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The purpose of this paper is to examine the process of transformational organizational change that occurred over time in a small manufacturing firm using the conceptual framework of organizational change and archetypes.

This longitudinal study – which is based on six cycles of interviews with all members of the firm over a two‐year period – examined how the change attempt was perceived by the strategic leadership, middle‐level managers, and lower‐level employees.

The findings suggest that the pace of archetypal change is influenced by organization members' experience with, and capacity to, assimilate the change; that, sequentially, new structures and systems are implemented prior to new interpretive schemes; and that unresolved excursions are non‐linear. These findings question the conventional wisdom about the importance of leadership in sustaining organizational transformation. Most notably, it was found that most of the archetypal change occurred after the initiating change agent (a new CEO) had left the firm and been replaced by the previous CEO who did not support the proposed changes.

The paper offers the first longitudinal study to examine the issue of substitutes for strategic leadership. In addition to two new substitutes that should be considered at this level of analysis – information systems and interpretive schemes – the data also point to the impact of collective action by mid‐level supervisors and employees.

This study aims to examine how transformational leadership impacts learning flows that are critical for enhancing the learning capabilities of organizations.

Data were collected from 502 employees of business organizations located in India. A cross-sectional design was adopted, and partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used for data analysis.

Transformational leadership behavior positively influences feed-forward learning flows in organizations and strengthens their learning stock. Learning stock held by the individuals emerged as a predictor of feed-forward learning flows in organizations and a partial mediator of the relationship between transformational leadership and feed-forward learning flows. The study’s findings suggest transformational leadership encourages feed-forward learning flows through the development of individual learning stock.

This study empirically supports the theoretical claim of transformational leadership behaviors as an important antecedent to fostering organizational learning.

The debate on public sector reform continues to be focused on policy, restructuring and targets rather than on the practical aspects of a new public framework that will support providers to implement change and transform public services. The challenge for government, as it has been since 1997, is how to create the conditions for innovation and service transformation. It is no longer enough to develop business models that will organise services more efficiently; public sector reform also requires an energising of people and democratic relationships. A reliance in government on centralised change levers and a faith in systems rather than people has led to modernisation becoming a technical process, detached from regional and local energies. The divide between national and local stakeholders has resulted in good policies being driven by a lack of concern for relationships across the public system, particularly between central and local players. It is government that sets the scene for reform through its policy, funding and performance management, yet too often Whitehall and politicians take themselves ‘out‐of‐the‐frame’ when conducting analysis. This article argues that modernisation levers are contested by many stakeholders, that government and its administration are critical stakeholders and that it is time to reconnect the local with the national in transformation.

Purpose – In this chapter we highlight the potential of critical and poststructural paradigms and associated qualitative research approaches for future research in strategy. In addition, we aim to contribute to the proliferation of applications of qualitative methodologies as well as to facilitate the diversity of qualitative inquiry approaches in the strategy field.

Methodology/Approach – Building on insights from standpoint theory, we discuss the importance and necessity of cultivating critical and poststructural paradigms in strategy. Furthermore, we review three related qualitative inquiry approaches (i.e., discourse analysis, deconstruction, and genealogy) and develop suggestions for their utilization in future strategy research on emerging market economies.

Findings – We highlight key concepts of critical and poststructural paradigms as well as of the selected approaches and provide a variety of examples relevant to strategy research to illustrate potential applications and analytic considerations.

Originality/Value of chapter – Critical and poststructural paradigms and related research methodologies are underutilized in strategy research; however, they are important contributions to paradigmatic and methodological diversity in the field generally and necessary approaches for developing our understanding of strategy phenomena in the context of emerging market economies specifically.

This paper aims to refine cross-organizational knowledge creation theory by exploring the knowledge conversion process of University-Industry (U-I) collaboration in Chinese aerospace industry. An ancient Chinese philosophy named I-Ching is also introduced to illustrate dynamics of knowledge creation to achieve enlightenment.

To describe the knowledge conversion tendency, a theoretical framework is developed by reference to Boisot’s (1995) Information Space. The application of the framework is described in the in-depth case study of micro-electrode manufacturing for aerospace vehicles. The dynamics of each stage in knowledge conversion is investigated with the implications from I-Ching.

Analysis of the results suggests that seven certain stages can be especially indicative of cross-organizational knowledge creation, namely: demand codification; knowledge gain; knowledge digestion; knowledge sharing; knowledge propagation; knowledge spillover and knowledge degeneration. A knowledge gain, digestion, sharing and propagation (GDSP) knowledge creation theory is developed accordingly. The form of knowledge in different stages is variable, the change among various forms is effectively explained by I-Ching.

There is clearly a strong requirement to test the framework further with other cases, such as sampling cases from different industries and of different firm scales. Besides, the knowledge creation processes on the organizational level and the individual level are quite different, which call for further study.

First, the theory helps firms to get a better understanding of the nature of U-I collaboration, that is to say, knowledge creation. That will, in turn, power the firm to take the initiative to participate in knowledge creation activities. Second, the illustration through I-Ching provides reasonable and easily understandable interpretations for Chinese corporate managers and executives. Traditional Chinese culture will be beneficial to make U-I collaborations more efficient and effective in China.

