Discourse-based approaches to studying organizations have grown in significance over the last 25 years. This accessible and insightful book exemplifies how to use a discursive approach to study organizations. By drawing on her own empirical research, Cynthia Hardy aligns key theoretical assumptions with a range of case studies to demonstrate the value and adaptability of a discursive approach. The book presents the key theoretical assumptions associated with a discursive approach and shows how to align them with the design of specific empirical studies. Cynthia Hardy also illustrates how data collection and analysis can be customized to suit the issues under investigation. By reviewing empirical settings that range from older workers to refugees, from businesses to voluntary organizations, from strategy making to inter-organizational collaboration, and from environmental regulation to chemical risk, the author shows the value and adaptability of this approach. Forward-thinking, the book concludes with a look towards the future challenges of the discursive approach, covering specific issues of resistance to and reflexivity in research on discourse. Demonstrating the importance of empirical work, data collection, and analysis, this book will be a useful guide on discursive approach for students of organization and management studies. It will also prove useful for researchers studying HIV/AIDS organizations, refugees, and environmental regulation, which are particularly focused on in the book.

This Research Handbook provides a cutting-edge review of complex project organizing (CPO), and suggests fruitful avenues for future research with a focus on grand challenges and a sustainable future. Split into four sections, this Research Handbook addresses transitions within the field of CPO that could, and should, take place to achieve our shared aspirations for a better future. Featuring a team of contributors that is both interdisciplinary and geographically widespread, chapters provide a clarification of core concepts of complex project organizing, comprehensive coverage of leading theoretical perspectives for CPO, as well as a discussion of key empirical research themes. In particular, special attention is given to the implications of Industry 4.0 for complex project organizing. The Research Handbook on Complex Project Organizing develops a guiding path to help academics - both established and early career - and research students in the fields of business leadership, operations management, and knowledge management navigate through these important topics, and envision how to respond to the grand challenges we all face.

This book provides readers with the latest research on the dynamics of language and language diversity in professional contexts. Bringing together novel findings from a range of disciplines, it challenges practitioners and management scholars to question the conventional understanding of language as a tool that can be managed by language policies that 'standardize' language. Each of the contributions is designed to recognize the strides that have been made in the past two decades in research on language and languages in organizational settings while addressing remaining blind spots and emerging issues. Particular attention is given to multilingualism, sociolinguistic approaches to language in the workplace, migration challenges, critical perspectives on the power of language use and the management of organizations as dialogical, discursive spaces. Understanding the Dynamics of Language and Multilingualism in Professional Contexts offers new insights into familiar and less familiar issues for international business scholars, sociolinguists, management practitioners and business communication scholars and experts, and brings understanding to the central role that language usage and linguistic diversity play in organisational processes.

The purpose of this book is to understand the lived experiences of Black women diversity practitioners at historically white higher education, healthcare, and corporate institutions before, during, and after the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and the racial reckoning of 2020. There is limited research on Black women's experiences in these positions outside of higher education. The stories and research provided in this book offers crucial information for institutions to look inward at the cultures and practices of their organizations that directly impact Black women diversity practitioners. In addition, implications for culture shifts and policy transformation would support Black women currently in these positions and women looking to break into the field of diversity, equity, and inclusion. This is a essential text for higher education staff and administration, CEOs, and leadership in corporate America and healthcare.

The international financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 and the situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have had a great impact on many firms' financial needs. Simultaneously, several emerging countries have bet on boosting private initiatives as a way to diversify their economies and create jobs and wealth for their populations. New forms of financing have appeared that have impacted the firm's capital structure, cost of capital, and access to finance by underprivileged communities that are normally outside the formal economy. The Handbook of Research on Acceleration Programs for SMEs provides and shares knowledge on the financial mix, alternative forms of finance, capital structure, and more. It calls attention to relevant challenges, financial institutions, and governments to guarantee funds and economic and social development with new competencies, innovations, new ways of investing, entrepreneurship, and business models with new public policies. Covering topics such as earnings management, capital structure, and foreign exchange, this major reference work is an essential resource for government officials, business leaders and executives, economists, sociologists, students and faculty of higher education, librarians, researchers, and academicians.

