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This chapter addresses the “Taylorism–Fayolism–Weberism (TFW) virus,” a metaphor developed to highlight how organizational features recommended by each of these three management theorists produce dysfunctions that create unintended hidden costs that adversely impact organizations and their employees. The virus leads to an ideology where cost cutting is seen as the best means to improve an organization’s performance. We explore the problematic features of the TFW virus: hyperspecialization, separation of work design from work execution, and depersonalized job descriptions designed for workers who are falsely assumed to be lazy. We then address how these organizational features are related to micro dysfunctions and hidden costs (e.g., poor work organization) that accumulate into macro-level dysfunctions and costs that form the features of the risk society envisioned by Ullrich Beck (1992). These dysfunctions collectively threaten human and planetary existence. Next, we describe how the socioeconomic approach to management (SEAM) can address the TFW virus in ways that manage and remediate micro, macro, and planetary risks that emerge from a globalized enterprise. We conclude by offering a hopeful agenda for research on how to use SEAM to more effectively manage the emerging micro and macro dysfunctions and impacts of the world risk society.

This purpose of this paper is to introduce and analyze the concept of place-based business models, by which entrepreneurs use highly context-specific strategies and linkages to a “sense of place” as sources of value creation. To illustrate how place-based business models create unique value, case studies are reviewed from three sectors in Italy: Slow Food (Coop Italia and Eataly), agritourism (Spannocchia) and the albergo diffuso (Sextantio).

This is a conceptual paper with case studies from qualitative data and external sources.

The case studies demonstrate the value-creating potential of opportunities for the implementation of place-based business models. In contrast with conventional harm reduction perspectives, these models show how organizational contributions to local and regional resilience may also directly generate competitive advantage. The cases also illustrate challenges such as scaling up while maintaining authenticity, and coping with the public goods-nature of place-based resources.

Conventional management theory and practice treat environmental context as a distraction from which the technical core of the organization must be protected. Place-based business models diverge from convention by using tight coupling with local context to create value, enhance local economic resilience and contribute to a “sense of place”.

Purpose – This paper examines the public sector reforms in Fiji and the introduction of market‐oriented practices in the Public Rental Board (PRB). The tensions between profit seeking and provision of public service are explicated. Design/methodology/approach – The case study method is employed. The empirical evidence is interpreted using new institutional sociology as well as the technical rational perspective. Findings – The PRB implemented private sector business techniques such as economic rents, sale of state houses, and performance measurement in the form of the balanced scorecard. Such a businesslike approach was demanded by financial institutions such as the World Bank. In return for lending money, international financiers expect a more efficient, wealth producing economy. However, global trends in the form of imposed restructuring of the public sector do not necessarily meet local needs. Tensions are created between the mission and performance of the state rental organization charged with providing accommodation for the less fortunate in Fiji. Research limitations/implications – Institutional theory may be helpful in explaining the introduction of private sector practices into the public sector. The technical rational explanations in terms of achieving greater economy and efficiency need to be considered in relation to institutional factors and the mission of state organizations. Practical implications – The case study illustrates the limitations of the introduction of private sector techniques of managerialism into one state sector organization. There are implications for other state sector organizations in Fiji and elsewhere. Originality value – The paper improves understanding of the rationales for public sector reform especially in developing countries. The reforms can be understood from a technical rational perspective, but may need also to be understood in terms of external institutional influences.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a commentary on “Structuration theory: reflections on its further potential for management accounting research”, a paper by Coad et al.

This paper presents, discusses and challenges the critique that Coad et al. direct towards the notion of a flat and local structuration ontology in management accounting research.

This paper offers a number of reflections upon Coad et al.’s key arguments against a flat and local structuration ontology in extant accounting research. Based on the authors’ understanding of such an ontology, they also elaborate on what they believe a flat and local structuration ontology “can do” and “cannot do” for accounting research. Overall, the authors agree with Coad et al. that there is indeed an ontological divide between their different views on a flat and local ontology; a divide largely related to whether researchers have an essentialist view on social phenomena. However, the authors believe that Coad et al. exaggerate how this ontological divide has affected, and may affect, future empirical management accounting research.

This paper expands the current understanding of a flat and local structuration ontology in management accounting research.

