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The purpose of this paper is to analyze how activists of the Spanish protest movement 15M conceptualize organizational practices in relation to the movement’s goals.

In order to theoretically understand social movement organizations (SMO), the concept of partial organization is placed within the context of the politics of prefiguration. Empirically, the paper is based on field research conducted in Spain in three consecutive years (2014-2016) that included 82 qualitative interviews and participant observation.

Activists consider the organizational practices as crucial means to achieve social change. They conceptualize SMO in a meaningful and systematic way as partial organizations, specifically, by aiming at open membership and non-hierarchical structures. As they do this to enact the movement’s goals prefiguratively in their daily organizational practices, the limits and restrictions of the practices of self-organization are widely accepted.

The research focused on studying the relatively young and often very successful organizations of the Spanish movement. It remains open to what extent the prefigurative practices will survive organizational life cycles.

By contributing to a deeper understanding of the underlying philosophy of SMO, this paper is useful for social movement activists and scholars.

This is one of the first papers, which analyzes the organizations of the Spanish protest movement with respect to both empirical and theoretical aspects.

Self-service technologies (SST) have become more and more pervasive in retail to facilitate autonomous checkout. In this context, customers play an active role and, as such, can be considered as “partial employees.” Partial employees have to perform a wide range of tasks, get rewarded for their work and need to understand the terms of the exchange, all without being subject to a formalized contract. In this research, the authors suggest that partial employees go through a process of organizational socialization that allows them to define the psychological contract they hold with the organization.

In order to investigate the psychological contracts of partial employees, 324 Canadian customers using SST completed an online questionnaire, in which their SST use, psychological contract fulfillment and organizational socialization were measured.

Descriptive analyses highlight that customers as partial employees build a psychological contract with their most frequent retailer, as they perceive not only retailer inducements but also their own contributions. Multiple linear regressions suggest that organizational socialization favors psychological contract fulfillment, but that specific dimensions of organizational socialization are important for employer inducements vs. employee contributions. Moreover, results suggest that the frequency of use of SST as well as the patronage positively predicts psychological contract fulfillment.

This research investigates a specific situation of unconventional employment – that of customers as partial employees with organizations. It contributes to the literature on the psychological contract by broadening its application to new relations and to the literature on customer management by reemphasizing the relevance of the psychological contract in this domain.

This paper discusses the role that customers play as human resources in service‐based organizations. These involve situations where a customer replaces a more traditional employee (ATMs, self‐serve gas stations), or situations where the customer serves as a strategic partner by providing resources, particularly information, that are critical for the performance of the service exchange (consulting, health care, physical fitness training). After discussing the conditions under which a customer acts as a “partial employee” of a firm, we turn to a discussion of how human resource functions apply to partial employees. Research propositions are offered to guide future research in customer labor contributions.

This chapter explores the multiplicity, formation, and porosity of organizational boundaries in new, fluid forms of production. Conceptualizing them as “partial organizations,” we argue that both the intentional design of organizational elements (such as membership, hierarchy, rules, monitoring, and sanctioning) as well as unintended adjustments of “unorganized” aspects drive boundary formation and impact boundary porosity. In addition, we contend that structuring dynamics will create specific trajectories for boundaries over time. Empirically, we further our theoretical framework on the basis of an in-depth case study of the Apache open-source software community during its formative years (1995–2002). We find that both the salience and formalization of boundaries increase over time. However, different conceptions of boundaries (such as efficiency, competence, power, and identity) become salient at different points in time. While design and adjustment drive boundary formation with regard to all boundary conceptions in our empirical case, porosity develops differently for each of them. We also demonstrate that the formalization of boundaries does not necessarily reduce boundary porosity, but actually may increase it.

This study aims to analyze how startups organize their purchasing activities to improve operative excellence and become attractive customers.

The authors use a two-phase exploratory approach with semistructured interviews and a World Café. In total, 20 startup purchasers and suppliers participated. It is an international study with participants from eight countries (Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Hungary, The Netherlands, the UK and the USA).

