This open access book states that the endemic societal faultlines of our times are deeply intertwined and that they confront us with challenges affecting the security and sustainability of our societies. It states that new ways of inhabiting and cultivating our planet are needed to keep it healthy for future generations. This requires a fundamental shift from the current anthropocentric and economic growth-oriented social contract to a more ecocentric and regenerative natural social contract. The author posits that in a natural social contract, society cannot rely on the market or state alone for solutions to grand societal challenges, nor leave them to individual responsibility. Rather, these problems need to be solved through transformative social-ecological innovation (TSEI), which involves systemic changes that affect sustainability, health and justice. The TSEI framework presented in this book helps to diagnose and advance innovation and change across sectors and disciplines, and at different levels of governance. It identifies intervention points and helps formulate sustainable solutions for policymakers, administrators, concerned citizens and professionals in moving towards a more just and equitable society.
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Organizations in legal practice, under pressure to do “more for less,” are searching for ways to automate legal work, to improve efficiency of legal service delivery. Automated drafting of contracts (or: contract automation) is one of the areas where technology is—partly—replacing legal professionals. In Dutch legal practice, the number of organizations that are actively deploying contract automation is still relatively small, but growing. This chapter looks at experiences with contract automation of organizations from various sectors in Dutch legal practice. Contract automation can improve legal service delivery to consumers and SMEs, as well as contracting processes within organizations. Several organizations report positive results. However, successfully implementing contract automation, especially for internal use within organizations, is not simple. Tight budgets, resistance to change and poor integration with other software are some of the problems that organizations may encounter. Generally, human and organizational factors are often at least as important as the technological aspects. Successful implementation of contract automation requires design thinking, a proactive approach and process-oriented (legal) professionals. Regardless of these difficulties, the use of contract automation software in Dutch legal practice can be expected to increase, due to several factors. The number of organizations that are offering contracts (and other legal documents) online to SMEs and consumers has grown rapidly over the last years. Contract automation is not only offered to consumers and SMEs by commercial parties, but also by branch organizations, as a service to their members. Consumers and SMEs will become used to these self-help solutions for legal matters. Legal publishers are also increasing the offering of automated contracts and other legal documents. In addition, law firms and consultants are promoting the use of contract automation within client organizations. Finally, many corporate organizations are increasingly exchanging experiences on improving legal operations and the use of Legal Tech, including contract automation. Eventually, increased use of contract automation may drive further harmonization of contracts within sectors and facilitate other technological applications, such as the automated analysis of contracts.
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De Peer Support Group Kwalitatief Onderzoek van de HU is een groeiende, zelfsturende, HU-brede groep die is ontstaan uit de behoefte van onderzoekers en docenten om als ‘peers’ onderling kennis en ervaring te delen met betrekking tot kwalitatief onderzoek. De logistiek en organisatie van deze groep heeft een zeer fluïde karakter. Zij vormt zich naar de inhoudelijke en organisatorische behoeften van de groep. Deze behoeften zijn continu in beweging door onder andere veranderingen binnen de organisatie van de HU en de verschillende werkvelden en onderzoeksdomeinen waaruit de deelnemers afkomstig zijn. Maar ook door de ontwikkelingen die plaatsvinden op het terrein van kwalitatief onderzoek, binnen de eigen Peer Support Group (PSG) zelf en van de individuen die deel uitmaken van de PSG. In deze bijdrage zal ik nader uiteenzetten hoe complexiteit een rol speelt in het ontstaan en functioneren van de PSG.
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Legal departments play a pivotal role in the quality of contracts and contracting processes within an organization. This article reflects on current developments and innovations in contracting practice and their impact on the role of legal professionals and legal departments within organizations. Based on empirical research among legal professionals and legal departments in Dutch legal practice, the article positions contracts and contracting within the legal function of an organization and discusses developments in contract management, automated contract assembly and legal design and their potential impact on the role of legal professionals and legal departments. Finally, areas for future research are identified. Throughout the article, the focus is on large commercial organizations.
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This article shows that business ethics is not capable of explaining the responsibility of limited organized collectives such as chains, sectors and industries. The responsibility of the pharmaceutical industry to make AIDSblockers available for patients in Africa is an example of such a sector responsibility. By using system theory it is possible to understand responsibility at the level of a social system. The Integrative Social Contract Theory has been extended to determine this system’s responsibility.
