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Accounting for quality and improved organizational performance has recently received attention in management control research. However, the extent to which process innovation changes have been integrated into management control research is limited. This paper contributes to that integration by drawing from institutional adaptive theory of organizational change and process innovation strategies. The paper utilizes a 2 by 2 contingency table that uses two factors: environmental conditions and organizational change/learning strategies, to build a process innovation framework. A combination of these two factors yields four process innovation strategies: mechanistic, organic, organizational development (OD) and organizational transformation (OT).

The four process innovation typologies are applied to characterize innovations in accounting such as activity based costing (ABC). ABC has been discussed as a multi-phased innovation process that provides an environment where both the initiation and the implementation of accounting change can occur. Technical innovation can be successfully initiated as organic innovation that unfolds in a decentralized organization and requires radical change and double loop learning. Implementation occurs best as a mechanistic innovation in a hierarchical organization and involving incremental change and single loop learning. The paper concludes that if ABC is integrated into an OD or OT intervention strategy, the technical and administrative innovation aspects of ABC can be utilized to manage the organization’s operating activities.

This chapter discusses how media use changes when everyday life undergoes change, focusing on major life transitions. I briefly introduce different perspectives on evolving media repertoires across the life course, and argue for the relevance of studying periods of destabilization and reorientation, when elements of media repertoires and modes of public connection are temporarily or more permanently transformed. I argue that easily adaptable media technologies such as smartphones tend to become more important in unsettled circumstances, as easy-to-reach for tools for new forms of self-expression, information-seeking or social contact, in accordance with shifting social roles and everyday circumstances. The primary empirical material analyzed in the chapter is a small qualitative interview study with mothers, about their media use the first year with a new-born.

The role of supply chain members is often relegated to an ancillary role in brand building. Do distributors serve only as a conduit for movement of products confined to the business-to-business (B2B) market or do they possess the capability to transcend boundaries and help build the brand of the products that they distribute? Using a case study methodology, an exploration has been carried out on the success journey of Al Seer Group, one of the biggest and oldest Fast Moving Consumer Goods distributors in the United Arab Emirates, driven by the vision to be a brand-building partner. The organization is propelled by a robust people strategy, a process-based operational framework, a data-driven culture and a strategic reorientation that helped them to introduce the brand-building perspective to their stakeholders. This study encourages further research interest on employee retention strategies focused on the Millennial and Gen Z workforce, challenges of data-driven organizations in implementation of emerging technologies, the role of C-suite executives in organizational strategic orientation, and the brand-building perspective of B2B distributors.

This essay proposes the need to infuse open innovation (OI) and open source (OS) principles and technologies into schools as a means of tackling many of the most pervasive challenges in education, and by extension, society at large. It is argued that the principles of OI and OS, which are rooted in innovation management and software development, respectively, may be applied to the way we conceive of and approach organizational governance structures related to schooling, particularly in regard to harnessing innovation, updating management processes, and codifying new systems of trust. Whereas OI offers a novel approach to knowledge flow and the open exchange of ideas, communities rooted in OS principles breed tangible and generative effects through peer network democratization. These emergent, digitally defined networks have been proven to maximize innovation potential, expand collaboration, and enable the propagation of highly durable systems of trust and transparency, all catalytic and essential if we are to realize a future learning economy which favors equity, distributed systems, and common goods over profit, centralized decision-making, and proprietorship. It is within this framing that we articulate the core tenets of both OI and OS translationally as a means of stimulating thinking about how core principles of “openness” and the distributed technologies they enable may help to build common ground in an ever-evolving education and information ecosystem.

The so-called ‘Third Mission’ of the university is under debate for the last 20–30 years (Laredo, 2007) and this mission has received a wide variety of interpretations. In this chapter we adhere to execution of activities that contribute to the economic and social development of its territory. This new idea of the university as an entrepreneurial one requires a reorientation of its strategy to cope with the challenges imposed by its new task towards society. In this sense, the Entrepreneurship Support Programmes (ESPs), as university services, are a central element in the fulfilment of the aims and objectives of any entrepreneurial university, as those that combine and integrate the traditional activities of education and research with the contribution to the economic and social development (Etzkowitz, 1998; Goddard, 1998). The ESP services consist, for example, of programmes that promote entrepreneurship in all the fields; they support the creation of new innovative companies with a scientific or technologic base; they support the development of university spin-off and training related to the creation and management of companies; and they promote university–company relationship and interaction between other factors (Arroyo-Vázquez & van der Sijde, 2008). The reorientation of the strategy of the university into an entrepreneurial one involves also a strategy with regard to the university's ‘entrepreneurial’ services, which have to adapt to the new demands and needs of the university's ‘new’ users, entrepreneurs and companies as well as university staff members.

