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The article examines strategies of human resource management in the absence of institutional hedging by norm-enforcing institutions such as a state monopoly of violence by using case studies of criminal organizations. This condition provides a test-bed for studying the effects of human relations management strategies on organizational performance.

For this purpose, a case study methodology is applied. Three cases are selected to build a scale from complete plasticity of an undifferentiated network via a status differentiated gang to a hierarchical organization that provides social positions. The case studies are analysed by qualitative content analysis, network analysis and agent-based simulation.

An undifferentiated network based on informal trust lacks mechanisms for conflict resolution. This is a highly vulnerable organizational structure. While a status differentiated gang is more resilient towards internal conflicts, its activities remain dependent on individually accumulated social capital. This organizational structure is not resilient over generations of actors. A hierarchical organization provides highest degree of structural resilience up to a level of a system of self-organized criticality.

The study of human relations management outside the legal world provides insights into the basic mechanisms and functional effects of organizational activity.

This viewpoint article is concerned with an attempt to advance organisational plasticity (OP) modelling concepts by using a novel community modelling framework (PhiloLab) from the social simulation community to drive the process of idea generation. In addition, the authors want to feed back their experience with PhiloLab as they believe that this way of idea generation could also be of interest to the wider evidence-based human resource management (EBHRM) community.

The authors used some workshop sessions to brainstorm new conceptual ideas in a structured and efficient way with a multidisciplinary group of 14 (mainly academic) participants using PhiloLab. This is a tool from the social simulation community, which stimulates and formally supports discussions about philosophical questions of future societal models by means of developing conceptual agent-based simulation models. This was followed by an analysis of the qualitative data gathered during the PhiloLab sessions, feeding into the definition of a set of primary axioms of a plastic organisation.

The PhiloLab experiment helped with defining a set of primary axioms of a plastic organisation, which are presented in this viewpoint article. The results indicated that the problem was rather complex, but it also showed good potential for an agent-based simulation model to tackle some of the key issues related to OP. The experiment also showed that PhiloLab was very useful in terms of knowledge and idea gathering.

Through information gathering and open debates on how to create an agent-based simulation model of a plastic organisation, the authors could identify some of the characteristics of OP and start structuring some of the parameters for a computational simulation. With the outcome of the PhiloLab experiment, the authors are paving the way towards future exploratory computational simulation studies of OP.

This paper uses a historical case study, the controversy over the possibility of climatic extremes caused by hydrogen bomb tests on Pacific Ocean atolls during the 1950s, to show how, in a context of few scientific data and high uncertainty, political affiliations and public concerns shaped two types of argumentation, the “energy” and the “precautionary” arguments.

Systematic analysis of publications 1954–1956: scientific and semiscientific articles, publications of C.-N. Martin and contemporary newspaper articles, especially from the Asia–Pacific region.

First, epistemological and scientific reasoning about the likelihood of extreme natural events aligned to political convictions and pressure. Second, a geographical and social distribution of arguments: the relativizing “energy argument” prevailed in English-language scientific journals, while the “precautionary argument” dominated in popular journals and newspapers published worldwide. Third, while the “energy argument” attained general scientific consensus within two years, it lost out in the long run. The proponents of the “precautionary argument” raised relevant research questions that, though first rejected in the 1950s, later exposed the fallacies of the “energy argument” (shown for the case of the climatologist William W. Kellogg).

In contrast to the existing secondary literature, this paper presents a balanced view of the weaknesses and strengths of two lines of arguments in the 1950s. Further, this historical study sheds light on how once-discarded scientific theories may ultimately be reconsidered in a completely different political and scientific context, thus justifying the original precautionary argument.

The Australian higher education sector faces severe risks from the consequences of COVID-19. This paper aims to explore these risks, their immediate impacts and the likely future impacts. The authors specifically focus on the institutional financial and social risks arising from the global pandemic.

The authors collect data using the 2019 annual reports of the 37 Australian public universities and relevant media contributions. The findings of identified sector change are interpreted through Laughlin’s organisational change diagnosis.

The sector confronts significant financial and social risks because of its over-reliance on income from fee-paying onshore overseas students resulting in universities primarily undertaking morphostatic changes. These risks include job losses, changing employment conditions, mental health issues for students, scholars, other staff, including casual staff, online learning shortfalls and the student expectations of their university experience. The study reveals how many of these risks are the inevitable consequence of the “accountingisation” of Australian public universities.

Despite material exposure, the universities provide only limited disclosure of the extent of the risks associated with increasing dependence on overseas student fees to 31 December 2019. The analysis highlights fake accountability and distorted transparency to users of audited financial statements – a major limitation of university annual reports.