The authors find that startups organize the purchasing function in five ways: partial outsourcing, transactional-oriented, strategic only, outsourced purchasing and full department. Each type has advantages and disadvantages regarding operative excellence. The authors identify type-specific antecedents to operative excellence: forecasting, payment habits, ordering process, contact accessibility and quick decision-making.

The value of this paper is that it offers entrepreneurs a framework to organize startup purchasing activities, including outsourcing options. Furthermore, it provides theoretical contributions that expand the topic of purchasing and supply organization and operative excellence to the startup context.

The value of this paper is that, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first to explore purchasing organization and operative excellence in startups.

In this paper, the authors aim to clarify the relationship between organization and society. They argue that the proliferation of organization in modernity has not yet been properly understood in light of the absence of organization in premodern times. The authors therefore ask: Why do organizations proliferate? Why do they proliferate in such manifold organizational forms? And how can these heterogeneous forms nevertheless be related to a common problem to which organizations provide a solution? A comparative historical analysis based on the theory of social systems reveals that organizations fill a gap which the decline of morality as an integrative success medium created.

The paper develops a conceptual framework focusing on the theory of media within Luhmann’s theory of social systems as a point of departure. The authors discuss the concept of “interpenetration” to assess the relation between morality and organization. They raise several follow-up questions for future empirical research, most prominently pertaining to the relationship between organization and digitalization.

The main finding is that morality can be conceptualized as a specific success medium (alongside religion and symbolically generalized communication media) which used to structure premodern societies by means of social and interhuman interpenetration at once. Modern society instead employs two differentiated forms of interpenetration: Social interpretation through organizations and interhuman interpenetration through love relationships. These centripetal counterforces help to mediate the centrifugal forces unleashed by the full development of modern success media. Modern society critically depends on the proliferation of organizations.

This paper examines the relationship between morality and organization not from the perspective of interaction or organization, but from the perspective of society. This approach provides novel insights in that it opens up promising avenues of comparison between organization and other social forms. Understanding the distinctively modern “success story” of organization as a social form makes it possible to ask about corresponding potentials and limitations, but also alternative possibilities. In doing so, the authors depart from most studies of organizations grounded in social systems theory as the authors primarily focus on Luhmann’s theory of media (as opposed to the theory of differentiation).

This article presents an integrated model of the learning organization. It is based on empirical research of the learning organization literature, as well as on practitioners’ understandings of the concept where learning organizations were often described in terms of four distinct individual aspects – no more and no less. This article argues these aspects cannot be treated as separate, and that the four aspects have to be combined in order to create a true learning organization. The four aspects are: learning at work; organizational learning; developing a learning climate; and creating learning structures. The article suggests that only those organizations that have implemented all of the aspects should be called “learning organizations”, and those organizations that have implemented only one aspect should be called “partial learning organizations”.

All too often, the realisation of the full benefits available from logistics management is hampered by inappropriate corporate organisation. Logistics consultant Ian Tencor outlines methods of selecting the most appropriate solution for particular businesses.

The growing interest in total quality management programmes is well‐known, although there is some concern that such programmes have, in practice, paid only limited attention to human resource management issues. Uses the findings of a primary case study and two secondary case studies to examine this particular proposition. The basic findings indicate that both the introduction and the operation of total quality management programmes require a consistent management approach, with particular effort being given to making complementary changes in related human resource management practices.

In general small companies have not taken advantage of the potential of integrated physical distribution management to reduce costs, improve customer service and increase profits. This is because the most publicised corporate distribution studies have used, as the tool for analysis, large computer simulation models. This paper reviews the distribution operation of Castrol (Australia) Pty. Ltd. a relatively small company involved in the blending and distribution of oil products. All analyses discussed were carried out on a pocket calculator. The procedures described provide a framework for other small companies to follow when evaluating their distribution operations.