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The aim of the paper is to investigate the associations between hedge fund activism and corporate internal control weaknesses.

In this paper, the authors identify hedge fund activism events using 13D filings and news search. After matching with internal control related information from Audit Analytics, the authors utilize ordinary least square (OLS) and propensity score matching (PSM) to analyze the data.

The authors find that after hedge fund activism, target firms report additional internal control weaknesses, and these identified internal control weaknesses are remediated in subsequent years, leading to better financial-reporting quality.

The findings indicate that both managers and activists have incentives to develop a stronger internal control environment after targeting.

Research was conducted to investigate whether, and how, political accountability might stabilise when agents are faced with profound changes in external structures such as competition laws and austerity policies.

We performed a field study from 2007 to 2015 in a regional hub in Finland and worked with data from document analysis, interviews and meeting observations. We have used embedded research design, where we apply methodological bracketing as well as composite sequence analysis for field research.

Accountability declined when irresistible external structures were the dominant influence on the unreflective actions of agents-in-focus. With time, however, the agents started acting critically by drawing on structures that could facilitate strategic actions to stabilise political accountability.

The field research and interpretation of the data were limited to the organisation analysed; however, the theoretical arguments allow for analytical generalisations.

The research demonstrates how public officials and political decision-makers can eventually adopt a strategic approach when faced with irresistible change in external structures.

The research demonstrates how public officials and political decision-makers can eventually adopt a strategic approach when faced with irresistible changes in external structures.

The study locates political accountability in the context of strong structuration theory and discusses how it is redefined by external structures.

The purpose of the paper is to present a service design (SD)-based methodology developed to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) undertake organisational change.

This research used the design science research methodology, which enabled the creation of the Service Design for Organisational Change (SD4OCh) methodology. A real case study of a small service company specialised in neuropsychological disorders was used for the definition and validation of SD4OCh.

The main outcome of this study is the SD4OCh methodology, which is based on three key stages: diagnosis (knowing where to begin by detecting the organisation's strengths and weaknesses), innovation (improving the structure/processes and designing/redesigning services by employing a customer-centric approach), and implementation (enabling the definition of the route towards organisational change). There is also a transversal evaluation stage, which quantifies the organisational changes.

This study adds valuable knowledge to the service science research field and contributes to the awareness of the usefulness of SD theory within companies, especially those which are small and medium-sized, since those companies lack the tools and methods required to tackle organisational change, signifying that the challenges the companies confront are different to those of larger companies.

Although this is a SD-based research, the SD4OCh methodology was developed in order to enable companies to make holistic changes, namely, to innovate their services, structure, and processes, thus supporting and guiding organisational change.

Government-owned companies (GOCs), such as ports, have engaged in efforts to become more sustainable. Most of such efforts have been technological and policy ones and mainly focusing on the environment, with limited research on organisational change management. This paper aims to provide insights into how ports have been addressing sustainability change forces and pressures.

Twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted with top-level directors and sustainability managers, representing ports across Europe’s maritime regions and a range of port types and sizes. The interviews were analysed using grounded theory’s constant comparative analysis.

The findings highlighted that the ports’ success in their process to become more sustainable depends on how they take advantage of the thrust forces and reduce the drag ones. The findings serve to develop the “ports’ sustainability change management framework”, with five stages: reactive, proactive, transactive, interactive, and sustainable port.

Ports, and other GOCs, should capitalise on their private–public nature in their contribution to making societies more sustainable by adopting a holistic perspective and interactive changes.

This paper provides a dynamic perspective on corporate sustainability efforts, particularly on GOCs, through organisational change management complementing technocentric and managerial approaches.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent of voluntary disclosures in UK higher education institutions’ (HEIs) annual reports and examine whether internal governance structures influence disclosure in the period following major reform and funding constraints.

