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1 – 10 of over 1000Nina Hasche and Gabriel Linton
The study aims to examine the development of student venture creation in a co-curricular business model lab initiative with collaboration between students, researchers, technology…
Abstract
Purpose
The study aims to examine the development of student venture creation in a co-curricular business model lab initiative with collaboration between students, researchers, technology transfer offices (TTO) and industry. It presents a fresh approach to the study of student venture creation by discussing a unique co-curricular case, its embeddedness in a network and drawing on the concept of tension.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative, case-based research design is applied containing data from interviews, observations and active participation.
Findings
The findings point to the inherent difficulties in managing and organizing student venture creation and networks surrounding the student venture creation in a co-curricular setting that can lead to several different types of tensions. Episodes where task-, role-, process-, affective- and value-related tensions arise are identified. Furthermore, the findings highlight that affective-related tension is often an outcome of other types of tensions.
Research limitations/implications
Our theoretical implications point to the importance of the context of student venture creation, but not only regarding curricular and co-curricular initiatives; depending on the context, such as if student surrogate entrepreneurship is used, different types of support structure might also be needed to enable student venture creation.
Originality/value
Research on the entrepreneurial university has mainly focused on entrepreneurship education and ventures created by researchers. This study responds to recent calls for research on the venture creation of students. The limited research conducted on student venture creation can be divided between curricular and co-curricular initiatives. Our research points out that many other contextual factors are of importance, such as the origin of ideas, student surrogate entrepreneurship, industry collaboration, team formation and expectations.
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Hogne Lerøy Sataøen and Mats Eriksson
The aim of the study is to deepen the knowledge about municipalities' risk communication for preparedness. This objective was pursued by analyzing how risk communication functions…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of the study is to deepen the knowledge about municipalities' risk communication for preparedness. This objective was pursued by analyzing how risk communication functions were organized in municipalities and by scrutinizing tensions in risk communication management.
Design/methodology/approach
The study relies on 19 qualitative, semi-structured interviews with communication practitioners in Swedish municipalities. The sample was purposive and included Swedish municipalities varying in number of inhabitants, geographical location, degree of urbanization, size and risk profile.
Findings
Risk communication is seen as a sub-field of crisis communication in municipalities' communication management. The task of initiating risk communication activities and campaigns is frequently assigned to the municipalities' safety units or emergency coordinators and is normally not part of communication practitioners' duties. Municipal communication practitioners often face challenges in trying to demonstrate the significance of the practitioners' role in risk communication and other risk-related activities within the municipality. The practitioners' work is characterized by four categories of tensions that are identified as follows: constitutional/legal, organizational, cultural and technological.
Practical implications
The identified tensions in risk communication are important for reflexive practitioners to consider, and the paper suggests three steps that municipal communication managers can take to handle them.
Originality/value
The study contributes with novel knowledge about municipal communication management in a context of risk communication. The study challenges the existing and dominant risk communication research and offers a more contextual and reflexive understanding of actual risk communication processes in municipalities.
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Serena Galvani and Roberta Bocconcelli
This paper aims to analyze the digital servitization (DS) process with the paradox theory lens. The purpose is to catch how intra- and inter-organizational tensions generate…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to analyze the digital servitization (DS) process with the paradox theory lens. The purpose is to catch how intra- and inter-organizational tensions generate complexity along a DS journey to find “where” and “when” industrial companies can intervene to face them.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology is a qualitative, in-depth single case study, which longitudinally explores the DS strategy of a manufacturer along with three phases of development: design, implementation and assessment.
Findings
The analysis reveals six intra- and inter-organizational tensions in DS and provides insights on tensions’ origin and how to face them. A theoretical framework on DS complexity and an empirical framework on tensions’ origin is produced.
Originality/value
The research combines service and organizational paradox literature. Together with a longitudinal methodology, it results in a spatial and temporal analysis of DS, from which theoretical and managerial implications are drawn.
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Peter E. Johansson, Jessica Bruch, Koteshwar Chirumalla, Christer Osterman and Lina Stålberg
The purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of paradoxes, underlying tensions and potential management strategies when integrating digital technologies into existing…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of paradoxes, underlying tensions and potential management strategies when integrating digital technologies into existing lean-based production systems (LPSs), with the aim of achieving synergies and fostering the development of production systems.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopts a collaborative management research (CMR) approach to identify patterns of organisational tensions and paradoxes and explore management strategies to overcome them. The data were collected through interviews and focus group interviews with experts on lean and/or digital technologies from the companies, from documents and from workshops with the in-case researchers.
