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The purpose of the paper is to propose a systems change lens to current approaches to assessing social impact in social ventures. Many existing tools for measuring social impact are limited in their capacity to assess the inherent complexities and interconnected nature of the work done by social enterprises.

The paper uses in-depth interviews with sector experts to gain insights into their needs related to impact assessment, as well as issues they face when attempting to understand and measure their impact.

Expert interviews provide insights into how social impact occurs through interconnected systems. It also highlights the need for impact assessment to better consider interaction within systems and networks. Results support previous work concerning the need for methods that can better account for complexity, interacting problems and the place of power in influencing actions.

Following results from interviews and review of existing literature, symbolic interactionism and Social Worlds/Arenas theories are used to gain insight as to how impact can be conceptualized in terms of systemic shifts in social equilibria. The model proposes to capture the contested definitions of problems and their negotiation in social structures.

Grounded in sociological theory, the model brings a new theoretical approach to social impact assessment, one that provides a different view of social structures than existing models that are grounded in economic metrics. The proposed model, therefore, provides a new lens for the detailed assessment of the complex interactions between systems.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between information and coping from the experiences of young people coping with long term illness.

Situational analysis was used as a methodological approach. It has roots in the Chicago Symbolic Interactionism School. Cartographic approaches enabled the analysis, mapping the complexities emerging from the data.

As the young people became more informed about their health conditions, and gained knowledge and understanding both about their illnesses, their own bodies and boundaries, their confidence and capacity to cope increased. Gaining confidence, the young people often wanted to share their knowledge – becoming information providers themselves. From the data, five positions on an information-coping trajectory were identified: information deficiency; feeling ill-informed; needing an injection of information; having information health; and becoming an information donor.

The research was limited to an analysis of 30 narratives. The paper contributes to information theory by mapping clearly the relationship between information and coping.

The study establishes a relationship between levels of information and knowledge and the ability to cope with illness.

The information theories in this study have originality and multi-disciplinary value in the management of health and illness, and information studies.

To explore whether deliberate organisational change of a public sector organisation (a local municipality) would create an avenue for organisational learning.

A case study was set up to study the means by which the organisational change towards a digital administration was to come about. The organisational change was interpreted through the optics of theories of organisational learning. A pragmatic version of these theories is presented and applied in the study in which learning is understood as being triggered by the meeting with uncertainty and the relation between the individual and the organisation (subject‐world) as transactional (a continuous mutual formation).

Viewed through the lenses of a pragmatic understanding of organisational learning it is possible to extend this understanding to an understanding of organisations as arenas made up by social worlds created and held together by commitments to organisational activities. Further, elaborating the idea of learning as being triggered by the meeting with uncertainty into the organisational arena, it is possible to characterise organisational tensions made up by different commitments to the organisational change and development as tensions between social worlds. It is argued that these tensions may act as closures or openings towards organisational learning understood as the continuous transformation of the organisation.

This paper offers an understanding of organisational learning that ties the subject‐world, the individual‐organisation, together in a way that is coherent with the learning theory. Further, it offers possibilities for working with the enhancement of organisational learning by way of paving a way for joint critical thinking or inquiry.

This paper aims to examine how academics enact trust in e-learning through an inductive identification of perceived risks and enablers involved in e-learning adoption, in the context of higher education institutions (HEIs).

Grounded Theory was the methodology used to systematically analyse data collected in semi-structured interviews with 62 academics. Data analysis followed the constant comparative method and its three-staged coding approach: open, axial and selective coding.

The resulting trajectory of trust factors is presented in a Grounded Theory narrative where individual change and integration through shared collective understanding and institutionalisation are discussed as stages leading to the overcoming of e-learning adoption barriers.

The paper proposes that the interplay between institutionalism and individualism has implications in the success or failure of strategies for the adoption of e-learning in HEIs, as perceived by academics. In practical terms, this points to the need for close attention to contextually sensitive trust-building mechanisms that promote the balance between academics’ commitments, values and sense of self-worth and centrally planned policy, rules, resources and exhortations that enable action.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to solving the complexity problem as increased complexity is a main reason why projects fail to reach their goals, and it is unclear what complexity is.

Conceptual development integrating theories of materiality, teleology, and complexity, decision-making theory, communication theory, coordination theory, and qualitative, quantitative and participatory approaches are used in this paper.

To understand complexity, it is necessary to develop a material-systemic process approach and to distinguish structured from unstructured complexity. The social actors construct a complex material-systemic process between themselves and nature to handle unwieldy outer nature. The material-systemic approach reveals how materiel life-world arenas are developed through increased complexity and specialization. Handling complexity is possible by materiality in general and structural material in special, the interplay between inner time (planning) and outer time (production), and between human subjects and an underlying coordination mechanism. It is a systematic organizational blockade that reproduces internal complexity as unstructured and incomprehensible complexity.

The practical models of organizing are tested to the highest degree in construction industry. It is a task to try and examine the models in other types of projects.

The paper offers a proposal to a theoretical solution to the complexity problem going back to the roots in Enlightenment and shows at the same time through practical models how increased complexity may be the most important productive force in future projects.

This paper aims to contribute to the debate on what is a learning organization (LO). The author proposes that pragmatist philosophy may be a source of inspiration in this endeavor.