The authors adopt a modified version of Coy and Dixon’s (2004) public accountability index, referred to in this paper as a public accountability and transparency index (PATI), to measure the extent of voluntary disclosures in 130 UK HEIs’ annual reports. Informed by a multi-theoretical framework drawn from public accountability, legitimacy, resource dependence and stakeholder perspectives, the authors propose that the characteristics of governing and executive structures in UK universities influence the extent of their voluntary disclosures.

The authors find a large degree of variability in the level of voluntary disclosures by universities and an overall relatively low level of PATI (44 per cent), particularly with regards to the disclosure of teaching/research outcomes. The authors also find that audit committee quality, governing board diversity, governor independence and the presence of a governance committee are associated with the level of disclosure. Finally, the authors find that the interaction between executive team characteristics and governance variables enhances the level of voluntary disclosures, thereby providing support for the continued relevance of a “shared” leadership in the HEIs’ sector towards enhancing accountability and transparency in HEIs.

In spite of significant funding cuts, regulatory reforms and competitive challenges, the level of voluntary disclosure by UK HEIs remains low. Whilst the role of selected governance mechanisms and “shared leadership” in improving disclosure, is asserted, the varying level and selective basis of the disclosures across the surveyed HEIs suggest that the public accountability motive is weaker relative to the other motives underpinned by stakeholder, legitimacy and resource dependence perspectives.

This is the first study which explores the association between HEI governance structures, managerial characteristics and the level of disclosure in UK HEIs.

The aim of this research is to investigate the relationship between (dual) organizational identity and individual heuristics – simple rules and biases – in the process of strategy change. This paper offers a theory on identity reflexivity as a cognitive mechanism of strategy change in the context of organizational hybridity.

The authors draw on a 2-year ethnographic study at a Dutch social housing association dealing with the process of strategy change. The empirical data comprises of in-depth semi-structured interviews, ethnographic observations as well as secondary sources.

Conflicting identities at the organizational level influence heuristics at the individual level, since members tend to identify with their department's identity. Despite conflicting interpretations, paths of cognitive shortcuts – that the authors define as internal and external identity reflexivity – are shared by the conflicting identities.

The findings of this research are subject to limitations typical of a qualitative case-study, such as possibly being context dependent. The authors argue that this research contributes to the understanding of how individual heuristics relate to organizational heuristics, and suggest that the process of identity reflexivity can contribute to the alignment of conflicting identities enabling strategy formation in the context of a dual-identity organization.

Understanding how managers with conflicting identities achieve agreements is important to help organizational leaders to pursue sustainability-oriented strategy change.

Given the pressure experienced by mission-driven organizations to integrate multiple sustainability demands in their mission, understanding managers' decision-making mechanism when adapting to new, often conflicting, sustainability demands is important to accelerate societal sustainability transitions.

This paper addresses the process of new strategy design in the context of a socially driven business. This context fundamentally differs from the one addressed by the existing heuristics literature with respect to organizational environment and role, and specific competing demands.

This study aims to understand and explain how institutional change occurs at the level of value co-creation practices in service ecosystems. Despite the centrality of collective practices to the service ecosystems perspective, theoretically grounded explanations of how practices change and become institutionalized remain underdeveloped. Applying the theory of routine dynamics, this paper addresses two questions as follows: what does the institutional change mean at the level of value co-creation practices and what processes underlie these changes?

The study develops a conceptual framework that characterizes value co-creation practices as routines involving three aspects, namely, ostensive, performative and artifactual. As a key element in institutional change, the interplay between these informs an account of institutional change processes in service ecosystems.

The proposed conceptual framework specifies the conditions for institutional change in terms of value co-creation routines. First, any such change is seen to be grounded in alignment between changing institutional rules and the ostensive, performative and artifactual aspects of routines. Second, this alignment is seen to emerge through a dialectics of planned and practice-based activities during institutional change. An empirical research agenda is proposed for the analysis of institutional change processes in different service ecosystems.

This conceptual framework extends existing accounts of how service ecosystems change through the contributions of multiple actors at the level of value co-creation practices.

This study aims to determine whether there is an effect of internal and public debt on income inequality in Kenya for the period 1970–2018.

