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Managing organizations in complex environments is a major challenge. Complexity is not only due to the external environment (market and/or technological turbulence) but also to the internal configuration and specificities. A recent stream of studies in organizational literature suggested that organizations should develop and deploy specific capabilities for facing complexity, namely dynamic capabilities. This means becoming more flexible. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper proposes four main capabilities to face four dimensions of complexity. It then investigates if it is more appropriate to focus on a specific capability when facing higher levels of a specific dimension of complexity. The research methodology is a multiple case study in seven different organizational units of the same super-store corporate.

Data showed some important results. First of all, internal complexity is unit specific rather than corporate or industry specific. Moreover, it can derive not only from unpredictability and rate of change, but also from variety of elements and their interactions. All these elements form complexity. Internal complexity is characterized by four main elements: uncertainty, dynamicity, diversity and interdependence. Finally, for each of these elements, different organizational strategies are used: in case of uncertainty, for example, a strategy used by the companies is the sharing of information and the development of redundancy.

Originality lies in linking different capabilities with different dimensions of internal complexity.

From the perspective of two groups of governance actors, this paper aims to understand how internal audit (IA) achieves and consolidates organizational significance.

Interviews were conducted with audit committee chairs and chief audit executives from multinational corporations, and the participating corporations’ registration documents were analyzed.

The data indicate that IA achieves and consolidates organizational significance by activating the IA effectiveness “building blocks” (Lenz et al., 2014) all together so as to generate organizational learning and positive change. New IA effectiveness drivers also emerged from the field.

This research contributes to the IA literature by establishing a connection, through the IA impact on organizational learning, between the constructs of IA effectiveness and organizational significance. It also contributes to the IA literature by identifying new drivers and illustrating the complementarity and interconnections between the IA effectiveness building blocks.

This paper encourages internal auditors to keep their eyes on the prize (i.e. organizational significance) instead of simply being focused on the mean (i.e IA effectiveness), in order to fight stakeholder disappointment.

The paper proposes a conceptual model of IA organizational significance and gives key insights for setting up effective IA to stimulate organizational learning and fostering positive change in the whole organization.

A Novartis social business in India completely separated the activities of its social and business units—the former engaging in raising the health awareness of villagers and encouraging them to visit free health camps, while the latter developed affordable medicine delivered directly to village pharmacies. Connections between these units were made through open and fluid market-type mechanisms, and by appealing to the needs and interests of villagers with incentives. This synchronized business model was developed partly because Novartis believed in villagers' self-initiated behavior for health improvements, which made it not interfere into marginalized institutions, and more significantly because it used its internalized control and coordination systems with clear goals of social contribution in operating the business unit. Consequently, Novartis achieved economies of scale, business sustainability, and social contribution.

The purpose of this paper is to emphasise projects as being part of a social process. It aims to move away from the traditional views that lay emphases on linear and predictable models of project practice to one that better highlights the complex nature of human interrelations.

The work reported upon involved a case study where one of the authors was embedded as a reflective practitioner undertaking action learning and elicitation of knowledge from colleagues using soft systems methodology as a primary research method.

Findings from the doctoral research implemented in the Middle East, indicate that socio‐cultural factors in project contexts affect knowledge creation processes critical to organisational change.

Research results benefited from viewing the project organization as a “complex adaptive system” with a structurally open project entity facilitating the contextual interconnections necessary for detecting and creating environmental change.

Pragmatic knowledge was seen as emergent through movement of human interactions and contributed to the portrayal of the project organisation as a “becoming” cognitive system whose resilience is dependent upon producing meaning as opposed to processing information. When change management is viewed in a multicultural context such as this, within this paradigm, then greater emphasis will likely be placed upon complexity and uncertainty issues arising out of the interplay of culture and the political aspects of managing change in a more empathic way.

Complexity in project management and theory has traditionally focussed on technical and structural aspects of project practice; but given the heterogeneous nature of human capital residing in today's organisations, aligning social systems with nature where disorder and uncertainty prevail, provides a more relevant ecological model of social analysis. The paper shows that the challenge today for those working in culturally pluralistic project environments is to make sense of such multiple realities and disparities in language to effectively manage the inherent power relationships that influence project outcomes.

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the discussion on criticality in international business by proposing an interconnection between organizational managerialism and the construction of a global managerial order.

Explores the theoretical divide within critical management studies and the challenge provided to theory by internationalization/globalization. Using the case study of the World Bank, examines its organic drive to global governmentality. Examines relevance of C. Wright Mills's theory of the power élite to the advent of a global managerial élite.

Neither purely realist nor constructivist accounts offer an adequate framework for critical study of international business. Using an approach acknowledging the interweaving of materiality and discourse in construction of a global order, argues that transnational institutions, including the World Bank, play a key role in implementing networked global managerialism. Updates critical élite theory to accommodate globalization and the rise of organized civil society.

Further challenges include mapping global managerial élites and their interconnections.

Critical management researchers should pay more attention to the interconnection between organization‐based theories of control and broader human systems.

Contributes to the application of theories of managerial control beyond the intra‐organizational context.

This paper seeks to contribute to the management literature by providing a theoretical frame. The authors analyze the dynamic relationship and interactions that exist between three organizational capabilities (collective intelligence, knowledge management and innovation) and the correlation with decision‐making effectiveness. The aim is identifying the interaction between the different dimensions and the mediating role of information technology.