A new “GDSP knowledge creation theory” which enriches and advances the typical socialization, externalization, combination and internalization (SECI) knowledge creation theory in some aspects is proposed. The theory is deeply grounded in Chinese culture. Furthermore, the conversion of different knowledge forms in the theory is considered from a totally new perspective of ancient Chinese philosophy: I-Ching.

This paper aims to explore the pertinent issues, barriers and pitfalls of intergenerational communication in business families during their leadership succession period.

Building on relational leadership theory, the paper makes use of an action research approach using a qualitative single case study to investigate communication barriers and pitfalls in business transition.

Through action research, interventions were taken in the underlying case, which increased the consciousness, as well as the personal and social competencies of the business family. Thus, business families stuck in ambivalent entanglement understand their underlying motives and needs within the change process, get into closer contact with their emotional barriers and communication hindrances, which is a prerequisite for any change, and break the succession iceberg phenomenon.

Future research should undertake multiple case studies to validate and/or modify the qualitative methods used in this action research to increase the validity and generalizability of the findings.

Given the large number of business families in transition, our study shows the beneficial effects action research might have on business families’ communication behavior along a change process. The findings might help other business families to understand the value of action research for such underlying challenges and decrease communication barriers.

This is one of the few studies to have addressed intergenerational communication of business families using an action research approach.

With strategy-as-practice theory the authors explore successful business-owning families hand-over of roles to the next generation. The authors argue for the usefulness of strategy-as-practice theory in exploring the complexity and plurality of best practices in intergenerational hand-over. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A cross-cultural in-depth case study with best practice cases from China, Germany, Sweden, England, Tanzania, Israel and the USA, based on in-depth interviews of family members and non-family employees.

The authors identified three different succession patterns: a “monolithic practice,” a distributed leadership hand-over, and active ownership with a non-family managing director/CEO. Two other types of hand-over practices were categorized as incubator patterns that formed a part of, or replaced, what we traditionally see as a hand-over of roles. Families would switch between these practices.

Surprisingly, a monolithic succession practice (a one-company-one-leadership role) was rarely used. Quantitative and qualitative research should consider, as should advisors to family owners and family businesses, the plurality of succession practices. Education should explore a variation of succession and how the dynamic of gender influences the process.

Giving practitioners, such as research and practitioner, an overview of strategic options so as to explore these in a client or research case.

Adding the notions that the family is an incubator for new entrepreneurship makes it possible to show how not only sector or public policy generate new ventures. That family as source of entrepreneurship has been well established in the field but it mainstream policy thinking the family is not seen as such a source.

The paper offers an integrative model of the complexity of hand-over practices of ownership and leadership roles. It shows how these practices are fundamental for understanding how a family’s ownership and their leadership of businesses and new entrepreneurship develops.

This paper aims to develop a framework for object trust evaluation and related object trust principles to facilitate knowledge management in a virtual organization. It proposes systematic methods to quantify the trust of an object and defines the concept of object trust management. The study aims to expand the domain of subject trust to object trust evaluation in terms of whether an object is correct and accurate in expressing a topic or issue and whether the object is secure and safe to execute (in the case of an executable program). By providing theoretical and empirical insights about object trust composition and combination, this research facilitates better knowledge identification, creation, evaluation, and distribution.

This paper presents two object trust principles – trust composition and trust combination. These principles provide formal methodologies and guidelines to assess whether an object has the required level of quality and security features (hence it is trustworthy). The paper uses a component‐based approach to evaluate the quality and security of an object. Formal approaches and algorithms have been developed to assess the trustworthiness of an object in different cases.

The paper provides qualitative and quantitative analysis about how object trust can be composed and combined. Novel mechanisms have been developed to help users evaluate the quality and security features of available objects.

This effort fulfills an identified need to address the challenging issue of evaluating the trustworthiness of an object (e.g. a software program, a file, or other type of knowledge element) in a loosely‐coupled system such as a virtual organization. It is the first of its kind to formally define object trust management and study object trust evaluation.

Using Arroyo’s (2012) institutional entrepreneurship (IE) framework, the purpose of this paper is to enhance our understanding of how top managers interpret change in the macro-political and economic environment and integrate it into their performance management systems (PMSs).

The paper combines multiple data sources to study PMS change in the big four Swedish banks over the deregulations’ first quarter of a century.

The findings support previous research by identifying IE as a collective phenomenon. Moreover, it points to the importance of distinguishing between different types of field-level events, when investigating change initiated by such events. Finally, the findings also indicate that change at different levels of analysis have separate timings, advising future research on change to pay closer attention to the aspect of time.

The paper tests Arroyo’s (2012) multi-level framework in an accounting setting and specifically focuses on top managers’ interpretation and integration of field-level events. It does so in the specific context of banks and thereby contributes to our understanding of how different field-level events affect banks’ PMS. In the post-financial crisis era, organizational and accounting scholars should engage time and effort to better understand this complex industry, not least to advice policymakers and regulators in the ongoing re-regulation of the financial markets.

Inspired by organizational studies of IE, this paper uses a longer time-frame and includes more organizations, than conventional management accounting case studies. By studying a field, rather than a single organization, the paper opens up to a “wider perspective” on PMS change.