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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a model on how business managers perceive that an employee’s psychological contract influences his or her attitude toward an organizational change. More specifically, it aims to provide insight into the managerial views on: first, the affective, behavioral and cognitive responses of employees toward organizational change; second, the pre-change and change antecedents of these responses; and third, the role of the psychological contract as a pre-change antecedent. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from in-depth interviews with 39 human resource directors, change managers and management consultants in eight European countries. Based on detailed grounded theory-driven analyses of the qualitative data, a conceptual model was developed. Findings – Based on the grounded theory analysis, a model emerged that positions the individual change perception and individual answer to the “what’s in it for me?” question as central determinants of an employee’s attitude toward change. Moreover, the model distinguishes between “influencing” variables that shape the employees’ change perception, and “overruling” variables that can potentially reverse the change perceptions. Practical implications – A strong emphasis on managing the employment relationship by fulfilling mutual obligations and by creating trust will yield more constructive responses to organizational change than focussing on managing an organizational change as an independent event. Originality/value – As one of the first in its field, this study provides insight in the sense-making processes during organizational change, while adopting a managerial perspective. A grounded theory approach by means of interviewing, serves as a first step toward better understanding of the development of employees’ affective, behavioral and cognitive responses to organizational change.
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Human rights groups are increasingly calling for the protection of their right to privacy in relation to the bulk surveillance and interception of their personal communications. Some are advocating through strategic litigation. This advocacy tool is often chosen when there is weak political or public support for an issue. Nonetheless, as a strategy it remains a question if a lawsuit is strategic in the context of establishing accountability for indiscriminate bulk data interception. The chapter concludes that from a legal perspective the effect of the decision to litigate on the basis of the claim that a collective right to group privacy was violated has not (yet) resulted in significant change. Yet the case study, the British case of human rights groups versus the intelligence agencies, does seem to suggest that they have been able to create more public awareness about mass surveillance and interception programs and its side-effects
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Writing as soul work refers to the active engagement of students in transformative writing activities in a group setting with the aim to enable students to develop new, more empowering narratives. This article explains how soul work through writing can be used to foster career adaptability, expressed in the form of increased awareness and self-direction. We summarize the labour market realities that underlie a need for more narrative approaches and introduce writing as soul work as a potential method to respond to these contemporary career challenges. We define what is meant by soul work and writing, illustrate its use with several stories from practice, and make recommendations for teachers and implementation in institutions. “This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in "British Journal of Guidance and Counsellingon" on 04/16/2016 available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/03069885.2016.1169366 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reinekke-lengelle-phd-767a4322/
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High actual turnover rates in Dutch travel industry in combination with demographic changes in the workforce, may have consequences for economic sustainability for Dutch travel companies. A previous study has shown significant differences in the psychological contract of generations in the workplace in travel industry. This study was aimed at providing insights for creating generation-sensitive HR management. The research design included a qualitative in-depth study exploring meanings, beliefs and experiences of HR managers with three generations in the workplace. These HR managers experience differences in attitudes, values and expectations of generations and find the lower commitment and higher turnover intention of Generation Y especially problematic. Managing three generations essentially entails a differentiated style of management, taking into account generational differences.
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The impact communities of practice (CoPs) make can be understood in several different ways, depending on which theoretical perspective is used. For example, CoPs have been studied from a learning-theory perspective, from organizational development theory, and from a small-group theory. To understand the effects of participating in a CoP on individuals, groups or the organization in which they function, we could use traditional learning theory, organizational learning theory, information-processing theory or small-group process theory, etc. Or we could look at the internal processes of CoPs; the output they generate, or employ a synthesized view. CoPs can also be seen as impacting different actors in the organization in which they operate; individuals, groups or the whole organization. This means, for example, that we could look at CoPs from an organizational learning perspective to see how CoPs impact strategy development or renewal. At the level of the group, we could look at how CoPs lead to increased group performance and how that in turn leads to a higher output of knowledge products. And as learning is one of the key processes in a CoP, an important aspect of we need to study is how the individual learns, as well as what the individual learns. The complexity of impact a CoP can have on the diverse actors requires a pluralistic and multiperspective approach. However, a review of the literature showed no comprehensive model that neither integrates these different levels of impact nor employs multiple theoretical perspectives. Furthermore, most models of measurement or assessment use traditional types of output measurement, such as ROI, or anecdotal evidence that the CoP has improved organizational capability. Much like any human resource development initiative – which is the perspective of CoPs we take in this paper – there has been no real attempt to develop measures for assessing impact. We try to fill this gap by presenting a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, conceptual model that approaches measuring certain aspects a CoP has on individuals, groups and organizations.
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