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The purpose of this paper is to explore and describe the perspectives and reasoning of senior development leaders in healthcare organizations, when reflecting on design as theory and practice in relation to more traditional methods and tools for improving quality and support innovation.

The paper is based on a qualitative interview design with five development and innovation leaders from separate healthcare regions in Sweden. They have, to varying degrees, applied design theory and practice for quality improvement and innovation in their organizations. The interview transcript was analysed using a content analysis together with an interpretive approach.

The major findings are to be found in the balancing act for leadership and organizations in healthcare when it comes to introducing and combining different theories and practices for improving quality and support innovation. The balance is between the change in power dynamics and pushing traditional boundaries in a complex healthcare world.

The narratives from the leaders' experience of applying design theory and practice for improving healthcare quality can help us create readiness and knowledge about how we prevent and/or facilitate planning and implementing design theories, practices, methods and tools in a healthcare context.

The study provides a unique insight when it captures and illustrates five different organizations' experiences when applying design for developing healthcare quality.

While quantification and performance measurement have proliferated widely in academia and the business world, management and organization scholars increasingly agree on the need for a more in-depth focus on the complex dynamics embedded in the construction, use and effects of quantitative measures (pertaining to the thread of research called ethnostatistics). This paper develops a pluralistic method for conducting ethnostatistical research in organizational settings. Whilst presenting practical techniques for conducting research in live settings, it also discusses how historical approaches which focus on source criticism and contextual reconstruction could overcome the limitations of ethnostatistics.

The methodological approach of this paper encompasses an in-depth discussion of the ethnostatistical method, its underlying assumptions and its methodological limitations. Based on this analysis, the authors propose a pluralistic method (model) for conducting ethnostatistical research in organizational settings based on the integration of 1) research practices employed by one of the authors conducting ethnostatistical research in a large multinational organization and 2) best practices from ethnographic and historical research.

This paper suggests how historical approaches can successfully join ethnostatistical enquiries in an attempt to overcome some limitations in existing conventional methods. The developed framework explores four levels of analysis (ethnography, statistics at work, rhetoric of statistics and history of statistics) and suggests practical approaches for each level that can contribute to strengthening the research output and overcoming limitations when using ethnostatistics.

This paper contributes to the ethnostatistical field by discussing the intersection between history and ethnography and the ways for their complementary use in organizational and management research on quantification processes. As such it offers unique insights and hands-on experience from conducting ethnostatistical enquiries in live organizational settings.

The purpose of this study is to explore the interplay among self-organization, networks and sustainable innovations within microfinance institutions (MFIs) and to examine the extent to which organizational resilience plays a significant role in shaping these dynamics as a mediator.

This paper adopted a cross-sectional research design combined with analytical and descriptive approach to collect the data. Smart partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to construct the measurement model and structural equation model to test the mediating effect under this study.

The results revealed that organizational resilience is a significant mediator in the relationship between self-organization, networks and sustainable innovations among microfinance institutions in Uganda.

The data for this study were collected only from microfinance institutions in Uganda. Future studies may collect data from other formal financial institutions like commercial banks and credit institutions to test the mediating effect of organizational resilience. More still, the study adopted only a single approach of using a questionnaire. However, future research through interviews may be desirable. Likewise this study was cross-sectional in nature. Therefore, a longitudinal study may be useful in future while investigating the mediating role of organizational resilience traversing over a long time frame.

A possible implication is that microfinance institutions which desire to have sustainable innovative solutions for their business operations in disruptive circumstances may need to scrutinize their capacity to be resilient and self-organize.

Microfinance institutions play a great role to the underserved clients. Thus, for each to re-organize to be able to provide services that meet users’ needs, without physical products so as to ensure long-term financial and social welfare combined with the ability to bounce back and adapt in times of economic downturn to avoid mission adrift.

While most studies have been carried out on organizational resilience, this paper takes center stage and is the first to test the mediating role of organizational resilience in the relationship between self-organization, networks and sustainable innovations, especially in microfinance institutions in Uganda. This paper generates strong evidence and contributes to the powerful influence of organizational resilience in enhancing the level of sustainable innovations based on self-organization and networks.

Collaboration between creative professionals (artists and designers) and companies has become more prominent. In so-called “crossovers,” indicated with the acronym CoCreaCO (collaboration of creative professionals with companies) when they concern specific crossover of creative professionals with companies, societal and organizational challenges such as becoming more innovative are addressed through multidisciplinary collaboration that increasingly embraces and exploits the distinctive way of thinking and working of artists and designers. Over the past years, several scholars focused their research on the effect of artistic interventions or arts-based initiatives (ABIs) and design thinking in organizations. Hardly any research has been done on the conditions (organizational and individual factors) that are conducive to ABIs in organizations, such as trust and common ground. The central question for this study is which conditions foster successful collaboration between creative professionals and organizations in crossovers. For this study, the conditions for collaboration between creative professionals and four Dutch organizations were studied by interviewing ten creative professionals, project managers and employees who worked together, following which a survey of 60 questions was filled in by 41 Dutch respondents. This study shows that despite the differences between the disciplines of creative professionals and employees for this type of crossover, both disciplines requested quite similar conditions for collaboration. Both creative professionals and employees should realize and encourage trust and common ground by focusing on an open process and outcome, a shared creative process started with a shared problem. Experience with this type of collaboration, art disciplines, the role and qualities of the artist (individual factors) as well as the organization's sector seem to influence neither expectations of collaboration nor the intention to engage in this type of cooperation in the future.

Both ten employees (project managers) and creative professional(s) with whom the organization cooperated were interviewed (four case studies, semistructured interviews). Thereafter, 41 respondents have been filled in a survey.

