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The paper aims to analyse how the medical profession, the pro‐competition organisation, and the rural community have responded to the rural doctor shortage with reference to international medical graduates (IMGs) as reported in Australian newspapers.

Utilising the commercially available database LexisNexis during 2003, the author keyed in “overseas trained doctors” and retrieved 641 Australian newspaper articles. The qualitative data analysis software NVivo2 has assisted the author to organise the data, informed by critical realism and narrative analysis.

While the medical profession is undoubtedly committed to serving the health needs of the Australian public, the medical community is less than united in addressing the rural doctor shortage, especially through the employment of large numbers of IMGs. The handling of IMGs has led to tensions not only between the locally trained and IMGs, but also between rural and non‐rural doctors, and between younger and established doctors. The medical professional institutions seemed relatively detached from the adverse consequences of the shortage of doctors in the rural community. This contrasts the efforts demonstrated by the Rural Doctors Association and the rural community.

This paper concludes with a critical realist and narrative analysis and resolving of the rural doctor shortage and recommends close communication and consultation among the diverse interest groups rather than their engaging in blaming one another. This would be an obvious starting point to address the rural doctor shortage, which may partly be achieved by the effective use of services by IMGs.

To critically analyze why the implementation of self‐managed teams often leads to disappointment.

The methodology used is qualitative. It is based on the theory of microstoria (Boje) and entails in‐depth interviews and dialogue to collect data.

The introduction of the new concept (self‐managed teams) did not start an intensive management discourse. Management largely discussed the concept and decided to implement it, without consulting the employees who had to work with the concept. This led to misunderstandings and resistance to the concept of self‐managing.

The research was conducted in only two organisations.

The primary reason why the concept was poorly implemented was that management did not understand the process of shared meaning. Creating a proper “dialogue” is important for implementing new management concepts.

This paper offers a social constructionist point of view to critically evaluate new management concepts such that they do not become fads.

The purpose of this study is to examine the fulfillment of Panda’s mission statement in the organization’s macro and minor storytelling and provide a close look at the function of the organizational culture to enhance the fulfillment of organization missions. The study employs qualitative methodology and participant observation to inspect the fulfillment of Panda’s mission statement in the organization’s macro storytelling first. The fulfillment of the mission statement in the micro storytelling is examined at a local store. By comparing the macro and the micro storytelling, the study presents the consistency and inconsistency of fulfillment of the organization’s mission statement at different hierarchies of the organization. Lastly, the study discusses the function of organizational culture in enhancing the fulfillment of the mission statement of the organization. The first finding of this study is that there are consistencies and inconsistencies in fulfilling Panda’s mission statement in its macro- and micro-level storytelling. The second finding of the study readdresses that organizational culture can work as a buffer to enhance the fulfillment of the mission statement and mitigate the inconsistency between the macro and micro storytelling.

Cyber-attacks that generate technical disruptions in organisational operations and damage the reputation of organisations have become all too common in the contemporary organisation. This paper explores the reputation repair strategies undertaken by organisations in the event of becoming victims of cyber-attacks.

For developing the authors’ contribution in the context of the Internet service providers' industry, the authors draw on a qualitative case study of TalkTalk, a British telecommunications company providing business to business (B2B) and business to customer (B2C) Internet services, which was a victim of a “significant and sustained” cyber-attack in October 2015. Data for the enquiry is sourced from publicly available archival documents such as newspaper articles, press releases, podcasts and parliamentary hearings on the TalkTalk cyber-attack.

The findings suggest a dynamic interplay of technical and rhetorical responses in dealing with cyber-attacks. This plays out in the form of marshalling communication and mortification techniques, bolstering image and riding on leader reputation, which serially combine to strategically orchestrate reputational repair and stigma erasure in the event of a cyber-attack.

Analysing a prototypical case of an organisation in dire straits following a cyber-attack, the paper provides a systematic characterisation of the setting-in-motion of strategic responses to manage, revamp and ameliorate damaged reputation during cyber-attacks, which tend to negatively shape the evaluative perceptions of the organisation's salient audience.