This paper aims to use Stones’ strong structuration theory (SST) that combines Giddens’ duality and Archer’s analytical dualism to deal with the paradox of embedded agency, focussing on resistance, in the budgeting literature. It also applies this framework to an illustrative case study that examines a failed attempt to implement performance-based budgeting (PBB) in the Egyptian Sales Tax Department (ESTD).

The authors have used SST as an analytical framework. Longitudinal case study data were collected from interviews, observations, discussions and documentary analysis and from publicly available reports and other media issued by the World Bank.

The SST framework identifies the circumstances in which middle managers as embedded agency have limited possibilities to change their dispositions to act and identify opportunities for emancipation in the wider social context in which they are embedded. The official explanation for the failure to implement PBB in Egypt was obstruction by middle managers. The findings of this study provide an alternative explanation to that published by the World Bank for the failure to institutionalise PBB in Egypt. It was found that the middle managers were the real supporters of PBB. Other parties and existing laws and regulations contributed to the failure of PBB.

As a practical implication of the study, the analysis presented here offers an alternative interpretation of the failure of the Egyptian project for monitoring and evaluation to that published by the World Bank. This case and similar cases may enhance the understanding of how and when monitoring and evaluation technologies should be introduced at the global level to manage conflicts of interest between agencies and beneficiaries.

This paper contributes to the extant management accounting literature on the use of ST in addressing the paradox of embedded agency in making or resisting structural change. It uses SST to integrate Giddens’ ST with critical realist theory, incorporating duality and dualism in a stronger model of structuration. The SST framework offers a means of analysing case studies that result from interactions and conjunctures between different groups of actors at different ontological levels. The paper also examines the issue of embedded agency in budgeting research using an illustrative case study from a developing country, Egypt.

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 article considers a series of ways in which hierarchy is ontologically and politically opposed to flatness, particularly in the work of the artist Takashi Murakami and the cultural critic Dick Hebdige. It explores the attractions and problems of flatness as an alternative to hierarchy, but concludes that both are equally two-dimensional representations of organizing. Instead, alternative organizers with a commitment to anti-hierarchical practices would be better learning from the three-dimensional practical examples of anarchism, feminism, socialism and environmentalism.

It was not until the late 1960s that housing attracted much attention from academic social scientists. Since that time the literature has expanded widely and diversified, establishing housing with a specialised status in economics, sociology, politics, and in related subjects. As we would expect, the new literature covers a technical, statistical, theoretical, ideological, and historical range. Housing studies have not been conceived and interpreted in a monolithic way, with generally accepted concepts and principles, or with uniformly fixed and precise methodological approaches. Instead, some studies have been derived selectively from diverse bases in conventional theories in economics or sociology, or politics. Others have their origins in less conventional social theory, including neo‐Marxist theory which has had a wider intellectual following in the modern democracies since the mid‐1970s. With all this diversity, and in a context where ideological positions compete, housing studies have consequently left in their wake some significant controversies and some gaps in evaluative perspective. In short, the new housing intellectuals have written from personal commitments to particular cognitive, theoretical, ideological, and national positions and experiences. This present piece of writing takes up the two main themes which have emerged in the recent literature. These themes are first, questions relating to building and developing housing theory, and, second, the issue of how we are to conceptualise housing and relate it to policy studies. We shall be arguing that the two themes are closely related: in order to create a useful housing theory we must have awareness and understanding of housing practice and the nature of housing.

The brand logo, as a fundamental element of marketing communications, serves as a crucial visual representation of a brand. In the current era of mobile Internet, logo flatness has become a new trend in practice. However, there remains a scarcity of research that explores the effects of logo flatness on consumer perceptions and brand attitudes.

Across four studies, using both observational analyses of real brands and experimental manipulations of fictitious brands, the authors examined the impact of logo flatness on consumer perceptions and brand attitudes.

Results show that logo flatness promotes the perception of modernity due to the simplicity it presents. Consumers will evaluate the brand more positively when their perception of the logo association is congruent with the brand image. Notably, traditional brands using skeuomorphic logos and modern brands employing flat logos can effectively enhance consumers' brand attitudes.

The findings of this study have significant implications for businesses seeking to enhance consumers' brand attitude and foster brand renewal through the strategic selection and design of logos that align with their brand image.

This study provides a theoretical and empirical test of the influence of logo flatness on consumers' perception of brand image, thereby enriching the existing research on brand management.