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This paper examines the mobilizational plane of Spain's Podemos party's populist proposal to transform popular outrage into political power. Drawing on thirty-four semi-structured interviews with current and former party members, it sheds light on how and why a group of formerly horizontalist activists decided to rely on a charismatic figure as both a symbol and a strong leader. This decision is explained in relation to the Laclau-inspired theoretical reflections on leadership and representation of Íñigo Errejón, Podemos' chief theorist in the early stages and intellectual author of the party's first organizational model. This paper also follows the evolution of Errejón and his circle as they move from advocating the need for strong leadership to blaming themselves for 'failing' to erect effective counterweights to centralized and personalized power. We see that they attribute this failure to their lack of a proper theory of organization, which, in turn, is tied to their belief that a charismatic leader could make up for the lack of well-developed organizational structures and lead Podemos to power before the 'populist moment' passed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surfing's popularity has seen substantial growth over the last 50 years, resulting in an increased number of surfers worldwide. With a greater number of individuals in the water, many surf breaks have become overcrowded, thus leading to management issues. At these crowded locations, some local surfers are protective and maintain ownership over a site or break through the practice of localism. Localism may produce aggressive behaviour, including verbal abuse, damage to property and violent confrontations. Previous studies on localism have mainly focused on residents' perceptions of tourists and newcomers. To further our understanding of the relationships and social interactions between local surfers and outsiders, the following research draws on the experience of 94 foreign participants who travelled to New Zealand with a surfing tour operator. Based on a participant observation and informal interviews conducted from 2011 to 2016, this paper reflects on experiences of outsiders at seven New Zealand surfing locations. The argument draws on the neo-tribal understanding of surfing and localism in reflecting on the concepts of masculinity and intersectionality, as well as in exploring Durkheim's theory of social organization. This paper concludes that localism is an expression of a coercive social structure belonging to the global, yet heterogeneous, surf community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between industry structure, aggregate R&D activity, and the pace and quality of the resulting innovation process is currently the subject of a lively debate across NATO in general and even more so among its European members. This paper tackles this issue from a standpoint belonging to the tradition of industrial economics, adapting it to the specific context of the defence sector. This is done with a view to stressing the need of increasing the degree of concentration in order to increase standardization and interoperability of defence systems and facilitate the exploitation of scale economies. In the traditional jargon of industrial organization theory, this amounts to vindicating the Schumpeterian view according to which increasing concentration (eventually all the way up to pure monopoly) monotonically fosters innovation incentives, while mitigating effort duplications affecting large and long-lasting R&D projects. One additional implication, equally relevant, is that the concentration process can indeed be facilitated, in the short to medium term, by systematically resorting to the creation of research joint ventures and/or R&D cartels so as to boost spillover effects and reduce excess investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a typology of boundaries faced by public police organizations. Following trends in police organization structure and developments in organization theory, the paper focuses on the work-unit level as the locus of organizational boundary activity. Treating boundaries as sites of negotiation that arise when overlap occurs between units inter- and intra-organizationally, the paper focuses on operational aspects of public policing in creating typological categories. The typology elaborates three boundary types: scarcity, proximity, and technical/systemic. These can each be subdivided into two further categories: physical and virtual. Using examples from recent fieldwork in British Columbia's Lower Mainland District, the paper provides examples of each boundary type and suggests common strategies for boundary negotiation. In using the typology to understand public police as organizations within a complex web of similarly organized actors, the paper emphasizes the particular importance of informal and personal contact networks for comprehending boundary activity in public police work. The implications of this finding for the challenges of twenty-first century-policing are explored, and a future research agenda is outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When in 2015–2016, several hundred thousand new asylum-seekers arrived in Germany, this put local administrations to a test. In contrast to scholars who identified a "crisis of the administration" or a situation of "state failure", this article argues that the events in some cases served as a motor for administrative change. Drawing on the sociology of organizations, the paper shows that this period is better understood as a time of fundamental uncertainty rather than a crisis of the administration, and that the local