The author revisits a 25-year-old case study in which the process of implementing an LO in a public enterprise was observed. This was in the heyday of LOs, when they were regarded as an organizational form that could provide solutions for almost all organizational problems. The author starts by considering this case using the first four types of understanding in Örtenblad’s LO taxonomy (2018): “learning at work,” “climate for learning,” “organizational learning” and “learning structure.” Then the author uses Örtenblad’s fifth version of LOs, the “social perspective,” to show that the pragmatist concepts of experience, inquiry and commitment are helpful in revealing and explaining how learning happens as part of the “social”.

The author proposes the sixth version of Los, involving letting experience and inquiry loose. This is an extension of Örtenblad’s fifth version of LOs, which rests upon collective as the learning unit and learning as context-dependent cultural or social activity. The sixth version makes it possible to understand organizational learning and LOs as recursive processes of inquiry into tensions in experiences and the organizational affordances of voicing and enacting these tensions.

Regarding LOs from a pragmatist perspective makes it possible to view learning as cultural and social activity without making learning a matter of either motivational persons for learning or organizations as “conducive” for learning, but understands the two as connected in recursive, iterative and rhythmic processes of tensions and resolutions.

This paper aims to show how the internationalization process of a multinational corporation (MNC) is shaped and formed by actors engaging in collaborative inquiry. Faced with a centralized strategy grounded in Scandinavian organizational solutions, leaders of foreign subsidiaries reinterpret their local institutional frameworks in creating new organizational practices. Their ability to create acceptance for these practices both locally and with the central management determines which practices prevail.

The paper is based on a qualitative comparative study of organizational units in Norway, Sweden, Mexico, the USA, South Korea and Poland. Over a four‐year period, 165 interviews were conducted with both employees and management.

Through a perspective on learning, it is possible to show how organizational members make use of their institutional environment as they mutually attempt to build shared ideologies for conducting their business. To view organizational change as a learning process allows for explaining how both actors and structures intertwined represent the dynamic for change. Cultural‐cognitive institutions are seen here as active living phenomena which are created and enacted by individuals in their historical and geographical contexts.

Much research on MNCs has focused on explaining the development of such organizations either as a result of experiential learning (i.e. the Uppsala model), systematic planning (economic rationality) or contextual factors (contingency perspectives). This study provides a closer and more detailed look at how these organizations develop through the action and interaction of people in one MNC.

Green care – the utilisation of farms as the basis for health services – is seen as a promising addition to other health services, and it is seen as a viable diversification strategy for many farm families. However, the number of such services is low both in Norway and in Europe in general. The development of green care seems to have stagnated. This paper seeks to analyze and discuss the case of Norwegian green care in order to reflect on the hindrances to the further development of a viable green care sector.

The paper analyzes the green care market, green care policies and the interaction of social worlds that are necessary to make the green care sector function smoothly.

The conclusion is that there is a sound basis for a green care market and that there are sufficient political support and political engagement for the development of green care in Norway. The problem with the green care sector is the interaction between the “social worlds” involved in the sector – the suppliers/farmers, the users, and the (public sector) buyers. It is argued that the development of a green care market is hampered by the lack of an institutional framework and a set of market devices capable of bringing key actors together.

The paper presents an analysis of the Norwegian green care sector. It shows that there are substantial cross‐national differences between health service systems, and therefore comparisons between nations are difficult. However, the principal challenges – diverse social groups, the lack of institutional frames, and immature markets – are shared. Therefore, the need for further research is evident and there are lessons to be learned from cross‐national comparison and case studies.

Within the green care research field, there have been few social science studies that address organisational issues and the governance of this new and emerging business. Theoretically oriented and analytical contributions on organisational aspects of green care services are therefore timely. This paper is such a contribution.

Considers that complexity of relationships between organizational, human and technical factors involved in any technological change increases in cases of network‐based information technologies (NBIT), due to the multiplicity of institutional levels and the diverse nature of professional and organizational groups of potential users. Suggests that, to understand NBIT integration in organizational settings and practices, we must focus on the significance that various actors involved invest in the innovation. Argues that networked technologies cannot by themselves induce new forms of practice and change professional attitudes and behaviour. In fact, NBIT can result in reinforcement of existing practices that were intended to be changed.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an adequate account of anti-corruption agency (ACA) ineffectiveness and propose the kind of ACA that would hold the promise of success. The paper draws on legitimacy theory, legal process and the notion of integrity of purpose.

This paper contextualizes the establishment and proliferation of ACAs; explores different ways of conceptualizing them; examines the broad range of factors that have underpinned ACA ineffectiveness and utilizes both legitimacy theory and the notion of the integrity of purpose.

The one-ACA-model-fits-all approach in corruption-control has been an abysmal failure. Disentangling the reasons for ACA ineffectiveness reveals various endogenous and exogenous factors. It also emphasizes the crucial importance of integrating both legitimacy theory and integrity of purpose in a revamped ACA concept that meets the corruption-control challenge.

It is possible to design and implement an effective ACA by avoiding various factors that have been shown to seriously undermine corruption control efforts by also drawing on legitimacy theory, legal process and integrity of purpose.

Corruption in both the public and private sectors cannot be controlled in isolation from other socio-economic problems. An effective ACA is one that fosters integrity and is considered legitimate by its stakeholders.

While there have been some articles the past two decades discussing the effectiveness of ACAs in particular countries, this is the first paper to account for the overall ACA ineffectiveness also using legitimacy theory, legal process and integrity of purpose to revamp the ACA concept.