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The purpose of this paper is to provide a process model on how mindfully performed organisational routines can simultaneously enable organisational stability and organisational change.

Via conceptual analysis, the authors develop several propositions and a process model integrating the theory of mindfulness and performative aspects of organisational routines with organisational stability and change. To do so, the authors review the literature on organisational routines, mindfulness, stability, inertia and change.

First, the authors demonstrate that, based on levels of mindfulness employed, performative aspects of organisational routines can be categorised as mindless, mindful and collectively mindful (meta-routines). Second, in the process model, the authors position the mindless performance of routines as enabling organisational stability, mediated through inertial pressure and disabling change, mediated through constrained change capacities. Finally, the authors state that engaging routines with mindfulness at an individual (mindful routines) or collective (meta-routines) level reduces inertia and facilitates change. Such simultaneous engagement leads to either sustaining stability when required or implementing continuous organisational change.

The framework uses continuous, versus episodic, change; future research can consider the model’s workability with episodic change. Future research can also seek to empirically validate the model. The authors hope that this model informs research in organisational change and provides guidance on addressing organisational inertia.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to categorise the performative aspects of organisational routine based on the extent of mindfulness employed and propose that mindfulness-based practice of routines stimulates either inertia-induced or inertia-free stability and continuous change.

The traditional dualism view regards stability and change as opposites and separate, two essential but largely incompatible and mutually exclusive elements in an organization, and it advocates contingency theories to handle the paradox situation; more recent research has adopted the paradoxical lens to highlight both the contradiction and the interdependence between the two elements. This paper aims to address how an organization pursues stability and change simultaneously, i.e., how stability and change contradictorily enable each other to promote the development of an organization.

By adopting a case study on the strategic and structural change of Signcomplex in China, this paper attempts to explore the paradoxical relationship between stability and change, especially their interdependence. Multiple approaches were used during data collection to meet the criteria for trustworthiness, and the data analysis went through a five-step process. Through this analysis, the main mechanisms of stability and change were identified. An analysis was also conducted on how these stable and variable mechanisms enable each other, and finally, a framework was set up to show this paradoxical relationship.

The results confirm the paradox of stability and change: stability enables change by supplying security and consistency, offering reserved knowledge and skills and enabling commitment and the provision of resources for a better realization of the change. Change enables a firm to set up a new state of stability through variable mechanisms such as trial-and-error and exploration activities. The results also indicate that the nature of organizational change is to help an organization reach a new stable stage with higher efficiency and that organizational development relies on the paradoxical effects of both stability and change.

This research is constrained by several limitations. The findings need to be further confirmed through the investigation of more organizations; other stable mechanisms, such as habits, tight coupling, commitments, control and low variance, and variable mechanisms, such as search, mindfulness, redundancy and openness, should be considered. As an organization may experience many cross-level or cross-department changes which struggle with each other for resources and with stable mechanisms, to explore the paradox, future research may need to conduct a more in-depth examination of the system of change.

The findings offer some valuable insights for further research and hold important implications for management practices, especially management practices in a Chinese context. The findings extend the existing paradox theory by further revealing how stability and change enable each other and offer a paradoxical perspective to look into the nature of organizational change and organizational development. The results remind managers to rethink the relationship between stability and change, to factor these coexisting concepts into their decision-making and to accept, understand and use this paradoxical relationship to realize synergistic effects for the firm.

This work aims to analyse the flexibility-stability continuum and explore the question of where the best equilibrium lies on this continuum and to what extent it can be realized.

After analysing the concepts of flexibility and stability, along with their trade-off relationship, from a theoretical standpoint, the optimum in the flexibility-stability continuum is determined by means of a triangulation of theories. The subsequent operation to determine best possible practice is also accomplished via a theoretical analysis.

Organizational flexibility and stability are two poles of a continuum that are interdependent. The optimum in a flexibility-stability continuum lies, according to Gossen's first law, where marginal utility is zero. Determination of the optimum requires a great deal of information, however, which is difficult to collate and process because of its complexity. As an alternative to the “optimum”, “best possible practice” is introduced. This provides an alternative to the less satisfactory method of “best practice according to benchmarking.”

