Search results

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the main advantages of integrating bottleneck theory, action learning and transformation capabilities to phenomenon and process analysis systems.

This paper selects three typical cases, using grounded theory standardized coding procedures, and selects exploratory case study approach.

Inward small and medium manufacturing enterprises use the bottleneck breakthrough program and provide a correct knowledge input for action learning. Action learning provides a strong guarantee that for the implementation of bottleneck breakthrough program, programming and action learning are required to continually solve problems and achieve goals in the process.

The authors used inward manufacturing small- and medium-sized enterprises as research subjects The authors did not analysis the role of knowledge services; the future studies could explore how to improve the performance through the transformation value co-creation.

Because of the lack of resources and capacity, small- and medium-sized enterprise adopt appropriate micro-innovation and continuous micro-transformation to break the bottleneck stage and achieve small victories.

Learning and development enterprises are not only through multinational clients which restructuring enhance the learning capacity of the international M & A path. It does not conduct thorough and comprehensive change, and also not related to the structural of readjustment organization. In fact, the radical change and transformation strategy is different than other strategies.

Examines business process re‐engineering (BPR) from a theoretical standpoint. Elaborates on antecedent concepts to the BPR construct and highlights their usefulness in strengthening the conceptual foundation of BPR. Develops a model of BPR based on the elements of process, radical transformation and sociotechnics interaction, increasing the level of sharing and collaboration and reducing the number of sequences within organizational processes. Notes that these change forces provide direction and impetus to BPR‐based change initiatives. Describes a framework for translating issues, such as those encapsulated by the people and organizational culture dimension.

Business process re‐engineering (BPR) has been widely promoted as a technique for organisational survival in an increasingly competitive environment. The initial message and language of BPR was radical, calling for the obliteration of traditional methods of processing business. Organisations were encouraged to reinvent themselves. However, survey and case study evidence of the success rate of BPR projects has been disappointing. As a result, BPR is under revision, with new definitions and new remedies on offer. When examined, the similarities between the revised language of BPR and TQM are striking. This suggests that incremental process improvements are the more viable option for organisations seeking to improve quality and performance.

In August 2007, over 6,000 sociologists gathered in New York to attend the 102nd meeting of the American Sociological Association and discuss the possibility of radical social transformation in post-modern capitalist society.¹ The adoption of the conference theme ‘Is another world possible?’ was theoretically significant, for it seemed to call into question one of the most fundamental assumptions upon which critical sociology depends: that despite the rarity of radical social change, it is possible, desirable and even imperative to imagine and struggle for better alternatives to existing ways of being. From phenomenological insights into the contingency of our subjective interpretations of reality to the imperative of reconciling ‘appearance’ with ‘reality’; from the long history of collective movements to defend human dignity to the ‘politics of small things’ (Goldfarb, 2006), critical theories of society presume that human fates are not determined and futures are not reified, and that the possibility of possibility is a pre-condition for ‘normal’ human existence. This is not to say that progressive alternatives to the status quo are not often and everywhere repressed to some degree and in some form, or that they are equally distributed or attainable. But as Gustavo Gutierrez once remarked, a ‘commitment to the creation of a just society and, ultimately, to a new human being, presupposes confidence in the future’ (2003, p. 197).

Theories of organizational learning and sustainability must be able to respond to contemporary social issues and accommodate, in some way, the multiplicity of perspectives that are present in society on these topics. One way of developing multi‐perspectival capacities in the scientific understandings is through the building of metatheory. Nowhere is this task more urgently needed than in the study of organisational sustainability. To be sustainable, organisations must not only meet economic, environmental, social and governance requirements but also learn to embody them in their practices and values even during times of turbulence and extraordinary upheaval. The purpose of this paper is to propose a metatheoretical approach to organizational sustainability that can accommodate this plurality.

Three important metatheoretical lenses – the developmental, internal‐external and learning lenses – are presented which have particular relevance to turbulent organizational environments and the transformational imperatives that arise from them. These lenses are then used individually and in combination to discuss several paradoxes related to learning and sustainability issues.

The growth, learning and sustainability paradoxes present a number of challenges to organisational learning capacities that can be usefully discussed within a metatheoretical context. The set of metatheoretical lenses identified here provide some new avenues for achieving authentic sustainability.

There are two important implications of metatheoretical discussion. The first is the opening up of new directions for middle‐range theory. The second is the capacity of metatheory to critically examine extant theories and research paradigms. Several issues are raised in this paper concerning the evaluation of current theories of organisational learning and sustainability.

The metatheoretical approach to learning and sustainability proposed here resolves some fundamental paradoxes facing organisations and it opens up new ways of conceptualising the radical transformations required to meet the sustainability challenges that are being faced in the twenty‐first century.

This paper presents a structured literature review of studies on IT-enabled organizational transformation to determine the state of the art and to identify areas for future research.

