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For better or worse, digital technologies are reshaping everything we know, from customer behaviour and expectations to organizational and manufacturing systems, business models, markets, and ultimately society as a whole. To understand this overarching transformation, this paper extends the previous literature, which has focused mostly on the organizational level, by developing a multi-level research agenda for digital transformation (DT). In this regard, we propose an extended definition of DT as a socioeconomic change across individuals, organizations, ecosystems, and societies that is shaped by the adoption and utilization of digital technologies. We propose four lenses to interpret the DT phenomenon: individuals (utilizing and adopting digital technologies), organizations (strategizing and coordinating both internal and external transformation), ecosystems (harnessing digital technologies in governance and co-producing value propositions), and geopolitical frameworks (regulating the environments in which individuals and organizations are embedded). Based on these lenses, we build a multi-level research agenda at the intersection between the bright and dark sides of DT and propose the PIAI framework, which captures a process of perception, interpretation, and action that ultimately leads to the possible impact of intended and unintended consequences for the socioeconomic infrastructure. The PIAI framework identifies a research agenda consisting of a non-exhaustive list of topics that can assist researchers to deepen their understanding of the DT phenomenon and provide guidance to managers and policymakers when making strategic decisions that seek to shape and guide the DT.

Background Patient-centred care is now ubiquitous in health services research, and healthcare systems are moving ahead with patient-centred care implementation. Yet, little is known about how healthcare employees, charged with implementing patient-centred care, conceptualize what they are implementing. Objective To examine how hospital employees conceptualize patient-centred care. Research design We conducted qualitative interviews about patient-centred care during site four visits, from January to April 2013. Subjects We interviewed 107 employees, including leadership, middle managers, front line providers and staff at four US Veteran Health Administration (VHA) medical centres leading VHA's patient-centred care transformation. Measures Data were analysed using grounded thematic analysis. Findings were then mapped to established patient-centred care constructs identified in the literature: taking a biopsychosocial perspective; viewing the patient-as-person; sharing power and responsibility; establishing a therapeutic alliance; and viewing the doctor-as-person. Results We identified three distinct conceptualizations: (i) those that were well aligned with established patient-centred care constructs surrounding the clinical encounter; (ii) others that extended conceptualizations of patient-centred care into the organizational culture, encompassing the entire patient-experience; and (iii) still others that were poorly aligned with patient-centred care constructs, reflecting more traditional patient care practices. Conclusions Patient-centred care ideals have permeated into healthcare systems. Additionally, patient-centred care has been expanded to encompass a cultural shift in care delivery, beginning with patients' experiences entering a facility. However, some healthcare employees, namely leadership, see patient-centred care so broadly, it encompasses on-going hospital initiatives, while others consider patient-centred care as inherent to specific positions. These latter conceptualizations risk undermining patient-centred care implementation by limiting transformational initiatives to specific providers or simply repackaging existing programmes.

Socially constituted systems of order emanate from tacit interaction. While they are reflected in an organization's culture, they do not necessarily align with the organization's authorised rules and codes of conduct. Such misalignment renders legitimacy in organizations problematic. The paper explores the relation between power and legitimacy by showing how such systems of order recursively establish, and are established by, forms of legitimacy that may not be formalised. Empirically, such forms of legitimacy thwarted a police organization's attempt to reform. Theoretically, an understanding of organizational change is connected to the relationship between power and legitimacy. The paper provides insights into how power influences the social construction of legitimacy within the context of public organizations.

Contemporary organizations are teleological—purposive—structures, designed to fulfil myriad societal needs. The purposive efforts of any organization are shaped by knowledge. Organizational knowledge includes both conscious and unconscious dimensions. This paper argues that a similar duality applies to organizational teleology. Organizational behaviour unfolds in service to consciously understood teleological aims (such as corporate strategies and business plans) and also unconscious teleological aims (that are undesigned or emergent), which are subtler to detect. Said differently, organizational behaviour is always purposive. Many of the intentions driving organizational behaviour are publicly understood and sanctioned; others are less well understood and unsanctioned. To the degree that some purposive behaviour in organizations remains unconscious, it may detract resources from managerial objectives and confound organizational change efforts. Drawing from facets of systems theory, this paper briefly discusses collective, purposive, and patterned characteristics of unconscious behaviour that may help practitioners to detect and respond to it. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

