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The focus of this study is on the knowledge retention process, including knowledge capture, knowledge codification and the internalising of knowledge in organisations – a key aspect of age management. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to an understanding of the difficulties in this process to discuss implications for organizational measures to retain knowledge.

This study is based on field research on a Swedish multinational company from the perspective of senior employees.

The findings indicate that knowledge retention is a complex phenomenon, partly because valued knowledge is tacit and knowing is highly subjective and transferred through learning in collaboration with others in the process of undertaking assignments and acting together in work situations.

Knowledge retention is considered only from the perspective of senior, white-collar employees in this study; it would be of interest to consider other employees’ perspectives as well. A second limitation is that the data were collected at a single site. It could be argued, however, that a single case study research format provides an opportunity to gain deep knowledge and allows for explanations about observed phenomena, thereby contributing towards transferable scientific knowledge.

Knowledge retention is hindered by focusing solely on senior workers and on an explicit and commodified view of knowledge.

Knowledge retention should be an on-going way of working throughout the organization in which tacit knowledge and knowing are important.

This study shows the importance of considering knowledge and knowing retention as a matter of continual interaction between actors. Retention of tacit knowledge and knowing is not merely a matter of capturing and codifying knowledge. This study contributes to an understanding of the internalisation of tacit knowledge and knowing in continual interaction and cannot be preceded by a step-wise process.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and theoretically explain how line managers and lower-status experts work together in public health-care organizations. Hence, this study explores how lower-status experts influence line managers' decision-making and task prioritizing in order to guide staff experts' cooperation and performance improvements.

The authors used a qualitative method for data collection and analysis of the experts' and line managers' explanations about their cooperation. A theoretical approach of experts' identity positioning, in terms of differences and similarities, was used in analyzing the interaction between managers and experts.

This study shows that similarities and differences in positioning acts exist simultaneously. Similarity is constructed by way of strategic and professional alignment with the line managers' core tasks. Differences stem from the distinction between knowledge-grounded skills and professional attributes such as language, analytical tools, and jargon. Lower-status experts need to leave their entrenched positions and match the professional status of line managers in both knowledge aspirations and appearance to reach a respected approach of experts' identity positioning.

Unlike many previous studies, this study demonstrates that similarities and differences in positioning acts exist simultaneously.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the management control system, the bank’s control package, influences opinion about the usefulness of risk measurement (RM) in different control contexts before and after a financial crisis, to understand what influences the usefulness of enterprise risk management (ERM) manifested in RM.

The study is based on semi-structured interviews in 2000-2010, with senior bank managers of two international banks (Bank A and Bank B) – both ranking among the top 100 in the world but differing structurally and culturally.

The two banks took opposite trajectories. Bank A went from high to low expectations of usefulness; Bank B went from low to high expectations. The different attitudes toward RM exhibited by Bank A and Bank B are explained by differences in their control packages, manifested by technocratic control and socio-ideology.

This study reveals that there are not merely different degrees of RM usage in the two banks but that they also show two diverting trajectories. Given this finding, the significance of the organization structure and its control packages (especially the alignment between these two factors) is analyzed to find a plausible explanation for the different experiences of senior managers toward the usefulness of RM. This study contributes to ERM research and to the contingency theory of management accounting.

Although granted funding from government agencies, Britain’s Northern Rock (NR) Bank experienced a depositors’ bank run in 2007. The purpose of this paper is to explore bank managers’ and the Triparties’ communications, in their failed attempt to reassure depositors during the crisis.

The paper is based on content analysis of information given to depositors by bank managers and the Triparties via mass media. The theoretical concepts of rituals and masking were utilized.

Results suggest that nonfinancial reporting supersedes financial reporting. Rather than hidden losses, bank regulators’ and politicians’ discussions of emergency funding for NR was the crucial incident signaling “something going on.” Even positive statements by prominent organizational actors may have signaled serious problems that compromised NR’s “business as usual” stance.

Collective action manifested in a bank run is triggered by reasons other than numbers in financial reporting. The research results indicate a need to consider how regulatory authorities act during financial crises.

Previous studies concluded that sensegivers must be consistent in framing communication to sensemakers. Sensemaking requires that the crisis communication is also consistent in the sensemakers’ framing. Because it is difficult for sensegivers to reshape the collective sensemakers’ frame, successful crisis communication requires that sensegivers change their communication to match the sensemakers’ frame, including symbolic actions. Additionally, a bank run is characterized first by loss of trust in financial reporting; second, in nonfinancial reporting; and, finally, in the sensegiving actor: a domino effect.

This article aims to describe and analyze the results of efforts to improve patient‐centered care (PCC) in psychiatric healthcare.

Using the methodology of a qualitative case study, the authors studied three Swedish child and adolescent psychiatric care (CAP) units in order to describe how patient‐centered actions are performed. They conducted 62 interviews, made 11 half‐day observations, and shadowed employees for two days.

The article shows that the increased focus on accountability for unit performance and medical risks results in unintended consequences. The patient's medical risk is transformed to a personal risk for the psychiatrist and the resource risk is transformed to a personal risk for the unit manager. Patients become risk objects for both psychiatrists and unit managers, which creates an alignment between them to try to send patients elsewhere. New public management (NPM) reforms may consequently lead to the institutionalization of unintended healthcare practices.

