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In this volume we will present nine articles from the third conference of the European SSSI which was held on July 4–6 in Rotterdam in 2012. They come from a diverse range of countries such as Poland, Sweden, The Netherlands, and Germany. This collection shows a wide variety of qualitative methods and themes, such as sex-work in Poland, urban public places in the Netherlands, dancing during lunch break in Sweden, self-change in Papua New Guinea, immigration in Malta and the body online. When we look at the studies in this volume, it becomes clear that European scholars have been inspired by the SI tradition in various ways, which will be discussed briefly in this introduction.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how legacy organizational identity and death relate to each other and, thereby, contribute to closing the gap in knowledge on organizational identity constructions in times of death.

The paper opted for an exploratory study relying on primary data from in-depth narrative interviews with 20 organizational members of a bank that went bankrupt. The primary data, as well as documents like websites, newspapers, magazines, booklets, minutes, and reports, were complemented by secondary interviews with other members of the financial industry.

The paper finds that members of a dead organization construct a bankruptcy narrative that is also a legacy organizational identity narrative including a legacy organizational identity transformation and several identities that have positive and negative aspects and are conflicting but integrated into a coherent narrative. Furthermore, the paper provides empirical insights on how members of a dead organization draw upon their legacy organizational identity to justify their (lack of) past interpretations and responses to an unfolding bankruptcy. Finally, it provides empirical evidence on ways that legacy organizational identity from a dead organization play a substantial role in a living organization.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability.

The paper holds insight that can help practitioners understand members of a dying organization – including the ways they come to form and perform in a new organizational context; an understanding that is a prerequisite for helping and supporting these members in coming to perform satisfyingly in the new organization.

This paper addresses an apparent gap in the literature on identity and death; exploring identity narratives in a bankrupted bank, the paper considers constructions of legacy organizational identities in times of disruptive death.

The purpose of this paper is to review recent literature on global public relations in order to scrutinize how contemporary transformations are conceptualized in the field, and what this means for the understanding of public.

The authors offer a critical analysis and discussion of recent publications in order to explore the nexus of “public”, “culture” and “global”, questioning whether the increased interest in a specific understanding of culture actually contributes to the field’s ability to deal with complex and transforming publics in a meaningful manner.

The majority of global public relations literature applies redundant understandings of globalization. It attaches prime importance to the concept of culture and contributes little to the understanding of transforming publics. Few scholars acknowledge the limitations of using “culture” for the definition of publics in global contexts. Alternative approaches to understanding “publics” in global public relations research and practice are hardly offered.

The findings imply that global public relations research would benefit from abandoning monolithic social science categories and from working transdisciplinary in order to refine its understanding of contemporary societal and social transformations and their implications for the understanding of public and relationship building.

The discussion indicates that public relations practitioners could benefit from reorienting their understanding of publics in globalizing societies in order to build and nourish mutually beneficial relationships. The authors apply the insight into contemporary business practices to offer public relations practitioners a starting point for reorientation.

The authors contribute to global public relations scholarship with an alternative approach to the understanding of transforming publics which merges the spatial turn and the practice turn known from wider humanities and social science research, and relevant business practices.

This paper is positioned at the intersection of the spatial and the practice turn in management research. The purpose of this paper is to address the phenomenon of transgressive small to medium-sized enterprise (SME) formations and the limitations of SME globalisation research in capturing the connectivity of businesses in disjointed locations, and propose a qualitative case-study design to overcome these limitations.

The paper critiques existing approaches to SME globalisation, which are informed by an interpretative community that conceives of territorial geography as the nodal point of SMEs and does not distinguish between internationalisation and globalisation. The paper thus addresses related methodological challenges. Based on a synthesis across disciplines and theoretical perspectives, the paper offers a reflexive method for case-study research, in the hope that such a method may increase the productiveness of analytical exploration of the multidimensional quality of SME organising and managing at the focal point of current transformations.