state proved capable of dealing with uncertainty. In line with theories of organizations and based on qualitative interview data collected in three German cities, the paper identifies two ideal-typical strategies for reducing uncertainty – externalization or change through imitation. The text demonstrates how two of the three municipalities moved towards change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public facilities management (PFM) is currently moving from being an institution driven by ad-hoc practices to now introducing long-term and strategic practices. During this institutional change, human actors engage in institutional work to create new practices. However, old practices seem to be maintained within PFM to a large extend. Why? Data were collected through case studies in two public facilities management organizations, an interview study in eight organizations from the institution of PFM and a workshop with representatives from the institutional field of PFM. Findings show how the changing institutional setting for the institution of PFM produce negative emotions. To manage these, human actors engage in institutional work and here they employ artefacts as means to drive change. These artefacts functioned in various ways to reduce negative feelings by inducing a sense of safety (as soft blankets), by enabling the avoidance of dealing with 'the truth' (as shields) and by offering hope (as a vision of perfect future). Thereby, they did not take part in creating change, as much as they took part in maintaining current practices. The unintended consequences of the usage of artefacts, explain why practices are maintained during institutional change for PFM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings to light stories of Heather Höpfl. Its purpose is to show how Heather was and is present for us. We also illustrate Professor Dr Heather Höpfl’s contribution to organization theory, specifically her discourse of the maternal organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is a follow-up of [R.J.: Foundations of compositional model theory. IJGS, 40(2011): 623–678], where basic properties of compositional models, as one of the approaches to multidimensional probability distributions representation and processing, were introduced. In fact, it is an algebraic alternative to graphical models, which does not use graphs to represent conditional independence statements. Here, these statements are encoded in a sequence of distributions to which an operator of composition – the key element of this theory – is applied in order to assemble a multidimensional model from its low-dimensional parts. In this paper, we show a way to read conditional independence relations, and to solve related topics, above all the so-called equivalence problem, i.e. the problem of recognizing whether two different structures induce the same system of conditional independence relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances a contextualized theory concerning the spread of foreign management practices across Turkish business organizations. Drawing on the pertinent empirical literature, we expand acclaimed models of diffusion that typically address early-industrialized source countries and develop propositions that address late-industrializing recipients like Turkey. We argue that foreign practice diffusion across Turkish business organizations is driven by two contextual forces, namely the division between the modernizing elite and the more traditional non-elite business organizations and active engagement of the elite in importing and dissemination of foreign practices, typically those that are already well-established in the source country. This context features particular situational opportunities and constraints, most notably moral, as well as pragmatic and coginitive, legitimacy of foreign practices, that shape diffusion within Turkey. Based on these arguments we reconsider motivational and implementational claims in extant literature. Specifically, we suggest that, relative to the non-elite, the elite are more likely to be earlier adopters, boast stronger moral legitimacy concerns, and engage in high-fidelity implementation. We also predict widespread decoupling across elite and non-elite organizations, suggesting the possibility of deinstitutionalization after diffusion. As we conclude, we offer contingent generalizations to similar other contexts, which we argue are more likely to be observed in particular late-industrializing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a new but simple typology of international assignments that can help guide the management of expatriates. Applying a well-known job typology by Jacobs, D. (1981, ‘Toward a Theory of Mobility and Behavior in Organizations: An Inquiry into the Consequences of Some Relationships Between Individual Performance and Organizational Success,’American Journal of Sociology, 87, 684–707) and Baron, J.N., and Kreps, D.M. (1999,Strategic Human Resources: Frameworks for General Managers, New York: Wiley) to the international arena, we distinguish between star and guardian assignments. The essence of this distinction lies in a difference regarding a crucial relationship: the link between expatriate performance and organizational success. Drawing on two well-known case studies, we analyze the essential characteristics of and differences between star and guardian assignments, and deduct concrete consequences for the employment of specific human resource management policies along the expatriate cycle. The paper concludes with a discussion of theoretical and practical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article intends to take stock of the sociology of sports organizations