With the imperative placed on schools in recent years to improve, the leadership of educational change has increased in significance. The research reported here explored and analysed the change processes in 32 schools in South Wales that have made significant changes to improve pupil achievement. Various triggers initiated the improvement journey and the schools faced numerous challenges. Although the improvement journey was variously configured, there appeared to be sequential stages: pre-acceleration, acceleration and post-acceleration. The organizational leadership needs in those different stages were diverse and in schools where change had been successfully engineered, leadership was enacted differently with diverse themes emerging in the various phases. The findings have important implications for the leadership of change in a range of institutions such as those in the public and voluntary sectors which have multiple and often conflicting objectives, a multiplicity of stakeholders and are staffed by professionals. The paper illustrates the changing nature of leadership in the journey of organizational change which may help to explain the absence in the literature of the characteristics or the key actions that are the essence of good leadership. The paper concludes by modelling the dimensions of improvement that the leader must influence at an institutional and individual level to bring about educational change. These dimensions are effectiveness, reflective capability and adaptive capability.

Made available in DSpace on 2021-06-25T11:14:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2021-01-01 Many companies have already experienced the benefits sustainability may bring in terms of positive impacts on society, the environment, and its market value. Despite this, most of them do not know how Human Resource Development (HRD) could effectively promote employees' commitment to results and facilitate organizational change. The main objective of this paper is to propose guidelines for the development of human resources that contributes toward sustainability in organizations. The drivers of sustainability and HRD identified in the literature supported the analyses of 19 GRI G4 sustainability reports from Brazilian companies included in the BM&F Bovespa Corporate Sustainability Index (2016). The analyses allowed the characterization of the companies' sustainability and HRD initiatives, as well as the elaboration of ten HRD guidelines to foster corporate sustainability. This work contributes to the articulation on how the concepts of HRD and sustainability are related, promoting the discussion about the drivers of the HRD that can support managers in the journey toward sustainable development. School of Engineering Department of Industrial Engineering São Paulo State University UNESP School of Engineering Department of Industrial Engineering São Paulo State University UNESP

This paper deals with a central challenge in organization and management research: to predict the evolution of an organization's adaptive capability. We address both theoretical and methodological gaps in existing research. First, focusing on the largely overlooked external constraints on adaptive capability, we model how ties between an organization and its market audiences curtail adaptive capability as market tenure increases. Second, we address the methodological weakness of conceptualizing the content of organizational change in prior research with a novel approach. Our distance‐based approach sees adaptation as change in an organization's position in a cognitive market space. With position defined, one can measure the speed of movement in that space. An analysis of the UK motorcycle market serves as an empirical illustration for our theoretical prediction and proposed measure.

Many organizational problems are addressed through change to existing Information Systems (IT) rather than radical new design. In the face of high incidence of IT project failure, devising effective ways to tackle this type of change remains an open challenge.The paper discusses the motivation, theoretical foundation, characteristics and evaluation of a novel framework, referred to as POE-Δ, which is rooted in design and engineering and is aimed at providing systematic support for representing, structuring and exploring change problems. We generalize an existing theory of greenfield design as problem solving for application to change problems: from a theoretical perspective POE-Δ is a subset of its parent framework, allowing the seamless integration of greenfield and brownfield design to tackle change problems. Its initial case study evaluation shows that POE-Δ allows the systematic analysis of change problems, leading to clearer understanding and better informed decision making.

Maintaining momentum is a key influence on the ultimate success of large-scale change. In this paper, we develop theory to explain how stable versus shifting change-supportive perceptions over time differentially influence the perceived momentum associated with goal-directed change (i.e., change-based momentum). We use cross-level polynomial regression and data obtained early and 1 year later within an organization implementing a lean manufacturing transformation to model changes in individual perceptions. Results suggest that momentum perceptions are higher for “Champions” (stable and high perceptions over time) as compared to “Converts” (increasing perceptions over time), but momentum perceptions are lower for “Defectors” (decreasing perceptions over time) as compared to “Doubters” (stable and low perceptions over time). We find that even if participants converge upon change-supportive perceptions later in the change process, early divergent perceptions influence subsequent momentum for the change. These findings highlight the important role of temporal shifts in perceptions for organizational change processes.

