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This conceptual paper aims to develop a multi-level mental health management framework for project management practitioners (PMPs) in architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) project organizations through organizational design theories to extend current knowledge on mental health by revealing organizational, project and external environmental factors contributing to mental health management in AEC project organizations.

A systematic literature review was adopted to propose a theoretical model that integrated five organizational design theories: institutional theory, agency theory, resources-based theory (RBT), contingency theory and complexity theory.

The model reveals permanent organization, project organization and external environment factors for mental health management in AEC project organizations. It further proposed hypothetical interrelationships between elements of permanent organization, project organization, external environment and mental health management indicators to unravel the resultant effects of the interactions on mental health of PMPs.

This research contributes to the body of knowledge by developing a multi-level mental health management framework that identify and shows how combination permanent organization, project organization and external environment elements impact mental health of PMPs in AEC project organizations. It offers a model that offers guidance to practitioners on permanent organization and project organization management practices that can be implemented to improve mental health.

Managing internal supply chains is becoming increasingly complex, requiring managers to balance diverse needs. As a result, managers continuously face the need to change how they organize their internal supply chains. The purpose of this paper is to examine this phenomenon by addressing why multinational supply chain management organizations (SCMOs) change their designs, as well as how managers respond to pertinent change phenomena using complementary theoretical perspectives.

Qualitative data, collected from 50 executives within 24 multinational manufacturers, is used to develop an understanding of the organizational design change phenomena. A theory elaboration approach is taken to illustrate how various theoretical perspectives explain organizational design change.

This study identifies and elaborates organizational design change phenomena in the context of multinational SCMOs, including internal and external drivers of design change. Managers also discussed key supply chain management capabilities that were developed in order to meet perceived changes in business needs.

This study contributes to academic understanding of organizational design issues affecting SCMOs. Four theoretical perspectives are elaborated upon to illustrate their applicability for examining SCMO organizational design issues.

This study provides managerial application of several organizational design change theories by elaborating principles for framing, interpreting, and implementing design change initiatives in internal SCMOs.

This is one of the first studies to investigate organizational design change in multinational SCMOs. This research highlights the complexity and evolving nature of SCMO organizational design decisions by describing the adaption, integration, and reconfiguration of firm resources and competencies in changing environments.

The purpose of this paper is to show how the viable system model (VSM) and de Sitter's design theory can complement each other in the context of the diagnosis and design of viable organizations.

Key concepts from Beer's model and de Sitter's design theory are introduced and analyzed in order to show how they relate.

The VSM provides insight into the related systems necessary and sufficient for viability. As such, it specifies criteria supporting the diagnosis and design of organizational infrastructures, i.e. of organizational structures, HR systems, and technology. However, it does not explicitly conceptualize and provide a detailed heuristic for the design of organizational structures. De Sitter's theory fills in this gap.

The paper illustrates how, based on a rudimentary model of organizational viability, de Sitter's design theory positively addresses the question of how to diagnose and design organizational structures that add to the viability of organizations.

The organisational design of production systems is thought to be one of the key determinants of their performance. Therefore, in order to enable them to contribute effectively to the successful creation of products and services, OM practitioners need up‐to‐date, comprehensive and sufficiently detailed organisation design theory. However, 27 case studies aimed at identifying and explaining design performance relationships produced results that could not be explained using organisation theory (OT), while operations management (OM) theory did not provide much help either. OM, because the discipline lacks good organisation design theory. OT, because of some severe limitations, which are mostly due to the paradigmatic directions this discipline has taken. Consequently, OM has to take up the gauntlet itself. An agenda for OM‐driven organisation research is proposed, which builds on the strengths of OT, takes away its major weaknesses, and is believed to contribute to the development of actionable organisation design theory.

The purpose of this paper is to use de Sitter's design theory to show how organizational structures can be designed so as to attenuate organizational disturbances and amplify regulatory potential. It is argued that organizational structures with low values on so‐called design‐parameters are themselves no source of disturbances and have the required built‐in regulatory potential.

Key concepts from de Sitter's design theory are introduced and used to show how structures can attenuate disturbances and amplify regulatory potential.

The analysis in this paper deepens our understanding of the role of organizational structures for dealing with organizational complexity, and of the design parameters that should be manipulated to achieve structural attenuation and amplification.

Having a structure permitting organizations to attenuate and amplify is a crucial condition for organizational viability. This paper provides guidelines for the design of such structures.

This is one of a limited number of studies that makes apparent how general insights from (management) cybernetic (e.g. viability, attenuation and amplification) may be realized in organizations by their structural design.

While much research exists on methods and tools to support business processes, little research exists on the interrelationship with cultural and structural aspects. The purpose of this paper is to explore the chronological sequence in which culture and structure are important, as evidenced in 13 non-profit organisations that are changing towards a process-oriented way of working.