in France since the first works that appeared on the subject in the 1980s. Although its development coincides with the professionalization of a sector that had long been state-run and institutionalized, three axes of development can be identified that are focused on interest groups, governance, and configurations. This paper will then discuss the operational limits of this discipline and give its prospects for development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has entered a stage of high-quality development in the new era. In the field of childcare, although child welfare policies and family policies can solve the current childcare crisis to some extent, the social care policy perspective undoubtedly has more advantages. Population aging has become the norm in Chinese society, but existing governance models and institutional arrangements still lack structural and systematic responses and adaptations, and corresponding governance research has also encountered difficulties. [Extracted from the article]

In this paper agency theory has been used to interpret traveller preference heterogeneity in mode choice to understand agency problems. An agency problem is defined as a principal’s dissatisfaction with the outcome of an agent’s performance. Sydney statistical division travellers are considered as theprincipaland Transport for NSW (TfNSW) is treated as theagent. An agent performs the tasks that are delegated by the principal and thus ametaphoric contractis developed between them and travellers, for instance, show their satisfaction with the reliability and comfort of the transport service. TfNSW is expected to satisfy travellers’ desired services. Therefore, it is imperative to analyse traveller preferences to understand their desires/demands. Random parameter logit models are employed to analyse the travellers’ demand to explore travellers’ dissatisfaction (the agency problem). The analysis reveals that this agency problem exists in the association between traveller and TfNSW because the probability of using a private car for transport is high. The preference for use of private transport is evidence of dissatisfaction of travellers with public transport. This paper identifies the dominant attributes of traveller preferences and then devises an approach to increase the use of public transport and reduce the agency problem. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

B Guest Editors b Dirk Deichmann (Erasmus University) Gino Cattani (New York University) Simone Ferriani (University of Bologna & City, University of London) ddeichmann@rsm.nl; gcattani@stern.nyu.edu; simone.ferriani@unibo.it By definition, novelty does not fit well-established categories. The novelty-attention problem reflects a puzzling tension: the type of novelty that demands more attention to be recognized also deflects audiences' attention away (Trapido, [13]). [Extracted from the article]

The difference between what firms' strategic marketing plans say and what those firms do in practice is a long-standing issue. This paper describes work to empirically test Smith's 2013 model of marketing strategy implementation, itself a synthesis of several concepts from the organisational behaviour and organisational psychology literatures. Using a sample of 391 respondents from 53 medium and large firms in the life sciences sector, it was found that there is only a 50% overlap between plans and execution. Further, as Smith's model suggested, intraorganisational conflict was found to be the most important cause of this phenomenon, whilst individual commitment is an important secondary cause. Attempts to demonstrate moderating factors suggested by Smith's model were unsuccessful. This work contributes to theory by providing the first robust explanation of why firms do not fully execute their strategic marketing plans. It also contributes to practice by measuring the gap between plan and practice in marketing strategy and suggesting ways that gap might be reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the erosion and problematization of ‘the organization’ as a demarcated entity. Utilizing Foucault's reflections on ‘state-phobia’ as a source of inspiration, I show how an organization-phobia has gained a hold within Organization Theory (OT). By attending to the history of this organization-phobia, the paper argues that OT has become increasingly incapable of speaking about its core object. I show how organizations went from being conceptualized as entities of major importance to becoming theoretically deconstructed and associated with all kinds of ills. Through this history, organizations as distinct entities have been rendered so problematic that they have gradually come to be removed from the center of OT. The costs of this have been rather significant. Besides undermining the grounds that gave OT intellectual credibility and legitimacy to begin with, the organization-phobia resulting from this history has been implicated in dismantling organizations, and in making OT progressively irrelevant to a wider public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose:The purpose of this paper is to explore the strategic planning–organizational performance relationship (SP–OP). It is based on reviewing and analyzing previous studies and literature. A total of 15 related studies have been chosen from well-renowned electronic academic resources and databases (e.g. Emerald, Elsevier, ProQuest, Sage, Wiley Online, and University Utara Malaysia, etc.). The assumed SP–OP relationship considered some of the important contingent variables identified by these studies as: formal strategic plan (FSP), sort, size, and environment (turbulent) of business. Design/methodology/approach:The main