This insightful Elgar Introduction comprises the first effort to provide a succinct overview of the field of organizational paradox theory, exploring contradictions and tensions in organizational settings. By conceptually mapping the field, it offers guidance through the literature on paradox, making space for new interpretations and applications of the concept. Opening with a critical analysis of research to date, the authors explore ideas related to dialectics and ambidexterity in organizations, as well as pragmatic approaches to organizational paradox. Chapters propose new ways to analyse responses to paradox, bringing together influential contributions that consider the nestedness of paradox, the relation between power and paradox, and paradoxes of positive organizational scholarships. Providing novel approaches to the discipline, this cutting-edge book is crucial for graduate students and management scholars interested in employing organizational paradox theory as a conceptual framework for their research.

This textbook comprises an innovative companion for cross-cultural management classes, demonstrating how organizations can deal with cultural differences successfully. Providing a constructive and positive lens into the multifaceted world of interculturality, the authors illustrate the multiple benefits associated with cultural diversity in the fast-changing global and digital environment. Key features include: Carefully constructed chapters that match course development Practical recommendations drawn from multiple disciplines for managing diversity Case studies from numerous cultures to educate students and managers alike in shaping intercultural relationships Multiple frameworks for analysis and illustrative literature reviews to provide a substantial and unique overview of intercultural management. Outlining ways in which to understand and constructively design interculturality, this textbook is a seminal guide for students of bachelors, masters and MBA courses, particularly those focusing on management studies. It also provides useful insights for organizations looking to design and develop intercultural management practices.

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences, business and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. This Advanced Introduction provides a cutting edge review of employee engagement, illustrating the theories and key instruments for research that underpin the field and its antecedents and consequences. It translates the science into practice by offering recommendations on how to build an engaged workforce and how to socialize and engage newcomers. Key features include: A state-of-the-art review of the field, including an overview of potential methodologies for measuring employee engagement Informed and insightful discussions of different engagement targets and referents and strategic employee engagement A keen awareness of international variations in employee engagement. This book offers a critical research agenda for researchers in business and management hoping to develop their research in organizational settings. It will also benefit managers and other practitioners in overcoming common problems and developing an engaged workforce.

New Zealand (NZ) offers an astonishing story regarding its Covid-19 response. This book argues that NZ offers lessons for business and management actors across various geographical and political contexts in the world. In this book, we draw attention to problems and challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic from a functional management and organisational perspective. In particular, contributors explore centralised and decentralised decision-making, the notion of economic growth, well-being on a national level and on a personal level, and business recovery and how NZ's exporting and internationalisation strategies have been affected by Covid-19. The intricate complexity of globalised supply chains, the consequences of low levels of buffer in optimised outsourcing and offshoring agreements and the criticality of 'non-critical' labour for the seamless functioning and organisation of society are also examined. Finally, the contributors explore the NZ Covid-19 response's geopolitical significance beyond the Pacifica/Oceania region. In so doing, they illuminate how the NZ experience can offer insights and learning for business and management in other countries. This book will be key reading for business and organisational scholars interested in international business, internationalization and the geo-political and business implications of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Donald W. Katzner explores concepts, their properties, and the implications of those properties that underlie many of the current approaches to the economics of firm organization. The book examines these matters in important new ways and in ways that have not been fully considered in the existing literature. Topics covered include authority structures, the social interaction (including supervision) among employees required to fulfill the responsibilities of their jobs, participatory decision making to the extent that it occurs, the impact of time, and certain kinds of complexity and efficiency, all of which are fundamental to analyses of the internal organization of the economic firm. The author provides a clear and extensive presentation of the basic ideas, and examines how they relate to the firm's operation and profitability. He also develops and employs measures of the dimensions of pyramidal authority structures and analyzes the relationship between them. This book should be of interest to graduate students and scholars interested in the economic fundamentals of firm organization. It is relevant for an introductory graduate course in organization theory in economics departments and business schools. It will also appeal to scholars in such fields as sociology and psychology who work in organization theory from the perspective of their own disciplines.

