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Finds a statistically significant relation between top‐down concept‐mapping and the right cerebral hemisphere, and between bottom‐up concept‐mapping and the right hemisphere. Correlates scores on concept‐mapping with scores on hemispheric tests, and compares the scores of the subjects on hemispheric tests with the preferable style of concept‐mapping. Concludes that top‐down concept‐mapping, the right hemisphere, and Frege’s logic are mutually related. Similarly, bottom‐up concept‐mapping, the left hemisphere, and Russell’s logic are mutually related.

The purpose of this paper is to assist public sector organizations to carry out better change management strategies and thus achieve better change processes and also to provide a critique of top‐down change strategies, especially when employed by public sector agencies. Furthermore, the paper uses the case of one such public sector organization to highlight the need to complement top‐down change strategies with other approaches.

The paper used a three‐year longitudinal case study approach to ascertain the efficacy of top‐down change in a large public sector organization. Data were collected by means of a series of employee focus groups and interviews with key management personnel. This was supplemented by organizational communication outputs.

The paper finds that a top‐down change strategy needs to be coupled with other change strategies for change to become successfully embedded in the organization. Organizational factors and processes can limit the effectiveness of communicating top‐down change and prevent information from filtering through the organization in the expected way.

The paper shows that genuine consultation and meaningful two‐way communication must be established for top‐down change strategies to function effectively together with other techniques.

The paper complements previous literature on top‐down change and corroborates earlier findings. In addition, it highlights the vital importance of middle managers in communicating organizational change and the need to establish a genuine two‐way communication flow.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the strengths and weaknesses of top‐down management in a university that has embraced globalisation with a strong market‐led ethos and to suggest the ways in which adjustments might be made to top‐down management processes.

The paper examines the strengths and weaknesses of top‐down management by drawing upon relevant literature and further explores its related problems through a case study of a department in the universities of one country.

Several studies have concluded that top‐down management through its exercise of direct power is still a preferable means of reducing the chaos resulting from teachers caught up in de‐stabilising and confusing change processes. In the current globalisation context, it is also concluded that the success of top‐down management is predicated upon a willingness or readiness of the faculty to allow it to exist.

Although this paper explores the strengths and weaknesses simply through literature, it provides a case study to understand the problems with top‐down management in higher education. The case study illustrates some of the issues that may or may not be proved by ensuing or larger‐scale research to be generalisable, but for the specifics of this case the issues discussed would appear to be important.

This paper recognizes the importance of top‐down management to higher education in the global society and sheds light on how to make top‐down management more efficient in higher education.

The purpose of this study is to scrutinize the connection between creativity and innovation in the context of public healthcare. This is achieved by applying the theoretical concept of employee-driven innovation (EDI) to explore employees’ perceptions of their creative engagement in innovation processes, as well as to capture the managerial implications of setting up such processes in the sector.

A critical discourse analysis (CDA) is applied as a methodological lens to capture the interaction between the macro-level production and meso-level distribution of innovation discourse (top-down), and the micro-level perception of, and response to, the same (bottom-up). This study is based on a qualitative approach and is set in the public healthcare system of the Autonomous Province of Trento, Northeast Italy. In total, 26 semi-structured interviews were conducted with 22 healthcare professionals. For triangulation purposes, observation and document analysis were also performed.

The findings of this study reveal that tensions are present between the macro-level discourses and the meso-level strategies around innovation, and the micro-level perceptions of employees’ creative engagement in innovation processes. Healthcare professionals’ creative efforts are not easily recognized and supported by top management, which in turn does not receive a framework of reference in policies acknowledging the importance of human skills and creativity in innovation processes.

That this is a single case study implies a limitation on the generalizability of its results, but the results may nevertheless be transferable to similar empirical contexts. Therefore, a multiple case study design would be preferable in future studies in order to study EDI strategies and policies across various types of organizations in the public sector. Moreover, apart from CDA, other theoretical and methodological lenses can be applied to investigate the interaction between top-down organizing and bottom-up responses to innovation.

This study contributes to the EDI literature by providing a more integrative understanding of EDI in the public sector, demonstrating the importance of scrutinizing the interactions between employees and top-level management.

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study investigates a variety of approaches to supply disruption risk management for achieving effective responses for resilience at the supply management subunit level (e.g. category of items). Drawing on the attention-based view of the firm, the authors model the attentional antecedents of supply resilience as (1) attentional perspectives and (2) attentional selection. Attentional perspectives focus on either supply risk sources or supply network recoverability, and both are hypothesised to have a direct positive association with supply resilience. Attentional selection is top down or bottom up when it comes to disruption detection, and these are hypothesised to moderate the association between disruption risk management perspectives and resilience.