methods being used for this article were comprehensive review and analysis of related studies and literature review for development of hypotheses. Well prominent electronic resources and databases have been selected. Navigating and selecting relating articles was based on using same keywords of this article title (impact of, relationship, strategic, planning, organizational performance), and excluding those are not. The article hypothesis is constructed based on these studies, literature review and my own observations. The criterion of assessing is made by formulating and drawing comparative table. The contents of the table (refer to Appendix A) are author/s and article titles, purpose, and the findings. In addition, two important columns are comparing this article hypothesis with selected articles’ and whether they are in congruence or not have been identified. Findings:Despite the large number of studies examining SP–OP relationship, the results have been inconclusive. Findings are ranging from positive, negative, and/ or to no relationships. Eight studies support the FSP–OP relationship; nevertheless, these supporting studies have come up with findings of many previous studies which evidenced inconclusive and unquantifiable. SP–OP relationship in banking and tourism sectors is positively explored. Intensity of SP in banking sector causes better performance. Four studies are from bank sector. Three of them fully agreed on the positive SP–OP relationship (especially FSP–OP). Although SP–OP relationship has been largely neglected in tourism, hospitality industry, and healthcare, it had showed a significant relationship. In regard to impact of business size on SP–OP relationship: five studies are devoted to small business size, three of them found no significant relationship. The impact of firm size on SP–OP relationship has not yet reached a final conclusion. The majority of studies and literature suggest the non-existence of this relationship. The impact of FSP on OP is varied and contradictory in instable environment. Some findings of studies support this hypothesis, while others found difficult to formulate and implement a plan in such environment. There are five studies tried to explore this relationship. Three of them support this hypothesis and two found no relationship. Research limitations/implications:The big confines to empirically conduct this study is the unwillingness of companies to freely participate. Also, such a study or alike requires longitudinal method using both financial and non-financial metrics. This limitation is in alignment with Glaisteret al.who recommended incorporation of other performance measures, such as quality and employee satisfaction, in addition to financial measures which would enrich our understanding of the planning–performance relationship. Originality/value:Chosen studies have been selected from different countries. These differences will enrich the study with diverse perspectives and findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Embedding its own branches in private enterprises is the governance strategy that the Communist Party of China (CPC) controls the grassroots society. This study proposes a framework by incorporating the socioemotional wealth theory into neo-institutionalism to explain how are family businesses involved in the organizational network of the CPC. Findings reveal that there is an organizational isomorphism that the coverage of party organizations expanded from non-family businesses to family businesses. Furthermore, family businesses are not likely to establish party organizations when coercive pressures are low. However, this resistance strategy sharply disappears when coercive pressures are high, and joining state-backed industry associations and mimicking others' practice both are also positive factors motivating family businesses to establish party organizations, which means that the coercive, normative and mimetic mechanisms jointly shape the organizational isomorphism. This study contributes to the literature of neo-institutionalism and sheds new light on the state-society relationship in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has analysed a change process within an organisation providing home-based elderly care. Using a theoretical framework from metaphor theory and insights from the literature on 'accounting talk', we followed how metaphorical representations of accounting were introduced and developed by the change agent. New core values and practices emerged within the home help unit that were in line with the ideas and inferences made by these accounting metaphors. The metaphorical representations of accounting concepts linked the unfamiliar domain of accounting to a more familiar domain, and provided rationales for organisational change. Our findings highlight the importance of change agents and 'accounting talk' for determining the trajectory of organisational change processes. The findings also suggest that metaphors are a potentially powerful tool for both changing organisational members' general understanding of financial issues, and forging specific links between accounting concepts and work practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reveals that the relationship between public service motivation (PSM) and employee wellbeing depends on the societal impact potential (SIP) through the job and organizational type. In people-changing organizations, PSM relates to higher burnout and lower job satisfaction when SIP is high: employees sacrifice themselves too much for society. However, in people-processing organizations, low SIP relates to higher burnout and lower job satisfaction: employees experience frustration if they cannot contribute. This shows