The authors use a positivist case study methodology with pattern-matching to falsify or confirm three theoretical perspectives that claim to explain the phenomena of organisational structure and culture, and their impact on business processes. The competing perspectives are: process lifecycle theories, organisational design theories and cultural and motivational theories.

The case studies cover six scenarios based on a recurrent sequence of changes and perceived outcome. The (theoretical and empirical) relationships between business processes, a process-oriented culture and a process-oriented structure are then combined in a process capability success model.

Although limited to the non-profit sector, the findings agree that the process lifecycle is insufficient. Cultural and motivational theories prevail over organisational design theories to explain and predict process success.

From the process capability success model, a roadmap for (un)successful business process management (BPM) is derived with best practices and advice on the sequence of process improvements.

While the relevance of culture and structure has been touched in research before, the aspect of chronological sequence and pattern-matching sheds new light on the topic. The case studies performed also help to evidence how important it is to believe in process-oriented developments for organisations that want to apply BPM.

The purpose of this paper is to survey existing inter-organisational information security research to scrutinise the kind of knowledge that is currently available and the way in which this knowledge has been brought about.

The results are based on a literature review of inter-organisational information security research published between 1990 and 2014.

The authors conclude that existing research has focused on a limited set of research topics. A majority of the research has focused management issues, while employees’/non-staffs’ actual information security work in inter-organisational settings is an understudied area. In addition, the majority of the studies have used a subjective/argumentative method, and few studies combine theoretical work and empirical data.

The findings suggest that future research should address a broader set of research topics, focusing especially on employees/non-staff and their use of processes and technology in inter-organisational settings, as well as on cultural aspects, which are lacking currently; focus more on theory generation or theory testing to increase the maturity of this sub-field; and use a broader set of research methods.

The authors conclude that existing research is to a large extent descriptive, philosophical or theoretical. Thus, it is difficult for practitioners to adopt existing research results, such as governance frameworks, which have not been empirically validated.

Few systematic reviews have assessed the maturity of existing inter-organisational information security research. Findings of authors on research topics, maturity and research methods extend beyond the existing knowledge base, which allow for a critical discussion about existing research in this sub-field of information security.

How do organizations respond to negative feedback regarding their innovation activities? In this chapter, the authors reconcile contradictory predictions stemming from behavioral learning and from the escalation of commitment (EoC) perspectives regarding persistence under negative performance feedback. The authors core argument suggests that the seemingly contradictory psychological processes indicated by these two perspectives occur simultaneously in decision makers but that the design of organizational roles and reward systems affects their prevalence in decision-making tasks. Specifically, the authors argue that for decision makers responsible for an individual project, responses given to negative performance feedback regarding a project are dominated by self-justification and loss-avoidance mechanisms predicted by the EoC literature, while for decision makers responsible for a portfolio of projects, responses to negative performance regarding a project are dominated by an under-sampling of poorly performing alternatives that behavioral learning theory predicts. In addition to assigning decision-making authority to different organizational roles, organizational designers shape the strength of these mechanisms through the design of reward systems and specifically by setting more or less ambiguous goals, aspiration levels, time horizons of incentives provided, and levels of failure tolerance.

This paper aims to explore what organizational structural designs and strategies that organizations can seek to adopt so as to enable them to respond effectively to the post-COVID-19 environment conditions. It adopts the contingency theory, which asserts that organizational survival is dependent on the fit between organizational structures and contingencies. Furthermore, the paper applies Miles et al. (1978) typology of business strategy to study four strategic orientations that organizations can adopt in achieving better organizational performances.

A framework of six strategic orientation archetypes is proposed that can support organizations in re-thinking their organizational structural designs for building up and strengthening resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors explore the influence of transactional leadership and transformational leadership and organizational culture on the adoption of strategic orientation. In addition, the authors developed six propositions.

Organizations that have a prospector orientation tend to focus on creativity and innovation. Organizations that have a defender orientation tend to focus on reducing manufacturing and distribution costs and maintaining or improving product quality. Analyzers tend to be second-movers after prospectors making slower and fewer changes to their products.

To the authors’ best understanding, this study is one of the first to explore the interrelationship between organizational structures, situational factors and strategic orientation.

Technological development creates technological imperative for organisations. The most recent is dedicated to digital technologies with a strong influence on the way of managing and organising. To gain a better understanding of the latest business practice, the authors use a multilevel perspective and apply the historical analysis method. Specifically, this chapter explores organisational design (OD) of the future through the evolutionary perspective (spanning across the four industrial revolutions) and brings into focus how technological imperatives modified organisational structure, coordination mechanisms and people/job practices. By reflecting on the historical changes in OD practices that happened throughout different phases of industrialisation, the authors analyse how building blocks of digital OD shape managerial and employee behaviours, thus unleashing the performance potential of digital technologies.