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This study seeks to examine the effects of a “personal effectiveness” training on both assertiveness and Psychological Capital (PsyCap) that were monitored before and after the training.

In addition to self‐ratings, other‐ratings were assembled to explore two ways in which they can contribute to the monitoring of intervention effects. To verify self‐reported results, and to predict participants' performance through the use of self‐other agreement.

Overall, rater and ratee scores showed a similar increase on assertiveness and most components of PsyCap. Self‐other agreement measures showed an increase in agreement for assertiveness and PsyCap after the training. Lastly, the type of relationship between rater and ratee appeared to have significant influence on the consistency between raters, such that agreement was higher for cohabiting partners than colleagues, supervisors or friends.

This study has created a better understanding of the role that the self‐other agreement and PsyCap can play in monitoring intervention effects.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

The favourable prospects of computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) are widely recognised. Based on a case study and relevant literature some of the risks associated with CIM are outlined. It is argued that the technological orientation of the CIM vision unwarrantably underestimates organisational and social problems of implementing and applying computerised manufacturing systems. Specifically, it is shown how disregard of uncertainty and of applicants′ divergent motivations may lead to serious friction. The attempt to realise the CIM vision may trigger a social dynamic which impedes the realisation of potential results. Finally, several implications of the research are described.

This article, one of the keynote addresses at the joint ANZHES conference in December 2008, explores a concept that I call the Great Divide, by which I mean the cultural division between principals and teachers, and between principals and students. Drawing on visual imagery, historical reports, and cultural studies of American schools, I argue that the Great Divide is a historical construction of both administrative practices and representational culture that has led to misunderstandings of the complexity of the school principal’s middle managerial work in the school organisation.

This paper seeks to reflect on the importance of surprise in qualitative research on information‐technology initiatives. It also aims to consider how the use of social theory in the context of surprise can help to shape and guide field methods, data transformation, and substantive findings.

The discussion is personal and reflective. The paper considers the significance of surprise surrounding events within two of the authors' own research projects. It also reports on a perusal of the literature for explicit treatments of surprise.

Surprise in qualitative research is twofold. First, the research subjects experience surprise; indeed, surprise appears to be quite prevalent in IT‐related projects. Second, researchers too can be surprised in the course of their own work. Where these two kinds of surprise come together, one can find especially fruitful occasions for insight. In the authors' own projects, the element of surprise helped establish their respective commitments to actor‐network theory (ANT) as an effective approach for recognizing and understanding the crucial events in the emergence and evolution of information systems projects. Based on a literature search, the paper can add a third category of surprise to the first two: the authors' surprise at finding that surprise, despite its practical prevalence, remains largely unrecognized in information systems research.

The value of the paper lies in calling forth the element of surprise as an important kind of research event that deserves qualitative researchers' explicit attention. It also points toward the usefulness of social theory in systematizing the researcher's response to surprise.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework that systematically captures the ambiguity of different understandings about science, the university and its relation to society, while conceptualising sustainability. Following Corley and Gioia (2004, p. 174) on identity ambiguity and change, it seems pivotal to better understanding the ambiguity of sustainability in relation to academic cultures and university models to manage the transition more effectively.

The nature of this paper’s objectives as well as the wide thematic scope leads to the need of exploring a broad knowledge base. This was best addressed by an exploratory literature review with data collection from primary and secondary sources. The data was interpreted through a hermeneutic analysis and resulted in the inductive development of first categories and goals (further referred to as category development). In addition, a multi-method approach further adjusted the categories and raised their empirical validity and social robustness.

Implementing sustainability involves dealing with a double bound ambiguity due to organisational and individual identity reasons. Five fields of ambiguity were developed to systemise the conceptualisation of a sustainable university along contradictory understandings of science, the university and sustainability. These fields offer a framework to qualitatively assess the degree of sustainability in higher education institutions. Arguments for and against sustainability in universities have been categorised around five criteria and associated to the fields of ambiguity. The finding indicates that meaning in organisational change management for sustainability can be considered both, a potential driver and barrier for a sustainability transition in universities.

This paper exclusively focussed on the internal perspective and left aside any external factors that influence the sustainability transition, such as political measures to stimulate sustainability in higher education. In addition, the operational dimension of a sustainable university has been neglected, which is by all means a necessary and important aspect. The interrelation of the identified goals has not been discussed.

This paper focusses on the conceptualisation and understanding of sustainability within the institution, an often-forgotten but fundamental aspect of implementation. The fields of ambiguity are designed to be applied for assessing the “degree of maturity” of a sustainable university. The fields reveal the different understandings about the role, the mission and the governance of universities, stemming from competing preferences about goals and their assumed relations by various stakeholders of a higher education institutions. The five fields are not an attempt to resolve the hidden contradictions and tensions in a sustainability transition, but to state them clearly to anticipate resistances and conflicts that hinder the development of a shared understanding.