As we grapple with how to respond to some of the world's most pressing problems, there is growing global interest in 'social innovation' as a potential solution. But what exactly is 'social innovation'? And how can it help us to think about problems such as inequality, poverty and climate change? Danielle Logue theorizes social innovation as a contemporary manifestation of the historical tensions between 'economy' and 'society' and the simultaneous pursuit of economic and social progress. Going back to the historical work of Adam Smith and his discussion of markets and morality, the author draws on organizational and management theory to present three theoretical lenses for understanding social innovation. These lenses include theorizing social innovation as social value creation, capture and distribution; social innovation as polysemous; and social innovation as institutional change. She then considers some of the current issues confronting social innovation in practice and the challenges for organizations in 'doing good' and 'being good'. This generative introduction is targeted at graduate and doctoral students, as well as non-specialist academics. It aims to stimulate further discussion and analysis by providing a comprehensive understanding of social innovation and a choice of frameworks when examining complex and wicked problems and the organization and management of efforts to solve them.

Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary. This insightful Research Agenda presents the foundations of employee engagement, providing a framework for future research to serve as an evidence-based guide to practice. Offering an overview of contemporary engagement theory and research, it addresses important new directions for expanding our current understanding of the meaning, focus, development and outcomes of engagement. Chapters consider the future impact of a constantly changing landscape of work on employee engagement, addressing the growing prevalence of casual and contract forms of labour and the introduction of work automation technology. International contributors explore innovative methods for engagement research, including novel approaches in data gathering, qualitative and quantitative research methods and data analytic techniques that can be applied to answering a variety of different engagement questions. Setting out key research directions for the future of the field, this book will be essential reading for academic scholars and researchers of organizational psychology and organizational behaviour. In addition, researchers in business and industry will find new ways to think about, study, and evaluate the impact of engagement policies and practices.

This insightful and innovative book proposes a new theory of socio-material weaving for studying and understanding family business. It dissolves the family business into activities, constituted of the sociality of human interactions and relations and interwoven with materials that extend in both a bodily-lived and spatial existential sense. Building on hermeneutic phenomenology, Mona Ericson explores a new approach to the field, which shifts focus away from entitized conceptions of family business contexts. Building on a 'being-in-the-world' understanding, the book emphasizes human entwinement with activities in amongst materials. Chapters draw insights from research on the social and the material, exploring the field through five unique stories that illustrate the intertwinement of family business activities and materials associated with buildings and land. Taking a critical stance towards systems-oriented family business research, Ericson weaves together the social and the material in association with narrative truth. An innovative and imaginative exploration of an established field of study, this book is crucial reading for scholars, researchers and graduate students of family business, opening up new ways of approaching the field in scholarly work. It will also benefit practitioners through practical insights into the challenges family business owners face when establishing and managing business activities.

This guide places emphasis on both the individual and highly successful global businesses which have realized that personal and organizational growth depend on the ability to attract, develop and retain competent committed people.

Preparing for High Impact Change: Experiential Learning and Practice provides an overview of change processes for teaching, facilitating, and coping with change. Tested high-impact exercises in the book will prepare change leaders at all organizational levels to deal with the myriad of challenges inherent in the process of organizational change. Effective organizational change involves a combination of understanding, learning and unlearning, and practiced behaviour as part of the underlying conceptualization, formulation, and implementation processes. The book presents a series of exercises that promote self-learning and developing readiness for change, from preparing people for change, understanding and managing resistance, and coping with change-related obstacles to seeking buy-in for the change. Emphasis throughout the book is placed on developing change-related competencies. This book is a resource for understanding aspects of change, from theory to practice, for consultants, educators, students and practitioners such as corporate training and development personnel.

