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This chapter examines organisational change processes that occur when accountability demands from powerful external stakeholders change. It investigates, firstly, whether these external accountability demands impact on the performance management systems of two different types of organisations. Secondly, it considers whether the goals for improved performance contained within the external accountability demands are realised. The chapter derives its primary insights from analysing in-depth interviews with managers working in a private sector company and in public sector organisations. The analyses reveal complex organisational responses. In the public sector case study, the organisations tended to reorient their performance management systems towards the external accountability demands; whilst in the private sector organisation, pressures from falling share prices forced managers to focus their decision making on the preferred performance measures contained in shareholders’ accountability demands. However, whilst there is some evidence of performance management system changes, the desires for improved performance subsumed by the external accountability demands are not necessarily realised through the performance management system changes.

Purpose: This study examines whether changes in environmental and funding uncertainty during the first three years after the outbreak of the global financial crisis (which we presume to have increased significantly) are associated with changes in cost system design and intensity of use.

Design/methodology/approach: A dataset of survey responses from 56 Dutch municipalities is used for the empirical analyses. In the questionnaire, a senior-level financial manager reflected on the changes that he or she had perceived during the three years prior to the study (which was conducted at the end of 2010).

Findings: The results show that during these years, on average, ­environmental and funding uncertainty have indeed significantly increased, whereas cost system design and intensity of use have shown little change. The results further indicate that change in environmental uncertainty is positively related to changes in cost system complexity and cost system inclusiveness for activities and/or programs, whereas change in funding uncertainty is positively related to change in cost system intensity of use for product costing purposes. Also, change in cost system complexity is positively related to changes in cost system intensity of use for both operational control and product costing purposes.

Originality/value: Whereas previous large-scale research tends to focus on how the level of cost system design and/or intensity of use characteristics is related to the level of contextual factors, this study focuses on how changes in cost system design and intensity of use characteristics are related to changes in contextual factors. Also distinctive is that this study focuses on local government organizations experiencing a fiscal crisis.

Digital transformations represent an increasingly salient empirical phenomena for institutionalists studying the processes by which institutions evolve, erode, or otherwise change. Yet, there have been few meaningful attempts to engage with insights from the information systems (IS) literature, despite digital innovation and diffusion falling squarely within its domain. This essay makes an initial attempt at integration by offering a two-by-two framework which crosses salient theoretical categories within the IS and institutional literatures. From the former, we draw on concepts of system acceptance and resistance, and from the latter, we draw on concepts of institutional maintenance and change. Each quadrant in our framework represents user responses happening because of, in reaction to, or toward various institutional dynamics. We illustrate each quadrant with data collected as part of a study of digital transformation in the field of public healthcare in Australia. We use our illustrative case to open up research questions which researchers might use to frame their own studies of digital transformations as a form of institutional change. We conclude with a discussion of what other theoretical advances or insights might be yielded from greater collaboration between institutionalists and IS scholars. This essay contributes to the nascent study of digital transformations as a form of institutional change through examining how complementary concepts of the IS and institutional literatures might be used simultaneously to understand the intersection of digital innovation and diffusion and the institutional arrangements governing the fields which they change.

In September 2019, Booking.com changed from the smiley-based scoring system (2.5–10) to the purely 10-point evaluation system (1–10). The smiley-based service evaluation is based on the multi-dimensional (M-D) system, whereas the purely 10-point service evaluation is based on the single-dimensional (S-D) system. This paper aims to focus on how a change in review posting policies impacts service evaluations regarding review generation and distribution.

The authors exploit the natural experiment using Booking.com when the site changed its scoring system from a multidimensional smiley-based service evaluation system to an S-D scoring system. The authors collected online reviews posted on two travel agencies (Booking.com and Priceline.com) between September 2019 and October 2020. A quasi-experimental approach, Difference-in-Differences, was used to isolate the impacts of the new scoring system from the impacts of the change in the service evaluation environment, i.e. COVID-19.

The change in the scoring system considerably alters review distributions by decreasing the portion of positive reviews but increasing the portion of highly positive reviews. Using the theory of emotion work (Hochschild, 1979, 2001), DID is also the reason that the former M-D smiley-based system could have underrated, highly positive reviews of services. Using the information transfer theory (Belkin, 1984), the authors reason the asymmetric transfer of information when users consume reviews from the older (M-D) system but are required to generate reviews on a newer (S-D) system.

The findings would provide online review platform management with a deeper understanding of the consequences of changes in service evaluations when the scoring system is changed.

Though the change in the scoring system would affect how customers evaluate the services of hotels, the causal impacts of switching to the new S-D scoring system have not yet been thoroughly covered by prior hospitality and service evaluation literature, which this research aspires to do.

Explores the role of the management accounting system in the process of adopting a complex manufacturing strategy, lean production. Finds, in a longitudinal field study, using the clinical methodology, that in order to change the management accounting system to support the adoption of lean production, traditional performance measures have to reach a certain threshold. An important way to create impetus for this change is to raise the level of the unit of analysis in the management accounting system, both horizontally and vertically. Finally, the management accounting system affects the process in three concurrent ways: technically, through its design; formally, through its role in the organization; and cognitively, through the way in which actors think about and use the management accounting system. Proposes that in order for the system to be congruent with lean production principles, all three of these perspectives need to be changed.

Systems thinking is well established as an important perspective within the management field. However, the perspective is not always as all-encompassing as sometimes argued. This paper addresses the importance of including structural elements as a part of systems thinking in relation to organizational change. The purpose of the paper is to analyze how organizational infrastructure may influence processes and outcomes of organizational change initiatives.

The paper is based on a longitudinal case study of the introduction of lean in a large Swedish manufacturing company. The case study comprises three embedded cases, and the empirical material is based on interviews, observations and document studies. The material has been analyzed with a systems perspective, focusing on the interplay between ideas, infrastructure and behavior in the organization.

