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Drawing on the recent work of Sennett and others who considered the position of older workers in dynamic economies subject to rapid change, this paper aims to examine the perceived fit between employees of different ages and their employing organizations in four Australian workplaces.

Analysis of qualitative data, collected among workers and managers in four Australian organizations, was performed.

Results suggests that potentiality tended to be prized as an asset over corporate memory. While managers were frequently paternalistic towards their older employees, ageing human capital was often devalued as managers tried to balance operational budgets and organizations sought to remain responsive to changing market demands.

The paper discusses the implications for the prolongation of working lives.

In this chapter, the authors undertake a systematic review of the literature to identify research exploring the use of new information and communication technologies (ICT). New ICT include the use of the Internet, mobile communications, and social technologies. The authors find that while interest in the area is increasing, especially among marketing and information systems scholars, there seems to be far less research interest among international business (IB) and strategy scholars. This chapter provides a summary of the research that has been done and discusses some potential future research areas that IB and strategy researchers might wish to pursue. Among these projects are investigating the use of ICT as a tool to aid the internationalization process, improve location choice and entry mode decisions, and identify and create a sustainable competitive advantage. The use of ICT in business is pervasive; As research scholars, we need to build these technologies into our theories and research to help managers determine what works and where certain technologies can help create better performing firms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenges that small firms in the UK clothing manufacturing sector encounter. It has been suggested that small manufacturers' main problems are based on an inadequate information‐sharing structure. This research will explore the strategic significance of information to effective supply chain decisions in small garment‐manufacturing firms.

The paper is designed to employ Porter's five forces to explain the key factors influencing competition in the UK garment manufacturing industry and the relationship of information technology as a facilitator of shared information. In‐depth interviews and observations are conducted in a multiple case approach.

Empirical evidence shows that the slow and inefficient reaction of small garment manufacturers to competitive pressures is associated with inaccurate and untimely information sharing among trading partners.

The methodological approach justified the particularity, the specificity, and the boundedness required in case studies and demonstrates the depth of thoroughness and authentic explanations. It might, however, be useful to obtain a broader and wider sampling frame in any future research.

A successful supply chain will have implications for the upstream and downstream managers, who need to integrate their supply chains as part of a team that creates and adds value to the garments that end up in the hands of the consumers.

This paper has been able to stimulate concerns and interests in owner/managers of small garment manufacturers with special reference to their information needs. The evidence obtained demonstrated the overriding need for structured information strategies that will encourage the efficient flow of accurate and timely information across their supply chains.

From earliest times the land and all it produced to feed and sustain those who dwelt on it was mankind's greatest asset. From the Biblical “land of milk and honey”, down through history to the “country of farmers” visualised by the American colonists when they severed the links with the mother country, those who had all their needs met by the land were blessed — they still are! The inevitable change brought about by the fast‐growing populations caused them to turn to industry; Britain introduced the “machine age” to the world; the USA the concept of mass production — and the troubles and problems of man increased to the present chaos of to‐day. There remained areas which depended on an agri‐economy — the granary countries, as the vast open spaces of pre‐War Russia; now the great plains of North America, to supply grain for the bread of the peoples of the dense industrial conurbations, which no longer produced anything like enough to feed themselves.

We argue that in order to address the contemporary challenges that organizations and societies are facing, the field of organization development (OD) requires frameworks and skills to focus on the eco-system as the level of analysis. In a world that has become economically, socially, and technologically highly connected, approaches that foster the optimization of specific actors in the eco-system, such as individual corporations, result in sub-optimization of the sustainability of the natural and social system because there is insufficient offset to the ego-centric purposes of the focal organization. We discuss the need for OD to broaden focus to deal with technological advances that enable new ways of organizing at the eco-system level, and to deal with the challenges to sustainable development. Case examples from healthcare and the agri-foods industry illustrate the kinds of development approaches that are required for the development of healthy eco-systems. We do not suggest fundamental changes in the identity of the field of organizational development. In fact, we demonstrate the need to dig deeply into the open systems and socio-technical roots of the field, and to translate the traditional values and approaches of OD to continue to be relevant in today’s dynamic interdependent world.

Companies are increasingly adopting technologies that can promote integration between functions and tasks. The implementation of these technologies has largely concerned the tasks of installation and the technical integration of the system. However, insufficient attention appears to have been directed towards organizational and managerial integration issues. Argues, based on empirical data from 15 UK engineering companies, that effective implementation of integrating technology requires a better understanding of issues concerning the integration of functions/tasks involved. Focuses on the issues and problems concerning managers involved with improving engineering/production integration, and proposes alternative organizational and technical mechanisms for implementing such integration. Reviews these mechanisms by reference to the engineering case companies.

Research has shown that companies focus their internal processes when they adopt enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. However, the ERP systems need to expand their functionality to include customers and suppliers (with e-commerce functionality) to reach their full potential. The purpose of this paper is to consider business relationships as a resource but also a limitation when companies strive to get an extended ERP system.

The paper presents an illustrative case study of an industrial company's process of developing an extended ERP and how the company's portfolio of business relationships has affected the solution. The analysis is supported by the markets-as-networks theory.

The process of developing an extended ERP system needs to incorporate the company's business partners (customers and suppliers). It is a simultaneously bottom-up and top-down process given that the operative frontline staff hold the knowledge about the company's business relationships while the corporate management has the means of extending the ERP system functionality and align it with the focal company's strategy.

Companies need to consider the fact that the technological and financial status of their customers and suppliers differ. Thus, an effective and flexible extended ERP system needs to include both a high-end and low-end solution as well as understand that a full interorganizational integration might not be realistic.

The paper puts forth business relationship portfolios as an important factor to consider when extending the ERP system functionality in the supply chain and toward customers.

January 2016 saw the final release of Numinous Games’ crowdfunded linear adventure game That Dragon, Cancer. An impactful independent title which subverts many of gaming’s traditional and valued norms. In less than two hours of abstracted adventure, players are transported through a series of vignettes documenting one family’s struggle with cancer, and the battle faced by their terminally ill child, Joel. Digital memorialisation has been documented by scholars since the late 1990s. This has come in the form of sites specifically created for memorialisation, social networking sites repurposed by their users for memorialisation (MySpace and more recently Facebook), and online virtual worlds (Second Life and World of Warcraft). However, within That Dragon, Cancer the productive nature of grief has created and envisioned a gaming experience purpose-built for memorialisation. This chapter begins by documenting memorialisation within virtual environments. From here, the author turns to consider the way in which That Dragon, Cancer provides a purpose-built space for grief, memorialisation and understanding, focussing on key stylistic and mechanic-based decisions undertaken in the games design. Finally, the author considers the way in which That Dragon, Cancer, through the use of crowdfunding in late 2014, transformed from a project memorialising one child to the memorialisation of many across the globe.