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We explore the significance of social ontology and its capacity to inform the specification of organizational status, architecture and capacities. We consider how different conceptions of social ontology are critical for explicating a range of epistemological and socio-economic questions concerning organizations and develop a research agenda oriented to studying these issues from the perspective of management and organization studies.

This study provides evidence on how changes in management accounting and control systems (MACS) associate with competition, organizational capacity to learn, decentralization, and firm size. In doing this, it replicates (and extends) Libby and Waterhouse’s (L&W) Canadian study in the context of Australian manufacturing firms.

Drawing on contingency theory, the study uses data from a mail-out survey of a sample of Australian manufacturing firms.

Change in MACS was found to be significantly and positively associated with greater organizational capacity to learn and a more intensely competitive environment. Firm size and decentralization were not highly significant with changes in MACS. Additional analysis of the data indicated the generalizability of the L&W model across divisions of large corporations, but not across stand-alone firms and local market-oriented firms.

The results contribute to the field of management accounting change by suggesting that when an organization experiences changes in its business environment its management control systems need changes too.

This chapter explains how organizations can build intelligence capabilities into their everyday working environments. The definition of capacity building builds upon the organizational management and the strategic workforce development literatures. This chapter also derives essential guidance from another series focused on critical capabilities and capacity building. The authors highlight the role of a strong intelligence culture and learning in building intelligence capacity. Capacity building is achieved through short- and long-term efforts. This chapter also highlights the importance of balancing capacity building across everyday business operations and specialized intelligence functions.

The concept of resilience has exploded in the popular press covering topics from sports to the environment to the economy. Organizational scholars across disciplines have joined the discussion, but much remains unknown about the ability to build resilience capacity at work. Individual and organizational resilience is challenged by a world in constant flux, and having the ability to navigate unexpected or significant change is vital for success and well-being. This chapter explores several promising avenues of research to gain a better understanding of factors that build resilience capacity at work. We take an interdisciplinary approach to examine leadership, job crafting, and humor, through the lens of sensemaking, as a means to increase resilience capacity.

This chapter provides a new theory for organizational leadership in which an organization's leadership, authority, management, power, and environments (LAMPE) are made coherent and integrated. Organizations work best if their LAMPE is coherent, integrated, and operational. The chapter begins by introducing basic concepts, such as structures, processes, process frameworks, task–role matrices, interdependence uncertainty, and virtual-like organizational arrangements. The LAMPE theory is then built upon this base. Leadership is defined as the processes of initiating, enabling, implementing, and sustaining change in an organization. Authority is defined as the legal right to preempt the outcome of a decision or a process. Management is defined in term of its major processes. Power is the control of interdependence uncertainty. When 29 leadership practices are introduced, it is possible to link them to all five of LAMPE's constructs. A number of conclusions are derived, in the form of 36 propositions: 5 dealing with leadership, 5 focusing on leadership requirements matching, 4 relating to leadership effectiveness, 5 dealing with leadership capacity, 4 concerning the benefits of distributed leadership, and 13 linking LAMPE to the theory of the organizational hologram.

Contemporary organizations have realized the importance of creating work environments that energize and sustain collaborative capacity. Nowhere is the need for collaborative capacity more apparent than when business interactions and collaborative work efforts cross country boundaries. Collaborative capacity is the foundation to an organization's key resource, the collaborative capital. Creating a work environment or climate that supports, enhances, and maintains collaborative capacity is essential for achieving high levels of collaborative capital. In this chapter, we review an exploratory, cross-cultural investigation of the work environments that guide organizations (public and private universities) in the United States and in several Asian countries. One hundred and ninety-four staff from a university in the United States and a combined total of 976 individuals from eight universities throughout Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan) were asked to assess their organizations’ work environments using the Performance Environmental Perception Scale (PEPS; David Ripley (1998) The development of the performance environment perception scale and its underlying theoretical model. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, University of Tennessee, Knoxville). We describe what work environment factors were viewed the same across Eastern and Western cultures, and what factors were viewed differently. Additionally, we present a model of work environment factors that can be used to enhance and sustain collaborative capacity across Eastern and Western cultures.

We are living in turbulent and uncertain times and organizations need to struggle with these circumstances in order to achieve their goals. More than ever, resilience capacity is an added value that organizations need to build to respond to obstacles in these challenging times. Resilience is a capacity of individuals, teams, organizations, communities, even society, that make them to overcome setbacks (such crises, changes, or turbulences) in a way that they not only survive but emerge even stronger. Previous research on resilience at different range of settings and groups show that resilience is a capacity that can be trained or build up. Therefore, the goal of this chapter is to review the main lines of action available to organizations that want to foster resilience at work. The chapter will review theoretical research on workplace resilience, and empirical research that links Human Resources Management and workplace resilience. Aspects covered include the role that corporate social responsibility toward employees, career development or work–family balance have in developing resilience. The chapter closes with a discussion of some practical guidelines for HR managers and practitioners.