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The purpose of this paper is to examine what the authors can learn from organization studies of digital technologies and changes in public organizations, and to develop a research agenda that allows us to produce systematic knowledge about how work practices in the public sector change with digitization.

The paper is based on an analysis of the organizational studies literature on how digital technologies lead to changes in public sector organization. The literature comprises a wide range of different case studies, and they are analyzed with a specific focus on the insights they offer regarding bureaucracy, accountability and professionals.

The paper identifies various examples of how digital technologies change important aspects of public sector organizations relating to bureaucracy, accountability and professionals. It is a main finding that no systematic account exists in the organization literature of changes due to digitization specific to the public sector.

The knowledge produced by current and future research in this area is directly applicable for change management. To react productively on the digitization imperative, public managers need to deepen their knowledge of the organizational dimension of digitization.

The paper proposes an agenda for future research, which has the potential to produce both systematic and useful knowledge of how digitization changes central aspects of public sector organizations.

ONLY two months ago (June issue) this journal advocated the more general utilisation of robots in manufacturing industry coupled with a reduction in working hours so that all possible should have a share in what work remains available for humans to do.

This study aims to examine how the amount and type of flexibility in work schedule (flextime) and work location (telecommuting) may be related to receiving fewer training and development opportunities. Given that under flextime, employees remain at the work location, while under telecommuting employees are removed from the regular work site and social system, the paper expects that as employees have more telecommuting flexibility, they will receive fewer training opportunities, which in turn will be associated with more negative job attitudes and behaviors.

Participants (n=298) were recruited from a healthcare and a software development firm. Employees provided self-report ratings of their intentions to quit and supervisor supportiveness. Supervisors rated employees' citizenship behaviors and the flextime, telecommuting and training and development practices for the job positions.

As employees possess greater flexibility to telecommute, they received fewer training and development opportunities, while employees with greater work schedule flexibility (flextime) actually received more training opportunities. Additionally, the paper finds that training and development mediates the negative relationship between telecommuting flexibility and organizational citizenship behaviors. Thus, as employees had greater telecommuting flexibility, they exhibited lower levels of organization citizenship behaviors.

This study provides evidence of how greater telecommuting flexibility that leads to decreased training and development opportunities may negatively influence employees' citizenship behaviors. The study also supports that flexibility to work away from the regular work location and not schedule flexibility, is the key antecedent. The findings suggest that supervisors should monitor the amount of training opportunities provided to employees with telecommuting flexibility.

This is one of the few studies to examine telecommuting flexibility: the extent to which employees can work at home and modify their schedule in order to do so. It is also one of the few studies to compare how work schedule and work location flexibility may be differentially related to training and development. The paper examines the potential trade-offs between this flexibility and receiving fewer training and development opportunities.

THE luncheon given by the Lord Mayor, Sir Ralph Perring, to more than 700 guests at Guildhall on November 14, officially launched the country on National Productivity Year. Apart from representatives of the 120 local committees these were people from trade and employers' associations, trades unions, professional bodies and research organisations. It was, in effect, a token mobilisation of Britain's industrial might, because behind it stands a large army devoted to the task of increasing the country's output.

This paper examined relationships between students’ engagement in community service in different contexts through classes, student organizations, work study, and on their own as well as their development of socially responsible leadership at a large, public, research university in the Upper Midwest. Results from the Multi-Institutional Study of Leadership survey distributed at a single institution (n = 1,282) suggest, among other things, that students who participated in community service on their own consistently reported higher socially responsible leadership while students who participated in service both on their own and in a student organization reported higher socially responsible leadership in all areas save for consciousness of self.

This collection of commentaries on the reprinted 1987 article by Nancy C. Morey and Fred Luthans, “Anthropology: the forgotten behavioral science in management history”, aims to reflect on the treatment of the history of anthropological work in organizational studies presented in the original article.

The essays are invited and peer‐reviewed contributions from scholars in organizational studies and anthropology.

The scholars invited to comment on the original article have seen its value, and their contributions ground its content in contemporary issues and debates.

The original article was deemed “original” for its time (1987), anticipating as it did considerable reclamation of ethnographic methods in organizational studies in the decades that followed it. It was also deemed of value for our times and, in particular, for readers of this journal, as an historical document, but also as one view of the unsung role of anthropology in management and organizational studies.

ACCORDING to an announcement issued by the British Institute of Management Britain's managers have told the Chancellor that they are willing to forego tax cuts in the Budget in favour of spending money on infrastructure and education. Now who are these managers who are so ready to give away any benefits that the Chancellor may be able to provide for the British people as a whole?

The purpose of this paper is to synthetize qualitative research on play in the organizational context.

Through a metasynthesis, the research premises and findings of 12 individual empirical studies were examined.

The findings of the metasynthesis showed that the research on organizational play has focussed on three central themes addressing play as fun, pros and cons of organizational play, and management of play. In interpreting the findings, seven perspectives of organizational play are constructed as follows: authenticity, belongingness, experience, social activities, generating, functions, and artifacts. The perspectives are conceptualized into three dimensions of play as the orientation of being-in-the-world, play as meaning-making and enactment, and play as creations.

The sample consisted of 12 studies, which provided a limited insight into organizational play. However, following the guidelines of metasynthesis, the sample was appropriate and of good quality. The research suggests guidelines for further research into organizational play.

Achieving psychosocial well-being at work and success in management requires understanding of essential personal and social processes, such as play. The findings provide knowledge that can be applied in management and other workplace practices.

The study highlights the divergent perspectives of the organizationally important phenomenon of play. The paper contributes to a better understanding and the development of play in organizations.

IN the current issue of the journal of the Institute of Practitioners in Work Study, Organisation, and Methods one of its Members, a Mr. E. Cule Davies, plausibly argues that ‘professional standards’ are interdependent with what he terms ‘practical results’. Mr. Davies cites a notional case of a company inviting a ‘specialist’ (the quote marks are his) to improve productivity in a given section and who gave their own professional work study practitioner the same objective to attain.

This paper aims to study the kinds of methodologies used in studying “doing gender” in working life and organisations. To do so, articles that use empirical research materials from different academic peer-reviewed journals have been analysed. By methodologies, both data gathering tools and the analysing techniques using and concerting the data have been largely understood. In the articles analysed, interviews were the main methodological tool in extracting the “doing gender”, while studies using naturally occurring data, e.g. historical materials and methods in relation to this type of data were in the minority. The following question has been proposed for further exploration: What impact does the domination of interviews as a research method have on the concept of “doing gender”?

Qualitative content analysis, close reading and data were collected from academic peer-reviewed journals with the applied principles of literature review.

The research methodologies adopted in the articles on “doing gender” mostly deal with interview data and their analysis. Interview data are used most often as the primary source for ethnographic analysis. These method choices limit the potential interpretations available for the analysis of the conceptual idea of “doing gender”.

The limitations of this article relate to the journals chosen for the analysis.

This paper contributes toward a deeper understanding of the “doing gender” approach, particularly by exploring the research methodologies that have been used when studying “doing gender” approach empirically.