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Current debates about new management strategies exhibit a marked tendency to regard economic, political and social changes largely as though they amount to the end of an old era and the beginning of something new. New production arrangements have been envisaged before, usually with reference to the transitionary period of industrial development around the late 1960s and early 1970s. Others have described current transitions to new management arrangements variously as part of Post Fordism, of Japanisation, of Lean Production, or of Toyotaism.

The purpose of this paper is to question extant categorizations of organization and to introduce the concept of the hypermodern organization. In so doing, it aims to contribute to the understanding of the hypermodern organization by means of a case study of the accelerated appearance and disappearance of Enron.

Consideration is given in the paper to organization and its various forms, namely, the premodern, the modern and the postmodern organization. The hypermodern organization is then introduced and elaborated upon. To demonstrate the contemporary relevance of the hypermodern organization the increasing speed of both the appearance and disappearance of Enron is reviewed. The contribution of an increase in velocity to the disintegration of the hypermodern organization of Enron is considered.

Existing approaches to organizations and organizational change in the main fail to recognize the context and impact of hypermodernity. To address this, the paper introduces and develops the concept of the hypermodern organization. The relevance of the hypermodern organization to an appreciation of organization and organizational change is demonstrated through an analysis of the accelerated appearance and disappearance of Enron.

The paper introduces a new conception of organization and organizational change. Further research is necessary to verify and build on the findings.

The paper contributes to the understanding of organizations and organizational change. It argues that the information and consumer‐driven societies of the advanced countries are characterized by hypermodernity. Existing approaches to organizations and organizational change essentially disregard the significance and impact of the hypermodern organization. The paper suggests that one of the results of the hypermodern organization is the accelerated appearance and disappearance of business organizations.

This paper aims at summing up the main criticisms concerning quality management (QM) in order to address them through objective arguments or extant research. Since its diffusion in the Occident in the 70s, QM gained as much approvals as criticisms. Therefore, with 40 years distance, it seems useful to sum up the main criticisms addressed to QM, to present a synthesis of the answers provided by researchers to these criticisms and to propose extant research when it appears that some criticisms have not received yet the adequate response.

This paper is based on a literature review.

This paper comes up with a list of the main criticisms addressed to QM. Then, main causes of criticisms are identified: ignorance of QM, confusion concerning QM definitions and theory and misuse of QM by senior managers. At last, QM organizational solutions are proposed which answer most expressed criticisms. Extant research tracks are considered for those relevant criticisms which have not been sufficiently addressed until now.

Further research will look into depicting a survey conducted among QM professionals concerning QM criticisms in their organization and confronting them to these academic results.

This paper actualizes and completes Giroux and Landry’s (1998) article which dealt extensively with QM criticisms. Professionals will find in this paper answers to most criticisms against QM and a better understanding of the present limits of this discipline. Researchers will be provided with a state of the art concerning this sensitive topic, allowing them to go deeper in the fields that require special attention.

This paper aims to present a detailed examination of the relationship and debate between realist understandings of HRM, on the one hand, and discourse‐based notions of HRM, on the other. The objective is to provide a basis for a possible debate between these, seemingly contradictory, perspectives.

The paper argues that these perspectives can be integrated if one adopts a perspective that overcomes this dualism by thinking of HRM as a “project” where speech acts and non‐linguistic forms of action are seen as interdependent. The paper uses interview extracts in order to illustrate how the HRM Project gets constituted but also resisted in the context of a post‐privatisation electricity company.

This paper is predicated on the notion that the discourse of HRM is closely intertwined with the shift in power relations between employers, managers, employees and trade unions from the early 1980s onwards. In order to capture the broader context of the discourse it is suggested that the notion of an “HRM Project” includes not only language but also practices, boundary‐spanning linkages, and external agents such as regulators and financial institutions.

Builds on the notion of discourse as a strategic resource.

Digital intermediaries such as Google and Facebook are seen as the new powerbrokers in online news, controlling access to consumers and with the potential even to suppress and target messages to individuals. Academics, publishers and policymakers have raised concerns about the implications of this new power, from the impact on media plurality to implications for democratic discourse, freedom of speech and control over public opinion formation. After reviewing academic literature that has raised this concern and public policy addressing it, this paper aims to examine the empirical foundations for these claims. Through secondary analysis of industry data on referrals of online news traffic, the authors find that intermediaries do have the potential to exert significant influence over distribution of online news. The authors however find that not all news that is filtered through intermediary services is subject to the same shaping and editorial forces, in part, because user agency is also an important factor. The role of intermediaries in news distribution is thus complex; headline numbers do not translate automatically into influence due to the complex interplay and exchange between user agency and the editorial influence of intermediaries.

This paper is based mainly on a secondary analysis of publicly available data on news referrals, and some data provided by news publishers along with re-analysis of regulatory data from Ofcom and previously unpublished data from the BBC and SimilarWeb. These data sources are combined for the first time to investigate claims regarding the current controversy about media plurality, algorithmic power and transparency.

The paper finds that evidence that intermediaries wield concentrated editorial power is mixed. While other, non-intermediated news distribution platforms such as TV and the press remain highly important, online is heading towards being the most important distribution platform, particularly for younger demographics. The authors found that intermediaries such as search and social control access to a significant proportion of online news content. Not all use of intermediaries is indicative of online gatekeeping however. User agency also determines how content is prioritised and thus consumed. The news consumed is therefore a product of a complex interplay between user agency and intermediary influence. In contrast to traditional discussions of media power and its regulation (for example the notion of mass media plurality); it is thus not possible to make inferences on influence simply by noting the market share of intermediaries. The role of intermediaries is much more subtle and opaque.

This paper is mainly based on publicly available data. It is crucial to find out what is possible with such data as regulators with responsibility for monitoring and regulating media plurality are similarly limited to such data. The implications are that further research with a wide range of methods and data sources will be necessary to update research on media plurality and diversity.

The implications of these findings are that independent public authorities should have access to much more revealing data about public opinion formation processes, including referrals and other data currently held only by publishers. The three stage analytical framework will be of use to regulators and policymakers currently looking into these issues.

Civil society and public debate about digital intermediaries is currently intensively discussed in policy debate. Taking these debates forward will depend on whether existing public policy frameworks (such as limits on news plurality) are able to accommodate the new challenges such as intermediary influence on news distribution and public opinion formation.

The recent special issue of INFO, including contributions from Mansell and Helberger, raised a range of similar issues with regard to media plurality and intermediaries. These papers did not seek empirically to examine in depth, using all available publicly relevant data, the implications for media pluralism and diversity in one particular media market. The paper is theoretically original, contains some previously unpublished data and an entirely new empirical and theoretical analysis. The models and tables are previously unpublished.