Search results

Recent literature in the field of knowledge management (e.g. Nonaka and Takeuchi, 2021) asks for new, future-oriented approaches to strategy that allow us to deal with an increasingly complex world. Thus, this paper aims to build an approach to exploit aesthetics (human’s sensory perceptions and their felt meanings) to sense an organizations purpose and realize it by means of organizational strategy.

Conceptual paper, providing a new perspective on the perception of Organizational Purpose. The abductive argument follows Weick’s notion of Disciplined Imagination (Weick, 1989).

The main argument of this paper is that aesthetics contribute to the identification of organizational purpose. Thus, aesthetic perceptions can inform strategy to implement a stakeholders’ sense of purpose into strategy.

The argument presented is grounded in recent literature on the concepts of purpose and aesthetics and abductive in nature. Thus, empirical research to validate the argument would be beneficial and worthwhile to be undertaken.

The paper presents the idea to integrate the sense of organizational purpose into a corporate strategy to address stakeholders’ value expectations and build more sustainable organizations. By emphasizing aesthetics, the study takes a stand for the inclusion of nonrational knowledge in organizational decision-making.

As far as the author’s knowledge goes, the concepts of aesthetics and organizational purpose have not theoretically been connected to each other. However, due to the implicit nature of purpose, aesthetics may serve as the matching knowledge tool to work with organizational purpose.

Educational psychologists have, over the last half century or so, directed their attention to the study of student motivation. While teachers have not entirely been ignored, there has been little inquiry into teacher motivation that has been systematic and theory-driven. The concentration on students has tended to overlook the centrality of teacher motivations as integral to teachers’ goals, beliefs, perceptions, aspirations, and behaviours, and thereby to student motivations and learning. It is perhaps not surprising that those motivation researchers who have developed robust theories in relation to student learning in educational contexts would begin to turn their attention to teachers, to see whether those same theories might have explanatory power with regard to teacher motivations. Teacher self-efficacy research (e.g., Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2007; Woolfolk Hoy & Burke-Spero, 2005) has made important contributions to the study of teachers. Motivation researchers are now beginning to turn their attention to other aspects of the complex of motivational factors which demand greater attention and exploration. Robust theoretical frameworks already exist in the motivation literature, which can be applied to guide future research in this area. There has recently been a surge of interest, or what we have elsewhere described as a “Zeitgeist” (Watt & Richardson, 2008a) in applying well-developed theories in motivation research, to the domain of teaching.

This chapter draws upon empirical data collected with former violent extremists in the UK to address the phenomenological attractions of engaging in terrorism. We argue that there needs to be more consideration of the attractions of belonging to a terrorist organization and a more thorough appreciation of the experiences that attract people to acts of terrorism. This chapter begins to address these issues by engaging with Jack Katz's (1988) research on the phenomenological foreground, the compelling and seductive qualities of engaging in criminal acts. Katz's highly original and influential research shifts attention away from traditional criminological approaches that emphasize structural background factors such as class, unemployment, gender, poverty, or education. As Katz argues, this structural level of analysis overlooks the subjective phenomenological feelings that accompany criminal behavior. We argue that this is a serious omission as it is precisely the search for thrill, risk, and intense excitement that can serve to motivate further acts of criminality.

In the era of financial capitalism, how to manage and hold global corporations accountable has become too multifarious a topic for a solitary focus of one theme, to sufficiently outline the whole gamut and implications of their activities. Capitalism is characterized by several well-organized antinomies and contrasts, with reflections of critical dualities that bear a resemblance to the primeval paradoxes of Hellenic philosophy. The challenge of governance of capitalism to be effectual entails breaking out of the entrenched precincts of habitual academic silos. Various standpoints while reasonably informative falls short to explain fully the complex interlinkages between the concept of global governance and the state’s capacity to put into effect its will on corporate power.

Spotlighting on assessing the praxis of political economy at global and national level and the corporate reality, this chapter aims to provide a renewed thrust for the focused recalibration of global regulatory regime. In this chapter, the inquiries take the regulation as the main explanandum for elucidation of the shifting governance framework.

Maquiladora plants are foreign‐owned plants operating in Mexico and represent a pre‐North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA) mechanism to reduce tariffs on the assembly of component parts and finished products for re‐export. Maquilas first opened along the Mexican‐US border in the mid‐1960s to provide employment for Mexican workers as well as cheap labor for low‐skilled US manufacturers. Beginning in 1999 the industry started experiencing a sharp decline, which cost jobs and closed factories on both sides of the border. This study applies grounded theory to develop an initial understanding of the factors contributing to the success (and failure) of maquiladora realized strategies, that is, performed operating behaviors and the role of culture in the results these operations achieve. Broadly, these factors include internal relationships (with both management and line employees) and external relationships (both organizational and governmental). The study culminates in a series of suggestions for increasing the likelihood of success of maquiladoras and proposes the applicability of these factors in other multinational operations in labor‐intensive industries.

First-line nurse managers are frequently torn between conflicting demands from management and employees, and previous research suggests that nurse managers use a variety of responses to cope with these demands. The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of social support on nurse managers’ responses to role-conflict.

Two focused ethnographic studies involving participant observation and interviews with seven first-line nurse managers were completed. One study included first-line nurse managers from four units in two municipalities (2005), while the second included three first-line nurse managers from a hospital in Norway (2015-2016).

Three types of responses were identified: the embracing managerialism career, the emphasising managerialism career and the emphasising professionalism career. Emphasising managerialism was associated with role distance from the role of nurse, whereas emphasising professionalism involved role distance from the managerial role.

