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A burgeoning literature refers to the effect of hypercompetitive conditions on organizations. The new orthodoxy involves reference to the disintegration of vertical, rational bureaucracies and the corresponding emergence of widespread innovation in new organizational practices such as delayering, outsourcing, and reducing organizational boundaries. Differing assumptions occur regarding the compatibility of new organizational practices with more traditional practices such as centralization and formalization. We present systematic, survey‐based data in order to assist in assessing these differing assumptions about compatibility. Our results confirm greater use of new organizational practices by organizations operating in dynamic environments. They also show that greater use of new organizational practices is not associated with less use of either centralization or formalization—indeed it is associated with an increased use of formalization. We argue the need to move beyond a compatibility/incompatibility dichotomy and propose a research agenda for achieving this. The implications for management include the need to view with caution evangelical calls for radical restructuring that ignore the subtleties of the relationship between traditional and new organizational practices.

Consulting firms cite knowledge management as a core capability for achieving competitive advantage. Consistent with this claim has been their increasing investment in systems that seek to formalize knowledge management and allow firms to leverage the knowledge held within the firm. However, despite some successes, knowledge management remains a major challenge. Investigates this situation, using a framework that distinguishes between input and output challenges. Input challenges relate to the production of a knowledge base that is able to be shared within the firm. Output challenges relate to the capacity for effective utilization of any such knowledge base. Concludes with a discussion of the way in which changes in the pattern of consulting services has implications for the sort of knowledge that various consulting firms wish to codify, the dangers associated with codification and the means by which these can be managed.

The concept “flexibility” is ubiquitous as a rationale for organizational change. However, its broad application is accompanied by a general lack of definitional agreement or theoretical cohesion. The purpose of this paper is to propose the merits of an alternative approach – applying a discourse perspective to the use of flexibility as a rationale for organizational change.

This paper first illustrates the broad referencing of flexibility as a desired organizational characteristic. It then discusses the associated lack of theoretical coherence associated with the use of the concept “flexibility” before arguing the merits of a discourse perspective on flexibility as a rationale for organizational change.

This paper identifies a set of questions to frame a discourse perspective on the use of “flexibility” as a rationale for organizational change.

The questions derived in this paper provide a research agenda for an investigation of the use and effects of the concept “flexibility” in the context of organizational change.

The questions derived in this paper provide practice‐based insights into how the concept “flexibility” is and/or could be used in the context of organizational change.

“Flexibility” is a ubiquitous concept as a rationale for organizational change and its use is accompanied by a diversity of definitions and conceptual frameworks. The originality of this paper is that rather than seeking to provide yet another definition – or attempting a resolution of definitional differences – it argues the merits of a discourse perspective on the use and effect of the concept flexibility in the context of organizational change.

Since the mid‐1980s, there has been strong advocacy of the use of reframing through the application of organizational metaphors as one of the skills of the “new” manager. The reframing approach champions the virtues of analysing and responding to organizational situations through the use of multiple frames and is centrally implicated in the process of organizational change. The underlying message is that it enables both analysis and action to occur. Argues that this link has not been adequately explored in the literature which tends to assume that “appropriate” actions are able to be taken and that they will be successful. Explores four main constraints: cognitive limits; frame dominance and the limits of language; conceptions of action and their limits on reframing; and knowledge and power as limits to reframing.

INDUSTRIALLY the two ‘in’ words today seem to be participation and consensus, the first leading to the second. How these can become a reality in modern business was discussed recently by the London Region of the Institute of Work Study Practitioners.

A common argument is that organizations should adopt new organizational practices, in order to respond to the hyper‐competitive business environment. The assumption underlying this argument is that such adoption generally entails the replacement of traditional practices. We suggest, instead, that managers are more likely to be managing simultaneously both new and old organizational practices. We explore our position through an investigation of the use of remote collaboration technologies in film production. In our study of US, UK and Australian film production houses we identify seven organizational dualities which characterize remote collaborations: creative work/routines, freedom/constraint, trust/control, artistic excellence/cost effectiveness, collaboration/competition, emotional/rational and closeness/remoteness. One side of each relationship represents organizational practices commonly associated with traditional forms of organizing, while the other represents those practices commonly associated with new forms of organizing. The coexistence of these dualities suggests that new organizational forms are not replacing traditional forms but rather co‐exist with, and become incorporated into, remolded traditional forms.

