Search results

The purpose of this paper is to capture legitimising principles of recent successions to the throne through narrative time. Further, this study considers leaders’ sense-giving to succession.

This research applies a “temporal narrative analysis” to explicate legitimising principles of narrative time in three recent case studies of royal succession: the kingdoms of Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands.

The findings show that royal successions in three modern European constitutional monarchies are legitimised through giving sense to narrative time. The legitimacy of timing succession is embedded in multiple temporal narratives, in which heirs apparent are brought forward as the new generation who will modernise the monarchy.

The paper presents an innovative conceptual framework of sense-giving to succession through narrative time. This framework will be helpful to scholars who aim to grasp legitimising principles of temporal narration in leadership succession.

This paper aims to identify antecedents that influence perceived cleanliness by consulting experts and end-users in the field of facilities management (facility service providers, clients of facility service providers and consultants). Business models were evaluated to understand why some antecedents are adopted by practitioners and others are not.

A qualitative study, with end-users (n = 7) and experts (n = 24) in the field of facilities management, was carried out to identify antecedents of perceived cleanliness. Following the Delphi approach, different research methods including interviews, group discussions and surveys were applied.

Actual cleanliness, cleaning staff behaviour and the appearance of the environment were identified as the three main antecedents of perceived cleanliness. Client organisations tend to have a stronger focus on antecedents that are not related to the cleaning process compared to facility service providers.

More (visible) cleaning, maintenance, toilets, scent, architecture and use of materials offer interesting starting points for practitioners to positively influence perceived cleanliness. These antecedents may also be used for the development of a standard for perceived cleanliness.

A basis was created for the development of an instrument that measures perceived cleanliness and includes antecedents that are typically not included in most of the current standards of actual cleanliness (e.g. NEN 2075, ISSA).

In this chapter, we analyze the interactions between local governments and citizens’ initiatives. In the Netherlands, local governments take up the role of civic enabler based on a modest approach that leaves citizens room to invent and design initiatives on what they deem to be public issues by facilitating and activating their efforts. We focus on how a proactive form of this approach toward citizens’ initiatives in deprived neighborhoods affects citizen–government relations. Our research is based on a case study in the city of Amsterdam. We find that particularly more women and migrants took up a wide variety of initiatives, which suggests that the neighborhood approach is more inclusive than deliberative approaches. We also find that initiators developed a positive attitude toward public institutions that enable them and that they started to see frontline workers as collaborators in their initiatives with whom they could have personal and authentic interactions, as opposed to the cool bureaucratic response from government officials that they were used to. To close the chapter, we discuss some risks of the proactive enabling approach, we compare our findings to problems that citizens’ initiatives often face during their interactions with local institutional actors in the Netherlands found in other literature, and we briefly discuss possible implications of practicing a modest enabling approach for developments in governance.

The purpose of this paper is to present a systematic literature review on stimulus, organism and response variables related to actual and perceived cleanliness and develop a conceptual framework to encourage future research on cleanliness.

The PRISMA statement methodology for systematic literature review was applied. After analysing 926 articles, 46 articles were included and reviewed.

Stimulus, organism and response variables related to cleanliness were identified and integrated in a conceptual framework. A distinction was made between articles evaluating the relationship between stimulus and organism variables; stimulus and response variables; and organism and response variables. First, actual cleanliness, staff behaviour, condition of the environment, scent and the appearance of the physical environment were identified as stimuli variables influencing perceived cleanliness and service quality. Second, the presence of litter, behaviour and presence of others, scent, disorder, availability of trash cans and informational strategies were identified as stimuli affecting littering and other kinds of unethical behaviour. Third, the effect of perceived cleanliness (and other organism variables) on satisfaction, approach behaviours, physical activity and pro-social behaviour was registered.

The findings of this review allow in-house and corporate facility managers to better understand and identify most effective interventions positively influencing actual and perceived cleanliness.

No systematic literature review on antecedents and consequences of a clean environment has previously been conducted.

One ambition of most mid-career MPA programmes is to combine the attainment of an academic master degree with a qualitative leap in professional skills and functioning. This ambition requires that academic insights and methods be sensibly linked to real-life professional contexts and challenges. This chapter develops a rationale to enhance conditions and mechanisms that help to produce such linking, based on insights in professional learning.

Two methods used in the mid-career MPA programme at Erasmus University Rotterdam to help students to establish such links will be discussed. The first method involves an evolving personal learning agenda and the second method involves peer-to-peer coaching. Both methods will also be used to evaluate the added value of the programme for the professional functioning of the students.

The MPA programme makes students link theory to their own real-life practice and changes their perspective on analysis and professional intervention. Often, however, these new perspectives are quite general in nature, not taking much account of the specific context. Thorough lecturer feedback and training in peer consultation may help students to become more reflexive and to develop better situation-specific strategies.

