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The use of a designed quality plan for application in the electrical power industry is presented. Some contributions of Taguchi’s technique in power process parameter design are reviewed. Recommendations are made for developing a quality‐training plan that will incorporate the design of experiments and description of training sources. A case study of the experiment design in the Hellenic power production process is discussed. Difficulties with design of experiments applications to the power process are outlined and suggestions are offered for resolving these difficulties.

The purpose of the paper is to introduce a systemic approach to organizational learning “triple loop learning” (TLL) that addresses processes of power. Three equally important foci in our TLL are processes of design, processes of debate and processes of power. The focus on power aims to shift “power over” (power as domination) to “power to” enact empowering designs, “power to” co-develop responsible decision-making and “power to” transform our relations with each other and with life on Earth.

The organizational learning literature is reviewed in the context of power dynamics and its shortcomings are highlighted. The authors introduce their understanding of TLL, and how it engages with power dynamics in organizations.

Peter Senge’s conceptualization of systems thinking is unable to recognize processes of power in organizations and offers limited support to transformative learning. Conceptualizations of TLL aim to enhance learning in organizations but none satisfactorily address the processes of power. The learning organization literature as a whole does not satisfactorily address processes of power or reflect our way of envisaging “looping between loops of learning” in TLL to better design, better debate and better develop relationality in the social fabric of organizations.

The authors introduce an original approach to TLL that directly addresses the processes of power in organizations. It offers researchers, learning facilitators and practitioners of the learning organization a way to engage with the processes of power without neglecting other important organizational and environmental issues.

This paper aims to introduce and discuss a new contextual framework to explain the processes of management accounting change in various organizations.

Having an institutional perspective, the paper develops a “conceptual contextual framework” of management accounting change. The methodology to accomplish this theory building consists of an integration of a number of different works summarizing the common elements, contrasting the differences and extending the work in some fashion. Particularly, it draws on theoretical triangulation by adopting three approaches: old institutional economics for internal processes and factors (Burns and Scapens, 2000); new institutional sociology for external processes and pressures (Dillard et al., 2004); and power and politics mobilization (Hardy, 1996).

The proposed framework provides an understanding of the complex “mixture” of interrelated factors that may influence management accounting change at multi-institutional levels: political and economic level, organizational field level and organizational level.

The framework extends institutional theory-based management accounting research as well as provides a comprehensive basis for examining dynamics of accounting in the institutionalization process. Through further research, the framework will be extended and refined.

The paper has practical implications for practitioners and officers as well as for the accounting profession and academics alike.

The proposed contextual framework provides insights into the processes of change by focusing attention on the underlying institutions that encode accounting systems or practices in three institutional levels: political and economic level, the organizational field level and organization level. Examining the tension between institutionalized beliefs and values that may occur between these three levels of institutions will enhance our understanding of management accounting change in organizations.

Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.

Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.

TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.

The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.

X = multiple interpretations

This paper aims to describe and analyze organizational learning processes and power dynamics during the adoption and use of an information system (IS) at a Brazilian public organization.

A case study was chosen as the research method. Data were gathered from documents and interviews with key informants.

The results indicate the existence of two learning cycles during the adoption of the IS at the organization. In the first cycle, learning occurred only at the individual level. In the second cycle, cognitive and social processes of individual and group learning were associated with power dynamics, enabling learning at the organizational level. These results reveal a relationship between the organizational learning process and the specific modes of power, notably discipline, influence, force and domination.

The study presents empirical evidence about the conceptual relation between the organizational learning process and different forms of power in organizations. There has been limited empirical research on this topic worldwide to date, and none in the context of Brazilian organizations published in Brazil or abroad.

This paper aims to examine if the notion of gender subtext is still a useful concept to study the implicit processes of gender distinctions in organizations. It also aims to confront the authors' earlier elaboration of the concept of gender subtext with recently developed insights on how organizational processes produce gender at work.

The paper reviews the literature that was used to develop the notion of gender subtext. Then it turns to the new insights, concepts and theories that should be included in the update of the notion of gender subtext. The discussion focuses on three elements in particular: the entrance of intersectionality, the disappearance of the layered processes and the prevailing persistency of power.

The paper concludes that the original concept of gender subtext as a power‐based set of arrangements that reproduce gender distinctions can benefit from the recent theorizing on gender in organizations. The new notion gender^plus subtext takes the interference of multiple inequalities into account. Gender is one important part, but not the only, or even the most important, form of inequality at work. To understand the dynamic process of (re)production of these inequalities, the paper points to the interplay between structural, cultural, interaction and identity processes in organizations, and to the hybrid power processes of compliance, accommodation, resistance and counter‐resistance.

The authors hope that this updated version may trigger more debate about the reproduction and, more importantly, about change of gender inequalities in organizations.

The paper reconceptualizes gender subtext, bringing a new perspective to the understanding of the power processes that produce or alter complex inequalities in organizations.

Purpose – This chapter investigates the role of enabling organizations in the processes whereby institutional investors collectively influence corporate managers on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues. We develop a framework combining stakeholder and collective action theory to explain how institutional investors influence corporations through collective engagement and to specify how enabling organizations influence this process.

Methodology/approach – To evaluate our framework, we investigate the role of the organizational platform provided by the United Nations-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) initiative in supporting institutional investors’ collaborative engagement with corporations on ESG issues.

Findings – Our findings clarify how investors enhance their sources of power, legitimacy and urgency and attract managers’ attention through collaborative engagement, and show how they manage these attributes to reshape the legitimacy and urgency of their claims in the eyes of managers. Our results also show how enabling organizations such as the PRI initiative facilitate the emergence of collective action by lowering barriers to entry and providing a mobilizing structure, support collaborative efforts by adding their own legitimacy, normative power and persistence to the collaborative engagement, and create conditions for a lasting dialogue between investors and managers by providing a hybrid organizational space.

Social implications – In explaining how to enhance institutional investors’ collective action on ESG issues, this paper shows how we could reorient financial market forces toward sustainability.

Originality/value of paper – The paper benefited from a unique access to confidential and internal data from the UN-PRI initiative and provides a new framework.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the generation of innovations by employees and the creation of initiative paths, and to discover which factors contribute to the implementation of an initiative.

Based on longitudinal qualitative research, the study explores the profiles of initiative paths and the types of innovations and relationships among the generated innovations.

It was found that, to become an innovation, an initiative followed different paths along which the processing and outcomes varied, as did the time needed for experimentation. The creation of initiative paths required the transformative agency of the actors involved. Power relations had an impact on the generation of initiatives and implementation of innovations.

Innovations research has concentrated on the generation of ideas and the implementation of innovations. This study focuses on the process path along which ideas become innovations and on the role of power relations in the innovations process.

The significance of computer technology in terms of industrial relations is an area which has been neglected in the proliferation of literature accompanying the computer boom. This omission is becoming increasingly serious. By April 1976, the National Computer Index recorded a total of 9,245 computers in operation within the UK, in industry, the commercial and service sectors, public administration and defence. During the decade 1965–74 the population of computer installations grew by more than five and a half thousand and because this figure includes bureau facilities, it certainly understates the growth in the number of end‐users who have come to rely on computer technology. More importantly, the degree of this reliance has increased as the technology has been applied to a wider range of organisational functions. The growing dependence of organisations on the computer has enhanced its strategic position in the work process. Control over the functioning of the computer thus constitutes a source of increasing power which may well be used by employees as a powerful tool in negotiation.