that whether PSM relates positively depends on institutional logics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past half decade, research has consistently highlighted the need to improve cross-functional relationships and integration between the demand side (DS) and supply side (SS) of organizations. Yet, in practice, firms have made little progress toward more effectively integrating these diverse functional areas with friction between customer-facing and operations/supply functions often resulting in suboptimal business performance. Extant cross-functional relationship research is variously criticized for failing to capture interaction between the DS and SS of the organization in an integrative manner for focusing on the content of interaction but overlooking how exchanges take place, for taking a simplistic view of cross-functional relationships as being dichotomously good or bad, and for lacking a solid theoretical foundation. To address these shortcomings, this paper draws on disconfirmation theory to propose a conceptual framework that captures the process and content of interactions between DS and SS functional area representatives. To facilitate a better understanding of complex and dynamic cross-functional relational exchanges, prescriptions for testing the associated study propositions and directions for future research are also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an empirical study based on action research in which expert and novice facilitators in facilitated modelling workshops are compared. There is limited empirical research analysing the differences between expert and novice facilitators. Aiming to address this gap we study the behaviour of one expert and two novice facilitators during a Viable System Model workshop. The findings suggest common facilitation patterns in the behaviour of experts and novices. This contrasts literature claiming that experts and novices behave and use their available knowledge differently, and empirically supports the claim that facilitation skills can be taught to participants to enable them to self-facilitate workshops. Differences were also found, which led to the introduction of a new dimension-'internal versus external' facilitation. The implications of our findings for effective training and facilitation strategies in contexts in which external, expert facilitation is not always possible are also discussed, and limitations of this study are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to contribute to an ongoing theoretical discussion on rethinking curriculum theory. Various meanings of time and history, culture and agency in curriculum studies are discussed and comments made on didactics as a possible link between socio-historical and curriculum-theory approaches. Theoretical and methodological framework includes the curriculum-theory perspectives rooted in frame factor theory and highlights historical and theoretical analysis. I explore challenges evoked when concepts originating in one educational perspective confront a different theoretical strand, and I argue that such boundary work offers prolific means to rethink curriculum theory. I suggest that allowing Reinhart Koselleck's conceptual history, in addition to James V. Wertsch's reasoning on voices of collective remembering, to influence a vocabulary of curriculum theory would strengthen the theoretical tradition. I ground my arguments in empirical data and theoretical discussions within a number of research projects which I have been recently involved in. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The plurality of process outputs is a genericity of Nature. In this paper, Natural Law receives a new mathematical formulation founded on two axioms: ‘Everything is a set.’ and ‘Every process is aset-valuedmapping.’ I present a brief introduction to the algebraic theory of set-valued mappings, which culminates in two particular morphisms: the metabolism bundle and the imminence mapping. These are relations defined on the collection of processes of a natural system, and serve to characterize material entailment and functional entailment. Generalized metabolism is material entailment of (by-)products, and generalized repair is functional entailment of (side-)effects. Metabolism–Repair networks, hence equipped with set-valued processors, expand their role from models of biological entities to generic models of all natural systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main contributions of modern money theory (MMT) has been to explain why monetarily sovereign governments have a very flexible policy space. Not only can they issue their own currency, but also any self-imposed constraint on budgetary operations can be easily bypassed. Through a detailed analysis of the institutions and practices surrounding the fiscal and monetary operations of the Treasury and central banks of several countries, MMT has provided institutional and theoretical insights into the inner workings of economies with monetarily sovereign and non-sovereign governments. In terms of theory, MMT argues that taxes and bond offerings are not best conceptualized as funding sources for the Treasury, but rather as reserve draining devices to maintain price and interest-rate stability. As such, they are necessary even if a government issues its currency to spend. This theoretical conclusion holds even if the Treasury may be required to tax and issue bond to fund itself. Another theoretical conclusion is that merging the central bank and the Treasury in a government sector can be done without loss of generality for monetarily sovereign governments. Separating the two adds complexity without bringing insights. The paper shows that the previous