The value of this work lies in finding an optimum in the flexibility-stability continuum. As the (theoretical) optimum is difficult to determine and realize due to inherent complexities, “best possible practice” is presented as an alternative. This takes into account the idea of optimization meaning no improvement is possible if the goal is achieved. “Best possible practice” defines an implementable, best possible state that can be used for organizational goal formulation. To achieve the best possible equilibrium in the flexibility-stability continuum, the respective advantages of stability and flexibility should be ideally exploited to lead to competitive advantage.

This case study presents a critical analysis of why and how corporate managers in China are reluctant to adopt sustainability reporting assurance (SRA) provided by externally independent third-party assurers, despite the fact that it is acknowledged as a value-adding activity globally.

A longitudinal fieldwork case study was conducted from 2014 to 2019 in a Chinese central state-owned enterprise (CSOE), a pioneer in sustainability reporting practice since the mid-2000s, to collect first-hand empirical data on managerial perceptions of the adoption of external SRA. Semi-structured interviews with 25 managers involved in sustainability (reporting) practice were conducted. The interview data were triangulated with an analysis of archival documents and board meeting minutes pertaining to the undertakings of sustainability practices in the case study organization.

Our empirical analysis suggests that while managers recognize the benefits of adopting external SRA in enhancing the legitimacy of sustainability accountability, they oppose SRA because of their deep-rooted allegiance to the dominant logic of sociopolitical stability in China. SRA is envisaged to risk the stability of the socialist ideology with which CSOEs are imbued. Therefore, any transformational approach to accepting a novel (foreign) practice must be molded to gain control and autonomy, thereby maintain the hegemony of stability logic. Instead of disregarding external verification, managers of our case SOE appear to harness sustainability reporting as a navigational space to engage in internally crafted alternative manners in order to resist the rationality of SRA.

The empirical analysis presents a nuanced explanation as to why internal managers have hitherto been reluctant to embrace the embedding of independent assurance into the sustainability reporting process. Our prolonged fieldwork provides ample context-specific, intra-organizational evidence regarding the absence of SRA in Chinese CSOEs, which warrants more attention given their considerable presence in the global economy. In addition, the empirical analysis contributes to our understanding of the managerial capture of sustainability issues in a specific context of state capitalism and how organizations and individuals in an authoritarian regime interpret and respond to novel discourses derived from distinct institutional settings.

This study aims to investigate the influence of organisational culture, specifically O’Reilly et al.’s (1991) six dimensions of the organisational culture profile (respect for people, outcome orientation, team orientation, innovation, attention to detail and stability) on corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and the subsequent impact of CSR practices on organisational performance from the context of an emerging economy.

The study used a survey of middle- and higher-level managers in Bangladeshi organisations to develop a seven-dimensional model of CSR practices and used structural equation modelling to analyse the developed hypotheses.

The findings provide evidence of the influence of the six different dimensions of organisational culture on the different dimensions of CSR practices. The findings highlight the diverse impacts (i.e. positive and negative) of CSR practices on organisational performance. The study also highlights the direct influence of organisational culture on both financial and non-financial performance. In particular, the outcome and team orientation culture are positively associated with non-financial and financial performance, respectively, while an innovative culture is negatively associated with both non-financial and financial performance.

The findings of the study provide practitioners, internal (i.e. the managers and business owners of both the local and multinational organisations) and external policy-makers, and foreign investors in an emerging economy with new insights into the role of an intra-organisational factor (i.e. organisational culture) in influencing the adoption of CSR practices and the subsequent impact of CSR practices on organisational performance.

Using the 52 guidelines of CSR practices provided by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, this study provides a unique empirical insight into the influence of organisational culture on CSR practices and the impact of CSR practices on organisational performance. The findings contribute to the limited CSR literature examining the influence of organisational culture on the adoption of CSR practices and its subsequent impact on organisational performance in an emerging economy.

