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Collegiality is the modus operandi of universities. Collegiality is central to academic freedom and scientific quality. In this way, collegiality also contributes to the good functioning of universities’ contribution to society and democracy. In this concluding paper of the special issue on collegiality, we summarize the main findings and takeaways from our collective studies. We summarize the main challenges and contestations to collegiality and to universities, but also document lines of resistance, activation, and maintenance. We depict varieties of collegiality and conclude by emphasizing that future research needs to be based on an appreciation of this variation. We argue that it is essential to incorporate such a variation-sensitive perspective into discussions on academic freedom and scientific quality and highlight themes surfaced by the different studies that remain under-explored in extant literature: institutional trust, field-level studies of collegiality, and collegiality and communication. Finally, we offer some remarks on methodological and theoretical implications of this research and conclude by summarizing our research agenda in a list of themes.

Equity is an issue that pervades all aspects of primary care provision for children and as such is a recurring theme in the Models of Child Health Appraised project. All European Union member states agree to address inequalities in health outcomes and include policies to address the gradient of health across society and target particularly vulnerable population groups. The project sought to understand the contribution of primary care services to reducing inequity in health outcomes for children. We focused on some key features of inequity as they affect children, such as the importance of good health services in early childhood, and the effects of inequity on children, such as the higher health needs of underprivileged groups, but their generally lower access to health services. This indicates that health services have an important role in buffering the effects of social determinants of health by providing effective treatment that can improve the health and quality of life for children with chronic disorders. We identified common risk factors for inequity, such as gender, family situation, socio-economic status (SES), migrant or minority status and regional differences in healthcare provision, and attempted to measure inequity of service provision. We did this by analysing routine data of universal primary care procedures, such as vaccination, age at diagnosis of autism or emergency hospital admission for conditions that can be generally treated in primary care, against variables of inequity, such as indicators of SES, migrant/ethnicity or urban/rural residency. In addition, we focused on the experiences of child population groups particularly at risk of inequity of primary care provision: migrant children and children in the state care system.

“The unexamined life is not worth living” (Socrates). That is, without critically inquiring into the knowledge of life which is well-being and valuable, life is not worth living. Critical thinking questions existing theories and their unexamined and obsessive assumptions and generalizations, constraints, and “best” practices of the prevailing system of management and tries to replace them with more valid assumptions and generalizations that uphold the dignity, uniqueness, and inalienable rights of the individual person and the community. Better outcomes result from asking the right questions than from having the right answers. In the diverse, pluralist cultural environment of today, the promise of a truly generative dialog among Occidental (Western) and Oriental (Eastern) cultures and civilizations holds great hope for the future. Critical thinking (CT) is an “inclusive” thinking system that can facilitate this dialog such that all of us have a meaningful space and place in this universe. After defining CT and arguing its importance for executives, this chapter introduces CT in two parts: Part 1: Various Approaches to Critical Thinking; Part 2: Major Theories of Critical Thinking. Several contemporary business cases will be invoked to illustrate the need, nature, and scope of corporate CT.

Reality breakdowns generate reflexivity and awareness of the constructed nature of social reality. These pivotal moments can motivate institutional inhabitants to either modify their social worlds or reaffirm the status quo. Thus, reality breakdowns are the initial points at which actors can conceive of new possibilities for institutional arrangements and initiate change processes to realize them. Studying reality breakdowns enables scholars to understand not just how institutional change occurs, but also why it does or does not do so. In this paper, we investigate how institutional inhabitants responded to a reality breakdown that occurred during our ethnography of collegial governance in a large North American university that was undergoing a strategic change initiative. Our findings suggest that there is a consequential process following reality breakdowns whereby institutional inhabitants construct the severity of these events. In our context, institutional inhabitants first attempted to restore order to their social world by reaffirming the status quo; when their efforts failed, they began to formulate alternative possibilities. Simultaneously, they engaged in a distributed sensemaking process whereby they diminished and reoriented necessary changes, ultimately inhibiting the formulation of these new possibilities. Our findings confirm reality breakdowns and institutional awareness as potential drivers of institutional change and complicate our understanding of antecedent microprocesses that may forestall the initiation of change efforts.