The findings point to the need for further development of didactical strategies.

The chapter analyses professional added value of an academic programme.

Students should be able to use the case study in debate apply theories relating to the subjects specified.

The case is based on a fictitious South African company going through emergency response conditions analogous with what many businesses are encountering during the COVID crisis. The protagonist is struggling with structural challenges imposed on the business by unpredictable and uncontrollable external pressures and needs to make transformative decisions which might impact the culture, organisational design and digitisation of the business.

Post-graduate general management.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS: 7 Management Science.

Information system projects often go awry and when they do internal auditors are often in a position to bring the problems to management’s attention. However, managers are not always receptive to risk warnings, even when internal auditors who are role prescribed to carry out this function deliver such warnings. This phenomenon is known as the deaf effect. This paper aims to examine the actions that internal auditors take to resolve the deaf effect and how these actions affect the auditor–manager relationship.

Based on a multiple case study approach, the authors conducted in-depth interviews with auditors and examined ten cases of the deaf effect from the auditor’s perspective.

The findings revealed three categories of actions that auditors took in response to the deaf effect and how these actions immediately affected the auditor–manager relationship. Further, by analyzing the subsequent sequence of actions taken by the auditor in each case, the authors identified three distinct patterns that capture the dynamics of the auditor–manager relationship over time until the deaf effect was, ultimately, resolved.

Several practitioner studies have shown that internal auditors and managers struggle to build effective relationships, even under the most favorable circumstances and the authors suggest that deaf effect situations are likely to pose an even greater challenge to the auditor–manager relationship. The study contributes to the discourse on internal audit effectiveness in several ways. First, the authors identified three categories of actions that internal auditors took in response to the deaf effect. The authors found that two of these categories of action are related to the two distinct roles that internal auditors can play (inspector or consultant). Second, the authors examined how these categories of actions played out over time, influencing the auditor–manager relationship dynamics.

This chapter explores how experimental learning and transfer of learning can be designed in professional Master of Public Administration (MPA) programmes when external conditions constrain the application of learning formats that require the personal contact of students and/or the cooperation of the student’s employer.

The authors conduct a single case study of the professional MPA programme at the University of Kassel in Germany. The programme is based on the principles of blended learning with a high share of online teaching. The analysis is based on semi-structured interviews with students, document analysis and practical experience by one of the authors.

The study shows that attempts of bridging theory and practice have proved challenging in the past, which has, for instance, resulted in changes of course modules aiming directly at linking both domains. The findings are presented and discussed in the light of three different perspectives: (1) learning outcomes of professional MPAs and the theory-practice-nexus in a systems theory perspective; (2) the impacts of administrative culture; and (3) didactical/micro-level perspective. Furthermore, recommendations for practical purposes are derived.

The exploratory study does not provide strong generalisable results but aims at enriching the academic discussion as well as points to solutions for the practice.

Beyond useful insights on how (elements of) experimental learning are or might be implemented in the PA masters’ programme under study, the chapter offers a more generalised discussion of the challenges contextual factors might pose to the implementation of experimental learning formats and discusses possible solutions to overcome such challenges.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify which knowledge, skills and behaviors are used to describe excellent performance in professional communication. As the demand for talented communication professionals increases, organizations and educators need an empirically defined set of performance criteria to guide the development of (potentially) excellent communication professionals (ECPs). This research aimed to render a competence profile which could assist in the development of recruitment, training and development to develop relevant programs for high-potential communication practitioners.

This mixed-method research was approached in two phases: first, a series of focus groups (n=16) were held to explore work field perspectives resulting in a concept profile, and second, a series of expert panels (n=30) following the Delphi method were conducted to determine the extent of agreement with the findings.

Participants clarified that excellent performance is characterized by competences which transcend normative technical skills or practical communication knowledge. The five domains, 16 item “SEEDS” competence profile describes that ECPs are distinguished by their compounded ability to be strategic, empathic, expressive, and decisive and to see patterns and interrelationships.

Although a broad range of relevant professionals were involved in both phases, the study could be considered limited in size and scope. Research was conducted in one national setting therefore further research would be necessary to confirm generalizability of the results to other cultural contexts.

Although many competence frameworks exist which describe normative performance in this profession, specific criteria which illustrate excellent performance have not yet been identified. This competence profile clarifies characteristics which typify excellent performance in professional communication and can be helpful to educators and employers who wish to identify and create suitable training programs for ECPs.

This article discusses the effects of “Napster‐like” clone programs on the future of academic e‐books. This review will, first, catalogue the rise and fall of Napster and the development of clone programs that facilitate peer‐to‐peer file sharing; second, examine the main methods by which e‐books are placed on the Web; third, discuss piracy and the subsequent legal issues of intellectual property. Finally, the concept of e‐books in the world of academic publications will be analysed.