In this paper we explore how the implementation of public policy can differ from that mandated, and we argue that such departures are not necessarily a problem. Organizational change faces theoretical tension between considering non-acceptance behaviours as ‘resistance’ and requiring change recipients to tailor and adapt change agendas to fit local contexts. This tension is particularly salient in the public sector, due to the mandated nature of much public reform. We compare the implementation of policy change in four hospital case studies in two countries (Ireland and the UK). Based on interviews with 68 staff across the four cases, we identify how change recipients can react to, translate and contribute to policy change initiatives. Our findings challenge a straightforward distinction between change agents and change recipients, showing how ‘first-order’ recipients can act as ‘second-order’ change agents. Entrepreneurial second-order change agents use locally contextualized change agency to tailor and embellish policy mandates. We distinguish between ‘adaptors’, who make appropriate local adjustments, and ‘extrapreneurs’ who add extra dimensions to mandated change. This evidence suggests replacing the traditional ‘acceptance–resistance’ dichotomy with a continuum of responses to mandated policy, identifying how public sector actors can variously avoid, abstain, adopt, adapt or add to change agendas.

This paper analyses how top managers account for their consumption of popular management concepts. By ‘consumption’ we refer to managers acting as active users of popular management concepts within their organizations. After reviewing the relevant literature, we argue that the logic of appropriateness is a better theoretical perspective to view, understand and analyse managers' accounts of concept consumption than is the logic of consequence. We apply this perspective to extensive interviews we conducted with top managers in Germany. Based on the managers' own accounts of how they understand and apply popular management concepts, we identified four discourse categories: (1) learning from others' experiences, (2) controlling organizational change, (3) gaining external legitimacy and (4) collective sensemaking. We argue that these discourse categories all draw on the social norm of rationality central to managerial identity, while differing in socially defined rules about how rationality is realized in typical management situations. Our findings strongly encourage researchers, when investigating popular management concepts in the future, to take into account the situational nature of rationality that circumstantiates the consumption of concepts.

The research reported on in this paper was funded by a grant from the National Research Foundation of South Africa.

Belgium’s systems of unemployment insurance and employment protection legislation were set up in the context of typically enduring and stable relationships between workers and firms. Economic globalization and rapid technological and organizational change, however, are now demanding more flexibility of both workers and firms. As a result, current labour market institutions are in urgent need of reform to reconcile such increased flexibility with adequate security for workers. Though the call for a “flexicurity” approach is not new, there is no single view of what institutional model the latter implies. This paper proposes a reform explicitly guided by economic principles.

The ability to lead organizational and cultural change has never been a more critical factor for success in business than today. With renewed urgency many executives ask what do with their company culture(s): “Why can't we build organizations that are more innovative, inspiring, and more agile – and why do our change initiatives typically fail?” Based on project engagements where questions like these have been a focal point, this paper aims to shed light on the conditions and role of business anthropology to take active part in enhancing organizational change programs. Through concrete examples, it discusses central challenges on how we as ethnographers can strengthen our approach when navigating in change programs – not only in terms of how we decompose and diagnose culture (telling companies what they should not do) – but more importantly on how to play an active role in leading the way and tackling complexity through positive enablers of change.

