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Which courses of action and levers are used by companies in the quest for renewal? Do renewal initiatives create value for the company? Can successful renewal initiatives provide models for managers committed to change, enabling them to identify certain levers that can be exploited in their own drives for renewal? This paper aims at providing answers to these questions by describing different aspects (implementation and corporate value creation perspectives) of the renewal experience conducted in 1993 by a large French electrical engineering company, Spie-Trindel. In this company, a competence building process was identified and analyzed as a driving force behind renewal. Thanks to an analysis of different performance measures (return on investment, return on equity and stock market prices) of Spie-Trindel, the competence building process was studied as a transformational leverage and its impact on the resulting value creation of the company was put into light. Moreover, this paper provides a concrete and detailed description of a specific competence building process which led the company to both alter the hierarchy of competences (see “reordering mechanisms”) and institutionalize new competences (see “institutionalization and routinization mechanisms”) within its core competence portfolio.

This study investigates the role of functional area-specific managerial schemas on the attempt of strategic renewal at a large medical devices developer and manufacturer during a period of high environmental dynamism. Using data from a 16-month field study on managerial work related to the strategy process, I examine how functional area managers attempted to (re)configure organizational capabilities in response to various environmental challenges. While I did not find any disagreement between functional area managers related to what those challenges were, I did find fundamental disagreements related to what capabilities the organization can muster as a response. More specifically, disagreements surfaced in relation to how these capabilities should be assembled, and ultimately acted as triggers for the contestation of existing shared frames between functional area managers. These findings add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that there exist large differences between how managers within an organization interpret what the organization is capable of, and more specifically link these differences to the organization’s ability to adapt to environmental changes by showing how they impact the assembly of new capabilities deemed necessary for a successful response.

Urban renewal through the regeneration and redevelopment of public housing estates has become a major policy initiative in most Australian state housing authorities since the mid-1990s. These policies have involved a mix of both physical renewal and community development in response to the problems that have emerged in the public housing sector over the past two decades. While the origins of these problems are well established and reflect the changes experienced by public housing sectors in other comparable countries (Hayward, 1996; Peel, 1995), the impact of policies to address these problems in the Australian context has attracted less attention in the academic literature (Arthurson, 1998; Randolph & Judd, 2000). While there is an emerging body of evaluation and research that has attempted to assess the outcomes of renewal programmes and policies, it can be argued that there is still a relatively poor level of general understanding of what aspects of renewal are effective or what outcomes have actually been achieved. At the same time, there has been little effective development of an exchange between researchers or evaluators on the effectiveness of the various evaluation methodologies – qualitative and quantitative – that have been used to assess renewal policies. This is particularly evident at the national level (Spiller Gibbin Swan, 2000).

This paper argues that creative compliance tactics are an innovative union renewal strategy. Creative compliance involves the observance of the letter of the law while undermining its spirit. This regulatory inconsistency stems from indeterminate legal outcomes and discretion in legal interpretation and application. Drawing on interviews with senior union officials in four case studies in Australia, this paper reveals that two particular types of creative compliance tactics have been used by the unions to achieve positive outcomes: work-to-rule and the exploitation of loopholes. These opportunistic and proactive approaches to ‘anti-union’ legislation at the national level since 1997 represent a sea change in union tactics and a viable union renewal strategy, because they augment the individual ability of unions to shape and advance an agenda and therefore, adapt and transform at an organisational level. Consistent with adaptation theories on organisational-environment relations and strategic choice theory, the findings reinforce that unions ‘own’ strategic choices and that they can, in response to environmental scanning, adjust their tactics accordingly.

Organizational change is a key mechanism to ensure the sustainability of healthcare systems. However, healthcare organizations are persistently difficult to change, and literature is riddled with examples of failed change endeavors. In this chapter, we attempt to unravel the underlying causes for failed organizational change. We distinguish three types of change with different levels of depth that require different change approaches. Transformations are the deepest forms of change where beliefs and principles need to be modified to successfully influence routines. Renewals are deep forms of change where principles need to be modified to successfully influence routines. Improvements are shallow forms of change where only modifications at the level of routines are needed. Using deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) as our metaphor, we propose a theory of “organizational DNA” to understand organizations and these three types of organizational changes. We posit that organizations are made up of a double helix consisting of a so-called “social string,” which contains the “soft” interaction or communication among the organization's members, and a so-called “technical string,” which contains “hard” organizational aspects such as structure and technology. Ladders of organizational nucleotides (i.e., Routines, Principles, and Beliefs) connect this double helix in various combinations. Together, the double helix and accompanying nucleotides make up the DNA of an organization. Without knowledge of the architecture of organizational DNA and whether a change addresses beliefs, principles, and/or routines, we believe that organizational change is constrained and based on luck rather than change management expertise. Following this metaphor, we show that organizational change fails when it attempts to change one part of the DNA (e.g., routines) in a way that renders it incompatible with the connecting components (e.g., principles and beliefs). We discuss how the theory can be applied in practice using an exemplar case.

