” is expressed in the context of organizational learning.

The researchers take a phenomenological approach via qualitative data collection with a purposeful sample – the six female managers in a group of 24. Data were collected through quarterly semi-structured interviews over 12 months with the themes – knowledge, interaction and gender.

Organizations seek to build advantage to gain and retain competitive leadership. Their resilience in a changing task environment depends on their ability to recognize, gain and use knowledge likely to deliver these capabilities. Here, gender was a barrier to effective organizational learning with women’s knowledge and experience often unseen and unheard.

This is a piece of research limited to exploration of gender as other, but ethnicity, age, social class, disability and sexual preference, alone or in combination, may be equally subject to invisibility in knowledge terms; further research would be needed to test this however.

Practical applications relate to the need for organizations to examine and address their operations for exclusion based on perceived “otherness”. Gendered organizations cause problems for their female members, but they also exclude the experience and knowledge of key individuals as seen here, where gender impacted on effective knowledge sharing and cocreation of knowledge.

The study offers further evidence of gendered organizations and their impacts on organizational effectiveness, but it also offers insights into the continues social acceptance of a masculinized normative model for socio-economic practice.

This exploration of gender and organizational learning offers new insights to help explain the way in which organizational learning occurs – or fails to occur – with visibility/invisibility of one group shaped by gendered attitudes and processes. It shows that organizational learning is not gender neutral (as it appears in mainstream organizational learning research) and calls for researchers to include this as a factor in future research.

UK higher education has faced an unprecedented period of change due to multiple UK governmental policies over a short period – coupled with demographic change and the vote to leave the European Union. This pressures universities to meet third mission aims by engaging effectively with society and business, generating income in the process to address reduced funding. Support from the UK Government includes over 20 years of funding for universities to develop entrepreneurial structures and processes, termed entrepreneurial architecture (EA). While the government regularly collects data on funds generated through third mission activities, less is known about how EA is perceived by those inside the university. The purpose of this paper is to meet that gap by exploring the perspectives of those employed specifically as part of EA implementation, as knowledge exchange intermediaries.

The study takes a phenomenological approach to achieve deeper insights into those routines and norms resulting from the application of EA. This is a purposeful sample with what is reported to be an under-researched group (Hayter, 2016); those employed as internal knowledge intermediaries across 15 universities (two from each). These university employees are specifically charged with business engagement, knowledge exchange and research commercialization; their contracts are funded and designed as a part of the EA rather than for research or teaching. An initial pilot comprising four semi-structured interviews indicated suitable themes. This was followed up through a set of three interviews over 18 months with each participant and a mapping of EA components at each institution.

Despite EA strategies, the picture emerging was that universities had embedded physical components to a greater or lesser degree without effective social architecture, shown by conflicts between stated and actual routines and norms and by consistent barriers to third mission work. Power and perceived power were critical as participants felt their own worth and status was embedded in their senior manager’s status and power, with practical difficulties for them when he or she lost ground due to internal politics.

The benefits of this study method and sample include deep insights into the perspectives of an under-reported group. The purposeful sample might be usefully expanded to include other countries, other staff or to look in depth at one institution. It is a qualitative study so brings with it the richness, insights and the potential lack of easy generalizability such an approach provides.

In designing organizations to achieve third mission aims, EA is important. Even where the structures, strategies, systems, leadership and culture appear to be in place; however, the resulting routines and norms may act against organizational aims. Those designing and redesigning their institutions might look at the experience suggested here to understand how important it is to embed social architecture to ensure effective actions. Measuring cultures and having this as part of institutional targets might also support better results.

Governments in the UK have invested resources and funding and produced policy documents related to the third mission for over 20 years. However, the persistent gap in universities delivering on policy third mission aims is well documented. For this to change, universities will need to ensure their EA is founded on strong underlying supportive cultures. Knowledge sharing with business and community is unlikely when it does not happen in-house.

The study adds new knowledge about how EA is expressed at individual university level. The findings show the need for more research to understand those routines and norms which shape third mission progress in UK universities and how power relations impact in this context, given the pivotal role of the power exerted by the senior manager.