Many management fads have been shown to be detrimental to the well-being of employees as well as to the long-term competitiveness of organizations. Downsizing has been recognized as belonging to this category and research has begun to clarify what is now commonly known as ‘survivor syndrome’, the negative attitudes and behaviours of those that survive retrenchment. However, recent evidence shows that ‘survivor syndrome’ does not actually exist in all downsizing situations. By closely examining the specific conditions under which the effects of downsizing are lessened, this study contributes to the development of effective interventions for dealing with organizational change. Using the data from a longitudinal survey, this paper investigates the impact of downsizing on survivor attitudes of affective and continuance commitment, general and specific job satisfaction, perceived organizational support, and the behaviours of performance, effort, turnover intention and absenteeism. While analyses reveal evidence of decline in some of the variables after the downsizing, a more important finding was support for the counter-argument that a syndrome does not actually exist. Four of the variables were not significantly affected by downsizing. The implication for management is that effective management of a downsizing programme can decrease the likelihood of a syndrome permeating an organization. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper examines how and why ongoing organizational change is experienced emotionally on an everyday basis and identifies important consequences of such emotional experiences. Three main antecedents to negative emotions in ongoing change are proposed: perceptions of an insecure future; perceptions of inadequate working conditions; and perceptions of inadequate treatment by the organization. Two outcome variables are identified: trust in the organization and withdrawal from the organization. The model is tested with cross-sectional and follow-up data from a field study. Regression and path analysis reveal that: a) ongoing changes are associated with negative emotions; b) this relationship between ongoing changes and emotions is mediated by the three proposed antecedents; and c) negative emotions predict employee lack of trust and employee withdrawal, both immediately and one month later. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Institute of Medicine's report, Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century (IOM 2001), has challenged health care practitioners, administrators, and policymakers to implement major reforms to reinvent the nation's health care delivery system. Chronic care quality improvement (QI) collaboratives offer one set of comprehensive strategies for restructuring chronic care delivery systems. The collaboratives combine rapid-cycle change methods with multiple change strategies suggested by the Chronic Care Model (CCM) to facilitate improvements in processes and outcomes of care for people with chronic illness (ICIC 2003a, ICIC 2003b; IHI 2003). The CCM recommends organizational change in six areas: delivery system redesign, patient self-management support, decision support, information support, community linkages, and health system support. While change strategies have been implemented with success in each of the six areas (Wagner, Austin, and Von Korff 1996; Von Korff et al. 1997), little is known about how implementation in all six areas affects processes and outcomes of care (Bodenheimer, Wagner, and Grumbach 2002a,Bodenheimer, Wagner, and Grumbach 2002b). The RAND/Berkeley Improving Chronic Illness Care Evaluation (ICICE) team was charged with assessing the implementation and impact of the chronic care collaboratives. Key objectives were to evaluate (1) the success of the chronic care collaboratives in inducing the changes needed to implement the CCM and (2) the effects on costs, processes, and outcomes of care in organizations which were successful in varying degrees in implementing CCM (Cretin, Shortell, and Keeler 2004). This paper focuses on the first objective by addressing the following question: Did the participating organizations succeed in making CCM changes to their care delivery systems?

Recent empirical literature has introduced the ‘Skill Biased Organizational Change’ (SBOC) hypothesis, according to which organizational change can be considered as one of the main causes of the skill bias (increase in the number of highly skilled workers) exhibited by manufacturing employment in developed countries. This paper focuses on the importance of the SBOC with respect to the more traditional ‘Skill Biased Technological Change’ in driving the skill composition of workers in the Italian machinery sector. A dynamic panel data analysis is proposed which uses a unique firm-level dataset. The results show that both skilled and unskilled workers are negatively affected by technological change, while organizational change—which in turn may be linked to new technologies—is positively linked to skilled workers. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The article is based on a qualitative study of how green issues affect the R&D work in two large Swedish manufacturing firms. Both internal (environmental staff, top management) and external (regulators) actors drive the greening processes and our firms seem to be far reaching in their green works. In our discussions, we rely on a dynamic model of organizational change to emphasize that if green issues, in our cases perceived as strategic issues, are to change the firm and its R&D work, there has to be a focus on not only technological (tangible) components, but also on cultural (intangible) aspects. A proactive environmental product development strategy might therefore benefit from widening its focus to the whole organization. In addition to a more holistic approach, a basic argument in the paper is also that if green issues are to survive, they have to be kept evergreen. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Change is now a key concern of most business organizations, but the management of change (MOC) appears weak, with research suggesting that, at least in part, the methodologies used are responsible for this weakness. By outlining an alternative systemic MOC framework for action, and pointing to how this might be applied, this paper recommends an approach to MOC which seeks to address some of these current methodological shortcomings. A critical examination and classification of organizational change are conducted, leading to a categorization of approaches to change, and allowing critical assessment of the benefits and limitations of current approaches. Systems perspectives and their relevance to MOC are discussed, and by combining MOC and systems perspectives a systemic MOC framework is developed. This study suggests that MOC is characterized by diversity and interaction, for which systemic perspectives are more appropriate than the approaches currently applied. The systemic framework developed is thus seen to be a useful way of helping understand and manage organizational change more effectively

