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Despite widespread frustration with meetings in organizations, they receive very little attention from academics. The purpose of this paper is to shed conceptual light on meetings and hence render them amenable to research and development.

From interviews with managers and employees, six common assumptions about meetings were extracted, termed a folk theory of meetings, which most office workers seem to carry in the back of their minds.

This folk theory holds meetings to be places for excessive talk, whether by a domineering leader or highly vocal participants, the purpose of which is to walk through the items on the agenda and dispose of each. This bleak and conservative concept of a meeting impedes intellectual as well as practical progress.

An alternative theory of meetings is proposed, one based on the group facilitation approach to social order in meetings. On this view, a facilitator can change meetings by controlling their form and process, providing direction, stimulating engagement and ensuring that the meeting creates value for its external stakeholders and meaning for its participants. If adopted in management training, this view of meetings – and the widely available facilitation tools that go with it – may render meetings at work the subject of conscious organizational development.

The proposed “folk theory of meetings” is novel, as is the contrast provided with the facilitation approach to meetings. Together, they constitute a reconceptualization that can be used to move meetings out of the organizational doldrums.

The purpose of this paper is to call attention to the fact that conferences for professionals rely on massive one‐way communication and hence produce little learning for delegates – and to introduce an alternative, the “learning conference”, that involves delegates in fun and productive learning processes.

A typical full‐day conference is analyzed. It has six hours of podium talk and twenty‐five minutes for delegates to become involved. What model of learning can possibly lie behind this? The transfer model, which assumes learners to be empty vessels. An alternative view is that conference delegates are active professionals in search of inspiration, and they also want to share knowledge with their peers at the conference. A theory of the conference as a forum for mutual inspiration and human co‐flourishing is proposed, as are four design principles for a learning conference: presentations must provide concise input; the conference host must introduce processes that help delegates; interpret the input in the light of their ongoing concerns; talk about their current projects; and share knowledge with the other delegates.

Six learning processes for use during conferences are described: individual reflection; the buzz dyad; “You have won two consultants, free of charge”; facilitated group work; the knowledge exchange; and lunch with gaffer tape.

This paper introduces learning theory and learning techniques into an educational context which has resisted innovation, the professional conference. It offers alternatives to wall‐to‐wall lecturing: some simple processes for involving delegates so as to help them derive inspiration from the material presented and from each other.

This paper aims to discuss the opinions of current Shariah scholars on the concept of debt money in the present-day fiat money system.

Research design of this paper is a quantitative investigation of Shariah experts by distributing a questionnaire to them. As majority of Shariah scholars are also Shariah advisory of the current banking system, it is important to find out their level of knowledge on the issue of debt money created by the commercial banking system through the fractional-reserve banking (FRB) system.

Based on this investigation, most Shariah scholars are unaware of and confused about the mechanics underpinning the creation of money, especially with respect to FRB as it is practiced by the conventional and Islamic banking systems.

Based on this research, it is recommended that these scholars should improve their understanding of the operation of the fiat money system and its consequences. It is recommended that, in future, Shariah scholars should think “outside of the box” by creating Islamic financial instruments that do not resemble those of the conventional system.

The purpose of this study is shed light on the underlying forces behind entrepreneurship within a regional innovation system (RIS) in a remote rural region. The authors examine the following questions: Which are the main underlying forces behind the entrepreneurial process in a rural RIS characterized by traditionally low-tech, small-scale businesses? How can the development of a low-tech regional innovation system be conceptualized?

The design of the study is based on entrepreneurship theory. Data analysis followed practices used in phenomenography, a research approach used to analyse and identify commonalities and variations in populations' perceptions of a certain phenomenon. Data are composed using semi-structured interviews and a database composed of company information of all firms in the population.

A proactive mobilization of regional stakeholders and resources can be an important driving force behind the entrepreneurial process and generation of a rural RIS. Innovation can be generated within low-tech industries turning the rural context into an asset. An RIS in a remote rural context can be initiated and orchestrated by regional authorities, but knowledge brokering and orchestration can also be managed by networks of small-scale businesses brought together by mutual benefit and common interests.

Regional innovation systems theory is most often used to study high-tech industries. But by combining regional innovation systems with rural entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship context theory is a fruitful avenue to understand the role of rural entrepreneurship in regional development, even in remote and peripheral regions. Innovation does not need to entail high-tech international environments; it can appear as the result of efforts in low-tech industries in rural and remote environments. The authors’ findings need to be scrutinized; therefore, the authors call for more research on regional innovation systems in rural environments.

It is possible for regional authorities to orchestrate a development process through the actions of a strong regional agent but also by supporting the creation of networks of small businesses that are built on trust and common interests.

This study contributes to the literature with a new perspective to the study of entrepreneurship and of regional innovation systems. Entrepreneurship research with focus on rural contexts most often highlight limits to entrepreneurship and see entrepreneurship as “just running a business”. A perspective that starts from innovation and innovative behaviour, despite the rural context and embedded resources, helps to generate new knowledge that can enrich the understanding of entrepreneurship and also be the foundation for more precise business development policies in rural settings.

This paper seeks to explore the challenges and transformations in healthcare resulting from building information infrastructures for patient‐centred care.

Four types of information infrastructures are analysed with special attention given to the efforts and controversies related to their mobilization and to their consequences for patient‐centred care. Data are gathered through a literature review and by empirical research.

The development of information infrastructures for patient‐centred care requires mobilization of technical, legal, clinical and ethical standards as well as a change in organizational and professional boundaries. Furthermore, the mobilization of information infrastructures entails unexpected transformation in the nature of patients, professionals, health records and consultations.

Patient‐centred information infrastructures call for institutional innovation and decision making regarding basic structures and relationships in healthcare. At the same time, the ambitions of patient‐centred care should be broad enough to learn from the consequences of emerging infrastructures for the patient and professional identities and for the quality of care.

The paper contributes to the understanding of healthcare governance by conceptualizing and empirically exploring the role of information infrastructure as a formative part of patient‐centred care.