This study provides insights into first-line nurse managers’ responses to role conflict, by identifying the mechanisms involved and an opportunity to develop a theoretical framework for future studies among nurse managers.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the ways in which certain occupational, organizational and political positions become active sites of leadership construction. Taking as their example the introduction of the Modern Matron in the English National Health Service (NHS) this paper considers how new forms of gender transcending leadership are constituted relationally through a dynamic interplay of historical, nostalgic, social, political and organizational forces.

The research was conducted within an interpretive paradigm of social constructivism and draws on data from semi‐structured interviews with a purposive sample of 16 Modern Matrons working in a single English NHS Trust. In keeping with inductive, qualitative research practice, data has been analysed thematically and ordered using descriptive, hierarchical and relational coding.

Their contention is that the Modern Matron presents as a site for relational leadership in respect of both self and other. This paper argues that the construction of Modern Matron usefully points to the ways in which multiple discourses, practices and relations may be intertwined in defining what it is to lead in contemporary organizations. This paper highlights the extent to which leadership is an on‐going relational co‐construction based – in this instance – in the interplay of four factors: nostalgic authority, visibility, praxis and order negotiation. Together, these produce a mode of leading that is neither heroic nor popularist.

Further research might consider how competing temporal, political and organizational imperatives encourage the development of particular sites for leadership, and how such leadership is then re‐performed in practice, as well as the affects/effect on individual and organisational performance.

The data provides opportunity to consider the “lived experience” of leaders in sites that are traditionally gendered female in non‐standard/public sector settings. Moreover, this paper presents empirical evidence in support of leadership as socially constructed and relational, borne of tension between different temporal, spatial and experiential factors, the on‐going negotiation of which both utilises and transcends masculinized and feminized gender performances. The result is a form of “leading” which is often subtle, difficult to identify and self‐effacing.

Examining the self-identification of physician managers with their manager and clinician roles, and its impact on the state and professional powers in healthcare governance.

With purposive sampling, a total of 15 frontline clinical department managers (mainly principal consultants) and directorial managers (mainly Hospital Chief Executives) were recruited to elite interviews. The themes for data collection and analysis were based on a systematic scoping review of previous empirical studies.

Physician managers maintained respective jurisdictions in policymaking and clinical governance, as well as their primary self-identification as rationalizers or protectors of medicine, according to their managerial roles at a directorial or departmental level. However, a two-way hybridization of physician managers allowed the exchange of clinical and managerial authority, resulting in cooperation alongside struggles among medical elites; while some frontline managers were exposed to managerial values with the awareness of budget and organizational administration, some directorial managers remained aligned to a traditional mode of professional communication, such as persuasion through informal personal networks and by using clinician language and maintaining symbolic contact with the clinical field.

This study identifies the inconsistency in physician managers’ identity work, as well as its patterns. It goes beyond a dichotomized framework of professionalism versus managerialism or an arbitrarily blurred identity.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the discussion of the recursive relationship between the identity of a profession and the professional identity of individuals in the context of change.

The paper draws on qualitative data collected as part of a pilot study into change in the NHS. It draws on structuration theory and insights from social identity theory (SIT) to propose that the relationship between the collective level of the profession and the individual level of the professional is recursive.

The data suggest that individual professionals use and rewrite scripts of their profession but also draw upon new scripts as they engage with local change. To that extent they contribute from the local level upwards to the changing identity of their profession. Further more detailed micro level studies are required.

The argument is based on a limited data set and points towards the need for further microlevel studies which examine the recursive relationship between professionals' identity and the identity of a profession.

Further research can contribute to better understanding of local variance as professionals engage with change.

The paper fuses structuration theory and SIT and examines the agency/structure nexus in a specific change context.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the way “hybrid” clinical managers in Kenyan public hospitals interpret and enact hybrid clinical managerial roles in complex healthcare settings affected by professional, managerial and practical norms.

The authors conducted a case study of two Kenyan district hospitals, involving repeated interviews with eight mid-level clinical managers complemented by interviews with 51 frontline workers and 6 senior managers, and 480 h of ethnographic field observations. The authors analysed and theorised data by combining inductive and deductive approaches in an iterative cycle.

Kenyan hybrid clinical managers were unprepared for managerial roles and mostly reluctant to do them. Therefore, hybrids’ understandings and enactment of their roles was determined by strong professional norms, official hospital management norms (perceived to be dysfunctional and unsupportive) and local practical norms developed in response to this context. To navigate the tensions between managerial and clinical roles in the absence of management skills and effective structures, hybrids drew meaning from clinical roles, navigating tensions using prevailing routines and unofficial practical norms.

Understanding hybrids’ interpretation and enactment of their roles is shaped by context and social norms and this is vital in determining the future development of health system’s leadership and governance. Thus, healthcare reforms or efforts aimed towards increasing compliance of public servants have little influence on behaviour of key actors because they fail to address or acknowledge the norms affecting behaviours in practice. The authors suggest that a key skill for clinical managers in managers in low- and middle-income country (LMIC) is learning how to read, navigate and when opportune use local practical norms to improve service delivery when possible and to help them operate in these new roles.

The authors believe that this paper is the first to empirically examine and discuss hybrid clinical healthcare in the LMICs context. The authors make a novel theoretical contribution by describing the important role of practical norms in LMIC healthcare contexts, alongside managerial and professional norms, and ways in which these provide hybrids with considerable agency which has not been previously discussed in the relevant literature.