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The purpose of this paper is to propose first, a comprehensive model of the concept of agility in a humanitarian logistics context, and second, to generate a research agenda to test and operationalise this model.

The paper draws on the dynamic capabilities model originated by Teece and uses a topical literature review of research in various business disciplines in order to reflect on the concept of agility in a humanitarian logistics context, to demonstrate that its current scope needs to be widened, and to propose an alternative approach.

The proposed model extends the existing concept of agility in a humanitarian logistics context by integrating agility drivers, responsive and flexible operations, agility enablers, and strategic level agility capabilities into a single model.

Further research should focus on the nature of the risks/uncertainties encountered by humanitarian organisations, the interactions between the strategic and operational levels of such an organisation, and the impact of strategic level agility capabilities on field responsiveness and flexibility.

This paper brings new insights into the concept of agility in a humanitarian logistics context and contributes a model that reflects a more comprehensive understanding of this concept. In particular, it demonstrates that agility stems from strategic decisions and managerial practices.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the prevalence of purposeful and ethical leadership in a UK county police force – referred to by the pseudonym PoliceOrg. The paper also evaluates the extent to which officers feel their values fit with those of the organisation, and the outcomes achieved by purposeful and ethical leaders.

A questionnaire survey, interviews and focus groups were conducted at PoliceOrg. The findings are compared with those from a public sector case study and with a representative sample of the UK working population.

Purposeful leaders at PoliceOrg have a positive impact on important outcomes for their direct reports and provide a sense of direction and guidance to those who do not feel a strong fit between their values and those of their organisation.

The study focuses on a new construct (purposeful leadership) that has not previously been explored in the academic literature. Consequently, the findings cannot be directly compared with those of other studies. The survey focused on the views of police sergeants and constables, and only one police force participated as a case study; hence, the generalisability of the findings is limited.

Police organisations should nurture and sustain workplace environments where leaders can translate their personal moral code and ethical values into their role behaviours to address the policing challenges of the future.

This study elucidates the concept of purposeful leadership in the context of a police force.

Extant research presents firms’ purpose as a consensual and positive attribute. This paper introduces an alternative perspective, which sees firms’ purposefulness as defined in relation to specific audiences. A firm’s purposefulness to a focal audience can be either positive or negative. Audiences find firms with which they share a common prioritization of issues more purposeful in absolute terms. Audiences find firms with which they share a common understanding of issues positively purposeful. Conversely, audiences find firms with an opposite understanding of issues negatively purposeful. Audiences harness specific resources to support firms they find positively purposeful and to oppose firms they find negatively purposeful. This paper introduces topic modeling and word embeddings as two techniques to operationalize this audience-based approach to purposefulness.

Organizational change is one of the most researched issues in management and leadership. Change is generally viewed as necessary, with positive outcomes for all stakeholders. Resistance is consequently seen as a surprising outcome. However, much of the management literature focuses on change as organizational dynamics-driven, especially by those at the top, in the interests of those at the top, often with scant attention to the role of employees. The purpose of this paper is to take a different perspective, grounded in the systems theory.

This is a conceptual paper. The authors critically examine theoretical explanations of resistance to change in organizations and offer an alternative perspective.

Systems theorists have addressed change, and its necessity in organizational survival, using an open systems model. The open systems theory posits that organizations are social systems that have purposes of their own and is made of parts (employees) that are purposeful and operate within a purposeful larger system – the environment (stakeholders). Change that ignores a key part – employees – will be resisted.

Using the systems theory, the authors propose several suggestions for organizational leaders and managers to implement sustainable change. These include, among others, recommendations on circular organizational designs, the need for more democratic organizations, purposeful leadership styles and how to include employees in proactive organizational change processes.

This paper was developed with the objective of unravelling the concepts and their applications in the broad areas of organizational learning (OL) and learning organization (LO). The same altogether was captured by the academic lens of Professor Eric Tsang. Through the interview, Prof Tsang helped in tracing the progressive path of his academic journey, understanding his ideas and perspectives from the space of OL and LO as well as his contributions related to those. Overall, this study aims to add to the ongoing knowledge-intensive process of redefining the ways in which organizations ‘learn’.

This paper is based on a detailed conversation with the distinguished academician, Prof. Eric Tsang.

How OL can follow the continuum of “purposeful organizational routines (ORs)” and that changes in such ORs will happen if shared work experiences of employees are put together. Also, organizational unlearning (OU) as a phenomenon is hard to ignore for successful organizations, especially large multinational companies.

The discussions with Prof Eric Tsang reflected his thoughts and critique pertaining to the core theme of OU and the significance of “purposeful organizational routines.” In the near future, other researchers and professionals can use the scope of verifying some of the assertions made in different contexts of conducting business across LOs.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the underlying strategic mechanisms of agility in a humanitarian logistics context. Based on the research conducted in business disciplines, the paper empirically examines a set of four strategic dimensions (being purposeful, being action-focused, being collaborative, and being learning-oriented) and identifies an emergent relationship between these capabilities and agile humanitarian logistics operations.