Institutionalized racism constrains therapy organizations in providing just, equitable and useful services for people from the non-dominant groups within our society. While the will to change is often apparent in individuals, many organizations do not manage to do so. This paper maps a model of individual racial identity development (Cross, 1971, 1978, 1981) on to process within organizations, and illustrates organizational change with a case example.

This paper uses a market signaling perspective to examine investor reactions to firm announcements of name changes to include ‘.com.’ Firms that change their name as a purely cosmetic technique are contrasted to those that employ other strategic investments. Results show that announcements of ‘.com’ name changes are associated with significant increases in stock prices and trading activity. Furthermore, the magnitude of investor reactions is significantly larger when name changes are accompanied by other strategies. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper seeks to extend and invigorate existing critiques of the aims and claims of diversity management. Four overlapping turns – demographic, political, economic and critical – akin to the broader and critical ‘turns’ in the humanities and social sciences are identified. When existing critiques are reconsidered through the framework offered by these four turns, then diversity management can be seen to: perpetuate rather than combat inequalities in the workplace; diminish the legacy of discrimination against historically repressed minorities in the workplace; continue to prescribe essentialist categories of difference and present problematic dualisms for effecting organizational change.

This paper focuses on the challenges involved in integrating virtual teams strategically and operationally into organizational systems. It argues that an understanding of virtual team integration must consider both the context within which virtual teams are being introduced and processes involved in their implementation. Such an approach demands that we consider the strategic rationales involved in teamworking generally, and virtual teams in particular. By looking at change processes, attention is drawn to the social, cultural and political dynamics that affect the implementation and operation of virtual teams. This analysis is used to suggest further avenues for research on virtual teams, as well as pointing to practical considerations

Strategy researchers now recognize that distinctive competencies are critically important for sustained competitive advantage. The processes by which such competencies are acquired, however, has only started to be examined. Connections between macro-industrial system level properties and micro-developments in proprietary technology at the firm level need to be made. This paper argues that system-wide properties, such as long-standing elementary and opposing logics in societal forces like governments and markets, and micro-developments, such as the firm's capacity to search for talent, technology, and ideas and to harmonize what it learns internally, can contribute in significant ways to the creation and acquisition of new competencies. Based on the case of pollution prevention in electric generation, it shows how the system-wide properties channel and direct the paths that the acquisition of new competencies take and how they interact with micro-developments at the firm level. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Clinical management is at the centre of organizational change in the contemporary British hospital sector, and throws up important questions about the relationship between medicine and management. Through the analysis of business planning as a key organizational process the interpretative frameworks which guide the perceptions of the roles of clinical directors and directorate managers can be understood. This paper presents empirical material from a study of an acute hospital trust going through a full business planning cycle, and traces the evolving interpretations of the nature, content and form of clinical management. It also provides insights into the changing face of the medical profession and its place within the health services domain.

As Universities and Institutes of Higher Education increasingly find themselves having to undertake organizational change, so potentially the nature and role of administration itself changes. This paper, in reporting the experiences of the central administrative team at the Karolinska Institute, a Swedish University, indicates how this can result in administrators becoming managers of change.

With the current pace of organizational change within the NHS there is a growing need to examine how information is contributing to business objectives. A valuable tool in this information management review process is the 'information audit'. This paper describes an information audit conducted for a Regional Health Authority. The management and methodology of the project are presented in detail together with the implications for the subject organization and ensuing opportunities for health information professionals.

