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States that very little useful information exists on how clients rate advertising agencies. Sets out to rectify this by conducting a questionnaire survey of 130 clients of advertising agencies to assess how they rate the performance of agencies. Suggests that this information would be beneficial to agencies in offering a better service or managing the client/agency relationship more effectively. Outlines the background history of advertising throughout the 1990s and mentions some previous research carried out. Proceeds to explain the methodology of this survey, identifying five key performance measures and six functional competencies against which the respondents rated their agency. Provides tables of the findings and conducts discriminant factor analysis to plot client satisfaction. Finds that most clients are not satisfied with value for money and service delivery offered by their advertising agency. Makes suggestions on how agencies could improve this. Outlines areas for further research.

In this article, we reflect on how smart technology is transforming service research discourses about service innovation and value co-creation. We adopt the concept of technology smartness’ to refer to the ability of technology to sense, adapt and learn from interactions. Accordingly, we seek to address how smart technologies (i.e. cognitive and distributed technology) can be powerful resources, capable of innovating in relation to actors’ agency, the structure of the service ecosystem and value co-creation practices.

This conceptual article integrates evidence from the existing theories with illustrative examples to advance research on service innovation and value co-creation.

Through the performative utterances of new tech words, such as onlife and materiality, this article identifies the emergence of innovative forms of agency and structure. Onlife agency entails automated, relational and performative forms, which provide for new decision-making capabilities and expanded opportunities to co-create value. Phygital materiality pertains to new structural features, comprised of new resources and contexts that have distinctive intelligence, autonomy and performativity. The dialectic between onlife agency and phygital materiality (structure) lies in the agencement of smart tech–enabled value co-creation practices based on the notion of becoming that involves not only resources but also actors and contexts.

This paper proposes a novel conceptual framework that advances a tech-based ecology for service ecosystems, in which value co-creation is enacted by the smartness of technology, which emerges through systemic and performative intra-actions between actors (onlife agency), resources and contexts (phygital materiality and structure).

This paper aims to introduce the concept of Entrepreneurial Collective Intelligence (ECI) as a means of understanding how communities of entrepreneurial actors learn to act both collectively and knowingly. It explores how connections between processes of CI, agency and action can explain and enable the development entrepreneurial community organisations.

There is a selective literature review of prior works on the related fields of community and collective entrepreneurship; collectives and intelligence; agency and action. The review is used to propose a framework of collective entrepreneurial intelligence, agency and action. An interpretive approach is used to research four case studies of community organisations which use CI to generate entrepreneurial outcomes.

The cases are compared with themes from prior literature to develop a conceptual model of four ECI processes which enable intelligence, agency and action: collaborative processes; distributed working; intelligence representations and organisation of infrastructures. These are theorised to discuss ideas, challenges, methods and questions to enhance entrepreneurial actions, based on sharing knowledge and learning, in the context of collective agency, action and intelligence.

The four processes, both together and separately, represent a coherent framework useful for further studies on the role of collectives in enterprising communities.

The four processes each represent a central area of attention, not only for development, learning, decision-making and leadership within enterprising communities but also for entrepreneurship education in terms of alternative didactics, pedagogies and learning forms.

The improved knowledge on the role of collective agency and CI within entrepreneurial processes is useful for strengthening civil activism and other fruitful forms of entrepreneurial collective processes. This may help solve complicated societal problems where traditional conceptions of entrepreneurship fail.

The conceptual contribution is to explain the dynamic relationships between ECI and action, mediated by collective agency. The role of CI in informing entrepreneurial communities is explored and four enabling processes are proposed. This coherent framework is useful for further studies on the role of collectives in enterprising communities, whilst informing their learning, decision-making and leadership.

We propose a framework of constrained agency grounded in the actors’ resources and motivations within their structurally constrained context. Structural positions influence the resources available to actors and color the motivations that shape their actions. Resources equip actors to exert agency, while motivations propel them to do so. We derive a typology of network actions and illustrate how the form of constrained agency through which a particular network action is taken can affect actors’ ensuing structural positions and the nature of the constraints they subsequently face. Our conceptualization of constrained agency identifies new sources of endogenous change in network structure.

