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Aligning actors in a road renovation project by a co-design process the road to circularity

Information management in supply chain partnering

From the article: "Abstract Maintenance processes of Dutch housing associations are often still organized in a traditional manner. Contracts are based on lowest price instead of ‘best quality for lowest price’ considering users’ demands. Dutch housing associations acknowledge the need to improve their maintenance processes in order to lower maintenance cost, but are not sure how. In this research, this problem is addressed by investigating different supply chain partnering principles and the role of information management. The main question is “How can the organisation of maintenance processes of Dutch housing associations, in different supply chain partnering principles and the related information management, be improved?” The answer is sought through case study research."

Towards a Culture of Regional Design

There has probably never been such an intense debate about the layout of the countryside as the one that is currently raging. There are serious concerns about the landscape, which is being rapidly transformed by urbanization and everything associated with this process, and not only in the Netherlands but also far beyond its borders. Everyone has something to say in this society-wide debate, from local to national governments, from environmental factions to the road-user's lobby, and from those who are professionally involved to concerned private parties. In many cases it is a battle between idealized images and economic models, between agricultural reality and urban park landscapes, between ecological concerns and mobility. This issue of OASE explores the potential significance of architectonic design for transformation processes on the regional scale. Besides considering the instruments that are available to the designer to fulfil this task, the authors also consider how the design can exercise a 'positive' influence on such processes. The various contributions shed light on the potential significance of territory in contemporary design practice and offer critical reflection on the topical discourse that has evolved over recent years.

Educators’ experiences with governance in curriculum change processes

In the midst of continuous health professions curriculum reforms, critical questions arise about the extent to which conceptual ideas are actually put into practice. Curricula are often not implemented as intended. An under-explored aspect that might play a role is governance. In light of major curriculum changes, we explored educators' perspectives of the role of governance in the process of translating curriculum goals and concepts into institutionalized curriculum change at micro-level (teacher-student). In three Dutch medical schools, 19 educators with a dual role (teacher and coordinator) were interviewed between March and May 2018, using the rich pictures method. We employed qualitative content analysis with inductive coding. Data collection occurred concurrently with data analysis. Different governance processes were mentioned, each with its own effects on the curriculum and organizational responses. In Institute 1, participants described an unclear governance structure, resulting in implementation chaos in which an abstract educational concept could not be fully realized. In Institute 2, participants described a top-down and strict governance structure contributing to relatively successful implementation of the educational concept. However it also led to demotivation of educators, who started rebelling to recover their perceived loss of freedom. In Institute 3, participants described a relatively fragmentized process granting a lot of freedom, which contributed to contentment and motivation but did not fully produce the intended changes. Our paper empirically illustrates the importance of governance in curriculum change. To advance curriculum change processes and improve their desired outcomes it seems important to define and explicate both hard and soft governance processes.

Forging Forms of Authority through the Sociomateriality of Food in Partial Organizations

This study theorizes on the sociomateriality of food in authority-building processes of partial organizations by exploring alternative food networks (AFNs). Through the construction of arenas for food provisioning, AFNs represent grassroots collectives that deliberately differentiate their practices from mainstream forms of food provisioning. Based on a sequential mixed-methods analysis of 24 AFNs, where an inductive chronological analysis is followed by a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), we found that the entanglements between participants’ food provisioning practices and food itself shape how authority emerges in AFNs. Food generates biological, physiological and social struggles for AFN participants who, in turn, respond by embracing or avoiding them. As an outcome, most AFNs tend to bureaucratize over time according to four identified patterns while a few idiosyncratically build a more shared basis of authority. We conclude that the sociomateriality of food plays an important yet indirect role in understanding why and how food provisioning arenas re-organize and forge their forms of authority over time. Pascucci, S., Dentoni, D., Clements, J., Poldner, K., & Gartner, W. B. (2021). Forging Forms of Authority through the Sociomateriality of Food in Partial Organizations. Organization Studies, 42(2), 301-326. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840620980232

The art of the possible: an insider analysis of change processes within a Dutch teaching university

Insider ethnographic analysis is used to analyze change processes in an engineering department. Distributed leadership theory is used as conceptual framework.