Conducted at the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study employs a hierarchical regression analysis on a multicountry survey of 190 procurement professionals, each responding from the perspective of their own subunit area of supply responsibility.

Both attentional disruption risk management perspectives are needed to achieve supply resilience, and neither is superior in terms of achieving supply resilience. Both the efficiency of the top down and exposure to the unexpected with the bottom up are needed – to a balanced degree – for improved supply resilience.

The results encourage firms to purposefully develop their supply risk management practices, first, to include both perspectives and, second, to avoid biases in attentional selection for disruption detection. Ensuring a more balanced approach may allow firms to improve their supply resilience.

The results contribute to the understanding of the microfoundations that underpin firms' operational capabilities for supply risk and disruption management and possible attentional biases.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the effectiveness of integrating a portfolio simulation‐based trading program with the top‐down approach to fundamental analysis in a security analysis course. The simulation allows for the application of class material using a combination of group and individual projects.

Students enrolled in the class completed a survey about the integrated approach and the required simulated trading.

Over 87 per cent of students agreed that the economic analysis provided more educational value as a group project than as an individual project, while over two‐thirds of the students disagreed that the trading simulation had more education value as a group project.

Although the authors focus on the top‐down approach, the concepts of technical analysis, hedging, and income generation could be more formally incorporated into the trading simulation.

The outline of how to integrate a trading simulation into the top‐down approach, using a combination of group projects and a cumulating project completed by each student, can be used as a guide for how to make the top‐down approach a more meaningful task.

The integration of the portfolio simulated trading program with the top‐down approach makes the course more applied and more enjoyable for both the students and the faculty.

The paper outlines how to integrate a trading simulation and the top‐down approach and reports the finding that students preferred the group approach to economic analysis and individual projects for the simulation and the company analysis.

Conceptualizations of work coordination historically assumed that work systems are put into place and that these systems shape the ability of workers to accomplish tasks. Formalization has thus long been invoked as an explanatory mechanism for work coordination. Recent studies have extended interest in emergent implicit and relational coordination, yet their underlying mechanisms of bottom-up coordination have yet to be explicated such that formal top-down coordination can be approached as a complementary mechanism rather than an alternative substitute. The purpose of this paper is to integrate the literatures related to coordination and routines, and extend analysis of bottom-up coordination toward an understanding of how it can be complemented by top-down formalized coordination of routines within organizations. Implications of this work, for both theory and practice, are discussed.

A conceptual review was conducted.

By integrating the literatures related to coordination and routines, the authors extend analysis of bottom-up coordination toward an understanding of how it can be complemented by top-down formalized coordination of routines within organizations.

From a theory-based point of view, in the present work, the authors integrated the literatures related to coordination and routines and arrived at the conclusion that bottom-up coordination can be complemented by top-down formalized coordination of routines within organizations.

The authors suggest that there is a need in the contemporary workplace for implicit, relational processes to enable individuals to continuously assess what changes are needed and adapt coordinated routines to accomplish the task at hand. This propensity will continue to increase as technology facilitates even more seamless communication among employees, organizations, and external partners.

For the first time the authors integrate the literatures related to coordination and routines, in order to extend analysis of bottom-up coordination toward an understanding of how it can be complemented by top-down formalized coordination of routines within organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the multi-level (individual, interpersonal and firm) consequences of top-down knowledge hiding in firms.

This study uses a multiple case study methodology by studying nine United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based firms. Furthermore, 26 semi-structured interviews with managers based in 9 different firms are undertaken.

Based on the qualitative interviews and comprehensive data analysis, four individual, one interpersonal and two firm-level consequences emerged. In addition, the consequences of top-down knowledge hiding are not multi-level, but multi-faceted too.

This study has some limitations. First, the results of this study are not generalizable to a broader population. Second, this study explores behavioral patterns with respect to UAE culture only.

Firms can use the findings from this study to understand the multi-level and multi-faceted consequences of top-down knowledge hiding in firms. Also, this study provides some constructive guidelines to firms/senior management to mitigate the consequences of knowledge hiding in firms.

This study contributes to knowledge hiding literature by revealing multi-level and multi-faceted consequences of top-down knowledge hiding in firms.

Lean implementations in hospitals tend to be lengthy or lack the desired results. In addressing the question, how can lean be implemented effectively in a hospital-wide setting, this paper aims to examine two opposing approaches.

