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I aim to understand how informal relationships at work provide a supportive context for individuals and contribute to their engagement in an environment of disruptive change when they are likely to be stressed.

The research was conducted in three UK public service organizations during pre-Brexit disruption. An app was used to capture 400+ transient emotions, reactions, and diary entries of employees about their interactions with co-workers, colleagues, and close colleagues. This was followed by 25 interviews to reflect more deeply on those relationships documented in the app.

Interactions with co-workers, colleagues, and close colleagues are shown to contribute in different ways to emotions felt and different aspects of engagement. Closer relationships, less transactional and more emotional in nature, contribute to feelings of trust, significance, and mutual reliance. A typology of four close colleague relationship types also emerged variously driven by the depth of the relationship and sense of shared mutuality.

This research documents employees' lived experience during disruption to show that relationships provide support for the meaningfulness, psychological safety, and availability aspects of personal engagement. It maps the process of developing supportive workplace relationships that form the relational context with four sub-contexts, distinguishing work, and personal engagement by their different foci. Practical and social implications are discussed.

The proliferation of bibliometric review articles is a true reflection of how bibliometrics is gaining popularity and has been widely adopted in various disciplines. The growing interest of scholars has encouraged us to dwell upon the what, why, when, how, and where of bibliometric literature reviews. The study explained the bibliometric review with the standpoint that it can be considered a strong review method for analyzing a large volume of data and scholars can supplement their traditional reviews with bibliometric reviews to strengthen their knowledge. This will help researchers to justify the (a) need for a study on the particular topic; (b) type or method of review chosen; (c) number of articles selected; (d) inclusion and exclusion criterion; (e) method of analysis; and (f) presentation of the findings.

Critical thinking is a challenging term to describe but considered necessary for academic achievement, success in the global job market, and essential in developing a life-long learner (Dwyer, Hogan, & Stewart, 2012). Many definitions exist, but some of the components include the ability to analyse, reflect, judge, and strategise in a systematic way, to be able to solve problems (Dwyer et al., 2012). Some of the definitions, taxonomies, models, and theories of critical thinking have been built by Western culture, and the United States contributes information towards this Western approach (Nicholas & Raider-Roth, 2016; Wang, 2017). These definitions, taxonomies, models, and theories make a significant contribution to the pedagogical approaches to the teaching of critical thinking in the United States. This chapter details the structures that support the definitions of critical thinking and the history of the connections between critical thinking and classroom instruction in the United States.

Critical thinking is a necessary construct for twenty-first century learning and discussed in scholarly professional literature and popular media (Dwyer, 2017). The term is a part of the twenty-first century four Cs of learning: collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking (Cunningham, 2018). The teaching of critical thinking can be challenging, and this chapter presents an overview of some helpful pedagogical approaches, including project-based learning, project-based design, e-learning, and active learning and descriptions of instructional pedagogy including the general, infusion, immersion, and mixed approaches (Abrami et al., 2008; Dwyer, 2017; Ennis, 1989; Marin & Halpern, 2011; Willingham, 2008). Quality assurance is an essential component in ensuring pedagogical approaches to critical thinking are effective. The contribution of core standards in the teaching of critical thinking in the United States will be discussed.

The objective of this chapter is to interpret a supply chain as an ontological entity with being-in-the-world of spacetimemattering. A case study approach is adopted to reveal the strategies undertaken by one of China’s fastest growing Internet companies – Xiaomi Inc. – to create competitive advantage through its management of product design and supply chain integration. Utilizing publicly available data, we analyze the company with quantum storytelling and network analysis techniques. Our analysis concludes that Xiaomi’s success originates from two aspects. First, Xiaomi is a good storyteller, who makes stories appealing to customers by involving them into product design and branding. Second, Xiaomi’s parsimonious supply chain substantially improves its market responsiveness and reduces disruption risks; more importantly, it helps to offer products of great value to customers.