The relationship is examined by using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model by Pesaran et al. (2001) and Toda Yamamoto causality by Toda and Yamamoto (1995).

Our findings suggest that both internal and public debt harm inequality in Kenya in the long term. Furthermore, a one-way causality from internal debt to income inequality is also obtained while no causality relationship is found to exist between public debt and income inequality. Based on these findings, the study recommends that to reduce income inequality levels in Kenya, other methods of financing other than debt financing should be preferred because debt financing is not pro-poor.

This study is unique based on the fact that no previous paper has analysed the debt and inequality relationship in Kenya. To the best of our knowledge, this will be the first study to analyse the applicability of redistribution effect of debt in Kenya. The study is also different in that it provides separate analysis for public debt and internal debt on their effects on income inequality.

The purpose of this study is to empirically test how problem-solving lean practices, along with leaders as learning facilitators in an action learning approach, can be transferred from a production context to a knowledge work context for the purpose of becoming a learning organization while enhancing performance. This is important to study because many organizations struggle to enhance efficiency in the short term while still trying to be long-term learning oriented (i.e. learning organization development).

The authors draw on theory on learning interventions to show how lean practices for problem-solving can foster learning and help an organization to become adaptive. This study’s subject is a non-production department of 100 employees at the LEGO corporation. The authors applied survey results from a natural experiment lasting 18 months between a pre-measurement survey and a post-measurement survey. The results were compared to a control department of 50 employees who were not exposed to the lean practices intervention. The authors’ focus was on the individual level as individuals have different perceptions of lean practices, performance, and learning.

Using repeated-measures tests, difference-in-difference regressions analyses, and structural equation models, the authors find that a package of contemporary lean practices for problem-solving, along with leaders who function as learning facilitators, significantly improved learning organization dimensions while also enhancing efficiency and quality and that learning organizations positively mediate the relationship between the lean intervention and quality-related performance, while efficiency is directly affected by the lean interventions. Data from LEGO's key performance indicators (KPIs), benefit trackers, on-site observations and more than 40 interviews with managers provided results that were consistent with the survey data. A detailed description of the lean practices implemented is provided to inspire future implementations in non-operations environments and to assist educators.

The authors contribute to the learning literature by showing that a learning-to-learn approach to lean management can serve as an active and deliberate intervention in helping an organization becoming a learning organization as perceived by the individual organizational members. The authors also add to the lean literature by showing how a learning approach to lean, as used by LEGO, can positively affect short-term efficiency and quality and create a foundation for a longer-term competitive advantage (i.e. a learning organization) in a non-production context. By contrast, most of the lean literature streams treat efficiency separately from a learning organization and mainly examine lean in a production context.

The extant literature shows three research streams on lean, learning, and performance. The authors built on these streams by trying to emphasize both learning and efficiency. Prior research has not empirically tested whether and how the application of problem-solving lean practices combined with leaders as learning facilitators helps to create a comprehensive learning organization while enhancing performance in a non-production context.

This study aims to explore the serial mediation effect of perceived internal employability and affective commitment in the relationship between the organisational practices of competences development and turnover intentions.

The methodology was quantitative and is based on a survey with a sample of 313 participants, all of whom were employed in several organisations located in Portugal.

A significant and negative effect of organisational practices of competences development, perceived internal employability and affective commitment on turnover intentions was verified. A total serial mediation effect was also found from perceived internal employability and affective commitment in the relationship between organisational practices of competences development (i.e., training, individualised support and functional rotation) and turnover intentions.

These practices should be developed by leaders of organisations in order that employees feel that the organisation is investing in their development, which can lead to an increase in their emotional attachment towards the organisation and consequently increase their desire to stay in the organisation.

This study makes two important contributions. First, it confirms the existence of a significant and negative relationship between perceived internal employability and turnover intentions. Second, it proves the existence of a total serial mediation effect of perceived internal employability and affective commitment in the relationship between organisational practices of competences development and turnover intentions.