This timely Handbook addresses the concepts of stress and well-being among workers in various public sector roles and occupations across the globe. Emphasizing the importance of well-being and stress prevention initiatives in ever-changing workplace environments, this Handbook highlights successful organizational initiatives and provides insight into best practice for promoting healthy employees and workplaces. Chapters analyze the new and ongoing challenges public sector organizations face such as: cost cutting, pressures to improve performance, changes in societal and workplace demographics, and increasing levels of stress and strain amongst their employees. This wide-ranging Handbook utilizes empirical research, literature reviews and case studies to draw greater attention to these and other challenges. Containing contributions from leading international experts in their respective fields, the contributors hope that this multidisciplinary Handbook will help to enhance the health and well-being of public sector employees and the sector's performance and contribution to society. The Handbook of Research on Stress and Well-Being in the Public Sector will be of value to researchers and practitioners interested in the public sector and both individual and organizational health and performance. This will also be a key resource for public sector and government professionals responsible for human resource management and work and health.

This insightful book illustrates thirteen case studies demonstrating the convenience theory of white-collar crime. Offering an integrated deductive perspective through a convenience lens, Petter Gottschalk provides crucial insights into the motives, opportunities and behaviors behind executive deviance. Featuring a unique examination of era-defining cases of white-collar crime, from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to the Olympus scandal, Gottschalk closely follows legal accounts to paint an international picture of executive deviance. This book scrutinizes public opinion of deviant behavior and how public sentiment towards white-collar crime has changed over time. Offering an innovative view of executive deviance, Gottschalk concludes by testing the integrated theory of convenience through empirical surveys of white-collar offenders. Audacious and illuminating, this book is crucial reading for researchers and students of business, criminal law and criminology, sharing a unique angle on the world of executive deviance through empirical research. Its real-world observations will also be crucial to policymakers and legal practitioners.

Presenting the emergence of new organizational designs in a novel way, this insightful book blends theory and practice to examine major trends and directions, the key ideas that underpin organizational design and how these ideas might be applied. The authors explore how, in a world characterized by relentless change and volatility, traditional bureaucracies of the past are increasingly regarded as being too slow and centralized. Instead, emerging ideas, such as platforms, ecosystems, holacracies, agility and improvisation are gaining purchase. Focusing on key trends and forms of design, the book offers an approach to organizing that accommodates paradoxes and offers a fresh view on managing organizational design. Rich in anecdotes and examples, the Elgar Introduction to Designing Organizations will be a useful guide for business and management scholars and advanced students with a focus on organizational studies and innovation. It will be beneficial for business managers thinking about how to design their organization so that it is fit for contemporary purposes.

The Geography of Entrepreneurial Psychology summarizes existing research and relevant insights from psychology, economics, management, sociology and geography to provide an overview to a new and innovative interdisciplinary field, answering the critical question 'what is a vibrant startup culture?' Mapping recent empirical advances and analysing regional differences in macro-psychological factors associated with entrepreneurship, the book discusses the role of historical trajectories of regional differences, considering their significance to contemporary entrepreneurial and geographical psychology. Chapters turn to established psychological theories, such as McClelland's Human Motivation Theory and the Big Five personality traits, to measure entrepreneurship culture and its persistence between regions and cities, delivering key implications for practice, education and policy in entrepreneurship. Setting a crucial agenda for future research, this cutting-edge book is vital reading for students and researchers of entrepreneurship cultures, particularly those focusing on regional differences. Psychologists and geographers will also benefit from this book's multidisciplinary insights into spatial aspects of entrepreneurial psychology.

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.

How and to what extent do decisions affect business performance? Despite years of study by academic researchers and industry practitioners, there still remains a need to draw a clear and established connection between decision making and performance. By closely examining consequential business decisions made by key executives, this book offers a better understanding of business performance and recommendations for improved business practices. Through the use of case studies and interviews with business leaders based on 17 theorized measures of performance, this breakthrough study not only clarifies the impact of decisions on business performance, but also defines and distinguishes decisions that lead to successful and unsuccessful performance. Recommendations are made to optimize decision making for businesses of all sizes and projections about the future of decision making and performance are provided. This book can be used both as a reference source for academic researchers and students seeking further research on the subject, and as a practical guide for leaders and business professionals seeking advancement and better decision making within the industry.