Research on the Australian higher education sector has mainly focussed on the impact of policies and changes. The public disclosure of critical risks taken by these universities are now addressed.

The purpose of this study was to examine the concept of value in healthcare through a practical appraisal of the applicability of a conceptual framework, which is aimed at supporting the measurement and realisation of financial benefits from process improvement (PI) activities in a hospital setting.

A single case study of a hospital system in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, was used to assess the applicability of the framework. The study sought to verify the framework's intention, that PI methods could be used to address known wastes that contribute to the cost of providing healthcare. The case study examines the current approach taken by the hospital to measure and realise financial benefits from PI activities and compares these to the components of the Strategy to Balance Cost and Quality in Health Care framework to assess its applicability in practice.

The case study revealed that the steps described in the framework were fundamentally in place albeit with some variation. Importantly, the case study identified an additional step that could be added into the framework to support hospitals to better define their portfolio of initiatives to deliver value. The case study also clarified three types of contributory elements that should be in place for the application of the framework to be successful.

The Framework to Achieve Value in Healthcare is offered to hospitals as a model by which they can look to reduce expenditure through the removal of non-value adding activities. The modification to the conceptual framework has arisen from a single case study and would benefit from further testing by other hospitals in other policy settings (i.e. other countries).

This is the first paper to examine and enhance an existing framework to assist hospitals balance cost and quality through PI.

This paper aims to explore the experiences, attitudes and expectations of higher education managers in relation to the increased use of metrics. Specifically, the authors examine a system of metrics which was introduced as part of the process for establishing Technological Universities in Ireland.

A total of 12 managers were interviewed. The authors present data from the interviews in which the authors explore: the previous use of metrics; the impacts of the introduction of metrics; and the future use of metrics. A mix of narrative structuring and thematic analysis is used.

The introduction of metrics evokes a mixed reaction from the managers. The metrics allow performance in a range of activities to be measured, assessed and benchmarked. However, there are both direct and indirect impacts of the transition to a metric-based system, which the authors explore using six themes.

The authors apply the Academics Responding to Change model proposed by Trowler (1998) as the theoretical lens. This helps to capture the complex mix of direct and indirect effects that metrics can have on activities both at an individual and institutional level.

In detailing the crimes against humanity committed by the Nazi regime before and during the Second World War, Breton and Wintrobe (1986) Breton and Wintrobe describe the Nazi bureaucracy as a flexible microstructure that zealously carried out the “Final Solution” to the “Jewish question”. In this model of bureaucracy, superiors accomplish their aims not by dictating rigid top‐down orders to passive subordinates, but by allowing competition among parts of the bureaucracy and trading “informal services” for “informal payments” over time. The present research adds to the Breton‐Wintrobe argument by presenting anecdotal/empirical evidence showing how the murder of 6 million Jews was carried out in a flexible organization, wherein subordinates devised creative solutions to the “Jewish question”. Also provides evidence detailing how the quid pro quo operation resulted in dramatic payoffs for those subordinates proffering the most creative and/or efficient solutions.

This paper aims to be a theoretical examination of the role of individuals in sponsoring and facilitating effective, systemic change in organisations. Using reports of a number of high‐profile initiatives to improve patient safety, it seeks to analyse the role of individual health care professionals in developing and facilitating new systems of care that improve safety and quality.

The paper uses recent work in sociology that is concerned with the phenomenon of “sociological citizenship”. The authors test whether successful initiators of change in health care can be described as sociological citizens. This notion of sociological citizens is applied to a number of highly successful initiatives to improve safety and quality to extrapolate the factors associated with individual clinician leadership, which may have affected the success of such endeavours.

In each of the examples analysed the initiators of change can be characterised as sociological citizens. In reviewing the roles of these charismatic individuals it is evident that they see the relational interdependence between the individuals and organisations and that they use this information to achieve both professional and organisational objectives.

The paper uses a case study method to investigate the usefulness of the role of sociological citizenship in interventions that aim to improve patient safety. The paper reviews the key concepts and uses of the concept of sociological citizenship to produce a framework against which the case studies were assessed.

The authors suggest that a goal of policy for improving patient safety should be directed to the problem of how hospitals and health care organisations can create the conditions for encouraging the individual diligence and care that is needed to support reliable, safe health care practices.

Improving the safety and quality of health care is an important public health initiative. It has also proven to be difficult to achieve sustained reductions in the harm caused by the occurrence of adverse events in health care. The process of linking individual diligence with service outcomes may help to overcome one of the enduring struggles of health care systems around the world: the policy‐practice divide.

The paper directs attention towards the role of sociological citizenship in health care systems and organisations.