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Business process re-engineering (BPR) initiatives are complex endeavours which require many factors to ensure success. However, most studies focus on the organisational processes and improvement within the organisation itself and less on the project team and management dynamics. The study aimed to identify factors that enabled the completion of a BPR, in a technical firm, based on reflections on the project management style.

The study entailed a descriptive and interpretive case study with reflections from project team members. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and content analysis.

Findings revealed that critical success factors for BPR in a technical firm include project leadership and sponsorship, organisational culture and attributes, team dynamics and the nature (activities), and duration of the process.

The findings will benefit project managers in improving their competence and project success through reflective practice. The identified factors could be used in future projects of a similar nature and size to improve how organisations execute BPR projects.

The study used reflections to identify success factors for BPR in a technical firm.

To review the edited anthology Anticipatory Behavior in Adaptive Learning Systems: Foundations, Theories, and Systems.

Comments on the book's 16 articles that rapidly transition from introductory philosophy to specific research reports.

The consensus is that anticipatory behaviors are critical to performance in a variety of natural and built systems – especially adaptive learning systems. This outcome, with some disagreement among the authors, is demonstrated through a variety of exemplars.

The reviewer feels that this book is of seminal importance. The exploration of anticipatory behaviors as a legitimate and promising area of informed discourse and scientific research is novel and definitely a major contribution toward understanding and enhancing the performance of complex systems.

This study aims to investigate cross-level influences of team cohesion, trust and conflicts on team member’s proactive motivational profiles and outcomes of profile membership over time.

Data was collected in a four-month longitudinal field study with 47 teams (N = 202).

Latent profile analysis derived four proactive motivational profiles. The higher motivated profiles reported better study outcomes, higher levels of team trust and cohesion and fewer conflicts over time. Team trust and interpersonal conflicts emerged as significant predictors of profile membership.

Recommendations are derived on how to best manage teams and the members comprising it when trust in teams is low or interpersonal conflicts are high.

Applying a person-centred approach in a team context advances multi-level theories of team motivation by mapping the cross-level effects of team processes on different kinds of motivational states.

The purpose of this paper was to examine knowledge hiding behaviours with perceived conflict types, competition and personal values of employees.

Two studies were carried out and structural equation modelling and moderated regression analyses were conducted to test the hypotheses.

Study I, with employees from software development companies, revealed that task conflict and relationship conflict have additive effect on knowledge hiding behaviour. Additionally, task conflict is positively related to employees’ perceived competition. However, no mediation role of perceived competition was found between conflict types and knowledge hiding. Study II, with employees from the banking sector, indicated that employees’ individualistic or collectivistic values play a moderating role between perceived task conflict and knowledge hiding behaviours. The negative effect of task conflict on knowledge hiding behaviour is higher if the individuals have individualistic personal values.

This study contributes to managers by offering some guidance on what can be the results of conflict and competition between employees and how employees’ personal values can affect conflict and knowledge hiding relation.

To the challenges of knowledge hiding behaviour outcomes for businesses, many managers should first consider the predictors of knowledge hiding and then find some solutions against the negative consequences. This study is one of the first to examine knowledge hiding with regard to conflict types, perceived competition between employees and personal values of employees.

This study aims to examine the extent to which organizational dissent predicts perception of workplace bullying. As previous studies have reported inconsistent and sometimes contradictory results regarding the interaction between the reporting of bullying and demographic variables, these variables are examined in the New Zealand context. Organizational communication research provides considerable insight into the ways individuals make sense of and resist workplace bullying through juxtaposition with the concepts of dissent and intragroup conflict.

A nationally representative sample of managers in New Zealand (n = 239) was conducted. Surveys included demographic questions and the following measures: Organizational Dissent Scale and Negative Acts Questionnaire Revised Scale.

Key results and indications for further research are highlighted by the third model in this study. First, workers who reported they engaged in either articulated dissent or latent dissent were more likely to perceive workplace bullying. Second, workers who are more likely to express contrary opinions in the workplace are more likely to recognize, acknowledge and tolerate less positive interactions in the workplace such as bullying.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to analyze dissent and bullying in the New Zealand context. Second, this research raises the question of whether there is a conflation of work-related bullying behaviors and bad leadership styles that may not be targeted (e.g. authoritative leadership and micromanaging). Finally, communication research provides a distinctive contribution by exploring the narrative form of worker responses to perceived bullying. In this manuscript, the authors examine potential predictors on the perception of workplace bullying in the context of New Zealand, particularly focus on the relationship between dissent and the perception of workplace bullying.

The purpose of this study is to test theoretically based hypotheses linking task and team-shared mental models (SMMs) with multiple dimensions of conflict and conflict asymmetry. SMMs are viewed as an underlying mechanism of team processes. While current research has begun to clarify their influence on functional team processes, their influence on dysfunctional processes is still unknown.

The survey was administered to 17 graduate business classes working on intense semester-long group projects. A total of 295 individual responses were received which comprised 90 (N = 90) teams.

Results suggest that team SMMs reduce all dimensions of conflict and relationship conflict asymmetry, while task SMMs increase all dimensions of conflict and relationship conflict asymmetry.

This study captured the influence of SMMs on conflict at one stage of group development. Future research should examine the impact of SMMs on conflict at multiple stages of group development.

This study contributes to the literature on both mental models and conflict. In addition, based on our literature review, it was the first to empirically link SMMs and conflict asymmetry.

Research has shown that managing client participation can add value to the delivery of quality services. While several control mechanisms have been proposed in the literature for the management of complex service relationships, they generally fail to account for two realities of service provider/client relationships ‐‐ information asymmetry and uncertainty. This paper proposes a new mechanism, “professional concern,” and suggests that its various dimensions ‐‐ provider authority, social affiliation, client role accountability and objective attitude ‐‐ provide a framework for managing knowledge‐based service relationships and optimizing decision‐making processes for delivering quality services.

There is a view that strong preventative contracts are essential to control supplier opportunism and delivery during an outsourcing implementation. The purpose of this paper is to test the proposition that contractual project environments, typical of outsourcing engagements, are essentially conflictual and that context and circumstance can act to overwhelm formal contractual and project control and lead to poor outcomes.

The paper reports on a supply case study focussed on the outsourced delivery of an application development in the defence sector. Data were gathered by a participant observation in situ for a period of three years. A grounded analysis from observations, diaries, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, documentary analysis, and e-mails was carried out with six case organisations within the extended supply chain.

Collaboration between suppliers and buyers can be blocked by preventative fixed price contracts and as a result when requirements are incomplete or vague this adversely impacts success.

Strong contractual control focussed on compliance may actually impede the potential success of outsourcing contracts especially when collaborative approaches are needed to cope with variability in demand.

The research raises the important practical and conceptual notion that an outsourcing can be a conflictual inter-firm phenomenon especially where multiple actors are involved and business uncertainty is present.