theoretical conclusions of MMT can be illustrated by providing evidence of the interconnectedness of the Treasury and the central bank in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Courses: This three-part semester-long assignment was designed for an undergraduate course in interracial communication. While interracial communication is the primary focus of this assignment, it could easily be adapted to a variety of courses focused on diversity with the goals of improving communication and connectedness among members of other social and cultural groups. Objectives: The interracial communication course seeks to promote a better understanding of, and sensitivity to, the communication dynamics of interracial interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the relationship between volunteering and socio-economic status, suggesting that the insights provided by social organization theory can contribute to explanations of low levels of volunteering in areas exhibiting high levels of deprivation. The piece aims to provide a complementary framework to work alongside existing theories of inequalities in voluntary action, to reach towards an account which elucidates the role of structural factors in affecting the likelihood of volunteering in deprived areas. The article illustrates value of such an approach through an account of ethnographic research in a deprived neighbourhood in England, suggesting that by paying close attention to the configurations of social life in such areas it is possible to shed new light on the relationship between deprivation and volunteering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution focuses on how one hegemonic idea – excellence – which has significant impact on science and higher education policy was translated in two Nordic countries: Norway and Sweden. Building on key concepts emanating from political science and organizational sociology, the article assesses how excellence was locally translated by policy makers, leading to the rise of a series of policy measures aimed at fostering excellence in science across the board. In doing this, we investigate a key empirical dimension: the policy mechanisms or instruments launched at national levels (two Nordic countries) in the form of centers of excellence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on various issues related to hybrid organization, which is comprised of structural elements derived from other types of organizations, such as the public sector, the private for-profit sector and sectors covering various activities and institutions of civic society. The topics discussed includes working and management of hybrid organizations, future research perspectives in this field, and particularities of performance management in hybrid entities.

Organization theory and organizational institutionalism have moved toward a more generative understanding of agency to better account for the relation between the microfoundations and macrofoundations of institutions. Central to such an understanding is an overlooked construct: intentionality, defined as actors' consciousness directed at or about something, the content of which is actors' intended meaning. Intentionality and intended meaning have three dimensions: prior intentionality, intentionality in action, and posterior intentionality. I propose that intentionality and collective intentionality mediate between macro-level structures and micro-level actions. This model allows for a more fluid conception of intended meaning before, during, and after an action, and thus facilitates a more fine-grained understanding of (1) how the macro is instantiated in the micro and how the micro transforms into the macro, (2) multiple pathways of institutional maintenance and change, and (3) the complexity of decoupling at both the micro and the macro levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizational sociologists argue that informal and formal rules within workplaces function to increase employee productivity and effectiveness, but can also have negative emotional consequences. Feeling rules, which are the emotional norms that regulate interpersonal interactions within the workplace are not applied equally; white women and professionals of color are expected to display deference in the face of emotionally-charged experiences at work, while their counterparts are given more flexibility in how they could display anger or annoyance. Scholars note that feeling rules work to reproduce extant gendered and racial hierarchies when expectations regarding worker productivity, effectiveness and outcomes are restricted on the basis of social identities. Analyzing sixteen semi-structured interviews with LGBTQ Center staff, we demonstrate the feeling rules are organized around employees' ability to (1) (re)produce trauma in themselves during training sessions and (2) minimize students' and their own anger throughout the workday. