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Through the lens of neo-institutionalism, this study suggests an up-to-date check of non-systemic quality management (QM) practices, based on the example of Swiss cantonal public administrations. Related findings shall allow public managers to choose concrete tools for quality improvement, which are less resource intensive than quality management systems (QMS).

A framework of quality management tools (QMTs) is developed based on existing literature, tested and adapted through four case studies and applied to a broader variety of Swiss public administrations based on a survey. It is detected to what extent QMTs are used, since when and with what intensity by paying attention to the respective importance of new public management (NPM) and network governance (NG)-shaped QMTs.

All examined offices use an important number of QMTs. Classical isomorphism only takes place on a superficial level. Findings are in line with more recent neo-institutional views, involving reflective attitudes of public administrations, which lead to a selective choice of QMTs. Non-systemic QM consists of NPM- and NG-shaped tools, although the latter are used less often in practice.

The obtained results need further confirmation based on a quantitively broader sample.

It is suggested to practitioners to choose individual QMTs with a focus on performance impact, opting to use a smaller number of QMTs in a systematic way rather than a bigger number with only half-hearted application.

This article sheds light on the often invisible non-systemic QM in public administration.

Following the ‘Sarkozy’ era (2007–2012), France has engaged in ‘zero-tolerance’ policies, which have brought an increasing number of people into the criminal justice system (CJS). In an already extremely impoverished CJS, these policies have led to serious financial problems and have made an already existing prison overcrowding problem worse. Consequently, the CJS has gradually opted for a McDonald (Ritzer, 2019; Robinson, 2019) type of offender processing, whether in prosecutor-led procedures (representing roughly half of all penal procedures: Ministry of Justice, 2019) or in the sentencing phase (Danet, 2013). A similar trend has been found in probation and in prisoner release (in French: ‘sentences’ management).

The prison and probation services, which merged in 1999, have since then been in a position to benefit from the 1958 French Republic Constitution, which places the executive in a dominant position and notably allows it to draft the bills presented to a rather passive legislative power (Rousseau, 2007) and even to enjoy its own set of normative powers (‘autonomous decrees’ – Hamon & Troper, 2019). By way of law reforming (2009, 2014, and 2019 laws), the prison and probation services have thus embraced the McDonaldisation ethos. Their main obsession has been to early release as many prisoners as possible in order to free space and to accommodate more sentenced people. To do so, the prison services have created a series of so-called ‘simplified’ early release procedures, where prisoners are neither prepared for nor supported through release, where they are deprived of agency and where due process and attorney advice are removed. Behind a pretend rehabilitative discourse, the executive is only interested in efficiently flushing people out of prison; not about re-entry efficacy. As Ritzer (2019) points out, McDonaldisation often leads to counter-productive or absurd consequences. In the case of early release, the stubborn reality is that one cannot bypass actually doing the rehabilitative and re-entry work. I shall additionally argue that not everything truly qualifies as an early release measure (Ostermann, 2013). Only measures which respect prisoners’ agency prepare them for their release, which support them once they are in the community, which address their socio-psychological and criminogenic needs, and which are pronounced in the context of due process and defence rights truly qualify as such. As it is, French ‘simplified’ release procedures amount to McRe-entry and mass nothingness.

This paper examines promotional practices Netflix employs via Twitter and its automated recommendation system in order to deepen our understanding of how streaming services contribute to sociotechnical inequities under capitalism.

Tweets from two Netflix Twitter accounts as well as material features of Netflix's recommendation system were qualitatively analyzed using inductive analysis and the constant comparative method in order to explore dimensions of Netflix's promotional practices.

Twitter accounts and the recommendation system profit off people's labor to promote content, and such labor allows Netflix to create and refine classification practices wherein both people and content are categorized in inequitable ways. Labor and classification feed into Netflix's production of culture via appropriation on Twitter and algorithmic decision-making within both the recommendation system and broader AI-driven production practices.