The Professors of the Imperial College of Science and Technology have addressed to Lord Crewe, the Chairman of the Governors of the College, a memorial urging the necessity of the encouragement of science and of research. In commenting upon this document the Journal of Chemical Technology observes that “a satisfactory feature of the memorial is the recognition on the part of the signatories that scientific education should be on broad lines.” “We have always contended that an indispensable preliminary to a professional career should be a thoroughly sound general education. Whether or not the study of science is the best kind of study may be a debatable point, but it is certain that exclusive attention to science is thoroughly bad. A man's mind is narrow when he is unable to recognise the importance of things outside his own particular sphere of action, and it is precisely this state of mind that the exclusive study of science tends to produce. It is, therefore, the more necessary, in seeking to secure greater attention to scientific studies in the reform of our educational system, to take care that nothing be done which may curtail the period required for the acquisition of general knowledge. It is far better to delay than to hasten specialisation. A step in the right direction has been made when scientific men themselves state that they do not believe that “an education which includes good teaching of science need be a narrow education,” but we wish that this opinion had been positively rather than negatively expressed. The memorial refers to the “lethargy, misconception, and ignorance” of the public regarding national education. It is pertinent here to remark that when anything goes wrong and no particular individual or individuals can be held to be, or will acknowledge themselves to be, responsible, the “public” is blamed; the public being everybody with the exception of the denunciator and his friends. In the present instance the fault is not, even for the greater part, with the people. They are, naturally enough, interested in education only in so far as it is expressed in terms of school and college accounts and of wage‐earning capacity. Of the bearing that improvement in education and the advancement of physical science has on the welfare of the community the average man knows little and cares less. He has to be educated in the value of education. He is not, and probably never will be, interested in education as an abstract good. What interest he has in it is purely utilitarian. If he sees that the knowledge which he himself does not possess carries with it but doubtful prospects for the future, poor remuneration in the present and a social position little better than his own, he is unlikely to be impressed with the value of education. The fact is that there is a lamentable want of opportunity for the intellectual classes in this country and until this state of things is remedied the public will continue to display—and with every justification — “lethargy, misconception, and ignorance” in respect to national education.

This paper argues that by shackling the future of work to a vision of full employment, alternative futures are closed off. At present, employment creation is seen as the sole route out of poverty. Here, however, we reveal that a complementary additional pathway is to help people to help themselves and each other. To show this, evidence from a survey of 400 households in deprived neighbourhoods of Southampton and Sheffield is reported. This reveals that besides creating job opportunities, measures that directly empower people to improve their circumstances could be a useful complementary initiative to combat social exclusion and open up new futures for work that are currently closed off.

Since March 16th the ban on the use of soya in the manufacture of sausages has been removed. The lifting of this restriction, which has been in force since 1946, will be welcomed by some manufacturers who claim that soya is an excellent binding agent. We are doubtful, however, whether these sentiments will be shared by all public analysts, many of whom are of the opinion that the presence of soya in a sausage renders the determination of the meat content if not wholly impossible at best a series of long and tedious processes, the accuracy of which would seem to be a matter of some controversy. Upon our enquiry about this divergency of opinion to the Ministry of Food, we were told that the Ministry were quite satisfied that the new Order could be properly enforced, in other words we assume this to mean that they consider the presence of soya does not prevent the accurate determination of the meat content. This was the answer one would expect to receive from the authority who framed the Meat Products Order, but it is none the less surprising to recall that only a very short while ago the Ministry were of the reverse opinion. In May 1950 a report was published in this Journal of a case heard before Old Street Magistrates. The defendants were summoned under The Meat Products, Canned Soup and Canned Meat (Control and Maximum Prices) Order, 1946, for selling sausages which contained soya. The Order stated that no persons should manufacture or sell any sausage, slicing sausage or sausage meat which to his knowledge contained any soya product. The prosecuting solicitor, for the Ministry of Food, said that it was necessary under the Order of 1946 for sausages to contain a minimum meat content, and if soya flour were used to bind the sausage it was not possible upon analysis to determine the meat content. It would be interesting to know whether the results of research during the past two years have made available new and efficient methods of examination which justify this change of viewpoint. We are advised, however, that if soya is present the amount of meat cannot be accurately assessed, and, moreover, the percentage error of this determination is likely to be directly related to the percentage of soya in the sausage. Thus it would seem possible that this new piece of legislation provides an added incentive to an unscrupulous manufacturer to prepare his mix with a lower meat content than that prescribed and to make up the balance with soya: a practice which would enable him to make more sausages than his honest competitor, and which would probably be difficult to expose.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how order‐generated rules applied to organizing form dualities can assist in creating the conditions for emergent, self‐organized behavior in organizations, thereby offering an operational deployment of complexity theory.

The paper begins by showing that the concept of dualities is consistent with complexity‐thinking. In addition, when applied to organizing forms, dualities represent a practical way of affecting an organization's balance between chaos and order. Thus, when augmented with order‐generating rules, organizing form dualities provide an access point for the practical instigation of edge of chaos conditions and the potential for emergence.

The paper maintains that many attempts to “manage” complexity have been associated with changes to organizing forms, specifically toward new forms of organizing. It is suggested that organizing form dualities provide some management guidance for encouraging the “edge of chaos” conditions advocated in complexity theory, although the details of self‐organization cannot be prescribed given the assumptions of non‐linearity associated with complexity theory perspectives. Finally, it is proposed that organizing dualities can elucidate the nature and application of order‐generating rules in non‐linear complex systems.

Dualities offer some guidance toward the practical implementation of complexity theory as they represent an accessible sub‐system where the forces for order and chaos – traditional and new forms of organizing respectively – are accessible and subject to manipulation.

The commonalities between dualities and complexity theory are intuitive, but little conceptual work has shown how the former can be employed as a guide to managing organizing forms. Moreover, this approach demonstrates that managers may be able to stimulate “edge of chaos” conditions in a practical way, without making positivistic assumptions about the causality associated with their efforts.