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The purpose of this paper is to assess the main implications for innovation and competitiveness of social computing trends that promote swift social and economic relations. They are increasingly being considered by policymakers, both as tool and object for policymaking (i.e. how social computing could play a role in information society policies). Therefore, a general issue for the paper is represented by the lessons to be learned in terms of policy‐related consequences for Europe.

The paper is based on an extensive desk‐based survey of secondary data available from reports, studies and most recent statistics, from internet audience measurement companies, international research companies, research projects of non‐profit centers, international firms or the industry itself.

The diffusion and usage of social computing applications have been growing at an exponential rate. A powerful feature emerges, i.e. the new user as supplier, co‐producer or innovator of the service. New areas of innovation lie at the crossroads of an increasingly complex process of both tacit and codified knowledge production. They affect the way people find information, learn, share, communicate and consume and the way business is done. New players and markets provide significant threats and opportunities for the ICT and media industries. New players have a smaller cost base, viable business models and a real market.

Comparative and systematic research of the fast growing social computing trends is needed over longer periods of time.

The paper provides the first evidence on the size and weight of these trends, as well as on their social and economic relevance. It raises the need for more research, e.g. on the areas that would be most impacted and to what extent, as well as a wealth of policy‐related research questions.

Since social computing is an emerging phenomenon, the work is innovative and novel because it attempts to draw a first solid overall picture of the development of these trends.

Meta-organizations are crucial devices to tackle grand challenges. Yet, by bringing together different organizations, with potentially diverging views on these grand challenges, meta-organizations need to cope with the emergence of contradictory underlying social orders. Do contradictory orders affect meta-organizations’ ability to govern grand challenges and if so, how? This paper investigates these essential questions by focusing on the evolution and intermeshing of social orders within international governance meta-organizations. Focusing on the International Whaling Commission and the grand challenge of whale conservation, we show how over time incompatible social orders between the meta-organization and its members emerge, evolve and clash. As our study shows, this clash of social orders ultimately removes the “decidability” of certain social orders at the meta-organizational level. We define decidability as the possibility for actors to reach collective decisions about changing an existing social order that falls under a collective’s mandate. We argue that maintaining decidability is a key condition for grand challenges’ governance success while the emergence of “non-decidability” of controversial social orders can lead to substantial failure. We contribute to both the emerging literature on grand challenges and organization theory.

Digitalization has become more central in organizations than ever before. Traditionally, organizations were places where employees spent most of their time. With digital organizations, working life has become flexible in terms of time and space, and the way of doing work has changed radically. While it has become difficult for employees to keep up with technological change and transformation, various digital conflicts related to technology have emerged within the organizations. This chapter deals with digital conflicts that occur in digital organizations. Digital conflicts could affect both the efficiency of organizations and the attitudes and perceptions of employees toward the organization. However, studies on the understanding of digital conflict management in digital organizations are quite limited. In this chapter, therefore, the causes and organizational consequences of digital conflicts in terms of organizational behavior are reviewed. The study indicates that digitalization, which is expected to increase workplace effectiveness and efficiency, could lead to destructive conflicts if not managed well, reducing socialization and job satisfaction of employees. The study also has shown that a well-managed digitalization process could increase efficiency and productivity for digital organizations and could increase job satisfaction by providing flexibility to employees. The chapter ends with suggestions for digital organizations to manage digital conflict management successfully.

The testing of measurement invariance is important in cross-cultural research to establish whether the psychometric properties of an instrument remain valid and reliable across different sample groups as these assumptions are rarely tested statistically. The purpose of this paper is to determine the factorial invariance of the employee engagement questionnaire across the various race groups by means of structural equation modelling.

Cross-sectional and descriptive research designs were followed in this study in the form of non-probability, convenience sampling to attract a sample of 1,175 employees in financial institutions. The employee engagement instrument (EEI) was electronically administered to 285,000 people who form part of a research database.

The results confirmed the reliability and validity of the instrument as determined by the exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Lastly, the results indicated that invariance can be assumed across race groups for financial institutions.

It is important for organisations to take cognisance of how specific socio-demographic variables influence the measurement of employee engagement, in this case race. The conclusion reached was that the EEI can be used with confidence in the financial sector for future employee engagement assessments.

These findings add to the current body of literature that exists on employee engagement and race in the South African work context and addresses one of the complexities assessment practitioners might have to comply with regarding questionnaire validity across race groups.