In this chapter, I focus on stigmatization exercised and experienced by local residents, comparing two socially-diverse areas in very different contexts: the Cabrini Green-Near North area in Chicago and the La Loma-La Florida area in Santiago de Chile.

Data for this study were drawn from 1 year of qualitative research, using interviews with residents and institutional actors, field notes from observation sessions of several inter-group spaces, and “spatial inventories” in which I located the traces of the symbolic presence of each group.

Despite contextual differences of type of social differentiation, type of social mix, type of housing tenure for the poor, and public visibility, I argue that there are important common problems: first, symbolic differences are stressed by identity changes; second, distrust against “the other” is spatially crystallized in any type and scale of social housing; third, stigmatization changes in form and scale; and fourth, there are persisting prejudiced depictions and patterns of avoidance.

Socially-mixed neighborhoods, as areas where at least two different social groups live in proximity, offer an interesting context for observing territorial stigmatization. They are strange creatures of urban development, due to the powerful symbolism of desegregation in contexts of growing inequalities.

The chapter contributes to a cross-national perspective with a comparison of global-north and global-south cities. And it also springs from a study of socially-mixed areas, in which the debate on concentrated/deconcentrated poverty is central, and in which the problem of “clearing places” appears in both material (e.g., displacement) and symbolic (e.g., stigmatization) terms.

Purpose – The aim of this chapter is to analyse the discourse associated with, and preceding the establishment of, the community interest company (CIC) legal format in the United Kingdom in 2005. The analysis identifies the political, ideological, social and economic meta-narratives that are embedded in five key texts from which the CIC emerges and is codified.

Design, methodology and approach – The approach consists of a discourse analysis of five principal texts produced between 2002 and 2005 in which the idea of a CIC is articulated and refined prior to the launch of the CIC format in 2005.

Findings – Analysis of five key texts elucidates four meta-narratives that contrast political, ideological, social and economic discourse and counter-discourse.

Research implications and limitations – The selection of five key texts excludes other texts that were produced during the articulation and refinement of the CIC format. Further research to examine the diffusion, adoption and translation of the CIC legal format is recommended.

Practical implications – We show how the crafting of policy is embedded in meta-narratives that shape the content and implementation of policy.

Social implications – The CIC protects, in perpetuity, collectively held property rights through an asset lock, and enables capital to be raised from investors and trustees to be paid. These characteristics are beneficial in that community asset ownership can contribute to local development, e.g. by creating new ventures, generating jobs and anchoring wealth in communities; raising capital from investors can facilitate the enterprise to grow and scale up; and the expertise of the board can be enhanced by rewarding trustees financially for their involvement in the governance of the CIC.

Originality – This chapter presents the first critical analysis of the discourse associated with the origins of the idea for, and articulation of, the need for a legal format for social enterprises in the United Kingdom.

In the past two decades governments in Britain have launched a series of initiatives designed to reduce the disparities between areas of affluence and deprivation. These initiatives were funded by central government and were delivered through a series of partnership boards operating at the neighbourhood level in areas with high levels of deprivation. Drawing on similar approaches in the US War on Poverty, the engagement of residents in the planning and delivery of projects was a major priority. This chapter draws on the national evaluations of three of these programmes in England: the Single Regeneration Budget, the New Deal for Communities and the Neighbourhood Management Pathfinders.

The chapter begins by identifying the common characteristics of these programmes, known as area-based initiatives because they targeted areas of concentrated deprivation with a population of about 10,000 people each. It then goes on to discuss the three national programmes and summarises the main findings in relation to how far key indicators changed for the better. The final section sets out the ways in which policy objectives changed in 2010 after the election of a coalition government. This produced a shift to what was called the ‘Big Society’ where the rhetoric favoured a transfer of power away from central government towards the local, neighbourhood, level. This approach favoured self-help and a call to volunteering rather than channelling resources to the areas in greatest need. The chapter closes by reviewing the relatively modest achievements of this centralist, big-state approach to distressed neighbourhoods of 1990–2010.

Based on a case study of the pre-2020 Olympics renewal project in the city-center of Tokyo, this chapter examines the nature and impacts of urban renewal conducted by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG) in relation to social housing.

A qualitative case study approach is used based on interviews (with different stakeholders), and participant observation (at various local events or public assemblies) to analyze the impact of such urban renewal on social housing and its community.

The TMG has promoted urban renewal of city government-owned land in public-private partnerships by defending these projects as “win-win-win strategy among residents-business-city.” However, at the same time it has worsened the housing conditions of residents by causing their displacement or the deterioration of their housing environment.

The chapter shows us that the TMG’s justification for the urban renewal — would produce trickle-down effects and help the residents — doesn’t reflect what is really happening to the community. This will help us to have a better understanding of the reality and to critically discuss a more just urban and housing policy.

The chapter provides a complex insight on the “super-residualization” of social housing in Japan, characterized not only by the decrease in its number but also urban renewal providing business services and amenities for the middle and upper classes. This provides an interesting comparison with Western societies.