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking an organizational sociology approach, the study of French pesticide regulation highlights the role of the unexpected effects of secrecies in organized ignorance. It demonstrates that the main regulator, the French food safety agency (ANSES), as well as the users of pesticides, the farmers, develop their own subcultures of secrecy to conceal information about their real practices. These subcultures support each other tacitly: the opacity created by farmers around their practices stifle knowledge production and reporting on their exposure to pesticides. Consequently, the risk standards are never called into question, which ensures that the French food safety agency maintains its scientific reputation. In turn, the fact that official standardization of risk is never challenged, impedes the reinforcement of pesticide regulations that would otherwise hamper day-to-day crop management. This tacit agreement between these combined subcultures maintains the illusion that the regulatory science used for risk management could control a broad spectrum of hazards, when in fact it has only a limited or even outdated knowledge of them. This deepens the definitions of organized ignorance. It demonstrates that non-knowledge production results not only from the complex mix of political, scientific and regulatory frameworks surrounding official expertise as STS researches tend to show, but also from more widespread and less perceptible sociological mechanism such as tacit understanding. Unexpected effects of intentional actions also count as much as willful actions in strategic ignorance production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant proportion of academic spin-offs (ASOs) are founded by entrepreneurial teams (ETs). Yet little is known about how these ETs are formed or the role of technology transfer offices (TTOs) in this formation process. This article examines whether and how TTOs affect the formation of academic spin-off entrepreneurial teams (ASO-ETs). To this end, we study in detail the formation of seven ETs behind life-science ASOs developed in one region in Norway. Our findings show that ASO-ETs followed different paths of formation, partly mirroring the organization of the TTOs. We further identify four different roles played by TTOs, two direct and two indirect, that shape the formation of these ETs. Based on organization imprinting theory, we contribute to the team entrepreneurship literature by developing a new framework showing how TTOs imprint the formation of ETs in ASO settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The organization is traditionally assumed as the principal context of work. This assumption no longer holds in post-industrial and post-bureaucratic settings. Conducting meetings from home while juggling household responsibilities can be characterized as a form of organizing, but such contexts is not well accommodated by organizational perspectives. In such contexts, the organization plays a varying and often limited role. To accommodate this decomposition and re-composition of how work is organized, the present study develops a conceptual framework centered on the work situation. Building on Goffman's account of social situations (1966, 1974), the analysis draws an explicit distinction between the context of work as a series of potential frames and the work situation as an enacted framework for gestalting the specific work at hand. On this view, the organization as a formal setting or social assembly is just one of many frames that influence what actors do at work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is there a crisis in urban studies and particularly in urban theory? Two recent exchanges inCity, the first between Alex Schafran and David Madden and the second between Neil Brenner and Christian Schmid and Richard Walker, raise the question of whether there is a crisis in urban studies and particularly urban theory. I argue that there is no need for a radical rethinking of the ontological and/or epistemological foundations of urban studies, but that we might consider the need for new metaphors or figurations that help us think creatively about our urban conditions and the possibilities for political interventions. In particular, I explore the streetwalker, the nomad and the weed and discuss two cases on the ground: Kigali, Rwanda and Chester, Pennsylvania, USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the formalisation of support structures for refugee students at German higher education organisations. After the refugee influx in 2015 and 2016, early support for refugees was characterised by often voluntary, informal, spontaneous activities by pioneers. Subsequently, the situation changed as higher education organisations adjusted to the new challenge and restructured their way of dealing with study-interested refugees. Based on 18 interviews with heads of international offices and with the holders of so-called first contact positions for refugees at eight German higher education organisations, we investigate – drawing on organisation sociology – these organisational responses to (prospective) refugee students. In a second step, we focus on the first contact positions as the smallest organisational units in this field of action and describe their tasks, their placement in the hierarchy, and the procedures for staffing. Our analysis shows that in response to the growing number of refugee applicants and the availability of external funding, support structures for refugees were formalised by creating and/or expanding existing organisational structures, including the establishment of first contacts as specific boundary positions and of new internal and external communication channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles within the issue, including articles on the efforts of independent Basotho traders and cooperatives in Lesotho to promote their political and economic interests, the struggle of small producers in relation to state and private interests, and the transformation of workplace culture by factory workers in Mozambique.

The author discusses aspects of the relationship between planning theory developed in academia and journals and planning practice on the ground in society. The author is critical on the context for considering the question which involves the impact of planning theory and practice. Also investigated is the negative aspects between the experience of planning practice and abstractness of planning theory.