This micro‐level view of information and communication technology (ICT)‐related decision‐making processes in particular female “knowledge” firms offers areas for further review, research and discussion. Internally focused, these firms reflect earlier studies recommending support for female networking to develop competitive advantage, since fewer sources of ideas, advice, and information may mean that options are limited when problems arise outside previous organisational experience. ICT adoption relied on family and friends rather than professional support. Similarly, Internet use to scope the market or source information was also limited. Further research is suggested to explore management practices within established female‐run firms, and in firms run by teams rather than single owners, to develop deeper understanding of the processes at work and how to support change and development in such firms.

In this article, three established small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises provide qualitative case study evidence of the extent to which information communications technology can be embedded within a firm’s marketing strategy, from the earliest adoption stages to the integration of the Internet with key business functions. These case studies also provide insights into the innovative ways that can be used to reposition a firm, its marketing strategy, services and products, both within the national and the global marketplace. Established firms, in addition to new businesses and industries, could gain considerable competitive advantage from Internet usage, if they can achieve the right mix of managerial capacity and marketing focus in terms of image, brand and customer needs. Their human resource base could allow such firms to “reinvent” themselves, mainly by effectively accessing and embedding new knowledge. It emerged that organisational culture facilitates and supports the wider access and application of new knowledge through organisational learning mechanisms.

The decline of the British public house (pub), well documented over the past three decades, is often linked to detrimental social and economic conditions in communities. The purpose of this study was to explore brewery responses to turbulent market conditions for the pub trade, with a focus on innovation through design.

A longitudinal, qualitative study was conducted over 12 months, with 4 months of close participant observation within the company, to explore the experiences of a design team located within a medium-sized UK brewery.

The “pubscape” emerged, extending and augmenting earlier models of the “servicescape”, driven by an entrepreneurial shared vision recognising the importance of design and innovation in delivering the modern pub.

A single case – one brewery – formed the basis for a longitudinal qualitative study, with the associated benefits and disadvantages typical of single case research in providing insights rather than measurable outcomes. Other cases and other research methods would allow testing of ideas, rather than exploration, and generate different perspectives.

The research indicates the value of adopting an entrepreneurial approach to address challenging trading conditions and shows the practical role that design can play in rethinking service offerings to fit consumer needs and aspirations.

New insights into modern pub management have emerged from this study, positioning design innovation as a route to delivering successful British destination pubs by innovating while retaining traditional brand values and local identity markers, using the “pubscape” as a specific way to envisage innovative servicescape environments.

Both the incidence of planning and the identification of female successors were lower than anticipated in this study of 128 companies with less than 50 employees. No company selected a female successor despite strong existing candidates, whether relatives or internal managers. Daughters were inappropriate for succession – they were “too good” for the workplace or were “doing something better”, i.e. teaching, health care, etc. Although female relatives benefited from resources for holidays or home improvements, only male relatives were seen as “heirs apparent” in terms of work status and treatment. Female relatives were neither developed nor encouraged as managers, despite frequently acting as mentors and trainers for the selected male successor. Views of successors and non‐successors are expressed and concerns for policy‐makers identified given the potential disappearance of firms without successors, and the neglect of available potential female managers.

As part of a larger study, owner‐managers of 128 small firms were asked about the learning taking place in their firms. Their responses were compared to those of key workers and supportive documentation. As a result of discrepancies in responses, owners and managers identified ways in which they had “bent the rules” on occasion to take advantage of funding opportunities, hence the gap between statements and reality. Explores descriptions given by some owners and managers as to how this “fudging the paperwork” had occurred, either in accessing funding or in complying with statutory health and safety or licensing requirements and the reasons behind this. Finds that workplace imperatives had undermined the way in which learning was perceived and carried out and had caused operatives to misrepresent data (without their necessarily agreeing with this practice). Discusses the implications for those studying small firm’s workplace learning practices and proposes further research to test these findings.

For the past several decades women have been moving into the United States workforce in greater numbers and they have been gaining access to the types of jobs that were, traditionally, performed exclusively by men. Despite this progress, they are still having difficulty penetrating the so‐called “glass ceiling” into upper management positions (Alimo‐Metcalfe 1993; Tavakolian 1993). Many reasons have been advanced, but the most compelling of these concerns the “glass walls” that support the “glass ceiling”. The “glass walls” refer to those invisible barriers that limit the ability of women and minorities to gain access to the type of job that would place them in a position to break through the “glass ceiling” (Townsend 1996). If women are to gain parity with men in the workforce, they need to succeed in the positions that lie inside the “glass walls” that will enable them to rise through the “glass ceiling” to upper management.