This paper suggests that organizational infrastructure may have a profound impact on organizational behavior. Consequently, an ambition to change organizational routines will be influenced by not only people’s sense-making and behavior but also the technology and infrastructure with which people interact.

Thus, alignment between all these entities will facilitate the change process and increase the likelihood of successful organizational change. Thus, systems thinking requires stronger attention to organizational infrastructure to better understand organizational change processes, and a philosophical approach needs to be balanced against behavioral and technical aspects of change.

This paper challenges much of the received knowledge and assumptions about systems and suggests an expansion of systems thinking.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the process of transformational organizational change that occurred over time in a small manufacturing firm using the conceptual framework of organizational change and archetypes.

This longitudinal study – which is based on six cycles of interviews with all members of the firm over a two‐year period – examined how the change attempt was perceived by the strategic leadership, middle‐level managers, and lower‐level employees.

The findings suggest that the pace of archetypal change is influenced by organization members' experience with, and capacity to, assimilate the change; that, sequentially, new structures and systems are implemented prior to new interpretive schemes; and that unresolved excursions are non‐linear. These findings question the conventional wisdom about the importance of leadership in sustaining organizational transformation. Most notably, it was found that most of the archetypal change occurred after the initiating change agent (a new CEO) had left the firm and been replaced by the previous CEO who did not support the proposed changes.

The paper offers the first longitudinal study to examine the issue of substitutes for strategic leadership. In addition to two new substitutes that should be considered at this level of analysis – information systems and interpretive schemes – the data also point to the impact of collective action by mid‐level supervisors and employees.

University campuses behave as complex systems, and sustainability in higher education is best seen as an emergent quality that arises from interactions both within an institution and between the institution and the environmental and social contexts in which it operates. A framework for strategically prioritizing campus sustainability work is needed. This paper seeks to address these issues.

First, a conceptual model is developed for understanding institutions of higher education as systems. Second, a leverage points framework is applied to experiences at the University of Vermont in order to evaluate campus sustainability efforts. Finally, real‐world examples are used to analyze and prioritize campus sustainability leverage points for advancing organizational change.

This systems thinking approach identifies key leverage points for actions to improve sustainability on campus. The leverage points framework is found to be valuable for: evaluating the potential of individual programs or actions to produce system‐wide change; coordinating individual programs into a strategic effort to improve the system; and making connections between campus and the surrounding social and environmental contexts. Advancing campus sustainability is found to be strengthened by particular ways of thinking and an organizational culture committed to continuous improvements and learning improved ways of doing business based on environmental and social, as well as institutional, benefits.

Campus sustainability workers must develop a prioritization process for evaluating which ideas to move forward on first. Systems thinking can cultivate our ability to consciously redesign and work with the systems that are in place, to intentionally pursue organizational improvements, and to plan and coordinate sustainability programs with potential for big changes.

The purpose of this paper is to quantitatively measure the vulnerability level of the whole rural social-ecological system in Yunnan Province and to analyze the spatial differences of the vulnerability in different regions.

Based on the “exposure-sensitivity-adaptability” vulnerability assessment framework, this paper establishes the index system of rural social-ecological system vulnerability to climate change. Combined with the questionnaire survey and meteorological data, the entropy method was used to measure and analyze the vulnerability level and influencing factors of the overall rural social-ecological system in Yunnan Province. At the same time, the vulnerability level of social-ecological system in Yunnan Province is divided into five levels, and the spatial differences of vulnerability level of 16 states (cities) in Yunnan Province are analyzed.

The results show that: the social-ecological system has high exposure to climate change (0.809), strong sensitivity (0.729), moderate adaptability (0.297) and overall system vulnerability is at a medium level (0.373). Yunnan Province is divided into five levels of social-ecological system vulnerable areas. The areas of extreme, severe, moderate, mild and slight vulnerability account for 21.45%, 24.65%, 36.82%, 13.18% and 3.90% of the whole province, respectively. The geographical division and vulnerability division of Yunnan Province are basically consistent in space.

Comprehensive evaluation of the vulnerability of the social-ecological system of Yunnan Province to climate change is the scientific basis for the country to formulate countermeasures against climate change, and it is also the need to improve the adaptability of the social and economic system of the fragile area, reduce the vulnerability and realize the sustainable development of national social economy. The research results can provide a basis for decision-making of climate adaptation in Yunnan and other regions and provide methods and indicators for the assessment of social-ecological system vulnerability under the background of climate change.

The purpose of this paper is to develop, implement, test and further enhance a framework for measuring organizational change initiatives.

The conceptual part of the framework is based on the structured analysis of existing literature. The framework was further developed during an action research (AR) study where the authors developed, implemented, evaluated and improved the measurement system for organizational change initiatives.

The academic literature is rich in conceptual articles providing required characteristics of a “good” measurement system and frameworks for how organizations should measure performance. However, academia provides less empirical evidence of how these performance measurement systems can be implemented, evaluated and improved. In this paper, the authors present a study where the developed measurement system has been implemented, evaluated and improved. The results in terms of how the actual framework worked as well as the response from the case organizations are equally positive.

The framework has been implemented in two different, major change initiatives in one case organization. While the results are truly encouraging, the framework needs to be further tested and refined in more organizations.

There is a gap between academic perception and practical reality regarding how organizations should measure performance in general as well as measuring organizational change initiatives. The presented, and empirically tested, framework measures both the results of the change initiative (effectiveness) the actual change process (efficiency) as well as the perception of the change initiative and process from different key stakeholders.

This is the first developed, implemented and further improved measurement system for organizational change which measures both the efficiency and effectiveness of the change initiative (process).