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“Shared purpose,” understood as a widely shared commitment to the organization’s fundamental raison d’être, can be a powerful driver of organizational performance by providing both motivation and direction for members’ joint problem-solving efforts. So far, however, we understand little about the organization design that can support shared purpose in the context of large, complex business enterprises. Building on the work of Selznick and Weber, we argue that such contexts require a new organizational form, one that we call collaborative. The collaborative organizational form is grounded in Weber’s value-rational type of social action, but overcomes the scale limitations of the collegial form of organization that is conventionally associated with value-rational action. We identify four organizational principles that characterize this collaborative form and a range of managerial policies that can implement those principles.

The purpose of this paper is to explore supportive and shared leadership structures at schools as a function of school culture policies and procedures.

A qualitative study was conducted at three secondary schools in the Midwestern USA. Administrators and teachers were interviewed, professional learning communities observed and artifacts collected to explore school culture policies, procedures and leadership in the implementation of professional learning community practice.

This study concludes that school leaders must provide supportive and shared leadership structures for teachers in order to ensure a positive school culture and effective professional learning communities that impact school improvement. Leaders in schools must work directly with teachers to create policies and procedures that provide teachers the leadership structure to directly impact school improvement through professional learning community collaborative efforts.

This study builds on the school culture and professional learning communities literature by exploring existent policies and practices in schools as unique cases. Much of the literature calls for specific case studies to identify issues in the implementation of effective practice. This study is important to the community as specific cases that may inform educational leaders on mechanisms that may be leveraged to ensure successful implementation of policies and procedures outline in school culture and professional learning community literature.

The debate on corporate social responsibility (CSR) as shared value creation is trapped between management scholars and business ethics scholars, focusing merely on the distribution of values from an outcome-oriented perspective. The result is a juxtaposition of shared value from either a corporate or a societal perspective, providing only little attention to the actual communication processes supporting the creation of shared value. The purpose of this paper is to re-conceptualize shared value creation from a communicative approach as an alternative to the current situation caught between the management and societal perspectives.

Building upon recent constitutive models of CSR communication, this conceptual paper explores the potentials and implications of re-conceptualizing shared value creation as an alternative approach that recognizes the tensional interaction processes related to shared value creation.

The paper suggests a new conceptualization of shared value creation, which is sensitive to and able to advance the understanding of the tensional and conflictual interaction processes in which the continuous negotiation of corporate and stakeholder interests, values and agendas may facilitate a new understanding of shared value creation.

In order to succeed with the shared purpose of creating shared value (CSV), the company and the multiple stakeholders should neither disregard nor idealize the interaction processes related to shared value creation; rather, they should acknowledge that processes filled with tensions and conflicts are prerequisites for CSV.

A re-conceptualization of shared value creation that provides an alternative approach that is sensitive toward the tensions and conflicts occurring between corporate voice and multiple stakeholder voices.

A full and adequate Systematic Quantitative Literature Research Analysis of the academic literature and research on creating shared value (CSV) is long overdue. This chapter commences this process by introducing some of the academic literature currently on CSV and examining the strengths and weaknesses of this literature, while identifying gaps for future research. The chapter builds on current academic literature to include writing and research from the business community in an attempt to make this chapter both topical and accessible to anyone interested in CSV, including practitioners interested in implementing these types of projects as direct CSV projects or as part of already existing CSR strategy. It is expected that the inclusion of this type of business literature will add value to academic research going forward. The Appendix brings the chapter together by presenting examples of a variety of CSV case studies to provide ideas for future project implementation and opportunities for future research in both implementation and measurement.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the characteristics of actors that allow them to relate to others actors in the system through shared intentionality (orientation) and the nature of the A4A relationship and the results that such interactions bring to the emergent system based on this shared purpose (finality).

The topic is approached by theoretical analysis and conceptual development of three integrative frameworks: the sociological perspective, service-dominant logic and a particular perspective of system thinking: the viable system approach (vSa).

The A4A relationships involve value co-creation based on actors integrating their resources and acting with intentionality to obtain value by providing benefits to other parties and by belonging to the emergent viable system; actor acts for other actors directly involved in the relationship generating positive effects for the whole system in which it is contextualized.

Future empirical research might better support findings.

Many social implications deriving from an augmented role of actors engaged within social relationships in co-creation exchanges. From the title of the paper A4A over on the manuscript describes numerous social inferences of actors in co-creation.

A4A is a relationship formed by actors that interact for the benefit of the whole system in which are involved. They find own benefit from the benefit created for the system in which they live and act. In A4A relationships the value of the single actor comes from the participation to the viability of the whole system.

