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Several studies have recently documented projects of organizational transformation and modernization which, commonly clustered under the umbrella term “New Ways of Working” (NWoW), simultaneously entail material, technological, cultural and managerial dimensions. Academic contributions, however, have paid little attention to the mechanisms allowing such projects to progressively become legitimized in organizational discourses and practices. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the distinctive features of the legitimation process underlying the implementation of NWoW projects.

This paper relies on a longitudinal, three-year analysis of a large insurance company. Data were collected through qualitative methods including semi-structured interviews (48), periods of observation (3 months) and document analysis (78).

The paper develops a grounded and integrative framework of legitimation processes underlying “NWoW” change projects. The framework emphasizes four decisive operations of translation in “NWoW” design and implementation: translating material constraints into strategic opportunities; translating strategic opportunities into a quantitative business plan supported by the top management; translating compelling discourses around “NWoW” into an organizational machinery; and translating a transformation project into discourses of unequivocal success, conveyed by legitimate spokespeople within and beyond the organization.

Besides contributing to the understanding of a managerial fashion, which has received little academic attention so far, the paper also offers an original integrative framework to account for legitimation processes that combines two theoretical approaches – the sociology of translation and research on institutionalist work.

This issue of Library Hi Tech contains a series of articles about the TULIP materials science journal access project, an unprecedented cooperative undertaking involving Elsevier Science Publishing and a number of major universities in the United States.

This paper aims to investigate business network activity patterns and how they change when actors experience tensions.

Four tensions, developed from previous literature, are considered in relation to how they influence activity patterns. A longitudinal case study focusing on the modernization of an international airport illustrates how tensions experienced by actors influence changes in activity patterns.

Results highlight that when tensions in relation to network position are experienced activity patterns are more likely to break and form new patterns. When multiple tensions are experienced within the same period, an old activity pattern is more likely to be broken and the new activity pattern develop.

Contributions in relation to interdependencies between activities heighten the impact of changes leading to the breaking of existing patterns, particularly the importance of coordination activities. These findings are context specific because activity patterns vary according to the industry.

Practical implications indicate that understanding network interdependences within the change process is important, particularly for co-ordination activities. The study informs practitioners about possible outcomes while tensions are experienced. This study found that when actors are experiencing multiple tensions, breaking of activity patterns is more likely to occur while experience less tensions extending existing activity patterns becoming more likely.

Contributions are made in relation to gaps in investigating the business network activity layer and their changes in relation to tensions.

This paper uses the ideas and concepts of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and aims to to examine how accounting works in the context of international development.

A case study approach within El Salvador is used. Data sources include archival documents, 35 semi‐structured interviews with field participants, and participant observations. The focus is on the activities of the Inter‐American Development Bank (IDB) and the United Nations Development Agency (UNDP) in the country of El Salvador, showing how complex assemblages of people, technologies such as accounting, and discourses such as accountability come to claim or “territorialize” particular physical and discursive spaces.

The analysis highlights how accounting and its associated actors further the development aspirations of loan beneficiaries; yet at the same time contribute to the “over‐organization” of these actors' social space.

The paper illustrates that the concepts of Deleuze and Guattari – assemblage, desire, Bodies without Organs, and lines of flight to name a few – open up for consideration and analysis a series of field‐specific processes that have previously been largely un‐explored within the accounting literature.

The purpose is to explore the role of international financial institutions (IFIs) during public financial management reform in a transitional economy. In particular, the study focuses on interaction between external enablers and local actors.

The paper is based on a qualitative study of public financial management reform in Ukraine during 1991–2014. This period is divided into stages corresponding with two projects financed by the World Bank: “Treasury System” and “Public Finance Modernization.”

First, IFIs supported a Ukrainian economy weakened by financial crisis and insisted on a comprehensive reform of public financial management to facilitate recovery. By strategically addressing local challenges, eliminating local uncertainties and maintaining stable interactions, IFIs gained support from the central government. Local actors continued the reform by negotiating with other actors and getting quorum support. In the second stage, IFIs could not implement planned changes. Even though the change was well-perceived at the beginning, developed tensions between local actors were overlooked by IFIs, which resulted in loss of commitment of the State Treasury representatives. The continuous political instability in Ukraine constrained interaction between IFIs and the Ministry of Finance and reduced political will for conducting reforms.

The study contributes to the debate on the adequacy of externally driven public management reforms in developing countries by exploring actions and interactions of global and local actors during the change in public sector practices.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that the application of social policy in the North East of England is often characterised by tension and conflict. The agencies and professionals charged with implementation of Westminster driven policies constantly seek to deploy their knowledge of local conditions in order to make them both practical and palatable.