Successful cooperation can be explained by six concepts of determinants, which are briefing, qualities of creative professionals, organizational qualities, organization factors and common ground. More particular, creative professionals' independency and their ability to render observations and to reflect of these and organization's role by informing employees and organizing a clear work process need to be addressed before or during collaboration.

past years, many scholars focused their research on the effects of artistic interventions or ABIs and design thinking in organizations. There is hardly any research on the conditions that are conductive to artistic interventions in organizations such as trust and common ground.

This study aims to investigate how two collaborative methods – selection and synthesis – influence knowledge convergence when people articulate a new strategic direction driving transformation within the organization.

The study is based on a longitudinal field experiment developed in four organizations involving 82 employees over a three-month process. Inspired by dynamics governing flocks as complex adaptive systems, selection and synthesis have been separately used in two sets of companies. Primary and secondary data have been largely collected and analyzed throughout the whole process.

This study describes how the two alternative methods differently influenced two kinds of knowledge convergence. While selection triggers a general and static knowledge convergence and the propagation of individual knowledge over time, synthesis fosters a local and dynamic knowledge convergence where individuals tend to propagate knowledge generated collectively.

This research offers insights into understanding the influence of alternative collaborative methods on the creation and propagation of knowledge when people are converging toward a new strategic direction. From a theoretical perspective, it contributes to complex adaptive system theory, highlighting the role of knowledge convergence and emergence through collaboration.

This research offers insights to managers who deal with the complexity of the engagement of different stakeholders during collaborative processes, offering some actionable takeaways to foster knowledge convergence by alternatively employing selection and synthesis.

This paper contributes to the management and social information processing literature emphasizing the role of knowledge convergence emerging from the complex interactions among multiple stakeholders.

This study aims to identify context-specific antecedents to schools’ absorptive capacity (AC) and to show how those can enact “a virtuous learning circle.”

The study uses a mixed method: an exploration based on semi-structured interviews with educational experts; the development of a measurement scale and a partial least squares structural equation modelling to test the impact of the antecedents.

The results yielded four empirically-grounded antecedents and their measurement scales, namely, prior knowledge, employees’ skills, educational projects and interactions with the environment (Studies one and two). All antecedents are significantly and positively related to AC processes (study three). Using the organizational learning theory perspective, the results have been interpreted as an AC “virtuous learning circle.”

With increasing pressures to adapt, a case of which was the COVID-19 pandemic, schools can greatly benefit from absorbing knowledge flows. This suggests the construction a favourable environment for AC. To this end, the individual (employees’ prior knowledge and skills), organizational (educational projects) and institutional level of managerial action (interactions with the environment) can be effective when create a recursive organizational learning circle. In addition, this study offers an expert-validated measurement scale for self-assessment of a school’s specific contingencies, and thus, for planning of punctual interventions to develop AC.

This study advances the existing body of knowledge management in the educational context by rigorously identifying and validating a scale for measuring the antecedents of AC and developing an interpretive approach to the AC “virtuous circle.”

This study explores the organisational dynamics in a change process across work units in a Swedish municipality. The purpose of this study is to understand how and why co-creation unfolds during efforts to bring different units into one united work unit.

A qualitative longitudinal study was designed using data triangulation for eight months, comprising written reflection texts, meeting protocols and interviews. This study is based on a back-and-forth inductive and abductive grounded theory analysis.

The main results of this study indicate that there was friction in the co-creation process between units, between the members of the change group and supervisors, as well as friction within the change group. Further, the results indicate that communications, relations, supervisor support and governing strategies clashed with work routines and methods, work cultures, roles and responsibilities and that the units had differing views of the needs of the intended target group. This thereby challenged the propensity for change which, in turn, may have limited developmental learning at a workplace and organisational level.

Working across units to find common and new paths and work methods for labour market inclusion proved to be challenging because of contextual circumstances. Crossing and merging organisational boundaries through co-creation processes was demanding because of new expectations from the organisation, as it shifted towards trust-based governance in conjunction with working during a pandemic when social interactions were restricted to digital communication channels.

This paper sets out to compare different methodologies for measuring the value(s) of live popular music and to explore the different motivations amongst a range of organisations engaged in that work.

The authors analyse how the values of live music are measured, who does it and why. Based on this analysis the authors present a model that visualises the myriad of organisations, methods, aims and objectives involved.

The authors identify three approaches to measuring the impact of live music (economic impact studies, mapping and censuses and social sciences and humanities) and three types of actors (industry, policy and academia). The analysis of these demonstrates that measuring live music is not a neutral activity, but itself constructs a vision on how live music ecologies function

For cultural organisations, demonstrating the outcomes of their work is important in acquiring various forms of support. The model presented in this paper helps them to select adequate methodologies and to reflect on the consequences of particular approaches to measuring live music activities.

While the number of studies measuring live music's impact is growing, theoretical and methodological reflection on these activities is missing. The authors compare the different methodologies by discussing strengths and weaknesses. This results in a model that identifies gaps in existing studies and explores new directions for future live music research. It enhances understanding of how different ways of measuring live music affect policymaking and conceptions of what live music is and should be.

This paper aims to analyze the business model innovation in medium and large Brazilian manufacturing companies located in Rio do Sul State.

A holistic multiple case study in five companies was developed. Data were collected through interviews and analyzed according to the content analysis technique.

The main motivation to business model innovation was the innovation in products and services, while the difficulties were the factors relating to the cost. The most common practice among cases was innovation in value proposition and the most widely used method was learning-by-searching. While part of the theory was demonstrated in the case studies, new motivations and practices were identified. The investigation of the learning process on business models’ innovation is pioneered in this study. Further studies on this subject are required.

New business models are likely to provide new opportunities to better address customer needs, generating differentiating itself from its competitors. It is a subject little investigated in the international context, and there are no studies to investigate the experience of Brazilian companies.