Expectations are high for digital technologies to address sustainability related challenges. While research into such applications and the twin transformation is growing rapidly, insights in the actual daily practices of digital sustainability within organizations is lacking. This is problematic as the contributions of digital tools to sustainability goals gain shape in organizational practices. To bridge this gap, we develop a theoretical perspective on digital sustainability practices based on practice theory, with an emphasis on the concept of sociomateriality. We argue that connecting meanings related to sustainability with digital technologies is essential to establish beneficial practices. Next, we contend that the meaning of sustainability is contextspecific, which calls for a local meaning making process. Based on our theoretical exploration we develop an empirical research agenda.
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This paper presents an approach to organizational research that aims to produce research results that are both relevant and rigorous. The research approach combines the designing of a management tool with the testing of the tool using an action research methodology. The lack of relevance in organizational research is a much debated issue in literature. A design approach has been proposed to help bridge the gap between research and practice. However, in organizational research, there is little empirical evidence how design-based research works in practice and it is unclear how this type of research is best structured. The purpose of the paper is to illustrate what a comprehensive methodology for design-based research can look like and how an action research methodology can be used to test the design in practice.
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A culture change within an organization may be of importance in this turbulent world. An assessment of the current and desired cultural profiles can help estimate as to whether any changes are required. In this study the organizational culture of a housing association was examined from both the staff’s and external stakeholders’ perspectives. How does the current culture compare with the desired culture? Do the external stakeholders perceive the organization’s culture in a similar way? Do the staff’s and external stakeholders’ perceptions coincide with the organization’s intended image? The results demonstrate that the external stakeholders’ perceptions of the organizational culture in this case study are similar to those of the organization’s staff.
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This paper presents four research projects on organizational innovation in the Netherlands. These projects are still in a design and theoretical investigation stage, but the authors find it useful to share their findings and insights with the research community in order to inspire them with their ideas and research agenda. In the paper four constructs are explored that focus on the human factor in organizations and that may have a positive influence on organizational innovation. Shared leadership: It is often thought that, for innovation, only one brilliant mind with a break-through idea in a single flash of enlightenment is needed. Recent research, however, shows that most innovations are the result of team-flow and sharing and alternating leadership tasks. Social Capital: through leadership and decision making, by influencing trust, respect and commitment, the organizations social capital and thus its innovative power is increased. External consultancy: deployment of external consultants will add to knowledge and skills necessary for innovation. IT and workflow management: if handled correctly, the human factor can add substantial quality to the design and use of IT in organizations. The paper shows that the way these constructs are managed is crucial in influencing and motivating members of an organization to attribute to innovation and make use of the facilities that are offered to them.
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Change has become continuous, and innovation is a primary approach for hospitality, i.e., hotel companies, to become or remain economically viable and sustainable. An increasing number of management researchers are paying more attention to workplace rather than technological innovation. This study investigates workplace innovation in the Dutch hotel industry, in three- and four-star hotels in the Netherlands, by comparing them to other industries. Two samples were questioned using the Workplace Innovation survey created by the Dutch Network of Social Innovation (NSI). The first was conducted in the hospitality industry, and these data were compared with data collected in a sample of other industries. Results suggest that greater strategic orientation on workplace innovation and talent development has a positive influence on four factors of organizational performance. Greater internal rates of change, the ability to self-organize, and investment in knowledge also had positive influences on three of the factors—growth in revenue, sustainability, and absenteeism. Results also suggest that the hospitality industry has lower workplace innovation than other industries. However, no recent research has assessed to what degree the hospitality industry fosters workplace innovation, especially in the Netherlands. Next to that, only few studies have examined management in the Dutch hotel industry, how workplace innovation is used there, and whether it improves practices.
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In 2017, I introduced a new theoretical framework in Archival Science, that of the ‘Archive–as–Is’. This framework proposes a theoretical foundation for Enterprise Information Management (EIM) in World 2.0, the virtual, interactive, and hyper connected platform that is developing around us. This framework should allow EIM to end the existing ‘information chaos’, to computerize information management, to improve the organizational ability to reach business objectives, and to define business strategies. The concepts of records and archives are crucial for those endeavours. The framework of the ‘Archive–as–Is’ is an organization–oriented archival theory, consisting of five components, namely: [1] four dimensions of information, [2] two archival principles, [3] five requirements of information accessibility, [4] the information value chain; and [5] organizational behaviour. In this paper, the subject of research is component 5 of the framework: organizational behaviour. Behaviour of employees (including archivists) is one of the most complicated aspects within organizations when creating, processing, managing, and preserving information, records, and archives. There is an almost universal ‘sound of silence’ in scholarly literature from archival and information studies although this subject and its effects on information management are studied extensively in many other disciplines, like psychology, sociology, anthropology, and organization science. In this paper, I want to study how and why employees behave as they do when they are working with records and archives and how EIM is influenced by this behaviour.
