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Critiques the visions of management gurus in comparison to the measures which they offer to “deliver” them. Argues that organization development requires a qualitatively different look at workers and work going beyond behavioural prescription. Presents the concept of the new skills mix supported by arguments that integrate and develop more systematic analyses informed by frames of reference often regarded as mutually exclusive – this leads to a critical examination of proactivity and empowerment.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how organisational frames of reference, which are neither not appropriately communicated nor supported, affect the wellbeing of workers.

A review of the literature is used to develop a new model linking ambiguous frames of reference with reduced levels of workers' wellbeing. This is then tested using data collected in a study involving primary health care workers in Papua New Guinea (PNG).

This paper finds that, for these particular workers, the model linking ambiguous frames of reference and reduced worker wellbeing is valid.

The paper shows that there is a need for further research into a variety of areas including the importance of frames of reference to worker wellbeing, the significance of reference groups to organisational frames of reference and the consequences of reduced worker wellbeing in developing countries.

In this paper, recommendations for changes to current PNG primary health care management practices, including ensuring the support for as well as communicating the organisational frame of reference, are discussed.

The paper shows that the experiences of these particular primary health care workers not only demonstrates the validity of the new model but also brings a unique perspective to the field of worker wellbeing, which up until now has been dominated by research conducted in western countries.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand the sensemaking strategies of managers involved in making decisions concerning arts sponsorship.

A qualitative, multiple case method is employed, using multiple informants in ten arts sponsorship decisions. Within and between case analyses were conducted and examined iteratively, along with literature to generate themes to guide future research.

This study finds art sponsorships may be seen as ambiguous, cueing sensemaking; the sensemaking strategies of senior managers involve response to pro-social cues while middle managers draw on commercial benefit cues; sensebreaking and sensegiving are part of the process; and the actors and their interpretations draw from cues in the organisational frames of reference which act as filters, giving meaning to the situations.

This study presents a novel perspective on these decisions, focusing on the micro-level actions and interpretations of actors. It extends current understanding of sponsorship decision making, contributing to a perspective of managers responding to cues, interacting and making sense of their decisions.

For arts managers, this perspective provides understanding of how managers (potential sponsors) respond to multiple cues, interpret and rationalise arts sponsorships. For corporate managers, insights reveal differences in sensemaking between hierarchical levels, and the role of interaction, and organisational frames of reference.

This study is unique in its approach to understanding these decisions in terms of sensemaking, through the use of multiple informants and multiple case studies.

The plight of the middle manager has received considerable attention recently as this endangered species has been delayered, rationalised and subjected to many organisational change programmes. These changes have pushed the middle manager into an increasing number of apparently contradictory and paradoxical situations. In the postmodern world, reality is chaotic and unstable and middle managers in particular cannot rely on unambiguous models of thinking to steer them through this uncertainty. This paper identifies some of the ways in which a paradoxical perspective can illuminate the tensions faced by middle managers and the impact of culture change programmes on their ability to make decisions informed by reflective thinking. Discussion is given to considering what actions might be taken to develop a paradoxical perspective in middle managers and this framework is applied to a management development programme, General Management or Specialists, currently being run at Cranfield School of Management. This is used as a practical example of the usefulness of a paradoxical perspective in helping managers make real choices about the world in which they work.

Since the mid‐1980s, there has been strong advocacy of the use of reframing through the application of organizational metaphors as one of the skills of the “new” manager. The reframing approach champions the virtues of analysing and responding to organizational situations through the use of multiple frames and is centrally implicated in the process of organizational change. The underlying message is that it enables both analysis and action to occur. Argues that this link has not been adequately explored in the literature which tends to assume that “appropriate” actions are able to be taken and that they will be successful. Explores four main constraints: cognitive limits; frame dominance and the limits of language; conceptions of action and their limits on reframing; and knowledge and power as limits to reframing.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate diversity of marketing practices of firms operating in the same environment, by identifying how management perception and business strategy (BS) fits with the choice of the marketing practice.