There now exists a substantial volume of empirical evidence which has examined the superiority of the ‘M’-form organizational structure for the management of large, diversified enterprises. Regrettably, attention has mainly been focused on manufacturing companies, despite the rising importance of the service sector in most major economies. This paper examines organizational structures within one segment of the UK service sector: the insurance industry. In the UK this industry has undergone significant, regulatory-driven structural change and, as a consequence, the majority of companies have undertaken organizational change. The results produced, however, suggest that many of these companies adopted sub-optimal divisionalized structures.

Much of the theory and research about change in organizations, by being presented free of rich context, creates a certain amount of confusion in the literature. This paper seeks to help remedy that situation by developing a comprehensive framework of change by organizations, built on various cycles: concentric to represent the contents and levels of change, circumferential to represent the means and processes of change, tangential to represent the episodes and stages of change, and spiraling to represent the sequences and patterns of change. This framework is fleshed out in conclusion by developing three models of change experienced by major world religions, labeled enclaving, cloning, and uprooting.

Teece (1982) extended Coase's (1937) theory of the firm to explain firm amalgamations. This explanation is centred around three fundamental constructs: excess capacity, market imperfections and the nature of assets, together with the frequency of their exchange. This paper provides an application of Teece's work to explain recent organizational change within the stockbroking industry in Australia and concludes by developing testable explanations of why, following deregulation, stockbroking firms countenanced moves by financial institutions, particularly banks, to acquire large equity positions.

The need for training and retraining is a central element in current discussions about the economy of the United States. This paper was designed to introduce training practitioners to some new concepts about how measurement science can provide a new framework for assessing progress and can add new discipline to the development, implementation, and conduct of training. The paper is a discussion-focusing chapter in a forthcoming ASTD-sponsored book in which other chapters are written by training practitioners. The paper demonstrates that measurement science, revitalized by interactive technologies and the disciplines of cognitive science, instructional science, applied artificial intelligence, and studies of organizational change, can be used to address the economic challenge our nation currently faces. Basic concepts of measurement science as applied to training and performance are described, and newer concepts, such as mastery assessment systems and the four generations of computerized measurement, are explored to demonstrate their applicability to training and performance measurement. A hypothetical future training application, making use of the advantages offered by advances in measurement science, is described.

The entry of large activist (or so-called ‘strategic’) investors has become a prevalent phenomenon in transforming economies, such as the Polish one. This paper investigates the relationship between firm performance and the likelihood of a strategic investor entry, as well as the changes firms undergo under control of an activist investor. Theoretical predictions and empirical analyses of 211 Polish companies in the period of 1994–2000 allow us to conclude that strategic investors are more likely to buy stakes in firms of higher labor productivity, and tend to catalyze changes in poorly performing firms. There is also some evidence that investors refrain from committing resources to restructuring the target firms before seizing significant control over them.

This paper reports the results of a randomized field experiment that tested the effects of an empowerment intervention among unit managers of a large trucking company. The intervention was designed to increase participants' beliefs in their personal control and self-efficacy with regard to key aspects of their jobs. Individuals who managed geographically dispersed profit centres were randomly assigned to either an intervention group (N = 38) or a no-treatment control group (N = 30). The intervention significantly increased perceptions of maintenance control and impact at four months after the intervention, but only for those managers who felt that their supervisors were supportive. The intervention also improved archival measures of unit performance and affected work attitudes (depending upon the level of perceived supervisory support). The data point out the key role that perceived supervisor social support plays when implementing such organizational change interventions.

Kaplan (1984) claimed that there has been little innovation in the last sixty years in the design and implementation of management accounting systems. Current systems lag changes in manufacturing processes. This paper provides a framework to explain that this lag in organizations may be due to the perceived greater complexity and lesser relative advantage, compatibility, trialability and observability of administrative (e.g., accounting) innovations as compared with technical innovations. The empirical research not only supports the existence of an accounting lag, but also suggests that there may be a substantial reward for those organizations that can remedy it.

This paper describes the development of a classification of committees frequently seen in response to authority-task problems in universities. It then reports data that describe how twenty high-level, experienced administrators, when presented with a series of seven hypothetical cases representing each type of committee, chose to compose each committee. Implications of this work for understanding the use of committees as strategic problem-solving tools are explored.