'This book is a winner. It bridges the gaps between leaders, leadership scholars and leadership development practitioners to introduce an exciting new model for how they can learn both from and with each other to develop effective leadership in SMEs. Blending practitioners' narratives, detailed accounts of their development process and a healthy platter of 'theory sandwiches', the book brings academic theory alive for practitioners and highlights the theoretical significance of small business leadership experience.' - Eric Guthey, The Copenhagen Business School, Denmark 'This could be the most important leadership book you have ever purchased. Underpinned by Steve Kempster's research and operationalised so well by Stewart Barnes and Sue Smith, the LEAD Programme is the shining light of British Leadership Development. Having participated in the research, and joined in the teaching, and having been a recipient of the programme, I can vouch for it - LEAD works. But here's the thing ... it is not just for SMEs.' - Ken Parry, Deakin University, Australia This is one of the first books to fully value and realize the connection between leadership and learning in SMEs. It provides a real-life narrative, encapsulating the development of business people on a leadership program for SME managers, whilst explaining the key theories, models and techniques that underpin the leadership methods and approaches deployed at each stage of the delegate's journey. The book follows three owner/managers over a ten-month period. Each chapter splits into two - an aesthetic narrative on the learning journey and a 'theory sandwich', which draws the reader's attention to the theories, models and debates underpinning the learning at each stage of the delegate's journey. Academics as well as students will benefit from the research-based examination of leadership learning in the SME context, as it will allow them to stand in the shoes of owners or managers. Policy makers and practitioners will also find the narrative both revealing and informative.

Compiling extensive research findings with real insights from the business world, this must-read book on performance appraisal explores its evolution from the classic appraisal to its current form, and the methodology behind its progression. Looking forward, Aharon Tziner and Edna Rabenu emphasize that well-conducted appraisals combine a mixture of classic and current, and are here to stay. The book first presents a primer to performance appraisals, covering the role of management, the appraisers, and external and political influences. The authors then present ways to improve the appraisal system through training, methodology and diversification. Consequently, they outline the key questions and opportunities facing the research and business communities, including the rapidly developing technological and democratic workforce. In particular, the authors highlight the need for the creation of a ''climate of performance'' and innovation in research, for the betterment of both the individual employee and society as a whole. Improving Performance Appraisal at Work is a comprehensive guide for researchers in business and management, human resource management and organizational behavior. The authors cover an extensive array of issues relating to the role of employee performance appraisal, making this book an excellent advisory text for those in professional human resource roles.

In the digital economy, a new type of business activity, digital entrepreneurship, has developed rapidly and required breakthrough technologies such as blockchain, big data, cloud technologies, and more. There is a need for a comprehensive resource that provides all-encompassing insight into the essence, special aspects, models, and international best practices of e-business based on various digital technologies in various high-tech markets. Digital Technologies for Entrepreneurship in Industry 4.0 provides theoretical frameworks and recent results of research in this sphere. It substantiates digital entrepreneurship, discusses the practical experience of its implementation, and develops the scientific and methodological recommendations for the development of its infrastructural provision and regulation of provision of its competitiveness. Covering topics such as investment attractiveness, corporate reporting modernization, and public-private partnership mechanisms, this premier reference source is an excellent resource for entrepreneurs, business executives and managers, investors, IT managers, students and faculty of higher education, researchers, and academicians.

'In the current surge of organizational theory research on emotions in organizations, Dirk Lindebaum's book makes a unique and important contribution. He identifies and explores how workers' emotions are being abused as a tool of social repression by our bosses. In bringing together critical theory and theory on emotion regulation, he stimulates us to see through the workings of managerial power and, in the same go, offers ways to resist repressive emotional conditions in the workplace. A remarkable accomplishment that deserves to be read for both its theoretical insights and practical relevance!' - Frank den Hond, Hanken School of Economics, Finland Emotion is often used by organizations to manipulate and repress workers. However, this repression can have adverse psychological and social consequences for them. This book articulates the pathways through which this repression occurs, and offers emotion regulation as a tool for workers to emancipate themselves from this repression and social control. Bringing together the largely unconnected literatures on critical theory and emotion regulation, this book articulates two pathways to social control currently underexplored in management: one where the social functions of emotion are exploited, and one where discussions about emotion override its social function. The author illustrates the processes through which workers can start to 'see through' the repression, and enlist emotion regulation strategies to emancipate themselves from it. These strategies may work in the short to medium term but, in the long term, workers may eventually change jobs. If staff turnover becomes unsustainable, the organization can seek to change the social structures causing the repression of workers in the first place. Combining fresh theoretical insights with practically informed vignettes, this book will appeal to academics and students across many social science disciplines, including business studies, organization studies, cognitive change, sociology and psychology. Both practising managers and disenchanted workers will also find this an enlightening read.

Common hiring practices are destined for failure-here's how to hire the right people and build a company culture designed for long-term success What's more important in a job candidate-skills or attitude? Mark Murphy argues for the latter, and Hiring for Attitude provides the data to back it up. In a major study by Murphy's company, Leadership IQ, 46 percent of all new hires fail within their first 18 months-and 89 percent fail for attitudinal reasons, not skills. Hiring for Attitude explains how to change your hiring practices to avoid this common pitfall and lead your company to long-term success. It takes you step by step through the process of shedding hiring techniques destined for failure and, instead, focus on the what matters in a candidate: attitude.