This paper aims to offer an analysis of the British Petroleum (BP) Prudhoe Bay environmental disaster. The primary purpose is to elucidate the fivefold of antenarrative in sensemaking environmental accidents. The analytic framework enables organization to envision futures where they want to be, and work to get there as more socially responsible companies.

The authors conducted an intertextual analysis of texts by ascribing voice and affiliation to each antenarrative. The multiple voices and antenarratives quoted within the texts were compared and coded and theme analysis was conducted over time to understand dynamics and see if organizational learning was occurring.

The antenarrative method generated several findings: BP is faulty beneath in how they conceive of safety, lacking foresight. BP executives leave out elements of safety, a fore having that does not include what needs to be prepared for. BP foretells that it is socially responsible, yet the reality of events seems contradictory. Within fore structure, some of BP’s leaders deny or ignore claims of critics through intertextual connections of events. By fore caring, BP mediates the problem in response to the disaster and critics. Their sensemaking in this case is more retrospective and reactive than prospective.

Organizations can avoid environmental disasters and negative backlash by adopting practices that provide more transparent discourse and greater accountability. The fivefold of antenarrative serves as a storytelling framework to promote care by using trial and error problem solving on future bets.

To date, few intertextual analyses have been performed to study organizations. By applying a fivefold antenarrative storytelling framework, which reflects new advances in storytelling theory, the authors offer an original perspective on environmental accident sensemaking.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a reflexive commentary on the nature and validity of actionable knowledge from the authors’ experience with action research in New Mexico and beyond.

The authors have situated their localized experience in the history and theory of the broader field of action research by posing the question of whether the validity of action research depends more upon the observer's worldview than upon the quality of change in the lives of those involved in the intervention.

Three fundamental tenets of action research are identified. A pragmatic perspective underlies the need for locality grounded criticality in reflection, instrumental participation leading to trust and genuine understanding of behavior, and a shared desire to actualize untapped human potential to solve a problem.

The paper offer's reflection on the validity of actionable knowledge from the authors’ experience, supported by a brief case example to illustrate the dialogical convergence of theory and practice. Thus, this perspective may not be relevant and useful to all readers.

Reflection, regardless of when or how long it takes, is an essential catalyst in the transition of actionable knowledge into change.

The article attempts to separate a few essential elements of action research from the accumulated bits of technique, personal beliefs, ideology, and collected experiences that practitioners and theorists have attached to the question of validity and utility of knowledge produced by action research.

Does the self-employed nature of entrepreneurs’ business ventures mean that they have perfect boundaries between their work and nonwork lives? Drawing on border theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine entrepreneurs’ work–life balance (WLB) in terms of how they construct and manage the borders between their work and nonwork lives.

The authors adopt a qualitative research approach to enhance their insight into entrepreneurs’ WLB using border theory. The study benefits from its empirical focus on Nigerian migrants in London who represent a distinct minority group living in urban areas in the developed world. Data for the study was collected over a three-month period, utilising semi-structured interviews as the primary method of data collection.

The study’s findings indicate that entrepreneurs prioritise “work” over “life” and reveal that entrepreneurs have little desire for boundaries as they work everywhere, which makes long working hours prevalent among them. Furthermore, the findings bring to the fore the prevalent social anomaly of entrepreneurs preferring to be unmarried, single and even divorced as a result of or associated with the entrepreneurs’ boundaries creation and management.

The extent to which the findings of this research can be generalised is constrained by the limited and selected sample of the research.

Research on human resource management (HRM) in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or businesses in which entrepreneurs operate is still under developed. The issue of the size and the nature of an organisation (i.e. labour or product market influences, ownership structures, etc.) have profound implications for human resources (HR) structures, policies and practices and the quality of the WLB of entrepreneurs. Research on HRM and entrepreneurship is still evolving. Consequently, HRM in several entrepreneurial business ventures is sometimes (if not often) organisationally fluid and ad hoc. The main implication for this work environment is that there may be little structure in HRM policies and processes to help self-employed entrepreneurs in their ability to comprehensively manage border crossing and to achieve WLB.

This paper provides valuable insights into entrepreneurs’ work/nonwork boundaries, which is hugely influenced by the commodification of time and money. It also enriches work–life border theory and its social constructionist perspective.