The authors studied two Dutch university hospitals which engaged in different lean implementation approaches during the same four-year period: top-down vs bottom-up. Inductive qualitative analyses were made of 49 interviews; numerous documents; field notes; 13 frontline meeting observations; and objective hospital performance data. Longitudinally, the authors depict how the sequential events unfolded in both hospitals.

During the six implementation stages, the roles played by top, middle and frontline managers stood out. While the top managers of one hospital initiated the organization-wide implementation and then delegated it to others, the top managers of the other similar hospital merely tolerated the bottom-up lean activities. Eventually, only the hospital with the top-down approach achieved high organization-wide performance gains, but only in its fourth year after the top managers embraced lean in their own daily work practices and had started to co-create lean themselves. Then, the earlier developed lean infrastructure at the middle- and frontline ranks led to the desired hospital-wide lean implementation results.

Change-management insights, including basic tenets of social learning and goal-setting theory, are shown to advance the knowledge of effective lean implementation in hospitals. The authors found lean implementation “best-oiled” through role-modeling by top managers who use a phase-based process and engage in close cross-hierarchical or co-creative collaboration with middle and frontline managerial members.

In recent years, the term “smart city” has attracted a lot of attention from policy makers, business leaders and citizenship in general. Although there is not a unique definition of what a smart city is, it is generally accepted that “smart” urban policies refer to local governments’ initiatives that use information and communication technologies in order to increase the quality of life of their inhabitants while contributing to a sustainable development. So far, “smart city” approaches have generally been related to top-down processes of technology diffusion. The purpose of this paper is to present a broader view on “smart” initiatives to analyze both top-down and bottom-up dynamics in a smart city. The authors argue that these two perspectives are complementary and its combination can reinforce the collaboration between different city stakeholders. Top-down and bottom-up initiatives are not opposed forces but, on the contrary, can have a synergistic effect on the innovation capacity of the city. Both perspectives are illustrated by providing examples of different “smart” aspects in the city of Barcelona: smart districts, open collaborative spaces, infrastructures and open data.

To illustrate the arguments, the authors analyze the case of the city of Barcelona providing examples of top-down and bottom-up initiatives in four different smart city aspects: smart districts, open collaborative spaces, infrastructures and open data. The research method is based on a case study (Yin, 1984). The primary data consisted on interviews to city council representatives as well as managers of local public institutions, like economic development offices, and local organizations like for instance coworking spaces. The authors interviewed also specialists on the innovation history of the city in order to validate the data. In addition, the authors used secondary data such as reports on the 22@, and documentation on the Barcelona innovation policies, as well as doing a compilation of press articles and the online content of the institutional webpages. All together, the authors have followed a data triangulation strategy to seek data validation based on the cross-verification of the analyzed data sources.

The analysis suggests that the top-down and bottom-up perspectives are complementary and their combination can reinforce the collaboration between different city stakeholders. Top-down and bottom-up initiatives are not opposed forces but, on the contrary, can have a synergistic effect on the innovation capacity of the city. Both perspectives are illustrated by providing examples of different “smart” aspects in the city of Barcelona: smart districts, open collaborative spaces, infrastructures and open data.

Nevertheless, the analysis has its limitations. Even if the authors have emphasized the importance of the bottom-up initiatives, citizens do not have often the resources to act without governmental intervention. This is the case of services that require high-cost infrastructures or regulatory changes. Also, as it usually happens in the case of disruptive technology, it is hard for citizens to understand the possibilities of its use. In these cases, firms and institutions must play an important role in the first phases of the diffusion of innovations, by informing and incentivizing its use. It is also important to note that some of the emerging usages of technology are confronted to legal or regulatory issues. For instance, distributed and shared Wi-Fi networks might be in opposition to economic interests of internet providers, that often difficult its expansion. It is also the case of services of the sharing economy that represent a menace to established institutions (like the tensions between Uber and taxi companies, or Airbnb and hotels). In these cases, city halls like it is the case in Barcelona, tend to respond to these emergent uses of technology by regulating to ensure protection to existing corporate services.

In conclusion, the transformational process that leads a city to become a smart city has to take in consideration the complexity and the plurality of the urban reality. Beyond considering citizens as being users, testers or consumers of technology, local administrations that are able to identify, nourish and integrate the emerging citizens’ initiatives would contribute to the reinforcement of a smart city reality.

The contribution of the paper is to go beyond the generalized technologic discourse around smart cities by adding the layer of the citizens’ initiatives.