The chapter furnishes empirical evidence about the extent and profiles of autonomy of EU agencies, the modalities whereby they are steered and controlled, and the interactions they have in EU policy networks. It thus provides the bases for a more complete picture of the EU multi-level administration.

The research is a survey-based design. A questionnaire was administered between July 2009 and April 2010 to 30 EU agencies included in the study population. The questionnaire was sent to the executive director of all the agencies included in the study. Questions were closed-ended, either in the form of multiple choices – with one answer or with check-all-that-apply and an option for ‘other’ to be filled – or in scale format. The resulting data set included ratio, interval, ordinal, and nominal scales. The reference model employed for the investigation relies on the analytical model developed within the framework of the research project COST Action IS0651 CRIPO (Comparative Research into Current Trends in Public Sector Organization – see also ‘Acknowledgements’) for the study of public agencies in Europe (Verhoest, Van Thiel, Bouckaert, & Lægreid, 2012).

EU agencies display a rather low level of managerial, especially financial, autonomy; conversely, they enjoy relatively high policy autonomy. As to the way in which multiple ‘parent’ administration steer EU agencies, it emerges a composite picture, in which the crossroads of steering and control by the parent administrations and accountability by the agency lies in the executive director. In terms of interactions within policy networks, EU agencies interact in a significant way with the European Commission, with national-level agencies in the pertinent policy field, and with specific technical bodies where they are part of the configuration of the policy sector, whilst interactions with national ministries as well as with other EU agencies are rare. No single model can capture in full the overall features of EU agencies, although the ‘community level institution’ model seems to capture a number of the profiles of these agencies.

Both the literature on EU multi-level administration and research agendas in public management can benefit from inclusion of – and in-depth empirical knowledge about – EU agencies. The chapter provides important empirical evidence to these purposes.

EU agencies are actors in European public policy-making, albeit to a varied extent depending on the sector. The extent of autonomy and the way in which they are held to account are crucial aspects for an enhanced understanding of their influence on European public policy-making, as is their location in European policy networks.

Research presented in this chapter is the first systematic empirical investigation of EU agencies encompassing networking, steering and control and autonomy of EU agencies, based on primary data.

Since 1970 there has been a phenomenal growth in the establishment of foreign commercial banks in the United States thus altering the competitive dimension of US banking markets. An analysis of the state of foreign banking presence in the United States is here provided using recent disaggregated bank‐level information. Foreign commercial banks' country of origin, timing of entry, forms of involvement, main areas of specialisation, and related offices in the United States are investigated.

Recent technological advances have enabled consumers and citizens to contribute to organizational processes through co-production and co-creation in ways that challenge traditional co-production. However, the practices and capabilities for value co-creation are less understood, particularly in an increasingly networked social government ecosystem. The purpose of this research is to examine the enablement of new digital co-production practices in social media platforms (SMPs) and theorize SMP-enabled digital co-production vis-à-vis traditional co-production for public sector.

Primarily using principles of interpretivist approaches, a qualitative content analysis of communication practices (i.e. genres) observed within Australian government Facebook pages was carried out to examine the salient digital forms of co-production practices.

SMPs enable new practices in digital co-production for public sector (information dissemination, Q&A, feedback and co-creation), ranging from lower to higher intensity in terms of resource integration, scale of contributions, engagement and extent of relationship vis-à-vis traditional co-production.

This research is bounded by its geographical emphasis on Australian Federal government. Hence, the results may not be readily transferable to other contexts.

Our framework offers an array of choices for digital co-production strategies to suit agency's focus and goals for engagement in the Facebook Pages. As agencies progress to reach higher intensity co-production, public engagement and impact increases.

