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The purpose of this paper is to identify critical success factors for the management of complex change processes in fire service organizations and to apply these in a case study of the Rotterdam-Rijnmond fire service.

The paper provides review of literature on organizational change, case study of the Rotterdam-Rijnmond fire service supported by the analysis of policy documents and 30 semi-structured interviews with key persons.

Combining different theoretical approaches helps to get a more complete picture of important issues and dilemma’s in the management of change processes – which is a first step in the successful implementation of changes – whereas other approaches tend to emphasize only some and overlook others. Applied in a case study, this approach revealed serious weaknesses in the management of change within the Rotterdam-Rijnmond fire service and offered practical guides for solutions.

This paper combines insights from different theoretical approaches into a more integrated perspective that aims to be helpful as a practical tool for designing and implementing complex changes in fire service organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of age in work teams on short‐term team consequences, such as satisfaction, involvement, mutual learning, decision making and feedback, and long‐term team consequences, such as quality, sick leave and burnout, and to consider their implications for team management and human resource management (HRM) policies in team‐based organizations facing an ageing work force.

The study elaborates on the framework of Milliken and Martins, further examining the effects of both average age and age differences. The authors collected objective data as well as data through questionnaires among 150 work teams with more than 1,500 white‐collar and blue‐collar workers from an automotive company in Sweden. With these data the authors conducted correlation and step‐by‐step hierarchical regression analyses.

The analyses showed significant positive effects of average age on both short‐term and long‐term consequences. No significant effects of age differences were found.

Conducting a longitudinal study in an automotive company in Sweden resulted in monocultural findings. The use of a sample from one organization may limit the generalization of our findings. Future research should pay more attention to effects of age in teams, compared to individual age effects in organizations and to explore more advanced models that help to understand the dynamic processes of age in teams.

The results have implications for management of teams and HRM policy in organizations relating to recruitment, early retirement, training developments and team composition in general.

The paper suggests positive effects of age in work teams and contributes to the literature about the ageing workforce working in teams.

In this paper, we will show that the debate between advocates of lean production and the socio‐technical approach has concentrated too much on the design aspect of the production structure, while neglecting the development aspect of teamwork. This paper addresses the question whether it is production design or team development that explains business performance and the quality of working life. The data are taken from four departments of the Volvo truck plant in Umeå (Sweden) that is redesigning from socio‐technical based assembly to line‐assembly. We conclude that good design of the production structure is necessary, but not sufficient for good performance; team development is just as important, although it requires a favorable context.

Public organizations often need to implement organizational change. Several authors have argued that the specific characteristics of public organizations make the implementation of organizational change in public organizations distinct or even more difficult. However, this issue has received little empirical investigation in both public management and change management research. Public organizations typically operate in an environment characterized by checks and balances, shared power, divergent interests and the political primate. The purpose of this paper is to advance knowledge about how the implementation of change and its leadership is affected by the complex environment in which public organizations operate.

A case study approach is adopted. A merger of three government departments in a Dutch city is selected as a case. This merger took place in an environment that became increasingly complex as the implementation process advanced. The main method of data collection was interviewing the managers that were involved in the organizational change. In all, 23 interviews were conducted and fully transcribed. The interviews were then coded using Atlas.ti software.

The analysis indicates that a high degree of environmental complexity forces public organizations to adopt a planned, top-down approach to change, while the effectiveness of such an approach to change is simultaneously limited by a complex environment. In addition, typical change leadership activities, such as defining the need for change, role modeling and motivating employees to implement the change, are not sufficient to implement change in a complex environment. In order to overcome environmental dependencies and maintain momentum in the change process, public managers must engage in more externally oriented leadership activities.

The paper provides empirical evidence about the relevant and rapidly growing research topic of organizational change in public organizations. The paper concludes with hypotheses that can be tested in follow-up research, and as such provides a starting point for future research concerning change management in public organizations.