The paper makes the case for SME globalisation research to move beyond societist and individualist ontologies to embrace social-constructionist thinking, to make practice the unit of case-studies, and to appreciate process geographies of managing and organising.

The paper contributes to business research on SMEs at the nexus of globalising flows. The theoretical, conceptual, and methodological implications are discussed and are substantiated by details and illustrative selected examples from an ongoing study.

The study of social SME landscapes, including from the perspective of the reflexive case-study method, is open to multilingual and international research collaboration.

The paper contributes a multidisciplinary research design that extends SME studies so as to embrace contemporary transformations, by offering a reflexive case-study method for the improvement of research practice. In the field of SMEs, the paper contributes a new concept social “SME landscapes” that could enrich and improve the understanding of contemporary business. In the fields of SME and entrepreneurship studies, the paper implements expressed demands for social constructionist, multidisciplinary approaches.

While intended as a bridge between the concepts of learning organization and organizational learning, current conceptualizations of organizational learning capability still predominantly lean toward the learning organization side, specifically directed at profit firms. The purpose of this paper is to propose a four-dimensional model of organization learning capability that leans more toward the organizational learning side, specifically directed at nonprofit and government organizations in general, and army organizations in particular. This model is applied to the British Army in the Second World War.

The paper entails a secondary analysis of historical and military sources and data.

It is found that the British Army possessed only a moderate learning capability, which can be plausibly, but not exclusively, related to differences in battlefield performance between the British and the German Army in the Second World War.

The research scope of the paper is limited to the analysis of one particular army in the Second World War. Implications for theory reside in the importance of organizational learning capability and its dimensions to the effectiveness of “lessons learned” processes inside organizations.

The paper has clear practical implications for armies and organizations that resemble armies in one or more aspects, like prisons, correctional facilities, police forces, hospitals, mental institutions and fire departments.

The paper ranks among the first organizational papers to analyze army operations and functioning from the perspective of organizational learning capability.

This paper aims to discuss tourism development, tourism policy development and its challenges in Rotterdam through the lens of “new urban tourism”, reviewing the relevance of the concept.

This paper comprises a review of the concept of new urban tourism and a case study of Rotterdam. Methods used include a literature review and social media search, an analysis of policy documents and street interviews.

Tourism in Rotterdam has grown rapidly, exhibiting aspects of new urban tourism such as encounters with the ordinary and everydayness, authenticity and de-differentiation. Details about tourism motives and nature of tourism are unknown. It is concluded that the concept of new urban tourism is a rather elusive and difficult notion to apply to the case of Rotterdam.

This research is a case study of one city.

This paper suggests that different tourism information and statistics are needed for policymaking and for understanding urban tourism.

The Rotterdam case raises new questions about new urban tourism, as the concept appears to be rather indefinable.

This chapter considers the toxic chemical asbestos as a salient example of the ever-widening gap in achieving the paradoxical aspirations of ensuring a high-quality environment and a healthy economy espoused in the Agenda 21 principles arising from the Earth Summit in 1992. In particular, this chapter reviews the scrutiny proposed around the production of toxic components and the disposal of poisonous and hazardous wastes. Despite an increase in global regulation, the elimination of asbestos mining, production and disposal of waste has not been achieved globally. We consider the various non-government and supranational organisations that provide commentary and responses to the global asbestos issue, as well as, a sample of key campaigns and corporate exemplars to highlight issues of governance and risk.

In this paper on police officers who monitor coffee shops in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, I relate their work to Becker’s moral entrepreneur (1963). Becker describes two categories of moral entrepreneurs: rule creators, such as the crusading reformer, and rule enforcers, for example the police. According to Becker, the rule enforcer is less naïve and more pragmatic than the rule creator. The main question of this paper is: in what respect can the work of the police officers be described as moral entrepreneurship? To answer this question I conducted in-depth interviews with six police officers on the meaning they attach to their duties of monitoring coffee shops. The research shows that police officers take a pragmatic approach, which also contains layers of morality that influence their rule enforcing. For instance, the way they define the character and intentions of the coffee shop managers is decisive in how they act towards them. Another difference is observed in relation to the two interests of the rule enforcer described by Becker. The police officers interviewed did not have to justify their existence and they did not have to gain respect by coercion. This is explained by (a) the routine character of the monitoring, which has created a predictable situation and a modus operandi known to all parties and (b) the criminalization of cannabis in recent years. The effect of this process is that the position of police officers in relation to cannabis sellers is not questioned.