Intellectual capital (IC) and social capital (SC), as forms of intangible value in organizations, are crucial assets in today's volatile business environment. Efforts to retain and develop these intangibles are becoming more deliberate and disciplined. However, organizations fail to recognize the relationship between organizational distress and the loss and/or reduction of intangible value. The loss of intangible value may potentially impact an organization with equal or greater damage than the loss of more tangible value. IC and SC generate many outcomes beneficial to the individual and the organization. These benefits are reduced when stress of employees becomes excessive and damaging. The relationship between the health of an organization and the degree of impact of distress serves as a lingering threat to organizational financial resources. Managers must build upon the growing knowledge from research and practice to help organizations account for the costs of organizational distress, translate the importance of intangible value into tangible terms, and garner support for developing IC and SC to obtain business objectives. Deliberate and disciplined effort to build collaborative capital can facilitate the growth of IC and SC which minimize the damage of organizational distress.

The issue of career orientations has become a critical component of career development of professionals in a rapidly changing world. This study examines the career orientations held by professionals and the relationship between of career orientations with background variables and career path preference. Data were obtained from 138 professionals by a questionnaire. The findings suggest that professionals have high organisational stability, sense of service and entrepreneurial creativity, but low technical/functional and life style integration anchors.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the strategic postures and political market orientation profile of two Danish parties. Profile stability at the organisational level is used as a control variable.

The strategic political postures of two Danish parties are derived using a self‐typing study. Based on configuration theory, ideal organisational profiles to implement these studies are juxtaposed with the actual political market orientation profile for each party, gained from two datasets analysed using Partial Least Squares. Member activity levels are used to control for organisational stability.

The self‐typing study revealed that Party A was perceived to follow a relationship builder posture, and Party B a convinced ideologist posture. However, both market orientation profiles resembled the organisational structures of a convinced ideologist. Thus, Party A exhibits a mismatch between strategic orientation and implemented organisational profile, based on configuration theory. The results were generally stable across political activity levels.

The investigation represents an intra‐group analysis, i.e. it is concerned only with two parties in one political system; however, this reflects the oligopolistic character of the vast majority of electoral markets and thus, further research could compare results across political systems. A link with performance variables needs to be established to assess the extent to which the organisational alignment results in competitive advantages for a party.

Whilst there exists a general cohesiveness within parties regarding the overall strategic posture, political managers need to be aware of the subtle differences that can affect the market orientation of different groups within the party.

The study contributes to understanding the concept of market orientation in the political sphere. More specifically, it empirically links political market orientation as an issue of political marketing implementation on the one hand, and strategic postures of parties as a strategic issue on the other, following a configuration theory logic.

While a record number of employees work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, organisations are faced with a new demand for human resources (HR) policies and procedures in light of this emerging ‘new normal’. It is common for organisations to promote certain behaviours and norms as their cultures develop; however, this can often be significantly more challenging in times of uncertainty. As a result, the strategic and operational focus of HR managers can make a critical contribution to organisational effectiveness in times of crisis, especially when pre-existing policies and procedures are challenged by employees attempting to cope in an evolving reality. In this chapter, we seek to explain how the needs of the organisation, policy enforcement and changes by HR managers, and the behaviours of employees conflict and complement each other in an internal three-way tug of war among these actors. Organisational culture, strategic HR management, and self-determination theories are utilised to discuss implications for norm formation and culture from the top management team, HR managers, and employees during times of uncertainty. Recommendations for practice and additional avenues for research are presented to examine the cultural implications for organisations in the future.

Organisational culture is increasingly being recognised as a critical determinant of the success or failure of organisational change efforts. A power utility company in Africa was undergoing planned change driven by its ambitious vision of becoming one of the top five performing utilities in the world. The purpose of this paper is to explore how the organisation’s culture was impacting on the change initiatives of one of the organisation’s operating units. The study also sought to investigate the robustness of the change model employed to inform the change process.

The study employed qualitative research methods for data collection, sampling and analysis. Ten semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with managers, supervisory and non-supervisory staff in the operating unit. Data analysis was by means of thematic analysis.

Organisational culture was found to be impacting the operating unit’s change efforts. According to the participants, cultural analysis to determine organisational readiness for change was not adequately undertaken. The cultural factors of, among others, communication, feedback, involvement, and consultations negatively impacted the change efforts. The participants’ perceptions were that leadership failed to connect employees to the vision.

The paper provides insight into the importance of leadership’s understanding and consideration of organisational culture in change initiatives. Cultural analyses before embarking on change assists leaders in identifying and then strengthening or changing cultural tenets implicated by the change initiatives.