In an era of unprecedented technological innovation and evolving user expectations and information seeking behaviour, we are arguably now an online society, with digital services increasingly common and increasingly preferred. As a trusted information provider, libraries are in an advantageous position to respond, but this requires integrated strategic and enterprise architecture planning, for information technology (IT) has evolved from a support role to a strategic role, providing the core management systems, communication networks and delivery channels of the modern library. Furthermore, IT components do not function in isolation from one another but are interdependent elements of distributed and multidimensional systems encompassing people, processes and technologies, which must consider social, economic, legal, organisational and ergonomic requirements and relationships, as well as being logically sound from a technical perspective. Strategic planning provides direction, while enterprise architecture strategically aligns and holistically integrates business and information system architectures. While challenging, such integrated planning should be regarded as an opportunity for the library to evolve as an enterprise in the digital age, or at minimum, to simply keep pace with societal change and alternative service providers. Without strategy, a library risks being directed by outside forces with independent motivations and inadequate understanding of its broader societal role. Without enterprise architecture, it risks technological disparity, redundancy and obsolescence. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this conceptual chapter provides an integrated framework for strategic and architectural planning of digital library services. The concept of the library as an enterprise is also introduced.

Purpose – To show how Hayek's work on cognitive theory can inform our understanding of the operation of the firm, more specifically the ability of firms to engage in organizational learning.

Methodology/approach – After reviewing Hayek's cognitive theory, the paper provides a brief overview of modern organization theory, focusing on the post-Coasean literature and the “resource-based view” of the firm specifically. I then offer several analogies between the two theories, arguing that the “map” and “model” of Hayek's work on cognition can be analogized to the balance sheet and the current budget/business plan of the firm.

Findings – I find that the “map” and “model” of Hayek's work on cognition can be analogized to the balance sheet and the current budget/business plan of the firm. The feedback between the model's encounters with the external world and the map's structuring of the classificatory process of the mind parallels the way in which firms' success or failure feedback to the evaluation of their assets. The paper also discusses the way in which the competitiveness of the individual's and the firm's environment might matter for the speed and effectiveness of learning processes.

Research limitations/implications – I conclude with some suggestions for further research, focusing on questions of political economy and how a more politicized marketplace might undermine organizational learning when seen through the lens of Hayek's work. Specifically, the paper argues for comparative explorations of different organizational structures in similar institutional environments and similar structures in different institutional environments to see which sort of factors matter for organization learning. One implication of the paper is that less competitive environments should demonstrate weaker and slower organizational learning.

Originality/value of paper – Hayek's work on cognitive theory has never been applied to organizational learning in any sustained way before. In doing so, this paper draws out some original research questions and political economy implications.

This paper explores whether and what kind of distance can be considered a relevant factor for managers of multinational enterprises (MNEs). In the so-called era of globalization, traditional measures such as geographical, cultural or psychic distance have become less relevant or surrounded by growing ambiguity. Instead, institutional distance, governance or administrative distance have been introduced as variables in understanding success or failure of MNEs. Relative institutional distance, thereby, proves more important than absolute distance. This paper argues that further advances in international management studies critically depend on whether it is possible to, first, move the study of internationalization from ‘factors’ to ‘actors’ and, secondly, add societal relevance to managerial relevance. Now and in the future, therefore, two final dimensions of distance are increasingly relevant: stakeholder distance and normative/development distance.

As libraries endeavor to respond quickly to changing business conditions, even those libraries with well-organized hierarchies find themselves in difficulty. Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps in their book “Virtual Teams,” state that hierarchies “use force to defend resources, maintain social ability and control technology” (Lipnack & Stamps, 2000, p. 145), and this characteristic causes the further slowing down of new developments. As a result, public libraries are placed at a disadvantage as they struggle to meet today’s challenges and prepare for the future. Libraries are coming to realize, as many businesses already have, that hierarchies may no longer be the best model for successful operation in a rapidly changing environment.

Our primary objective is to provide method-related broad guidelines to researchers on the entire spectrum of issues involved in cause mapping and to encourage researchers to use causal mapping techniques in strategy research. We challenge strategists to open the black box and investigate the mental models that depict the cause and effect beliefs of managers, “walk” readers through the causal mapping process by discussing the “nuts and bolts” of cause mapping, provide an illustration, and outline “key issues to consider.” We conclude with a discussion of some promising research directions.