In recent years, there has been a growing dialogue around community-based and systems-based approaches to security risk management through the introduction of top-down and bottom-up knowledge acquisition. In essence, this relates to knowledge elicited from academic experts, or security subject-matter experts, practitioner experts, or field workers themselves and how much these disparate sources of knowledge may converge or diverge. In many ways, this represents a classic tension between organisational and procedural perspectives of knowledge management (i.e. top-down) versus more pragmatic and experience focussed perspectives (i.e. bottom-up).

This chapter considers these approaches and argues that a more consistent approach needs to address the conflict between procedures and experience, help convert field experience into knowledge, and ultimately provide effective training that is relevant to those heading out into demanding work situations. Ultimately, ethics and method are intricately bound together in whichever approach is taken and the security of both staff and at-risk populations depends upon correctly managing the balance between systems and communities.

Reports from the Norwegian police indicate that actors in the architecture, engineering and construction industry face severe competition from criminal actors. Sub-contractors working within the law struggle to be competitive compared to dubious sub-contractors. This study aims to examine (1) what the sub-contractors’ perceptions of current contracting practices are, (2) what problems they face and (3) what countermeasures can be used to improve the situation.

The research was carried out on the basis of a qualitative approach. A literature review and a document study of reports from the sub-contractors, public agencies and other relevant organisations were conducted. In addition, in-depth interviews were conducted with the management of eight sub-contractors in the Norwegian architecture, engineering and construction industry.

There is a significant difference in the perception of the reality between contractors’ management and the blue-collar workers. Management among the contractors maintain that their control systems work; however, the result from this study shows that it is easy for the sub-contractors to take advantage of loopholes or avoid the countermeasures.

This paper is limited to Norway and use only the paint industry as a case study.

This study shows that sub-contractors constitute an important source of information in the effort to prevent dubious sub-contractors as they are the actors who experience the greatest pressure and competition from them. Therefore, contractors should include the sub-contractors in the process of developing measures to prevent this misconduct.

A very little research has been carried out within this field of study in Norway.

The case of Africa is important in understanding the growth of research management as a profession. Africa has rapidly increased its research output in recent years, and its institutions are increasingly in demand as research partners. Yet research management structures have developed from a very low base, and need not be confined by past practice. Through the Southern African Research and Innovation Management Association (SARIMA), it has been represented since the origins of International Networks of Research Management Societies (INORMS). Several external donors have sought to help build research management structures on the continent, and the success (or otherwise) of these initiatives can tell us much about the potential for common research management structures globally.

This chapter does not provide a comprehensive account of progress over the past two decades, or a complete list of relevant initiatives. Rather, it reflects on whether international assistance and collaboration have made a meaningful contribution to the progress that has been made, and its strengths and limitations. It considers how far growth would have happened regardless of funder intervention, or indeed whether international partners have inhibited progress by prioritising their own norms and priorities. It asks uncomfortable questions for funders about the way in which they plan and evaluate their work.

Diversity management is seen as a decisive factor for ensuring the development of socially responsible innovations (Beacham and Shambaugh, 2011; Sonntag, 2014; López, 2015; Uebernickel et al., 2015). However, many diversity management approaches fail due to a one-sided consideration of diversity (Thomas and Ely, 2019) and a lacking linkage between the prevailing organizational culture and the perception of diversity in the respective organization. Reflecting the importance of diverse perspectives, research institutions have a special responsibility to actively deal with diversity, as they are publicly funded institutions that drive socially relevant development and educate future generations of developers, leaders and decision-makers. Nevertheless, only a few studies have so far dealt with the influence of the special framework conditions of the science system on diversity management. Focusing on the interdependency of the organizational culture and diversity management especially in a university research environment, this chapter aims in a first step to provide a theoretical perspective on the framework conditions of a complex research organization in Germany in order to understand the system-specific factors influencing diversity management. In a second step, an exploratory cluster analysis is presented, investigating the perception of diversity and possible influencing factors moderating this perception in a scientific organization. Combining both steps, the results show specific mechanisms and structures of the university research environment that have an impact on diversity management and rigidify structural barriers preventing an increase of diversity. The quantitative study also points out that the management level takes on a special role model function in the scientific system and thus has an influence on the perception of diversity. Consequently, when developing diversity management approaches in research organizations, it is necessary to consider the top-down direction of action, the special nature of organizational structures in the university research environment as well as the special role of the professorial level as role model for the scientific staff.