The paper contributes to co-production in social government ecosystem by increasing the theoretical and practical understanding of new form of SMP-enabled digital co-production defined as “small-scale, repetitive, user-driven co-production that is flexible, durable, ad-hoc, and sporadic, where many hands make light work”. The proposed “co-production to co-creation” framework provides valuable guideline for enhancing public service provision via SMPs.

In this chapter, the author draws on a historical case study of the Australian wine industry to explore variations in collective agency. The inductively derived process model illustrates the emergence of a new profession of scientific winemaking, which unfolds in three phases. Each phase is characterized by a distinct form of agency: distributed agency during the earliest phase, coordinated agency during later phases, and orchestrated agency during consolidation. In addition to exploring the temporal shifts in agency, the study includes a detailed analysis of the early stages of distributed agency, examining how collective agency is achieved in the absence of shared intentions.

The purpose of this paper is to identify, describe and evaluate the different ways in which formal collective change agency is structured in specialist units inside 25 diverse organisations. As such it is oriented towards a range of practitioners operating in HR, project management or with responsibility for delivering change in public and private sectors.

Using a qualitative design, exploratory interview and case study research was conducted in organisations across the UK public and private sectors to explore how different change agency units operate within organisational structures.

Four dominant types of internal change agency unit are identified, varying in terms of their change impact scope and degree of structural embeddedness in the organisation. These units are described as transformers, enforcers, specialists and independents and share key concerns with securing client credibility and added value, effective relationship management and the use of consulting tools. Their roles and the tensions they experience are outlined along with hybrid forms and dynamic shifts from one type to another.

The study could be extended outside of the UK and conducted longitudinally to help identify outcomes more precisely in relation to context.

Each of the four types of change agency unit identified is shown to be suited to certain conditions and to present particular challenges for collective change agency and for specialist management occupations engaged in such work. The analysis could usefully inform organisation design decisions around internal change agency.

The authors extend debates around the nature of internal change agency which has typically focussed on comparisons with external change agents at the level of the individual. Developing the work of Caldwell (2003), the authors reveal how emergent, team-based or collective approaches to change agency can be formalised, rather than informal, and that structural considerations of change need to be considered along with traditional concerns with change management.

Modelling the organisation to enable purposeful analysis and diagnosis of its ills is often problematic. This is illustrated by the unconnected non‐synergistic plurality of organisational models each of which relates to a particular isolated frame of thought and purpose. A cybernetic approach is adopted to create a generic psychosocial model for the organisation that is used to characterise its emergent normative personality. Organisations are often complex, and seeing them in terms of their normative personality can reduce the complexity and enable a better understanding of their pathologies. This paper seeks to do two things. The first is to show that it is possible to set up a generic model of the organisation as an agency, and the second is to show that this same model can also be represented in the alternative terms of the emergent normative personality. In order to do this, an understanding of what it is that constitutes generic criteria is required. In addition, the paper shall show that organisational and personality theories can be connected generically. One of the consequences of the theory is that the patterns of behaviour which occur in an agency have underlying trait control processes.

A meta‐systemic view of the organisation is adopted through knowledge cybernetics that enables more flexibility and formality when viewing organisational models. The paper develops a formal generic model of the organisation that should facilitate the exploration of problem situations both theoretically and empirically.

The outcome of the research formulates the cognitive processes of normative personality as a feasible way of explaining organisations and provide a capacity to analyse and predict the likelihood of their behavioural conduct and misconduct. As an agency trait model, agency explains the socio‐cognitive aspects of self‐organisation and the efficacy of connections between the traits. These traits control the personality, and inter‐trait connections are Piagetian intelligences that orient the traits and work through forms of first‐ and second‐order autopoiesis. The development of a typology of pathologies is also suggested as feasible.

There are previous metaphorical notions that link agency with traits. Here, metaphor is extended to produce a formal model for the emergent normative personality. This is the first time that socio‐cognitive and trait approaches are formally linked, as it is the fist time that a typology for organisational pathologies is proposed.