Shared leadership is characterized by exercising lateral leadership influence depending upon the task and the adroitness required for the task. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of job characteristics on shared leadership and explore the moderating effects of perceived self-efficacy, and psychological safety on the relationship between job characteristics and shared leadership.

The authors applied hierarchical regression and social network analysis using a sample of 23 teams consisting 219 employees from an Indian-based multinational BPO.

Results indicate that skill variety, task significance, autonomy and feedback are significant precursors for shared leadership, and psychological safety and perceived self-efficacy act as moderators.

The study extends the literature associated with job characteristics in relation to shared leadership. Managers can encourage shared leadership using job design and by creating a psychologically safe environment to enhance performance of the team. The cross-sectional nature of the study and data from a single organization question the generalizability of the results.

The authors provide an initial understanding of the impact of job characteristics in a team for the development of shared leadership, which has not been studied so far. Also, psychological safety and self-efficacy of individuals in teams have not been explored in the past, moderating the job characteristics and shared leadership relationship.

The uncertainties, ambiguities and unknown issues that characterize the beginning of a new product development project have led practitioners and scholars to coin the term “fuzzy front end” to refer to this seminal stage. The causes of many product failures can be traced back to this fuzzy front end. Despite a growing realization of its importance, the meaning of the term “front-end fuzziness” itself remains vague. A theory-based framework is not available to guide thinking and research on this important topic. The purpose of this paper is to create a conceptual framework for fuzzy front end.

This paper applies Daft and Lengel’s (1986) theory of organizational information processing to create a framework for research on the fuzzy front end of product innovation. This framework is used to clarify the concept of front-end fuzziness and identify three sources of fuzziness in the project team’s task environment.

Contrary to the current literature, the authors argue that equivocality rather than uncertainty is the dominant cause of front-end fuzziness. This new conceptualization: appropriately broadens the concept of front-end fuzziness; identifies new problem areas; highlights the need for new solutions; and suggests the need to focus on team vision as a front-end deliverable.

The previous literature used a single uncertainty reduction rationale for integrative mechanisms. Thus, it did not consider that the implementation might change from front end to downstream. The dual theoretical rationale suggests that integrative mechanisms can be implemented differently to focus either on uncertainty or equivocality reduction. In the front end, equivocality is the dominant issue and mechanisms should be implemented in ways that create a rich channel to identify issues and share perspectives. In downstream activities where the dominant issue is uncertainty reduction, mechanisms might be implemented in ways that provide greater quantities of information on known issues.

This new conceptualization of front-end fuzziness provides a better theoretical rationale for how integrative mechanisms enable a project team to work through the fuzziness it faces, creating a clear team vision that guides its downstream efforts.

This paper aims to understand in-depth the concepts applied to the domains of organizational learning (OL) and learning organization, based on the notional perspectives of Professor Deborah Blackman and traces the evolutionary path of her academic journey and contributions in this regard.

A conversation with the distinguished academician, Professor Deborah Blackman.

How OL has pivoted around “shared mental models” that will enable in collective evidence-based decision-making across the organizational hierarchy.

The interactive session with Professor Deborah Blackman captured her ideas and critique pertaining to the theme of OL and the crucial aspect of “shared mental models” which promote “learning” in an organization. Delving deeper, it is seen that this trajectory offers the space and orientation to researchers and professionals to verify.

This study aims to explore the dynamics by which exposure to a moral rationale is given expression in schools, and how this is perceived as impacting on teaching, leadership practice and student outcomes.

A total of 11 Australian schools were part of a project in which they were supported in applying a conceptual framework involving moral purpose, learning and leadership to self‐selected improvement initiatives. Extensive focus group interviews with the school project teams were analysed to identify recurrent themes, and to illustrate the dynamics of engagement with moral purpose.

A significant insight that emerges from this study is that the movement towards increased moral sensitivity enhanced commitment to shared purpose. This movement provided a driver for ethically driven behavior. Part of the contribution of the intervention was to draw attention to these elements of moral purpose, which, in turn, increased teacher and leader sensitivity to their operation, and resulted in changed teacher practice and enhanced learning outcomes for students.

The findings of this study highlight the potential of explicit attention to moral purpose in school communities, and suggest some points of emphasis for school leaders who are committed to improvement built on staff commitment.

While many authors signal as a matter of principle the importance of moral purpose in schooling, and in the leadership of change, it is a comparatively under‐researched area in terms of its practical application. This study makes a contribution to addressing that gap.