We collect 201 academic publications on IT-enabled organizational transformation and analyze them from three perspectives: a publication perspective, a research perspective and a conceptual perspective.

From a publication perspective, we identify and synthesize the seminal works to provide a brief history of research on IT-enabled organizational transformation. From a research perspective, we show that studies in this area have seldom been grounded in theory and have predominantly used qualitative approaches, while only a few studies have drawn from quantitative data. From a conceptual perspective, we show that most research has studied higher levels of transformation, especially process redesign.

This review presents the landscape of the literature on IT-enabled organizational transformation, which provides a foundation for future research.

The purpose of this paper is first, to investigate empirically the plurality of understanding surrounding sustainability held by those working in the business sector, and second, to consider the likelihood of a dialogic accounting that would account for the plurality of perspectives identified.

The subjects of this study are those people actively working to incorporate sustainability within New Zealand business, both business people and their sustainability advisors. Participant’s subjective understanding is investigated using Q methodology, a method used widely by social science researchers to investigate typical views on a particular topic, from an analysis of the order in which participants individually sort a sample of stimuli. In this study, the stimuli were opinion statements.

Five typical understandings of sustainable development were identified, including understandings more usually attributed to business antagonists than business. Conflicts between environment and development are acknowledged by most participants. However, an agonistic debate that will create spaces, practices, and institutions through which marginalised understandings of sustainable development might be addressed and contested, is yet to be established and will not be easy.

The paper contributes to the few empirical investigations of the plurality of understandings of sustainability held by those people working to incorporate sustainability within business. It is further distinguished by the authors attempt to describe divergent beliefs and values, absent from their immediate business context, and absent from any academic priming. The paper also provides an illustrative example of the application of Q methodology, a method not commonly used in accounting research.

The purposes of this paper are to develop a more complete understanding both of the characteristics of innovation within retail firms and of the ways in which retailers perceive innovation and measure its effectiveness. Whilst there is a broad consensus that innovation is an application of new ideas that stimulate economic performance, the term attracts a wide range of interpretations that are largely contingent upon the context within which innovation occurs.

These aims are achieved through analysis at the level of the firm by means of qualitative research in the form of a series of in-depth interviews with more than 50 senior retail executives and other industry experts internationally.

The research results show that whilst retailers clearly recognise the important role of innovation for successful business performance, innovation in retailing nevertheless possesses a range of sector-specific meanings and measurement approaches that are distinct from more generic understandings of the phenomenon.

Whilst the paper summarises relevant literatures and presents the results of the primary research it also sets out a number of novel conceptual frameworks, which seek better to categorise the perceived meanings of retail innovation and the measurement tools most frequently employed to determine innovation effectiveness in retail firms. The proposed frameworks facilitate future scholarly exploration but are also of use to practitioners as a means of better understanding the nature of innovation within their businesses.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how change processes are dependent on historical events, geographical conditions, strong stakeholders and social norms developed over long‐time periods. The paper poses the question: what is the role of path dependencies in mergers between hospitals when motives of the mergers are ambiguous and the context of the change initiatives is characterized by conflicting goals?

The primary objective of this study is to describe the experience of three hospitals that were merged into a hospital enterprise, with the focus on a change in activity from 2003 to 2006. This fieldwork allowed a longitudinal study. The empirical data were generated from observations, interviews, document studies and newspaper clippings.

The investigations showed that the merger forced the hospitals to change, but the new organization – the different components of the merged hospital – followed different pathways to handle the externally imposed changes. Parallel processes evolved, and these processes were rooted in the historical and geographical conditions. Further, the paper illuminates the unique strengths of qualitative research methods that allowed a deeper understanding of these change processes.

The paper's findings add to our knowledge on the complex relations between externally imposed organizational change and the nature of internal organizational behaviour when intertwined with strong stakeholders. The paper particularly highlights the possible consequences when there is little interaction between the changes of systems and the practices of the professionals in hospitals when the processes are heavily influenced by path dependencies rooted in historical and geographical traditions.

Facing the widely spread malaise in and through irresponsible practices of and by modern organizations, phenomenology can provide an approach that is helpful for assessing this situation as well as getting a renewed perception concerning work and life (Fay & Riot, 2007). In particular, it can contribute to a renewal of understanding and enacting responsibility in the lifeworld of business. Practically, it may also provide reflexive practitioners with clues that can trigger new and more responsible practices. The following phenomenological perspective on responsiveness is a kind of application of phenomenology (Harmon, 1990) for reevaluating the constitution of responsibility as capacity to respond adequately in and of organizations and its members. Part of the organizational realities for its members is that it is challenging them to act, speak, and express, that is, they are provoked to give answers. A corresponding responsiveness as an answering behavior can be defined specifically as one, in which there is openness for the points of view of both (or various) parties involved, and by which the setting of pattern and standards coevolve.³