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The flexibility of corporations to adapt their strategy to a fast-changing environment can be a major source for competitive advantage and survival. While research mainly focuses on outcomes of this ability, little is known of how to foster it in organizations. Thus, by building on the upper echelons theory, the authors assume that the strategic flexibility of the company depends on the willingness and permission to change of the chief executive officer (CEO). To support the hypotheses, the authors apply the dimensions of commitment to change and work autonomy to the CEO and test for moderation under conditions of technological turbulence. The authors’ results based on medium-sized organizations in Germany show significant effects of both dimensions on strategic flexibility. In particular, under conditions of high technological turbulence, commitment based on loyalty and not on pressure together with autonomy on control and evaluation criteria is best suited to increase strategic flexibility. These insights extend the research literature and provide guidelines for CEOs and their supervisors alike.

Research into climate change adaptation measures has resulted in the identification of 155 such adaptation measures that contribute to making the built environment more climate resilient. These measures mainly focus on new construction. This paper assesses the feasibility of the measures for the existing social housing stock in the Netherlands.

Interviews were conducted with 12 property managers and policy staff members from Dutch housing associations. The interviewees judged 21 measures that were designed to adapt dwellings to heat‐related problems caused by climate change, and they also answered questions regarding their awareness of climate change and regarding the feasibility of the measures.

Low awareness of climate change adaptations, the financing of the measures and the technical complexity of adaptation measures are perceived barriers to implementation. Several possibilities to remove these barriers are discussed.

The sample of 12 interviewees provides valuable insight into the opinions of a select group of policymakers from housing associations. The judgements were made based on the personal experiences and expectations of the interviewees.

This paper provides valuable insight into the opinions of policy makers and decision makers in Dutch housing associations on climate change adaptation measures in the existing building stock. These insights will be of use for policy making at the local and national levels directed towards creating a resilient building stock.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature and impact of leadership in relation to the local implementation of quality improvement interventions in health care organisations.

Using empirical data from two studies of the implementation of The Productive Ward: Releasing Time to Care™ in English hospitals, the paper explores leadership in relation to local implementation. Data were attained from in-depth interviews with senior managers, middle managers and frontline staff (n=79) in 13 NHS hospital case study sites. Framework Approach was used to explore staff views and to identify themes about leadership.

Four overall themes were identified: different leadership roles at multiple levels of the organisation, experiences of “good and bad” leadership styles, frontline staff having a sense of permission to lead change, leader's actions to spread learning and sustain improvements.

This paper offers useful perspectives in understanding informal, emergent, developmental or shared “new” leadership because it emphasises that health care structures, systems and processes influence and shape interactions between the people who work within them. The framework of leadership processes developed could guide implementing organisations to achieve leadership at multiple levels, use appropriate leadership roles, styles and behaviours at different levels and stages of implementation, value and provide support for meaningful staff empowerment, and enable leader's boundary spanning activities to spread learning and sustain improvements.

Consulting work aims to bring about changes in organizational performance. In OD‐consulting practices, changes are to be sought through conversational settings created for these purposes. The purpose of this paper is to take a discursive approach to change work and ask how interactional change is constructed and managed during multi‐party consulting conversations.

A case episode from an authentic consultation event is presented. By combining ideas from discursive psychology and conversational analysis, it is shown that a consulting conversation may be socially sensitive and face‐threatening for all concerned.

The paper shows how such a “tricky situation” is not to be avoided but to be actively constructed for facilitating change. The use of different discursive strategies for managing criticism and blame is demonstrated.

Tricky situations involving criticism and blame can be used in facilitating interactional change. The consultant's role is to invite personal and focused criticism and to utilize a meta‐perspective and to anchor the conversation in the present situational interaction.

The paper takes an interaction perspective on OD‐consulting (process consulting) using naturalistic data and shows in detailed analysis the activity of the consultant and the clients.

Corporate downsizing or restructuring has reached epidemic proportions and left many victims and survivors in its wake. Although some corporations are now finding that they have overdone downsizing or restructuring, these efforts to re‐engineer themselves were necessary for many of them. The issue here is not the need to change our work environment, but rather how we communicate those changes. Deals primarily with the problems that survivors of reorganization face and offers some communication‐oriented solutions.

First impressions last forever! Often this initial meeting sets the impression buyers will have about the salesperson and his or her company. For this reason, the introduction cannot be taken lightly. The introduction consists of these steps, the first three of which were presented in part I: assess the environment and prospect personality type; introduce the salesperson to include name, company name, reason and anticipated length of time for the call; establish first‐name terms; state the rules, business philosophy and payment terms; request permission to ask questions; reposition the salesperson ‐ remove physical barriers. To understand what constitutes a successful introduction, we also need to know what the goals or objectives of the introduction stage are and how they can be achieved. A successful introduction should enhance trust and establish a fair and level “playing field” between the buyer and seller.

Explains how attitudes are “assumed” from behaviour and describes five characteristic working styles which can be identified. Gives examples of each working style in action, shows how different combinations can lead to conflict, and describes the strengths and weaknesses of each style. Explains how styles can become compulsive and gives suggestions for increasing personal effectiveness via self‐permissions to change certain behaviours.

This study/ paper aims to empirically examine the user attitude on perceived security of enterprise systems (ES) mobility. Organizations are adopting mobile technologies for various business applications including ES to increase the flexibility and to gain sustainable competitive advantage. At the same time, end-users are exposed to security issues when using mobile technologies. The ES have seen breaches and malicious intrusions thereby more sophisticated recreational and commercial cybercrimes have been witnessed. ES have seen data breaches and malicious intrusions leading to more sophisticated cybercrimes. Considering the significance of security in ES mobility, the research questions in this study are: What are the security issues of ES mobility? What are the influences of users’ attitude towards those security issues? What is the impact of users’ attitude towards security issues on perceived security of ES mobility?

These questions are addressed by empirically testing a security model of mobile ES by collecting data from users of ES mobile systems. Hypotheses were evolved and tested by data collected through a survey questionnaire. The questionnaire survey was administered to 331 users from Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). The data was statistically analysed by tools such as correlation, factor analysis, regression and the study built a structural equation model (SEM) to examine the interactions between the variables.

The study results have identified the following security issues: users’ attitude towards mobile device security issues; users’ attitude towards wireless network security issues; users’ attitude towards cloud computing security issues; users’ attitude towards application-level security issues; users’ attitude towards data (access) level security issues; and users’ attitude towards enterprise-level security issues.

The study results are based on a sample of users from Chinese SMEs. The findings may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to examine the model in a different context. The issues requiring further investigation are the role of gender and type of device on perceived security of ES mobile systems.

The results show that the key security issues are related to a mobile device, wireless network, cloud computing, applications, data and enterprise. By understanding these issues and the best practices, organizations can maintain a high level of security of their mobile ES.

Apart from understanding the best practices and the key issues, the authors suggest management and end-users to work collaboratively to achieve a high level of security of the mobile ES.

This is an empirical study conducted from the users’ perspective for validating the set of research hypotheses related to key security issues on the perceived security of mobile ES.