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This paper aims to better understand how accountability for sustainability takes shape within organisations and specifically, what makes employees act in a Swedish local authority. This aim moves beyond the prevalent external face of accountability in social and environmental accounting research by observing how employees understand and act upon their multiple accountability demands.

This paper adopts a single case study approach within a Swedish local authority, drawing from qualitative data including semi-structured interviews, site visits and governing documents.

Sustainable action is not only the product of hierarchically enforced structural accountabilities and procedures but often must be reconciled with the personal perspectives of the public sector employees involved as part of an accountability dynamic. Additionally, the findings reveal that hierarchical accountability, rather than serving to individualise and isolate employees, acts as a prompt for the more practical and personal reconciliations of accountability with the ethics and experiences of the individual involved.

Greater consideration to employee socialisation processes in public sector organisations should be given to reinforce organisational governance systems and controls, and thus help ensure sustainable behaviour in practice.

Employee socialisation processes are important for the development of sustainable practices both within and beyond organisational boundaries.

This study considers the interrelatedness of hierarchical and socialising accountability measures and contributes towards the understanding of the relationship between these two accountability forms, contrary to previous understandings that emphasise their contrasting nature and incompatibility.

While the notion of institutional racism typically focuses on racial discrimination in institutions such as governmental organisations, academic institutions and courts of law, there is a need to complement this organisational (meso) focus with the investigation of relevant factors at the societal (macro) and individual (micro) levels. The purpose of this paper is to examine the multilevel factors influencing institutional racism in the film industry.

Drawing on 16 in-depth interviews with individuals working in the film industry, this paper develops a conceptual perspective of multilevel racism.

The findings highlight how power structures, network-based recruitment practices, as well as formal and informal learning lead to and sustain racism in the film industry. However, agency on an individual level is observed as a way to break those patterns.

The findings highlight how individual agency pushes for more equality and diversity in the film industry, despite the barriers encountered on macro- and meso-levels. In addition, the important role of informal and formal learning through observation is stressed as a means to sustain the discriminatory practices in this industry.

The purpose of this paper is to reacquaint us with Chester Barnard's seminal treatise on status systems in organizations – the conceptualization that he labeled as a “missing scroll” of The Functions of the Executive.

The paper analyzes this “missing scroll” to draw the parallels and distinctions between Barnard's and the contemporary views of status systems in organization.

The paper outlines how this forgotten piece can inform and enrich the current understanding of the role of status in organization theory.

This paper draws practical parallels and distinctions between Barnard's and the contemporary views of status systems in organization and management literature.

This paper corrects the omission from The Functions of the Executive showing that Barnard was the first to recognize status systems as systematic in organizations.

During the 60's and 70's the Business Logistics—or, as it is now often referred to in Scandinavia, the Materials Administration—philosophy has become a well established and accepted management philosophy, based on a systems theory approach and emphasising a total materials flow concept. In literature as well as in practice however one encounters some major conceptual problems. One of the most significant areas in this context concerns the organisational aspects of the concept. Here proposals and assertions have covered a wide spectrum. Hence it has often been claimed that a logistics manager in a line position, based upon an organisational design involving a logistics department, is a requirement for the realisation of the philosophy. Just as firm, however, is the claim that a total approach to logistics only can be achieved within a matrix organisation framework. However, applications of the above‐mentioned organisational strategies often have negative logistics consequences. For example it is easy to find organisations where the introduction of a “logistics manager” concept has resulted in conflicts hindering the possibilities for a realisation of the logistics potentials for many years ahead.

Within hierarchical relationships, subordinates are expected to obey the existing order and to function well. Their deviance or organisational misbehaviour is usually regarded negatively and as a threat to the system. However, there seems to be a paradox: Subordinates' deviance and (occasional) misbehaviour does not threaten organisational hierarchy but often re-establishes or even strengthens hierarchical order even though it challenges it. In itself, this phenomenon is quite self-evident. What is less clear is when exactly subordinates' deviance might contribute to the (further) stabilisation, continuation and persistence of the hierarchical social order and when it might be indeed system threatening. For interrogating the specific conditions and consequences of subordinates' deviance within organisational settings, the concept of crossing of boundaries will be introduced and differentiated into weak, medium and strong crossings. The concept will then be applied to subordinates' deviance in the realms of social action, interests, identity and norms and values.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the aspects of being a physician that such medical professionals mention in dialogue groups when given the opportunity to choose their own topics of discussion.

