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Dialogue is emerging as a means of communicating at a subtle level, which points the way management may need to develop in order to deal with an increasingly complex and unpredictable world. Suggests that dialogue should be the basis of strategic planning. As senior managers bring the spirit of dialogue into the workplace, there will be extraordinary changes in the nature of organizations.

This paper aims to explore leadership from a cognitive perspective as a meaning‐making activity. Proposes that a primary role of leadership is to bring meaning to working life, especially in times of change.

Draws on experience of, and observation from, working with management and leadership groups from major organizations across all sectors. Starts with the idea that life is a continuous process of making sense of the world by integrating hierarchical cognitive structures. Suggests that the work of leadership is to orchestrate such meaning‐making at the organizational level, especially in times of rapid change. Contends that having a clear purpose makes work intrinsically rewarding and meaningful, and enables people to relate in collaborative structures such as teams; leadership enables people to rise to challenges, releasing energy that otherwise is expended on resistance to change; and leadership can be understood as a meaning‐making activity that ensures organizational survival and longevity.

Argues that the purpose of an enterprise, properly clarified, creates a field of meaning in which its stakeholders join. Within the meaning field, vision and values are formed that enable people to align with the common cause. Meaningful work allows people to self‐organize, releasing energy to achieve the aim – hence leadership is effective.

Demonstrates that the role of leadership is to make work meaningful, and to help people to rise to evident challenges so that they are fulfilled. This reduces the need for supervision, and helps with recruitment, staff retention and business results.

Suggests that, as a result of meaning‐making leadership, people's work becomes meaningful to them and they enjoy high levels of satisfaction. Their organizations can more easily recruit and retain staff.

In this article the authors discuss how technological advances may be frustrated by the changing values of different organisational groups, and examine the impact of changing social values on an attempt to increase shift working. In particular, they consider the viewpoint of managers and manual shift workers. They conclude that any increase in shift working might, in the long run, be constrained by these changing social values.

The purpose of this paper is to describe strategy workshops organized for delivery company TNT Express Services by the Centre for Management Creativity at High Trenhouse Management Centre, Malham Moor, UK.

Details the reasons for the workshops, the form they took and the benefits they brought for both the company and individual employees.

Reveals that output from the workshops has contributed to shaping the future strategy of the organization.

Highlights the benefits, for groups of people who wish to engage in strategic thinking, of getting well away from the distractions of day‐to‐day working life.

Reveals how organizations can clarify their vision and values and build strategies for achieving their goals.

Less than 50 per cent of global Chief Ecology Officers believe their enterprises are adequately prepared to handle a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environment. The purpose of this paper is to examine how leaders encourage ideas that turn into profitable and sustainable innovations in a VUCA world, especially in what the author calls “Brain Based Enterprises” (BBEs).

Through case studies, focused interviews.

BBEs need more leadership than management and they use more collaborative approaches to business, working with colleagues, customers, even competitors in some areas to produce ingenious ideas for a sustainable world.

The research from which this paper is written has matured for nearly 20 years, having written my first book on the topic in 1996. This represents tens of thousands of hours of diverse experience, working as a business practitioner across a wide range of sectors. The author has accelerated my thinking via the work as an MBA academic and mental adventurer, working on the flagship creativity, innovation and change programme. During that time, the business environment we live and work in has become more VUCA. This demands that individuals and enterprises become more ingenious to ride the turbulence that this produces, in order to be resilient and antifragile when challenged.

Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Organizations are often reluctant to relinquish control of core services but the trend in appointing outside contractors to handle non‐core activities should and can work well if arrangements are handled carefully.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the work of Carnegie and Walker and report the results of Part 2 of their study on household accounting in Australia during the period from the 1820s to the 1960s.

The study adopts a microhistorical approach involving a detailed examination of actual accounting practices in the Australian home based on 18 sets of surviving household records identified as exemplars and supplemented by other sources which permit their contextualisation and interpretation.

The findings point to considerable variety in the accounting practices pursued by individuals and families. Household accounting in Australia was undertaken by both women and men of the middle and landed classes whose surviving household accounts were generally found to comprise one element of diverse and comprehensive personal record keeping systems. The findings indicate points of convergence and divergence in relation to the contemporary prescriptive literature and practice.