Disasters continue to be most prevalent and severe for marginalised communities. To reach those furthest behind first, as the global community pledges in the 2030 Agenda, a critical assessment of equity in disaster risk governance is necessary. Yet, the understanding of factors that mediate the capacity of the governance processes to achieve equity ambitions is limited. This paper addresses this gap by proposing and testing a conceptual framework to assess equity in disaster risk governance.

The framework analyses the extent to which institutional relationships and data in risk governance support inclusion and diversity of voice and enable the equitable engagement of communities. The study applied the framework to key risk policies across governance levels in Brazil and Colombia.

The study finds that institutional awareness of cross-sectoral and -scalar coordination clearly exists. Yet, the engagement of actors further down the governance scale is framed reactively at all scales in both countries. The analysis of the risk data practices indicates that although data integration and sharing are key policy priorities, the policies frame the relations of disaster risk data actors as hierarchical, with data needs determined from the top down.

A key contribution of this framework is that its equity view results in a nuanced analysis, thus pointing to the differences between the two countries concerning the factors that mediate these challenges and providing specific entry points for strengthening equity in risk governance policies.

The purpose of this article is to investigate the communicative constitution of organizational inclusion and/or exclusion through humorous acts at the expense of members of minorities and/or historically disadvantaged groups.

Semistructured interviews with 84 employees in Austria and Germany dealing with their experiences regarding diversity and inclusion (D&I) at work were conducted and analyzed in two steps. First, a thematic text analysis was performed to structure the content and identify relevant themes and anecdotes for further analysis. Second, a ventriloquial analysis sought to identify the physically absent yet present voices in these anecdotes.

The interviews revealed that jokes and quips mostly target colleagues of observable foreign origin. The analysis further identified three themes that show that disparaging humor can simultaneously reinforce inclusion/exclusion across hierarchies and create boundaries within teams – but in different ways. The findings also indicate that above all prejudices “participate” in such events and that in most cases the collective is invoked to increase the joke's “authority”.

This research is the first one that investigates humor in the context of D&I through a communicative constitution of organization (CCO) lens, which facilitates studying the constitutive character of humorous communication in terms of inclusion and exclusion. Moreover, this is one of the first empirical humor studies to draw on established theory-driven concepts of inclusion-exclusion in its analysis.

A mainstay of conventional trade theory, the Heckscher‐Ohlin theorem, dates back to an article published in 1919 by the Swedish economist Eli Heckscher. Bertil Ohlin, a student of Heckscher's, developed the ideas in greater detail in 1933. A footnote in an article by Stolper and Samuelson specifically designated the “Heckscher‐Ohlin theorem” as such.

The purpose of this paper is to present, analyse and demonstrate the impact and potentials of a pragmatically derived information technology (IT) governance framework, IT4IT™, for the discipline of management of technology (MoT) especially within the IT industry.

This paper is based on an extensive literature study working with the limitations of the relatively recent publication of IT4IT™ and the normative character of IT4IT™. A mixed-method case study is presented based on an IT service provider organisation. Both a qualitative method and a systems and design oriented method are being used.

IT4IT™ can provide value and a clearer understanding of the service delivery framework if the technological core of the focal organisation is adapted to a value stream thinking. This suggests a more operational character of all IT processes and analogue to general MoT frameworks and corporate governance models.

Given the recent publication of the IT4IT™ framework, this study is primarily ex ante and suggests further full-scale ex post research in the future.

Validation and successful implementation of the IT4IT™ framework will give companies better opportunities for safe and controlled value creation using IT. Control connects with risk reduction and less risk can encourage innovation and “tame” development complexity. Using value streams will align IT better with manufacturing and services.

Companies are striving to seek governance and risk minimisation in IT development and operations. This paper is discussing the applicability of the IT4IT™ framework for finding a better understanding of the value creation and value proposition delivered by introducing controlled processes minimising risk.

In this article, we explore some of the barriers that prevent learning about grand challenges. By grand challenges, we refer to transformational social and environmental issues and the critical barriers toward addressing them. Despite recent research contributions, initiatives, and calls for action to focus on such concerns, relatively little is known about the different barriers that hinder learning about grand challenges. To explore these issues, we draw from Rayner’s (2012) concept of uncomfortable knowledge, defined as knowledge that is disagreeable to organizations because it may challenge their value base, self-perception, organizing principles, or sources of legitimacy. Focusing on the example of recent programmatic attempts to advance “responsible education” in business schools, we identify three barriers to learning about grand challenges: Cognitive overload, emotional detachment, and organizational obliviousness. We conclude by outlining several implications on how to overcome these barriers, adding to recent academic and policy debates on how to make business school education more attuned to the transformational and social challenges of our time.