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Metaphor is one of the important discursive themes in organizational literature (Grant et al.,2001). Metaphors play an important role in the discourse within organizations as well as in theorizing about organizations. This empirical paper focuses on the latter by analysing the role of metaphor in the development of theoretical concepts – in particular the concept of social capital – through the means of quantitative content analysis. Some authors argue that metaphors should be avoided in organizational theory (Bourgeois and Pinder, 1983; Tinker, 1986). Others see metaphors as valuable creative tools for developing new theories and insights (Weick, 1989). Morgan (1997) has shown that many theories about organizations can be ‘reordered’ (Keenoy et al., 2003) into a particular metaphorical view of organizations, showing the metaphorical bases of organizational theorizing. Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 1999) go even further, presenting compelling evidence from cognitive science indicating that metaphors are inescapable because they are the basis for our abstract reasoning. There is a debate about the way metaphor works (Black, 1993; Cornelissen, 2005; Heracleous, 2003; Keenoy et al., 2003; Lakoff and Johnson, 1999; Marshak, 2003; Oswick et al. 2002, 2003; Tsoukas, 1991;) especially about whether metaphor is simply a matter of comparison highlighting the analogies in the source and target domain, or whether a metaphor does more then that. In the paper we take the latter position and adopt Lakoff and Johnson’s (1999) model of cross-domain mapping. This model states that not only similarities and features are transferred from the source to the target domain but that the target domain often gets its structure from the source domain. The metaphorical mapping from the source to the target domain can be rich and complex because metaphors have many ‘entailments’. Entailments are the connotations of the metaphor that transport meaning from the source to the target domain. Furthermore, the application of conceptual metaphor often happens out-of-awareness (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999; Marshak, 2003). It is part of the unconscious mental operations concerned with conceptual systems, meaning, inference, and language. We can recognize the unconscious use of metaphor in organizational theorizing by looking at the literal meaning of organizational concepts and statements (Andriessen, 2006).
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Aim of the researchAim of this study is to understand which approach (expert or process orientated) sport club consultants use in succesfully raising the organizational capacity of voluntary sport clubs in the northern part of the Netherlands. Around 130 professional sport club consultants are active in the northern part of the Netherlands, but it is not clear which approach they use in raising the organizational capacity of the clubs within a specific context and if this approach is effective. Theoretical backgroundA sport club with great organizational capacity has the ability to offer their sport, now and in the future, in a sustainable and socially responsible way to (potential) members. Dutch voluntary sport clubs (VSCs) are facing several challenges in perceived consumerist behavior by members (Van der Roest, 2015), demands by the government to attribute to the social policy agenda (Coalter, 2007) and declining number of members in complex contexts (Wollebæk, 2009). Between 300-500 sport club consultants, mostly funded by local governments or sport associations, are tasked to raise the organizational capacity of these VSCs in the Netherlands Most consultants play an expert role delivering generic interventions on specific topics as recruiting volunteers, sponsorships or positive behavior support. The other consultants play a process consultation role in which a holistic strategic change approach is used for more sustainable organizational development (Schein, 1999). The context of the organizations (VSC’s) is determining which approach is the best in developing the organizational capacity. But most of the time consultants use the same, mostly expert role, in consulting the organizations (Boonstra & Elving, 2009). Therefore it is not clear which approach (expert or process orientated) sport club consultants in the Netherlands use in raising the organizational capacity of VSC’s in different contexts. Methodology, research design, and data analysisThe study will be conducted from March 2017 till the end of July 2017 in the northern part of the Netherlands. In March we have started .with identifying successful sport club consultants in three steps: these steps show a qualitative description of the current competences, approaches and interventions (repertoire) as seen by the sport club consultants in our target group:1) A group of experts have been gathered to formulate criteria for the competences, approaches and interventions of a successful process orientated sport club consultant. 2) The criteria from step 1 are validated by theory about organizational development and consulting of organizations. Thereafter the criteria are processed into a digital survey 3) The survey has been send to n=130 sport club consultants in the northern part of the Netherlands. 4) Based on the output of the survey, profiles will be developed of different types sport club consultants (process orientated, mediator, supporter, coach, expert) and the approaches per type of consultant. For each profile a ranking will be made based on which criteria (from step 1) the consultants meet. This ranking will be used to make a selection of successful sport club consultants to conduct research in five multiple case studies. From June on multiple case studies will be conducted in which five process consultants are working with a VSC. A case study protocol will be developed that observe the consultant in three sessions at the club In addition interviews will be conducted with the consultant, the board of the club, and other relevant stakeholders. With a cross-case synthesis patterns will be developed in the way the consultants worked and how these approaches were interpreted and valued by the various stakeholders. Results, discussion, and implications/conclusionsIn the expected results both approaches and interventions (repertoire) of the consultant as their competences and qualities are analyzed which will result in the profiling of the active sport club consultants. We also gain insights in which approach of the sport club consultants is the most effective in raising the organizational capacity of a VSC in a given context. New insights on how consultants can successfully contribute to the sustainable organizational development of VSCs will be presented.