The authors’ research question is to determine how organization can combine these capabilities to create superior value and to understand the role played by information technology. Their conceptual model is founded on the interconnection between different dynamic propositions.

The authors find in the review of the literature that the different capabilities are interdependent and have a positive association with effective decision making and superior value creation.

The authors’ theoretical model could incorporate other organizational capabilities, such as organizational performance. Additionally, ground experimentation and simulation are needed to confirm their proposal.

The findings carry theoretical implications for the decision‐making literature as they extend the scope of the research on information technology management. Moreover, this research allows managers to recognize better how to manage their employees effectively and to extend their strategy space with the aim of identifying new managerial practices.

The conceptual model links various organizational capabilities with strategic notions in the management of organizations. The goal of this theoretical article is to understand how three organizational capabilities affect firms’ decision making and how information technology can optimize the process.

The purpose of this paper is to examine why firms governed by the same environmental management standards within an industry exhibit contrasting responses, with some adhering to the letter and others achieving the spirit behind the standards.

Using Arena et al. (2010) as an analytical schema to examine the institutional dynamics behind such contrasting responses, the paper analyses archival and interview data relating to firm strategy, control technology and human expertise in two contrasting Australian forestry firms.

The embedding and decoupling of environmental standards with a firm’s environmental management practices is influenced, first, by the extent to which founder directors and senior management integrate environmental responsibility with the underlying business motives and, second, by the use of organisational beliefs and values systems to institutionalise the integrated strategic rationality throughout the firm. Finally, informed by the institutionalised strategic rationality, the participation and expertise of actors across the organisational hierarchy determine the level to which the design and execution of the eco-control technologies move beyond merely monitoring compliance, and act to facilitate continuous improvement, knowledge integration and organisational learning at the operational level.

This paper responds to institutional theorists’ call for a holistic explanation that considers the interactions among several intra-organisational factors to explain the dynamics behind why some firms decouple while others do not, even though the firms exist in the same social and regulatory context.

Which comes first – quality or change? Managing change is inherent in organisational quality enhancement. Managing organisational change and managing organisational quality go hand‐in‐hand. This paper seeks to look into quality enhancement initiatives to achieve organisational fitness for purpose.

This discussion focuses first on organisational quality – what quality means, why it is important and the means for achieving quality. The focus then shifts to effective management of organisational change including the nature of change and the high failure rate of change initiatives. Many models, approaches and prescriptions for understanding, and effectively managing, change are available. Two are discussed here: Kotter's eight‐step model of change and Doppelt's seven‐point “wheel of change”. Commonalities and differences of the two approaches are examined and pointers to “green” and “red” lights for change managers are highlighted. A large‐scale organisational reform program at La Trobe University (Australia) provides a case study of complex change in progress. Kotter and Doppelt's frameworks are used to reflect on aspects of that organisation's experience of working with change.

The discussion concludes by returning to the theme expressed in the title of this paper – quality and change go hand‐in‐hand. Libraries and librarians operating in an environment of rapid and complex change should add to their managerial “toolkits” an understanding of the intersecting issues of organisational quality and organisational change, and a proactive approach to managing both.

Managers and leaders seeking to make change and achieve organisational quality may be well served by keeping these basic green and red lights as markers and check points along the path to reaching change and/or quality objectives.

Integrating the Stimulus-Organism-Response model, the spillover theory and the person-organization fit literature, this study investigates how internal marketing spills over its effects from the work domain to nonwork domains.

Data of 279 hotel employees working in the US were collected from a self-administered survey via Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Findings support the direct effects of internal marketing on job performance and job satisfaction, and of job satisfaction on life satisfaction. Moreover, results show the mediating roles of perceived person-organization fit, highlighting the mechanism by which internal marketing generates its spillover effect from the work domain to the life domain.

This study advances the conversation on employee-organization behaviors by revealing how internal marketing could lead to job satisfaction, job performance and life satisfaction. These insights reflect the true interconnection of human work and life. For hospitality employees’ well-being, this study encourages managers to simultaneously adopt and integrate the five functional activities of internal marketing (i.e. communication, compensation, welfare system, training and management support) in organizational operations.

This article aims to discuss issues and strategies of developing practices of ecological sustainability in organizations. Three questions guide the discussion: how are practices of social responsibility and ecological sustainability developed and maintained in organizations? What learning in particular is involved in developing practices of ecological sustainability in organizations? How might this learning be fostered by organizational leaders?

The article draws from literatures in ecology, ecological learning and corporate social responsibility to describe the nature of ecological sustainability, intents and approaches of organizations developing it, and their challenges. Case examples drawn from studies of small business are examined to explore successful strategies of developing practices of ecological sustainability. These examples are analysed from a learning perspective.

Challenges that hinder adoption of ecological sustainability practice include low stakeholder understanding and support, low management focus and strategy, and insufficient cost‐benefit analysis. Organizations confronted these challenges by emphasizing education and enabling conditions that fostered learning in everyday action (decentralization, diversity, connections, shared focus, constraints, and feedback).

The discussion shifts the emphasis from corporate social responsibility (CSR) – which has become a broad, contested area of multiple meanings – to ecological sustainability, and shifts the focus from measurement and reporting (prominent in CSR literature) to learning.

Strategies are suggested for organizational leaders to enable conditions for learning that support practices of ecological sustainability.

With the learning perspective, and particularly with the focus on ecological learning models based in complexity science, the article demonstrates a unique link between learning approaches and practices of ecological sustainability.