The paper presents results from the implementation and evaluation of a EU/WHO multi‐centre programme on the promotion of children's psychosocial development through primary health care services. The aims of the study were to develop methods for use by primary health care workers in their contact with families on issues pertaining to healthy psychosocial development in the first two years of life, to develop a training programme for primary health care workers to implement in their contact with the families, to evaluate the effectiveness of the programme and to promote the implementation of the developed intervention techniques through the network of primary health care services.

This research aims to examine and understand the rationales and modalities behind the use of disclosure before, during and after a corporate governance scandal involving CPA Australia (CPAA).

Data beyond CPAA's annual reports were collected, such as news articles, media releases, an independent review panel (IRP) report, and the Chief Operating Officer's letter to members. These disclosures were manually coded and analysed through the word counts and word trees in NVivo. This study also relied on Norbert Elias' conceptual tool of power games among networks of actors – figurations – to model the scandal as a power game between the old Board, the press, concerned members, the IRP and the new Board. This study analysed the data to reveal a collective and in fieri power balance that changed with the phases of the scandal.

A mix of voluntary, involuntary, requested and absent disclosures was important in triggering, managing and ending the CPAA scandal. Moreover, communication and disclosure fulfilled a constitutive role since both: mobilised actors, enabled coordination among actors, contributed to pursuing shared goals and influenced power balances. Such a constitutive role was at the heart of the ability of coalitions of figurations to challenge and restore the powerful status quo.

This research introduces to accounting studies the collective and in fieri dimensions of power from figurational theory. Moreover, the research sheds new light on using voluntary, involuntary, requested and absent disclosures before, during and after a corporate crisis.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze price transmission in the Chinese pork market between 1994 and 2016 and examine any incidence and causes of asymmetric price transmission.

The approach uses threshold autoregressive models, asymmetric error correction models and autoregressive moving average models to examine the price transmission using monthly pig and pork prices from 1994 to 2016.

While a symmetric price transmission between pork and pig prices was identified for the period between June 1994 and June 2007, an asymmetric price transmission response between pork and pig prices was found for the period July 2007 to June 2016. Key factors behind the asymmetric price transmission include the chicken price and China’s provisional purchasing and stockpiling policy which is having a counter-productive impact on prices.

The paper contributes to the literature by examining price transmission in two different periods: 1994 to 2007 where prices are lower and more stable; and 2007 to 2016 where prices are higher and volatile. The paper examines the impact of production and market policies on price transmission in the Chinese pork and pig market, with several policy implications.

This paper aims to propose a new literacies approach to get insight into young people’s capability to detect fake news.

This study is a replication of a US empirical study in The Netherlands to examine whether schoolchildren were able to identify the spoof website “Save The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus” as fake.

In The Netherlands, only 2 out of 27 school children (7 per cent) recognized the website as being a hoax; results that are worse, even, than those of the 2007 US study, where the website was recognized as being unreliable by slightly more than 6 out of 53 school children (11 per cent).

A similar but large-scale quantitative empirical study should be conducted in several countries to see if the trends in the US and The Netherlands are indeed significant.

It is important to start teaching children at an early age how to critically evaluate online information.

The perceived reliability of digital information is a hot issue, given the frequency with which fake news is circulated. Being able to critically evaluate digital information will help to have access to trustworthy information.

Instead of using technological fact checking by Google, Facebook and Twitter, this paper suggests the adoption of a new literacies approach, focusing on young people’s capability to detect fake news.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the stressors involved in pre-qualification clinical psychology as reported by a sample of the UK trainee clinical psychologists. The main coping strategies reported by the trainees are also explored.

One-to-one interviews were conducted with 15 trainee clinical psychologists using qualitative research methods. Themes were established using the main principles of thematic analysis.

Three themes were identified that described the pressures involved in applying to the course, the support networks available to trainees, and the commonalities in their personal history, experiences and self-reported personality characteristics.

It is important to investigate the sources of stress and coping strategies in trainees to help them cope more effectively. The findings of the study are discussed within the context of clinical psychology training.