Findings
The findings of this paper provide insights into the salient organisational paradoxes embraced in the integration of digital technologies in LPS by identifying different aspects of the performing, organising, learning and belonging paradoxes. Furthermore, the findings demonstrate the intricacies and relatedness between different paradoxes and their resolutions, and more specifically, how a resolution strategy adopted to manage one paradox might unintentionally generate new tensions. This, in turn, calls for either re-contextualising actions to counteract the drift or the adoption of new resolution strategies.
Originality/value
This paper adds perspective to operations management (OM) research through the use of paradox theory, and we (1) provide a fine-grained perspective on why integration sometimes “fails” and label the forces of internal drift as mechanisms of imbalances and (2) provide detailed insights into how different management and resolution strategies are adopted, especially by identifying re-contextualising actions as a key to rebalancing organisational paradoxes in favour of the integration of digital technologies in LPSs.
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This study aims to create a better understanding of how practitioners implement and work Agile while balancing the tensions arising between stability and change.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to create a better understanding of how practitioners implement and work Agile while balancing the tensions arising between stability and change.
Design/methodology/approach
A grounded theory approach was used to explore what happens in practice when software development teams implement and work Agile. The empirical data consists of twenty semi-structured interviews with practitioners working in fourteen different organizations and in six different Agile roles.
Findings
As a result, a substantive theory was presented of continuously balancing between stability and change in Agile teams. In addition, the study also proposes three guidelines that can help organizations about to change their way of working to Agile.
Research limitations/implications
The inherent limitation of a grounded theory study is that a substantial theory can only explain the specific contexts explored in that study. Thus, this study's contribution is a substantial theory that needs to be further developed and improved.
Practical implications
The proposed guidelines can help organizations about to change their way of working to Agile. They can also assist organizations in switching from “doing Agile” to “being Agile”, thus becoming more successful.
Originality/value
The new perspective that this study contributes is the fact that our discovered categories show that several inherent processes are ongoing at the same time in order to balance the need to have both stability and change.
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Lisa Bohunovsky, Verena Radinger-Peer, Michaela Zint and Marianne Penker
Guided by paradox theory, the study aims to significantly advance Sustainability in Higher Education Institutions (SHEI) scholarship and inform change agents’ (CAs) practices by…
Abstract
Purpose
Guided by paradox theory, the study aims to significantly advance Sustainability in Higher Education Institutions (SHEI) scholarship and inform change agents’ (CAs) practices by uncovering the tensions underlying the challenges CAs face in embedding sustainability in their universities and learning about potential strategies to manage these tensions.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted a multi-step, mix-methods study including interviews (n = 15), an online survey (n = 36) and focus groups (n = 29) with CAs from 17 of Austria’s 22 public universities. Participating CAs consisted of faculty, staff and administrators with leading roles in their Higher Education Institutions’ sustainability change processes.
Findings
Austrian SHEI CAs’ responses revealed 15 tensions at and between the individual, organizational and system level addressing academic, organizational and external stakeholder engagement aspects. Six tensions were selected for more in-depth exploration including elaboration of management strategies, building on CAs’ experiences. Results revealed examples of acceptance, separation and synthesis strategies.
Research limitations/implications
Based on the exploratory nature of our study, the authors do not claim to have identified a comprehensive list of tensions underlying the challenges faced by SHEI CAs, nor of all potential management strategies.
Practical implications
Although this study focused exclusively on Austrian SHEI CAs, the challenges they shared were consistent with those in the literature and, thus, insights should also support the CAs’ efforts in other countries.
Originality/value
This study offers novel perspectives on how to manage the challenges to SHEI. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first to describe paradox theory-informed management strategies recommended by a heterogenous group of SHEI CAs to address the barriers they face in transforming their universities toward sustainability.
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As part of a national plan to govern professional and organizational development in Norwegian specialist healthcare, the country’s hospital clinics are tasked with constructing…
Abstract
Purpose
As part of a national plan to govern professional and organizational development in Norwegian specialist healthcare, the country’s hospital clinics are tasked with constructing development plans. Using the development plan as a case, the paper analyzes how managers navigate and legitimize the planning process among central actors and deals with the contingency of decisions in such strategy work.