A model was developed and tested using survey methodology based on three well-validated research instruments. Data were analyzed using the partial least square approach.

The results showed that different marketing practice were coupled with different frame of reference, as well as different BS. These forces were found to be inter related, and internally coherent, resulting in viable configurational profiles.

The research is unique and exploratory, and was conducted in three Arabic countries with a small sample size. For these reasons, generalizability is somewhat constrained.

The findings would help managers to carefully examine the internal logic of their marketing-related profiling; it can be used as an assessment tool, where performance should be enhanced if the variables are coherent.

To author’s knowledge this is the first study that inspect three variables that had been associated with decision making, but not integrated together in a holistic framework to explain marketing diversity. Additionally it identified four viable types of marketing practices with its corresponding frame of reference and BS. Therefore, the paper reports a work in an area not previously researched.

Grounded in case study research, the consultant‐client relationship is conceived as mediating between, and reconciling, competing enactments. Through their work, consultants seek to achieve a separation from existing organisational frames of reference, commitments and routines. To achieve any separation, consultants have to challenge the world that is shared and lived out by members of the organisation. The enactments created and sustained by interventions are experienced as competitive versions of social reality, with diverse advocates, seeking to secure a critical mass of belief and acceptance. Consultants come under pressure to conform to, or to operate within, the constructs of this organisational reality, and their interventions create tensions and the need to accommodate differing views. The consultant‐client relationship, as experienced and perceived, is central to the process of generating shared constructions, and profoundly shapes the emergent organisational reality. Reviews traditional conceptualisations of the client‐consultant relationship and contrasts them to more critical and emancipatory perspectives. Then discusses the case study research and the role and nature of the consultant‐client relationship within the theoretical framework developed.

Organizational learning and unlearning is a popular and important topic in business as well as academia. Even though there is a plethora of studies on organizational learning, surprisingly little is known about the conceptualization and operationalization of organizational unlearning. The purpose of this paper is to discuss organizational unlearning based on the organizational change and memory literature enhancing the organizational learning and change scholarship.

It is argued that unlearning is conceptualized as organizational memory eliminating, and is operationalized as changing beliefs and routines covariates in organizations. This is followed with a discussion of unlearning types, specifically, reinventive, formative, operative and adjustive, which are contingent on the environmental conditions. Finally, future research suggestions are proposed to leverage understanding on unlearning in the literature.

Shows that organizations first need to unlearn established beliefs and methods which have created rules and competency traps, in order to be receptive to new market and technology information.

This paper is of value in shedding light on the unlearning concept based on the organizational memory and change literature.

This study seeks to investigate how managerial assumptions shape international market orientation (IMO) and how IMO, in turn, affects the performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), drawing from cognitive theory and the resource-based view (RBV) to provide the theoretical framework.

The study focuses on the relatively unexplored domain of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Japan. A survey was developed and tested using data from 303 Japanese SMEs. The study model was subsequently analyzed using the partial least squares (PLS) technique.

The study reveals a nuanced relationship between managerial frames of reference (FoRs) and IMOs. The results confirmed notable congruence between interfunctional market orientation and managers who exhibit a political FoR. They also revealed a positive correlation between professional FoR managers and customer market orientation. Additionally, the findings showed that entrepreneurial FoR managers displayed a significant association with competitive market orientation and Bureaucratic FoR matched with the three types of IMO. Finally, the results indicate that all three forms of IMO have a substantial impact on performance, albeit to varying degrees.

The applicability of our results to multinational corporations (MNCs) has not been evaluated. Since the primary focus was to identify the types of associations among FoR and IMO, the causal pathways and explanatory factors that underpinned these observed relationships were not examined in this study. Additionally, due to the geographical concentration of our sample in Japan, we were unable to conduct tests on the suggested model in other countries to validate and potentially generalize the research findings.

By developing an implicit understanding of the market orientation fit within the organization’s FoR, managers can enhance their understanding of competitors' activities and enable them to respond with greater efficiency.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the rare papers that inspect the relationship between International market orientations and managerial assumptions as well as their effect on performance.