Over a period of two years, 60 physicians participated in eight dialogue groups at one of the main hospitals in Stockholm, Sweden. Five focus group interviews were performed after the final dialogue group session.

Qualitative content analysis showed that three themes dominated in the physicians' perceptions of their role: hierarchy and subgroups; understanding of learning and knowledge; clinical work. Very little time in the dialogue groups was spent discussing the third theme, i.e. problems or issues related to patients or their families. The hierarchy among doctors seemed to influence many aspects of the role of these individuals, their healthcare organisation and their work environment. The methodology in the dialogue groups challenged the prevailing hierarchical structures and seemed to improve the relations between different groups of doctors in the hierarchy. For some of the physicians, this also resulted in a new way of perceiving and acting in their professional role.

The results of this study represent only one hospital.

The findings may help healthcare managers understand physicians' conceptions of their role.

Few intervention studies have considered management programmes directed towards physicians. The present investigation is the first qualitative analysis of the use of dialogue groups within a healthcare setting.

This paper aims to uncover how employees make sense of the implementation of holacracy in their organization.

Our research is based on a case study of a Swiss SME (of 160 employees) that is about to implement a holacratic mode of governance. Data was collected using questionnaires (completed by 57 employees) and 12 interviews.

At the level of individual, team and organization, driving forces toward implementing holacracy are stronger than restraining forces.

Implementing holacracy requires careful planning, detailed communications, strong support and training of employees by managers to ensure that they are less fearful of holacracy’s structures and more positive and understanding of its benefits.

This study contributes to a better understanding of holacracy and employees’ sensemaking of the added value of this unconventional structure.

Is labour's decline permanent, or is it merely a temporary weakening, as Beverley Silver suggests in her recent book, as the labour movement is unmade and remade in different locations and at different times? The article aims to examine this question in South Africa, one of the newly industrialised countries of the 1960s and 1970s, now largely bypassed by new manufacturing investment destined for countries such as India and China.

The paper concentrates, through six case studies, on the growing non‐core and peripheral zones of work and examines the impact of the restructuring on labour.

The evidence presented is ambiguous. While there have been significant innovative union organising experiments, it may be that the structural weakening of labour has been too great and that the new sources of power are too limited, to permit effective reorientation.

It is concluded that significant progress will only be made if there is a concerted effort to commit resources and above all to develop new associational strategies that recognise the potential for symbolic power as an alternative to the erosion of structural power of workers and the unions that represent them. Unless such a shift is made the crisis of labour movements internationally may be better understood as a permanent crisis than the temporary one Silver suggests.

The paper identities the potential for new strategies to develop and sustain associational and symbolic power that might compensate for weakened structural power and facilitate a remaking of the labour movement under new conditions.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the formal and informal governance mechanisms of state-owned enterprises operating in a post-transitional economy of Poland.

The study combines legal analysis of Polish regulations in force, review of literature on the Poland’s institutional legacy, and a statistical analysis, based on a data set of 204 management board members, 180 external supervisory board members, and 114 state officials supervising Polish SOEs in 2011.

Legally designed relationships among the management board, supervisory board, and the state treasury, represented by the minister and ministry officials, constitute the key formal governance mechanisms in Polish SOEs. They are, however, complemented by relationships between SOEs and their stakeholders and distorted by other informal phenomena, including informal noninstitutional behavior, mechanisms grounded in cognitive and normative institutions, and perception of the relationship structure by the actors themselves. As a result, key corporate governance actors differ in their perception of governance influences upon SOEs.

This study contributes to policymaking by helping authorities gain a better understanding of the governance challenges in SOEs.

This paper is one of the first and few empirical studies investigating the issue of formal and informal governance mechanisms in SOEs in post-transitional economies of CEE.