Leadership and management actions perceived to support the four capabilities were identified and used as a basis to complete the exploratory research. Specifically, a case study with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) was undertaken and, in this context, a qualitative analysis of 29 face-to-face interviews with humanitarian logistics experts working for WFP was conducted.

The research corroborates the relevance of the four strategic-level capabilities to the humanitarian logistics context and confirms that these capabilities play a role in the development of agility in humanitarian operations. The work also identifies a set of key strategic decision-making areas that relate to the building of agility.

Additional research is needed to further investigate and measure the strategic-level capabilities and to quantify their impact on operational agility. Further research should also be undertaken to extend this study to a wider range of humanitarian organisations.

This paper is the first empirical research that takes a strategic approach to the concept of agility in humanitarian logistics. It highlights that the leaders and managers of humanitarian organisations have a significant role to play in the building of an agile system.

In this chapter, the author explores and discusses the transformation of management from the perspective of complex systems, systems change and the Taoist yin-yang theory. Modern complex organizations require innovative management practices that move beyond traditional approaches. Consequently, many organizations are experiencing a management shift towards more holistic and sustainable methods. This shift encompasses changes in organizational structures and modes of inquiry. Organizations are transitioning from rigid hierarchies to more collaborative and agile configurations while adopting a systemic approach to management that acknowledges the interconnectedness and interdependence of all organizational aspects. Simultaneously, there is a paradigm shift in management thinking, replacing the conventional focus on ego-action with eco-action, which emphasizes the integration of diverse perspectives and the cultivation of self-awareness and introspection. This shift in mindset is embodied in the yin-yang paradigm, highlighting the importance of balance and harmony between contrasting forces.

This paper describes the ways in which the next decade will be different from the last. Times are becoming more and more turbulent and a new kind of organisation is needed to survive and thrive in these times ‐ what we call a purposeful self‐renewing organisation (PS‐RO). This, in turn, requires a different style of organisational leadership ‐ leadership as a quality that is dispersed across the organisation not confined solely to the cadre of senior managers listed on an organisational chart.

This paper aims to examine language learners’ critical multimodal literacy practices with a moving-image text, focusing on text comprehension and interpretation rather than text production. It takes a critical perspective towards multimodality and proposes the simultaneous emphasis on critical and multimodal literacies.

This qualitative teacher-inquiry adopts critical multimodal literacy as the framework for understanding learners’ literacy practices. The course implementation highlights images, sounds and words as encompassing the five modes of visual, aural, linguistic, gestural and spatial (Arola et al., 2014) in emphasizing the multimodal in critical multimodal literacy, and the purposeful organization of the images, sounds and words as reflecting the critical in critical multimodal literacy. The analysis also adopts Serafini’s (2010) concentric perceptual, structural and ideological perspectives as the tenets of critical multimodal literacy.

The findings show that focusing on images, sounds, words and their purposeful organization enabled the students to critically examine a moving-image text through considerations for the multiple modes and arriving at the structural and ideological interpretive perspectives.

This study fills a gap in the literature, as very little research has been done to investigate the ways in which language learners engage with, that is, comprehend and interpret, moving-image multimodal texts. In addition, it presents a critical multimodal literacy framework based on Serafini’s (2010) tripartite perspectives and offers pedagogical suggestions for incorporating critical multimodal literacy in language classrooms.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the antecedents, levers of control and outcomes of organizational unlearning and forgetting in new product development (NPD) teams.

This paper employs a holistic multiple-case study design. This paper gathered data from 30 individual semi-structured interviews in 10 different NPD teams as well as additional data to triangulate the findings.

The authors propose a model of unlearning and forgetting elements occurring in NPD teams. The two most prominent factors that hamper innovation are the inability to unlearn and involuntary forgetting. Failure to manage these antecedents results in the loss of crucial resources, missing innovations or intra-team tensions. Managing knowledge loss by promoting unlearning and reducing forgetting leads to enhanced creativity and flexibility, a higher chance of exceeding innovation goals, increased conversion efficiency and augmentation of existing knowledge.

This paper contributes empirical evidence to the field of unlearning and forgetting. The model illustrates the NPD process from the perspective of organizational unlearning and forgetting. The authors examined the NPD process from an unlearning and forgetting perspective and proposed new categories of antecedents, consequences and managing unlearning and forgetting. This generates a more profound theoretical understanding of underlying knowledge loss processes in NPD teams.

Companies should promote unlearning and specify spatial and temporal freedom. In doing so, team members can identify outdated and obsolete knowledge. Being attentive to unlearning and forgetting processes allows teams to achieve increased creativity and flexibility.

This paper provides empirical evidence to generate a more profound understanding of the underlying mechanisms of knowledge loss in NPD teams. First, the authors propose a holistic model of antecedents, levers of control and consequences of both unlearning and forgetting. Second, the authors suggest that organizations can use these levers of control to successfully manage unlearning and forgetting in NPD teams.