Interdisciplinary approaches to doctoral education have been identified as a route towards enhancing research capacity to address pressing technical and socio-technological challenges. Increasingly, technological supports for part-time, distance, and flexible access to doctoral programmes are bringing together international groups of supervisors and students. Doctoral programmes in the field of educational technology often include academic staff and doctoral candidates from a fairly wide range of originating undergraduate and graduate disciplines. While technologies provide these diverse, dispersed doctoral students and their supervisors with digital connectivity, theoretical continuity remains a challenge for both new and established contributors to the field. This chapter reports results of a grounded theory informed study of doctoral supervisors’ experiences in dealing with disciplinary issues in educational technology. Resultant supervisory challenges and practices are reported. We posit a conceptual framework for examining perspectives on disciplinarity within educational technology and present an argument that the field provides fertile trans-disciplinary ground for represented disciplines to influence and potentially be reoriented by others. Trans-disciplinary reorientation provides a promising avenue towards developing shared discourses and theoretical underpinnings for at least broadly uniting the field and could make a substantive contribution to resolving persistent concerns in educational technology doctoral supervision and perhaps beyond.

This article explores how the commentary of intermediaries – third-party entities that do not have direct economic stakes in the sales of goods – can contribute to the creation of new market categories comprising preexisting but neglected and undervalued goods. Specifically, I study how the Sundance Institute facilitated the creation of a market for independent cinema in the United States, suggesting that intermediaries create market categories by defining boundaries, generating criteria of evaluation, and setting standards for measuring and establishing hierarchies of quality, which help audiences understand and value the category. The study, thus, adds nuance to our understanding of markets and categories.

This chapter examines the process by which men enter registered nursing. Research on men's entrance into atypical fields has looked at either motivational or career paths differences between men and women. I integrate these approaches by examining how men's prior work experience influences their subsequent career decisions and motivations. I find that men who are nurses are more likely to have had a prior health-care job, and this exposure helps them to recast nursing from a “female-only” job to an acceptable career choice. This reorientation job experience is a way for men to overcome informal barriers of “social control” (Jacobs, 1989) to entering a female-dominated occupation. These findings have implications for current efforts by many states and organizations that seek to expand the registered nursing workforce.

This chapter explores the role of contract breaches in firm turnarounds. Drawing from the turnaround and contract literatures, this chapter proposes that implicit and explicit contract breaches provide substantial resources to firms in turnaround situations during their retrenchment phase. It is asserted that the turnover of top management, the threat of bankruptcy, and the severe time compression of the turnaround situation will facilitate contract breaches. These contract breaches will, however, cripple the firm's ability to accomplish the goals of the reorientation phase, particularly if they choose to pursue a “return to growth” strategy. To avoid these crippling effects, it is proposed that the management of the firm will utilize the uncertainty inherent to the turnaround situation to provide accounts of why the contract breaches were necessary. Through these accounts, management will lower the perceived losses of the violated parties and will maintain their commitment during the firm's reorientation phase.

The aim of this chapter is to encourage a reorientation of creativity research in Public Relations (PR). By identifying key themes which characterise the study of creativity in PR, the chapter highlights limitations in current scholarship, including an overemphasis on what is framed as the creative individual. To offset these research gaps, the chapter introduces a collaborative perspective on creativity which is new to the field and positioned as a viable focus for future investigation. It is argued that this social conceptualisation of creativity has important implications for PR’s strategic role in organisations, its wider impact on society, while also highlighting the importance of leadership to the creative process. This perspective brings a range of factors into play for those with an interest in creativity, and to synthesise key themes, a new conceptual framework is presented to guide future research.