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Many organizations struggle to achieve their desired levels of business process flexibility and support. However, these two capabilities conflict with each other and different tradeoffs have to be made. In this paper, the authors analyze different process conceptualizations and discuss their implications. The authors argue that the conceptualizations people adopt to think (conceptualize) about business processes affect the way they model them, which in turn result in different flexibility-support tradeoffs.

A set of properties is proposed to compare process conceptualizations: dominant concept, contract, and existential and representational properties. Using these properties, several process conceptualizations are analyzed and integrated in a comparison chart, which highlights different flexibility-support tradeoffs. The storytelling method is adopted to support the analytic process.

The authors show how different process conceptualizations result in different flexibility-support tradeoffs. The authors suggest that we need to intervene on a set of properties of process conceptualizations to achieve different flexibility-support tradeoffs.

This research contributes to understanding the relationships between process conceptualizations, process modeling, and the flexibility-support tradeoff. A comparison chart helps organizations analyze their desired levels of flexibility and support using a set of properties.

The extent of covered viewpoints makes this study unique in the process management field. Such effort provides a contribution towards a more multidisciplinary discussion of process models, which integrates different process conceptualizations.

Integrating interdisciplinary studies with Human Capital Management Accounting (HCMA) refers to the dynamics of organized interdisciplinary action that are transversal or cross-cutting. This approach requires the mastery of a certain number of technical skills and disciplines, as well as the capacity to use them in a process to solve problems of financial performance. This is accomplished through the specific interaction tasks that are performed by each management function and operational unit, which act in real time with others, in the same direction as an organizational team, using a selected risk appetite threshold base.

Putting business fields side by side, (i.e., business disciplines silos, as is normally the case in MBA programs), is not enough to create the transversal interaction dynamic needed for firms to achieve expected financial performance goals. As a result, few graduates today have the cross-cutting or vertical skills required to act, in real time, from their workstation in accordance with the pyramid shape of the organization chart in order to create value.

This chapter presents the results of the interface established by a faculty member in the Accounting Department of the University of San Francisco with a “seasoned leader in the FinTech industry.” It proposes a single portal for employers and HRMs to which the continuing education services of professional training associations, executive education departments of colleges, and MBA schools and universities, can connect to issue the HCMA certificate supplementing their training offerings focused on “Leadership Development”.

The purpose of this paper is to explore what organizational adaptability means in the digitized context and to discuss how manufacturing companies achieve organizational adaptability during the digital transformation process.

By conducting semi-structured interviews and acquiring archive data from a typical Chinese manufacturing company, this paper gathers extensive data. Based on this, a single-case study methodology is used to investigate organizational adaptability in digital transformation.

This study identifies the process by which companies achieve organizational adaptability during digital transformation and deconstructs organizational adaptability into three dimensions: structural adaptability, operational adaptability and governance adaptability. This study also explores how organizational adaptability is affected by digital capabilities.

This study proposes a process model to demonstrate how organizational adaptability may be attained during digital transformation and redefines organizational adaptability in the context of digitization.

The purpose of this paper is to learn how managers make downsizing decisions.

Participants read a created organizational scenario and 25 hypothetical employee profiles and then chose five employees to lay off.

Older and minority applicants were chosen most often. No significance was found for performance. Rater group membership in race, gender, and age were significant predictors of layoff decisions.

Because the participants were in a controlled environment they may have disregarded other information often available to decision makers. The majority of the sample was students who may be unrepresentative of managers who make layoff decisions. The inclusion of managers who have made downsizing decisions was designed to help address this limitation.

An employer's use of personal characteristics in making downsizing decisions may ultimately affect the aftermath of downsizing.

This is one of the first studies to study the decision‐making process of layoffs.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and characterise the knowledge creation process in construction organisations and explore to what extent organisations facilitate the process.

A case study approach is adopted using four construction organisations; a knowledge creation model is also used as the analytical tool.

The model successfully identifies the characteristics of the knowledge creation process and its uniqueness among the cases studied; and that conscientious effort by organisations to facilitate the process is limited.

The study is limited to intra‐firm knowledge creation.

Understanding of the knowledge creation process by organisations adopting the model is a potential platform for enhancement of the process in organisations.

The article provides the establishment of specific knowledge creation models through an empirical investigation of construction organisations.

Literature identifies the key relevance of human resource management (HRM) in the creation of an organisational performance measurement and management system, while, in practice, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) continue to prioritise financial and operational aspects. This study aims to identify the main characteristics that typify an advanced performance measurement and management system in SMEs, according to the literature dedicated to performance measurement and HRM.

Through a multiple-case study methodology, the research deeply investigates four European SMEs. Empirical data were collected through interviews, company documents and direct observations. Then, within- and cross-case analysis were implemented to analyse the data.