On some current approaches, deontology is the foundation of social reality. But we do not yet have an account of the kinds of deontic structures in play. One way to approach a taxonomy of deontic kinds is to understand the ways in which they bind to an agent. There are three ways of binding deontic powers to any agent. The first two emerge from a distinction between those rights and duties forced upon an agent versus those that the agent voluntarily accepts. Within the category of voluntarily accepted deontics, however, there is an interesting subtype which, rather than being a composite of deontics assembled by sources external to the agent, is instead assembled and bound by the agent to herself. There are, then, three categories of deontic binding: imposed, voluntary, and self-bound (autogenic). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper investigates the perceptions among parents and staff of how relational aspects among students who use AAC, fellow students, and staff may affect the students' social relationships. Methods: The study included semi-structured interviews of 6 parents and 18 staff to 7 students using AAC. The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed by using a constructivist grounded theory approach. Results: The analysis identified several interactional facilitators and barriers to social relationships between students using AAC and fellow students. Conclusions: The results demonstrated the importance of considering personal as well as environmental facilitators and barriers to the student using AAC's social relationships. The complexities in how these interactional facilitators and barriers interact with each other are discussed in relation to previous research. Of special importance for the development of the students' social relationships was shared experiences between students using AAC and fellow students, environmental adaption and support provided by staff and fellow students, staff's efforts in building goodwill for students using AAC, and fellow students' confidence in using AAC. As confidence in communicating was associated with reduction of the consequences of challenging communication with students using AAC, the results indicated the importance of providing communication training to fellow students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regarding the relationship between CEO power and firm risk, contradictory views can be deduced from managerial power theory and organization theory. This study tries to reconcile these contradictions by delving into the differences in the types of CEO power. Using a sample of Chinese listed companies, we find that the formal power CEOs derive from ownership has a positive relationship with firm risk, but CEOs' informal power that originates from expertise is negatively associated with firm risk. Furthermore, CSR is verified as a mediator in the relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While literature on US voter trade policy preferences has an established diversity of theories and methods, academic and popular approaches to US organizational trade policy advocacy are underdeveloped. The dominant methodologies in economics conceptualize stakeholder group policy preferences as a continuum from free trade to protectionism. In contrast, this study builds on literature that assumes that organizations have both economic and ideological motivations. I examine China's effects on US stakeholder group advocacy and intergroup relations (e.g. multinational business associations, domestic manufacturing groups, and labor unions). I use interviews with organizational leaders and content analysis of documents from US stakeholders in manufacturing and services sectors. I argue that US-China issues reshaped organizational advocacy by expanding and evolving ideological interests. As groups increasingly advocate on the basis of their ideological interests, their discrete economic interests are a shrinking share of the content of trade politics, including traditional protectionism. Rather than simply advocating their microeconomic interests, US stakeholder groups organize around their competing ideologies for the future of US-China integration—free trade, strategic trade, and fair trade. China issues led new organizational agreements and disagreements along those ideological lines, which preceded policy outcomes reflective of the convergences and divergences of their goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of a new venture is at the heart of entrepreneurship. Chinese governments at different levels are proactive in promoting the entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) and fostering new venture creation (NVC). However, it is still far from clear how governments as focal actors in the EE affect and regulate the process and pattern of NVC. This study borrows from the theory of temporary organization and conducts a comparative case study of two entrepreneurial projects in the Hangzhou Dream Town EE. This study proposes an integrated conceptual framework to illustrate NVC in two dimensions of projectification (the process of NVC) and partnering (a pattern of NVC) and specifies that the main role of local governments is as a sponsor, feeder, and endorser in that order. The three functional roles enable local governments to catalyze the creation of new ventures through projectification and partnering. Our study not only contributes to the literature on entrepreneurship, governance theory, and the theory of temporary organization but also provides an actionable approach for governments to foster new ventures, especially in transition economies such as China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]