The article shows that accountability pressure to reduce patient risk may create new risks for patients.

The study uses theoretical concepts of risk tradeoffs (risk substitution and risk transformation), which were developed for the macro level, to explain the unintended consequences of NPM reforms at the micro level.

The purpose of this paper is to enrich the theoretical understanding of the phenomenon of sensemaking where a conceptual shift was provoked by a serendipitous encounter.

A theoretical framework consisting of three elements of reflexivity: the cognitive, the social, and the normative, all of which support the study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in the investigation of a serendipitous Episode that occurred in a larger research project. This Episode took place at a meeting between a social welfare officer and a psychologist in which they discussed the treatment of a psychiatric patient. When the psychologist left the meeting for a brief period, the researchers, unexpectedly, were able to interview the social welfare officer alone.

This interview revealed a deviation from the institutionalized patient treatment procedure that was explained to the researchers in earlier interviews. The study shows that shifts in sensemaking are possible when researchers are open to serendipitous encounters. This shift in sensemaking in this Episode was strategic because it concerned the three most important aspects of the actor’s decision making: how to make diagnosis, treatments, and cooperate around the patient.

It is recommended that researchers use the theoretical framework of reflexivity to test their sensemaking processes as well as remain open to changes in planned, traditional methodological approaches.

The study applies a post-hoc analysis with reflections on serendipitous events that may guide researchers when they encounter unanticipated events and make anomalous discoveries.

The aim of this study is to investigate sensemaking as interaction among team members in a multi‐professional team setting in a new public management context at a Swedish Child and Youth Psychiatric Unit.

A discursive pragmatic approach grounded in ethonomethodology is taken in the analysis of a treatment conference (TC). In order to interpret and understand the multi‐voiced complexity of discourse and of talk‐in‐interaction, the authors use dialogism in the analysis of the members' sensemaking processes. The analysis is based on the theoretical assumption that language and texts are the primary tools actors use to comprehend the social reality and to make sense of their multi‐professional discussions. Health care managers are offered insights, derived from theory and empirical evidence, into how professionals' communications influence multi‐professional cooperation. The team leader and members are interviewed before and after the observed TC.

Team members create their identities and positions in the group by interpreting and “misinterpreting” talk‐in‐interaction. The analyses reveal the ways the team members relate to their treatment methods in the discussion of a patient; advocating a treatment method means that the team member and the method are intertwined.

The findings may be valuable to health care professionals and managers working in teams by showing them how to achieve greater cooperation through the use of verbal abilities.

The findings and methods contribute to the international research on cooperation problems in multi‐professional teams and to the empirical research on institutional discourse through text and talk.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate if a rational perspective can be used to interpret cooperation problems in a health care organisation. This perspective is proposed as a complementary perspective to the cultural perspective that dominates as an explanation of cooperation problems. The focus of the research is multiprofessional teamwork in contemporary Swedish health care.

Four cases studies, in which the cooperation in daily work is described, are used to test the two perspectives. The cases concern the cooperative methods health care professionals use when work conditions depend upon an internal norm of mutual cooperation. Although the research is not designed to evaluate the two perspectives, it permits the rational explanations of cooperation problems to be compared with possibly cultural explanations.

The investigation concludes that health care cooperation problems may be primarily explained by the rational perspective, and only secondarily by the cultural perspective. The actors can be seen as underinstitutionalised in the sense they have not yet developed the intra‐organisational norms of cooperation needed for the provision of customised health care.

The paper provides a complementary explanatory framework of cooperation problems based on actors' perceptions of their self‐interests as producers. The examples of uncooperative behaviour reflect two forms of the free rider problem that Ostrom describes as a Common Pool Resource Problem. Management has to prove that cooperation is beneficial to the team members and has to promote a cooperative team spirit by instilling a common understanding of the concept of cooperation.

This paper aims to describe the integrating and disintegrating effects of professional actions in customised care.

Using a qualitative case study, the authors examine the work practices and cultures of three Swedish child and adolescent psychiatric care units (CAP) charged with providing customised care in collaboration with other organisations. The authors conducted 62 interviews, made 11 half‐day observations, and shadowed employees for two days.

The social embeddedness of action is crucial to understanding the professions' integrating/disintegrating activities. In the internal social context of CAP, the professions adapt to productivity‐enhancing new public management (NPM) principles, resulting in integrating effects between the different professions and administrative management in the CAP units. However, CAP exercises professional dominance over the cooperating organisations. Thus, in the external social context, CAP's resistance to customised care principles exacerbates the disintegration problems among the different organisations.

The study concludes that, contrary to findings in many other studies, neither the professional logic nor NPM/customised care reforms determine the actions of professionals. In this case, the institutionalisation of some NPM methods blocks the adoption of customised care practices.

Contrary to the widely accepted idea that resource restriction is a main source of conflict between management and the professions, the professions accept and adapt to resource restrictions, even at the expense of de‐emphasising the practices of customised care. Thus, since professionals choose different operational strategies depending on the social context, the success of a normative reform measure may depend in part on its social context.