In designing organisational performance measurement and management systems in SMEs, HRM emerges as essential in supporting the enhancement of the maturity of performance measurement and the improvement of performance management. Through a framework based on the relevant literature, this research identifies three conceptual propositions that highlight the main characteristics that typify advanced performance measurement and management systems in SMEs.

The research identifies a conceptual framework suitable to investigate empirically the role of HRM in developing performance measurement and management systems at SMEs, and it lays the foundation for future broader empirical studies in this field.

This paper underlines HRM as an important driver in the creation of organisational performance measurement and management systems. Moreover, it suggests some key characteristics that such a system should develop to be effective in the target enterprises.

Following the “Patient Quality and Safety Contract” launch by the Belgian Federal Authorities, Belgian hospital web sites were scrutinized. The aim of this paper is to assess the presence of some sort of quality management strategy within Belgian Acute Care Hospital digital external communications.

Digital communications were assessed using a pre‐established grid focusing on direct quality improvement testimonies, like a quality manager presence, a quality committee, a specific strategy, etc.

Two hypotheses explain the poor results: structured quality improvement exists in organizations but senior managers do not feel the need to transparently communicate the subject; and quality improvement does not exist in a sufficiently structured way to allow open communication.

The proposed Federal Contract should improve both quality initiative quality and frequency as well as transparent communication to healthcare workers and patients.

The paper underlines the urgent need for Belgian healthcare executives to be aware of structured quality management strategy's importance and to be eager to openly communicate the strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the talent management (TM) and talentship literature by exploring the key organizational conditions required to design a sustainable TM strategy.

The author carried out a one-year action research with the management board of a mid-sized French company that sought to implement a TM strategy. Immersion in the phenomenon studied allowed inductive exploration of a TM strategy design from the outset of its formulation and conceptualization. Data were collected from observations, interviews and focus groups with different stakeholders (management board, managers and employees) involved in TM strategy project, and were analyzed from a congruence model to interpret a posteriori the key organizational issues affecting TM strategy.

The findings highlight the need to go beyond simple TM alignment to business strategy, as talentship asserts. They offer an overview of key organizational issues influencing TM strategy: organizational inputs such as environment, history and identity, along with organizational components such as critical tasks, people, structure, management and culture and their mutual influences and dynamics. The lack of congruence among these key organizational factors hinders the ability to conceptualize, formulate and design TM strategy successfully.

Due to its exploratory nature and the fact that it consists of a single case, this study encourages further contributions to the TM and talentship literature on organizational issues affecting TM strategy in other contexts. It also suggests a complementary approach with the decision-making literature to explore the conceptualization stage and the influences of managers involved in TM strategy more deeply.

The paper suggests an organizational diagnosis on organizational conditions and capabilities for designing TM strategy based on congruence analysis used in this case. It also proposes in addition to the talentship approach and congruence analysis, when key organizational conditions are met, a five-step process for guiding managers in making sounder decisions during TM strategy conceptualization.

The paper sheds light on key organizational conditions required to design TM strategy that have been overlooked in the TM and talentship literature. It thus questions the apparent practicability of TM strategy in any organizational context.

This paper describes the ways in which the next decade will be different from the last. Times are becoming more and more turbulent and a new kind of organisation is needed to survive and thrive in these times ‐ what we call a purposeful self‐renewing organisation (PS‐RO). This, in turn, requires a different style of organisational leadership ‐ leadership as a quality that is dispersed across the organisation not confined solely to the cadre of senior managers listed on an organisational chart.

Managing a project involves taking a number of critical decisions that can have a crucial impact on the success or failure of the initiative. The analytical definition and visualization of the main components of a project can support project managers engaged to address the right issues at the right time. This article aims to identify crucial crossroads in the management of a project and to provide a visual representation of knowledge involved into a system of project components and decisions.

A design science process is adopted to define the initial goals and requirements and to develop the knowledge visualization framework. Expert feedback is also gathered to obtain a preliminary validation of the framework.

Moving from a system view of project dimensions, we identify eight types of strategic decisions, i.e. growth, problem shifting, goals balancing, escalation, rewarding, resource allocation, problem fixing and cooperation. We then present a visualization map of project decision making addressing six categories of knowledge (i.e. “what-knowledge”, “how-knowledge”, “who-knowledge”, “why-knowledge”, “what for-knowledge”, “when-knowledge”).

The framework needs further theoretical refinement in terms of more fine-grained decision types, other determinants and the reciprocal influence in the management of project activities.

The article can support project managers attempting to build a comprehensive view of project decisions, and it can be a basis to develop novel types of knowledge management systems for project-related applications.

The article proposes a new approach to sustain strategic decision making in project management by adopting a knowledge visualization view. Moreover, it provides an operational tool for managers and analysts at different levels engaged into the management of a project.