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In December of 2004 the Directorate General for Research and Technological Development (DG RTD) of the European Commission (EC) set up a High-Level Expert Group to propose a series of measures to stimulate the reporting of Intellectual Capital in research intensive Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs). The Expert Group has focused on enterprises that either perform Research and Development (R&D), or use the results of R&D to innovate and has also considered the implications for the specialist R&D units of larger enterprises, dedicated Research & Technology Organizations and Universities. In this report the Expert Group presents its findings, leading to six recommendations to stimulate the reporting of Intellectual Capital in SMEs by raising awareness, improving reporting competencies, promoting the use of IC Reporting and facilitating standardization.
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The aim of this paper is to understand how employees, in their role of follower of change, frame upcoming change by studying the prospective stories they tell (n=110). This study complements the dominant retrospective approach to the research of employees’ change sensemaking. We incorporate forward-looking awareness into organization theories and add to the scholarly interest in prospection (Gioia & Patvardhan, 2018). This could lead to a better understanding of followers’ adaptation- or rejection intentions in response to change initiatives (Konlechner et al., 2018). Theoretical background Employees experience continuous shifts in relationships and organizational roles (Van der Smissen et al., 2013). This ‘turbulence’ triggers intensive sensemaking (Weick, 1995) of what is going on and how to respond. In uncertain times, employees often form expectations towards the future based on their remembered experiences from the past, and organizational change literature has traditionally taken a retrospective approach to understand followers’ change sensemaking (Boje, 2008). However, traditional literature neither provides elaborate insight in followers’ attempts to build scenarios for their future, nor do they add to the understanding of followers’ hopes, dreams, concerns, or fears (which all have a future time orientation) in the context of upcoming change. Scholars suggested that the current radical changes employees face cannot be anticipated easily from a mere retrospective approach (MacKay & Chia, 2013). In reality, employees think as often about their future as they do about their past and tend to create complex, temporal ranges of future orientations (Klein, 2013). Hence, researchers have critiqued the omission of the possible impact of beliefs and expectations about the future (e.g., Kaplan & Orlikowski, 2013), and have developed complementary notions to develop temporal sensemaking to challenge us to “mentally reverse the arrow of time” (Lord et al., 2013, p. 4) by focusing on expected futures to understand the present. The acknowledgement of prospective sensemaking directing attitudes and behaviors today (Maitlis & Christianson, 2014), expectedly offers novel insights to those interesting in understanding employees’ change behaviors. Design/Methodology/Approach/Intervention. A narrative approach is used to capture 110 individuals’ idiosyncratic and cultural sensemaking efforts (Pentland, 1999). We created a digital research set-up in which participants were guided to write a narrative that resembles a biographical account about a fictive colleague. Participants were introduced to the task by a video message from the fictive focal actor “Jim” and a video announcement of upcoming change by a fictive CEO in a Zoom-call for the entire organization. By means of the Story Completion Method, participants were asked “how does the story end?” and invited to write subsequent chapters on how they expected this story to continue, and how the roles and responses of the different actors would unfold along the way. Research context is provided by the Dutch travel industry in which organizations are dealing with heavy consequences of the COVID19 pandemic. Results will be available by November 2021. Limitations Qualitative research is less generalizable given the sample size and scope. Besides, the method requires specific skills and a level of empathy with the scenario, this proved to be difficult for some of the participants. In our analysis we therefore have to account for a difference between prospective sensemaking efforts and mere extrapolations of past experiences. Research/Practical Implications This study reveals potentialities that are considered to be available in the future. For change leaders, it is helpful to understand these potentialities as they reveal explanations for differences in followers’ prospective change strategies, and diverse anticipative responses to change efforts. We extend the concept of prospective sensemaking, and explore its use in a follower-based, dynamic context of organizational change. Originality/Value Advancing the concept of follower-based prospective sensemaking is important as it could provide explorative notions that illustrate the formation and use of expectations. Especially interesting is the context Dutch travel industry context as employees at the time of data collection experienced a ‘cosmology episode’ triggering sudden loss of meaning and coherence. This is perceived to be a critical trigger for sensemaking in the absence of past empirical experience (as no one experienced a pandemic and resulting business challenges before, but rather relies on transcendent belief systems in the face of future uncertainty (Weick, 1993)).
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