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The inconsistency between the appearance of incoherence and chaos in the US policymaking process bringing about a historic record of legislative achievements in the 1960s and 1970s, on the one hand, and the emergence of hierarchical order bringing about a prolonged period of legislative impotence in the early 2000s, on the other hand, has led legislative scholars to revisit strongly held prior beliefs about legislative organization. Similar reevaluations of the garbage can model that emphasize the potential for conflict-ridden and chaotic organizations to be adaptively rational are ongoing in organizational theory. This paper adapts recent research on organizational design to explore the conditions under which decentralized, chaotic decision making facilitates more desirable legislative outcomes than centralized decision making controlled by a benevolent dictator. The author demonstrates that normative claims about legislative organization – much like normative claims about organizational design – should vary depending on the task environment faced by the legislature. In the face of rugged uncertainty in the mapping from policies to outcomes, decentralized decision making among modestly polarized legislators with fluid participation in decisions facilitates a functional mix of exploitative and exploratory search.

Patient handoffs involve the exchange of information between health professionals accompanying a transfer of responsibility for, or control of, a patient. Concerns over the safety risks of poor handoffs have resulted in regulatory pressure to standardize practice and considerable growth in research. But handoffs involve more than information transfer, and their consequences for health care organizations extend beyond the safety of patients. Using an organization theory lens, we review the literature on handoffs and propose a framework that characterizes handoffs as multifunctional, situated organizational routines. We also identify implications for researchers and hospital policymakers. Standardization and improvement efforts run the risk of causing unintended problems if they overlook the complexity of handoff and the larger organizational functions it serves. Deepening our understanding of the multifunctional, situated nature of handoff can lead to improvement efforts that not only safeguard individual patients, but also enhance the capabilities of the larger health care organization.

The purpose of this paper is to explore critically the potentially harmful business of professional wrestling in the USA as state-corporate crime.

This paper comprises desk-based research of secondary sources. The lack of official data on the harms experienced by professional wrestlers means that much of the data regarding this is derived from quantitative and qualitative accounts from internet sites dedicated to this issue.

A major finding is that with regard to the work-related harms experienced by professional wrestlers, the business may not be wholly to be blamed, but nor is it entirely blame free. It proposes that one way the work-related harms can be understood is via an examination of the political economic context of neo-liberalism from the 1980s onwards and subsequent state-corporate actions and inactions.

The paper raises questions about the regulation of the professional wrestling industry together with the misclassification of wrestlers’ worker status (also known as wage theft and tax fraud) and the potential role they play in the harms incurred in this industry.

The potential wider social implications of the misclassification of workers are raised.

The originality and value of this paper is the examination of work-related harms within the professional wrestling industry through the lens of state-corporate crime.

It is important to understand the organizational structures and decision making processes in the university and their relationship to the CWIS. This article describes, reviews and summarizes March and Cohens’ theories on the university as a structured anarchy. It also raises a list of questions that CWISs struggle with regularly which may be best answered by this theory. A second part of the article describes the companion theory of garbage can decision making proposed by March, Cohen and Olsen. Besides proposing the decision making model, March and Cohen even offer tactics to use in a structured anarchy that can enhance chances of success. Although CWIS problems seem dominated by management of technical questions, the authors feel that the ability to understand the organizational model of an institution and to manage the decision making process may be equally important to success as technical expertise is.

The main task of scholars is to help good ideas forged by their predecessors find a new life in the imaginations of their successors. In this essay, we consider some aspects of this process from our experience with garbage can ideas of organizational decision making. We record our memories of initial encounters with them, impressions of their current condition, and some thoughts on convolutions they may experience in the years ahead.

“Rational planning models” emerged in the early 1970's as a means by which to plan more effectively and efficiently in educational organizations. One of the most well known and widely distributed of these models was developed by Phi Delta Kappa, the educational fraternity. This paper describes a field study conducted in five Vermont schools that were “early users” of the Phi Delta Kappa material. The outcomes reveal many discrepancies between the theory and the reality of planning in public schools. In addition to the Vermont research, other research is cited that supports many of the findings and relates them to planning in schools in general. The article concludes by linking the study outcomes to recent works by other authors on the emerging concepts of loosely coupled systems, garbage can organizations, and organized anarchies and implications these concepts hold for alternative approaches to planning in educational settings.

This paper aims to address one of the fundamental issues of gathering existing knowledge/solutions from projects for re-use in other projects, that is, contextual elements that are integrated with the knowledge. Contextual elements that are associated/integrated with knowledge do not often taken into consideration adequately during knowledge transfer. Hence, this can lead to undesirable consequences, for example, unnecessary use of time and resources. This paper will increase the awareness of (and lead to finding appropriate ways to) dealing adequately with contextual elements in knowledge transferring processes.

Qualitative method: narrative literature study.

This paper provides a conceptual understanding of dealing with contextual elements in knowledge transferring processes from the sense making perspective.

This paper, which is connected to a research and development (R&D) project that has recently started, uses this paper to emphasize the importance of addressing contextual elements adequately in knowledge transferring processes. This emphasis is important as this R&D project deals with, among other things, collecting lessons learned on energy efficient solutions from building and renovation projects for re-use in other renovation projects.

This paper will contribute to replicate knowledge / lessons learned effectively and to increase the application of energy efficient solutions in building renovation projects.

This paper attempts to point out and increase our understanding on how acquisition of knowledge at an earlier point of time can influence transferring of that knowledge at a later point of time. In general, there is inadequate focus and awareness on this issue in construction projects.

John D. Blair examines, in systematic detail, the challenges and opportunities that arise from the significantly different perspectives of context-specific versus context-free researchers and the literatures to which they contribute. He argues that reviews of one type or the other or both types of literatures may provide different understandings of the state of the art in a particular area of health care management. He also provides some detailed suggestions for writing quality reviews along with suggested topics for future reviews.