This paper examines the region via established literature from history, geography, sociology and social policy. The paper gives illustrations via empirical work which has evaluated initiatives to improve the health of long term health-related benefit recipients and to sustain individuals in employment in the region.

Central to the paper’s argument is the notion of “biographies of place”. The core of this idea is that places have biographies in the same way as individuals and possess specific identities. These biographies have been shaped by the intersections between environment, history, culture and economic and social policy. The paper identifies the region’s economic development, subsequent decline and the alliance of labour politics and industrial employers around a common consensus that sought economic prosperity and social progress via a vision of “modernisation” as a key component of this biography.

The paper argues that an appreciation of these spatial biographies can result in innovative and more effective social policy interventions with the potential to address issues that affect entire localities.

Since 2009, e-government has been high on governmental agenda in Bangladesh. Seen as a vehicle for improving governance and service delivery, it is also presented as a key to fighting poverty and achieving the millennium development goals. Thus, the goals of e-government remain broad and ambitious. Can a developing country such as Bangladesh realize its e-government vision? The purpose of this paper is to explore this and other related questions seeking to draw lessons that the Bangladesh experience may offer.

The paper draws primarily on secondary information, complemented by primary data gathered from various sources. In addition to an extensive review of secondary sources, necessary information was derived from websites of relevant government departments/agencies and through interviews and conversations with selected government officials having intimate knowledge on e-government projects at the field and local levels.

The paper demonstrates the ways in which various e-initiatives have transformed traditional administrative systems and practices, notwithstanding the nation’s limited overall e-development. It also shows how e-innovations have helped tackle some complex challenges, thereby adding to convenience and benefits to service users. A major conclusion of the paper is that although e-government is yet to make a breakthrough in governance and service delivery, it has set the wheels of change in motion.

E-government must be seen as a long term project, it must attract high-level political support and it requires fruitful collaboration between the public, private and non-governmental actors.

This paper adds to the limited knowledge in the field. Lessons learned from the Bangladesh experience have much relevance to other developing countries with similar socioeconomic circumstances. The policymakers and practitioners are expected to benefit from the insights of the paper.

Traditional “hierarchical” and “network-centric management” approaches often associated with the management of well-defined construction projects lack the adaptability to cope with uncertainty, standardised practices and the required conformance to industry standards. The purpose of this paper is to propose an integrative “holonic” methodology for the management of megaprojects in the construction industry, which incorporates both adaptability and conformance to standards, and to illustrate the associated benefits of such a methodology.

A multi-case study comprising three cases delivered in the USA and Australia, namely the Adelaide Desalination Plant (ADP), the Seattle–Tacoma International Airport, and the Olmsted Locks and Dam Replacement project were utilized to demonstrate the key features of the hierarchical, network-centric and holonic approaches to managing megaprojects.

The case studies demonstrate incorporating the holonic approach into the management of complex construction projects results in increased management effectiveness and project success. The proposed “holonic” methodology provides the potential to efficiently manage megaprojects navigating through high degrees of uncertainty.

The adoption of the holonic view by project management (PM) practitioners will help them manage megaprojects that are characterised by greater complexity. Second, the proposed methodology enables the discipline of PM to evolve in alignment with rapidly unfolding global transformation trends.

This paper demonstrates the application of the “holonic” methodology to the domain of the management of construction megaprojects. Such an approach is needed as construction projects become increasingly more complex across the world due to technological, political and social uncertainties, larger scale, changing environmental and safety regulations, and the growing involvement of human factors germane to this research.

This paper aims to highlight the recruitment practices in the records management (RM) profession in Jamaica’s public sector and their implications for professional practice. This paper is part of a larger doctoral study completed at the University College London that investigated the connection between RM education and national development.

The research is a qualitative mixed methods study, which mainly utilises data from 34 interviews done among RM practitioners and educators, and development administrators and analysts in Kingston and Spanish Town, Jamaica.

The study found that there is an urgent need for a change in how RM practitioners are recruited for their roles in Jamaica’s public sector. More coherent frameworks and a more coordinated effort are required to support for the recruitment of practitioners.

This research is specific to the Jamaican case; therefore, it provides little basis for generalisation. Consequently, the study seeks to make no claims that the results in the Jamaican context are generalisable to other societies. Nonetheless, the conclusions and recommendations may be instructive in other environments.

The study evaluated some of the existing practices for the recruitment of RM practitioners. As a result, the findings should enhance the knowledge about the human resources needs in RM in Jamaica.

In addition to providing some directions for future research, the study also gives voice to a diverse group. It brings together an analysis of national discourses around RM recruitment practices. This is done through the multifaceted views of Jamaican RM practitioners, development administrators and RM educators represented in the interviews.