The authors have examined the developments in law and in practice concerning integrated reporting. An integrated report combines the most material elements of information about corporate performance (re: financial, governance, social and environmental functioning) – currently reported in separate reports – into one coherent whole. The authors first explore the motivation of companies and legislators to introduce integrating reporting. Next, they analyse how integrated reporting can be supported by legislation thereby taking into account the existing regulatory environment.

Literature study; desk research, analysing integrated reports; organisation of an international academic conference (30 May 2012 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands).

EU law needs adjusting in the field of corporate annual reporting. Although integrated reporting is currently being explored by some frontrunners of the business community and is being encouraged by investors, the existing legal framework does not offer any incentive, nor is uniformity and credibility in the reporting of non-financial information stimulated. The law gives scant guidance to companies to that end. The authors argue that amending the mandatory EU framework can support the comparability and reliability of the corporate information. Moreover, a clear and sound EU framework on integrated corporate reporting will assist international companies in their reporting. Presently, companies have to comply with various regulations at an EU and a national level, which do not enhance a holistic view in corporate reporting. The authors provide options on how to do this. They suggest combining EU mandatory corporate reporting rules with the private regulatory reporting regime developed by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).

Focus on EU and Dutch corporate reporting laws, non-legislative frameworks, and corporate practices of frontrunners.

The chapter can provide guidance to policymakers, companies and other stakeholders who want to form an opinion on how to legally support integrated reporting. It addresses important questions, especially concerning how European and domestic legislation could be adjusted in order to (i) reflect the newest insights regarding corporate transparency and (ii) become an adequate framework for companies with added benefits for financiers and investors. Moreover, it reports on the benefits of integrated reporting for reporting companies. The authors argue that integrated reporting can be a critical tool in implementing corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the main corporate strategy of a company.

Benchmarking is increasingly considered a useful management instrument to improve performance in healthcare. The purpose of this paper is to assess if a nationwide long-term benchmarking collaborative between operating room (OR) departments of university medical centres in the Netherlands leads to benefits in OR management and to evaluate if the initiative meets the requirements of the 4P-model.

The evaluation was based on the 4P-model (purposes, performance indicators, participating organisations, performance management system), developed in former studies. A mixed-methods design was applied, consisting of document study, observations, interviews as well as analysing OR performance data using SPSS statistics.

Collaborative benchmarking has benefits different from mainly performance improvement and identification of performance gaps. It is interesting that, since 2004, the OR benchmarking initiative still endures after already existing for ten years. A key benefit was pointed out by all respondents as “the purpose of networking”, on top of the purposes recognised in the 4P-model. The networking events were found to make it easier for participants to contact and also visit one another. Apparently, such informal contacts were helpful in spreading knowledge, sharing policy documents and initiating improvement. This benchmark largely met all key conditions of the 4P-model.

The current study has the limitations accompanied with any qualitative research and particularly related to interviewing. Qualitative research findings must be viewed within the context of the conducted case study. The experiences in this university hospital context in the Netherlands might not be transferable to other (general) hospital settings or other countries. The number of conducted interviews is restricted; nevertheless, all other data sources are extensive.

A collaborative approach in benchmarking can be effective because participants use its knowledge-sharing infrastructure which enables operational, tactical and strategic learning. Organisational learning is to the advantage of overall OR management. Benchmarking seems a useful instrument in enabling hospitals to learn from each other, to initiate performance improvements and catalyse knowledge-sharing.