The paper reflects on the implications of the findings for the notion of the household as a unit of consumption as opposed to production, gender differences in accounting practice and financial responsibility, the relationship between changes in the life course and the commencement and cessation of household accounting, and the relationship between domestic accounting practice and social class.

This paper aims to provide a critical assessment of the Internet of things (IoT) and the social and policy issues raised by its development. While the Internet will continue to become ever more central to everyday life and work, there is a new but complementary vision for an IoT, which will connect billions of objects – “things” like sensors, monitors, and radio-frequency identification devices – to the Internet at a scale that far outstrips use of the Internet as we know it, and will have enormous social and economic implications.

It is based on a review of literature and emerging developments, including synthesis of a workshop and discussions within a special interest group on the IoT.

Nations can harvest the potential of this wave of innovation not only for manufacturing but also for everyday life and work and the development of new information and services that will change the way we do things in many walks of life. However, its success is not inevitable. Technical visions will not lead inexorably to successful public and private infrastructures that support the vitality of an IoT and the quality of everyday life and work. In fact, the IoT could undermine such core values as privacy, equality, trust and individual choice if not designed, implemented and governed in appropriate ways.

There is a need for more multi-disciplinary research on the IoT.

Policymakers and opinion formers need to understand the IoT and its implications.

If the right policies and business models are developed, the IoT will stimulate major social, economic and service innovations in the next years and decades.

This paper pulls together discussions and literature from a social science perspective, as one means to enable more multidisciplinary studies of emerging developments.

The management of children′s literature is a search for value and suitability. Effective policies in library and educational work are based firmly on knowledge of materials, and on the bibliographical and critical frame within which the materials appear and might best be selected. Boundaries, like those between quality and popular books, and between children′s and adult materials, present important challenges for selection, and implicit in this process are professional acumen and judgement. Yet also there are attitudes and systems of values, which can powerfully influence selection on grounds of morality and good taste. To guard against undue subjectivity, the knowledge frame should acknowledge the relevance of social and experiential context for all reading materials, how readers think as well as how they read, and what explicit and implicit agendas the authors have. The good professional takes all these factors on board.

Planned episodic change programs, rigid processes and traditional structures, optimized for efficiency rather than agility, are no longer appropriate in a context where competitive advantage is fueled by high-speed innovation, supported by a more entrepreneurial mindset. The purpose of this paper is to offer a review of relevant research to provide an informed case for continuous strategic transformation facilitated by enhanced organizational agility. The concept of agility is explored, defined and a framework for categorizing agility-enhancing capabilities is presented. Specific aspects of this agility framework are examined to better understand how these interrelated competencies contribute to overall corporate performance in this fast-paced world.

A range of published empirical and practitioner research articles were reviewed to study the concepts of organizational agility and transformation as critical factors contributing to sustained competitive advantage, organizational performance and survival in the increasingly competitive global context. This literature review explores how organizations are overcoming the challenges imposed by their traditional structures, cultures and leadership models and identifies dynamic competencies to be developed to achieve a greater level of corporate agility.

Increased organizational agility increases the ability to respond proactively to unexpected environmental changes. The commitment to continuous transformation and agile strategies implies changes at all levels of the organization from its structure, through its leadership and decision-making dynamics, down to the skills and interpersonal relationships of the individuals implementing the agile mission.

There is a gap in the literature with respect to agility, namely that most research focuses on the characteristics of agile organizations, with little attention given to how to develop agile capabilities and embed the commitment to continuous change deep into the corporate DNA, beyond the process level, into the psyche of the people driving the organization.

Managers should consider agility as an overarching principle guiding strategic and operational activities. Fostering agility-enhancing capabilities will be paramount in ensuring the successful integration of agility as a performance enhancing paradigm.

For small- and medium-sized companies with limited resources, this reality makes staying relevant an uphill battle but also opens windows of opportunity. The challenge of the next century for large organizations will be to rekindle their innovative agile beginnings and for start-ups to continue to foster their dynamic capabilities as they grow.

The paper provides practical and empirical evidence of the importance of enterprise agility and specific dynamic capabilities on firm performance.