Design/methodology/approach
This study applies a qualitative research design using a case study method. The material consists of public documents, observations and single interviews, covering the process of constructing a development plan at the clinical level.
Findings
The findings suggest that the development plan was shaped through a multilevel translation process consisting of different contending rationalities. At the clinical level, the management had difficulties in legitimizing the process. The underlying tension between top-down and bottom-up steering challenged involvement and made it difficult to manage the contingency of decisions.
Practical implications
The findings are relevant to public sector managers working on strategy documents and policymakers identifying challenges that might hinder the fulfillment of political intentions.
Originality/value
This paper draws on a case from Norway; however, the findings are of general interest. The study contributes to the academic discussion on how to consider both the health authorities’ perspective and the organizational perspective to understand the manager’s role in handling the contingency of decisions and managing paradoxes in the decision-making process.
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Samantha Melis and Dorothea Hilhorst
When a major landslide and floods devastated Freetown, Sierra Leone had just overcome the Ebola crisis, which had left its mark on socio-political relations between different…
Abstract
Purpose
When a major landslide and floods devastated Freetown, Sierra Leone had just overcome the Ebola crisis, which had left its mark on socio-political relations between different disaster response actors. With international disaster response frameworks increasingly shifting to local ownership, the national government was expected to assume a coordinating role. However, in “post-conflict” settings such as Sierra Leone, intra-state and state–society relations are continuously being renegotiated. This study aimed to uncover the complexities of state-led disaster response in hybrid governance setting at national and community levels in the response to the 2017 landslide and floods.
Design/methodology/approach
During the four months of fieldwork in Freetown in 2017, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with various state, aid and societal actors were conducted.
Findings
The findings show that a response to policy building on the idea of a uniform state response did not take into account intra-state power politics or the complexity of Sierra Leone's hybrid governance.
Practical implications
This paper argues for a more nuanced debate in humanitarian governance and practice on the localisation of aid in post-conflict and fragile settings.
Originality/value
The study's findings contribute to the literature on the disaster–conflict nexus, identifying paradoxes of localised disaster response in an environment with strong national–local tensions. The study highlights intra-local state dynamics that are usually overlooked but have a great impact on the legitimacy of different state authorities in disaster response.
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Mary Ann Glynn, Elizabeth A. Hood and Benjamin D. Innis
As hybrid organizations become increasingly common, the authors observe that some hybrid forms are becoming institutionalized and legitimated. The authors explore the implications…
Abstract
As hybrid organizations become increasingly common, the authors observe that some hybrid forms are becoming institutionalized and legitimated. The authors explore the implications of the institutionalization of hybridity, addressing both the internal tensions that plague many hybrids and the external tensions stemming from evaluator assessments and stakeholder uncertainty. The authors propose that institutionalization can dampen internal tensions associated with hybridity and also facilitate legitimation and acceptance by external audiences. The authors present identity as a useful theoretical lens through which to examine these questions, as identities are born from, but also have the potential to modify, existing institutional arrangements. The authors present directions for future research at the juncture of identity, hybridity, and institutionalization, suggesting potential avenues of inquiry in this productive stream of research.
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Catrine Kostenius and Catarina Lundqvist
This study explores to what extent health promotion policy in practice and leadership engagement is reflected in school actors' experiences of health dialogues (HDs) and their…
Abstract
Purpose
This study explores to what extent health promotion policy in practice and leadership engagement is reflected in school actors' experiences of health dialogues (HDs) and their ideas about promoting health and learning in schools.
Design/methodology/approach
The 93 participants consisted of 44 school nurses, 37 students in grades 4, 7 or the first year of high school and 12 teachers, who shared their experiences with HDs by writing open letters.
Findings
The qualitative content analysis resulted in four themes: Putting health on the agenda, Finding a common goal, Walking side by side and Pointing out a healthy direction. The participants' expectations of school health promotion leadership are revealed in suggestions on how the HDs can fulfill both the educational assignment and promote student health.
Practical implications
Based on the findings, we argue that for successful school health promotion leaders need to acknowledge the field of tension where leadership has to take place, anchor health promotion policy and administer “a Sandwich approach” – a top-down and bottom-up leadership simultaneously that facilitates school-based health promotion.
Originality/value
When different school actors (school nurses, teachers and students) are given a voice, a collective picture of HDs can emerge and help develop health promotion practices.
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