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Social systems theory (Luhmann, 1984, 1995) closely embraces the concept of autopoiesis which, originally, describes the recursive (self)-production of living systems (Maturana & Varela, 1980). Following this, autopoietic organization theory (Bakken & Hernes, 2003; Seidl & Becker, 2006) establishes a more specialized understanding of autopoiesis in terms of organization studies. The transition from the biological to the social realm, however, draws frequent critique. Some scholar suspiciously regard social systems theory as antihumanistic (Blühdorn, 2000; Viskovatoff, 1999), for it neglects individuals in favor of interactions, organizations, and societies. Others deconstruct autopoietic organization theory with the argument that its definition of communication is “flawed with an unavoidable mental dimension, namely the component of understanding” (Thyssen, 2003, p. 213).

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the influence of top management team diversity on academic excellence in universities. Academic excellence is conceptualized as successfully gaining funds for inter-organizational research collaborations, interdisciplinary graduate schools and high-ranked scientific reputation.

The study applies upper echelon theory to universities. Three hypotheses are developed: (overall) top management team heterogeneity is positively associated with successful funding of excellence clusters, (overall) top management team heterogeneity is positively associated with successful funding of graduate schools and (overall) top management team heterogeneity is positively associated with academic reputation. The empirical study is based on a cross-sectional dataset with a time lag, covering characteristics of 75 German public universities from 2008 to 2013. Multiple-regression analysis is applied to test the hypotheses.

Our results indicate that disciplinary and educational diversity of upper echelons has a positive effect on the outcomes. Other top management team characteristics (age, gender, etc.) show no significant effects. Besides top management team composition, we find that a high number of faculties and a broad inclusion of internal status groups (students, tenured faculty, academic and administrative staff) and external stakeholders in decision making processes may enhance academic excellence of universities.

First, the study contributes to the body of literature concerned with higher education. It is situated at the crossroads of management studies and higher education research, unlocking strategic management theorizing for the public context. Furthermore, the study contributes to the body of literature on strategic leadership in pluralistic organizations. It highlights the importance of heterogeneous governance structures and modular organization designs for achieving academic excellence.

The paper may inform practitioners in administrative or leading positions and policy-makers concerned with higher education. The more diverse a top management team is in terms of multiple disciplinary backgrounds, the more likely they succeed in driving the university toward academic excellence.

The study is among the first to evaluate the influence of top management teams in universities with a quantitative research design.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how much value national governments worldwide place on political, economic, scientific, artistic, religious, legal, sportive, health-related, educational and mass media-related issues. This knowledge is critical as governments and policies are typically expected to be congruent with the importance these issues have for society.

Drawing on theories of polyphonic and multifunctional organization, the authors recoded and analyzed a US Central Intelligence Agency directory to test the cabinet portfolio of a total of 201 national governments for significant biases to the above issues.

The results suggest that governments worldwide massively over-allocate their attention to economic issues.

The authors conclude that this strong pro-economic governance-bias likely translates into dysfunctional governance and development at both the national and supra-national level.

The literature on Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A), cultural differences between organizations have frequently been identified as one of the main challenges in the process of post-merger integration (PMI). Existing research has explored a broad variety of cultural differences in perceptions, such as those relating to expectations, norms, values and beliefs within the respective organizations, and how these affect the process and success of PMI. However, less attention has been paid to the relevance of the macro-societal context to PMI. The ambition of this article is, therefore, to advance our understanding of how macro-level societal factors define organizational cultures and affect the success of PMI.

We draw on social systems theory as devised by Niklas Luhmann, assuming that organizations are always embedded in the macro-level societal context of distinctive realms of social reality—such as the economy, politics, religion and the arts—that make up the so-called “function systems”. Looking at the case of the integration of a Brazilian technology start-up into a market-leading corporation, we analyze the dominant orientations towards these function systems, and the changes in these orientations over time.

The results suggest that differences in organizational culture in PMI can be partly explained by differences in orientations to the function systems. Moreover, forcing dramatic changes of orientations towards the function systems within a merged entity can severely damage its raison d'etre in the first place, potentially leading to, in some sense, an account of “culture murder”.

This article is unique in demonstrating that organizations are multifunctional systems whose culture is defined by the highly specific and potentially varying degrees of importance they place on individual function systems and that knowledge or neglect of these functional profiles may seriously affect the success of post-merger integration. Against this backdrop, the article presents a multifunctional profiling method that may easily translate into PMI management tools.

Globally, urban planners and decision makers are pursuing place-based initiatives to develop and enhance urban infrastructure to optimise city performance, competitiveness and sustainability credentials. New discourses associated with big data, Building Information Modelling, SMART cities, green and biophilic thinking inform research, policy and practice agendas to varying extents. However, these discourses remain relatively isolated as much city planning is still pursued within traditional sectoral silos hindering integration. This research explores new conceptual ground at the Smart – Natural City interface within a safe interdisciplinary opportunity space. Using the city of Birmingham UK as a case study, a methodology was developed championing co-design, integration and social learning to develop a conceptual framework to navigate the challenges and opportunities at the Smart-Natural city interface. An innovation workshop and supplementary interviews drew upon the insights and experiences of 25 experts leading to the identification of five key spaces for the conceptualisation and delivery at the Smart-Natural city interface. At the core is the space for connectivity; surrounded by spaces for visioning, place-making, citizen-led participatorylearning and monitoring.The framework provides a starting point for improved discussions, understandings and negotiations to cover all components of this particular interface. Our results show the importance of using all spaces within shared narratives; moving towards ‘silver-green’ and living infrastructure and developing data in response to identified priorities. Whilst the need for vision has dominated traditional urban planning discourses we have identified the need for improved connectivity as a prerequisite. The use of all 5 characteristics collectively takes forward the literature on socio-ecological-technological relationships and heralds significant potential to inform and improve city governance frameworks, including the benefits of a transferable deliberative and co-design method that generates ownership with a real stake in the outcomes.