Assemblages that include algorithmic recommendation systems are imbued with structural inequities and therefore unable to be fixed by merely diversifying cultural industries or retooling algorithms on streaming platforms. It is necessary to understand systemic injustices within these systems so that we may imagine and enact just alternatives.

Findings demonstrate that via surveillance tactics that exploit people's labor for promotional gains, enforce normative classification schemes, and culminate in normative cultural productions, Netflix engenders practices that regulate bodies and culture in ways that exemplify interconnections between people, machines, and social institutions. These interconnections further reflect and result in material inequities that crystalize within sociotechnical processes.

Discrimination is a widespread problem in organizations and has been linked to a variety of negative personal and organizational outcomes (e.g., Hughes & Dodge, 1997; Jones et al., 2016). Confronting is one way to assuage these harmful outcomes. However, several factors can influence whether these confrontation behaviors take place. First, for individuals to confront, they must recognize the discrimination, interpret it as an emergency, take responsibility, identify a response, and decide to intervene (Ashburn-Nardo et al., 2008). In addition, factors like identity, type of prejudice, confrontation tone, and relationship to the perpetrator can influence decisions to confront, as well as the outcomes associated with these confrontation behaviors. Overall, this chapter reviews the literature on the antecedents, outcomes, and moderators associated with confrontation. Moreover, this chapter provides recommendations for organizations and future researchers based on the reported findings.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the theoretical concept of socially responsible pedagogy because it applies to teaching information literacy.

At Weber State University, two librarians use a socially responsible pedagogical approach, combining critical information literacy and visual literacy to teach an undergraduate information literacy course.

Initial results suggest that the course design and the authors’ approach to socially responsible pedagogy are largely successful based on students’ application of course material to a signature assignment in the course.

Data are limited because this approach was only used for two semesters. The authors are aware that a socially responsible information literacy classroom needs quality assessment to help make instructional decisions, evaluate teaching strategies and assist with ongoing student learning. Additional semesters of using this instructional approach will allow for reflection and critical inquiry into the theories and teaching strategies that currently inform instruction. Early implications of using this method of instructional design reflect students’ deep understanding of the importance of information literacy because they explore social justice topics.

The practical implications of this research reveal a theoretical framework for teaching critical information literacy, called socially responsible pedagogy. The theory looks at teaching based on the “spirit” of the course, which is the promotion of equality. It also looks at “the art” of designing an information literacy course, incorporating socially responsible pedagogy, culturally responsive teaching and critical information literacy. This study also looks at “the science” of assessment and offers suggestions on how one might go about assessing a socially responsible information literacy class. Moreover, the authors examine how visual literacy helps teach information literacy concepts in the course as students put together a signature assignment that meets both information literacy course objectives and general education outcomes.

This general review of the theoretical concept of socially responsible pedagogy is limited to two semesters of information literacy instruction. In researching these topics, students situate themselves within a diverse worldview and work to promote awareness and advocacy through group presentations.

While librarians are exploring critical librarianship and social justice, many are not using socially responsible pedagogy combined with other social theories and images to help students work through the research process and develop information literacy skills.

The purpose of this paper is to reframe the debate about the tension between management control and employee empowerment by drawing on a theory of paradox. Reframing the problem in this way draws attention to the variety of ways in which organisations can attend to both control and empowerment simultaneously.

The authors undertake a conceptual examination of the relationship between empowerment and control using a paradox theory lens. First, the authors bring together two dimensions of empowerment – structural empowerment and psychological empowerment – and combine them to produce three new empowerment “scenarios”: illusory empowerment, obstructed empowerment and authentic empowerment. For each of these three scenarios, the central tenets of paradox theory are applied in order to explain the nature of the paradoxical tension, anticipated behavioural responses and the resulting challenges for ongoing management control.

The authors find that neither structural nor psychological empowerment alone can account for variation in behavioural responses to management control. The conceptual analysis highlights the interplay of socio-ideological control and systems of accountability in generating psychological empowerment and demonstrates that this does not come at a cost to management control but instead results in a reduction in the scale and scope of ongoing challenges.

This paper contributes a new theoretical perspective on the classic problem of tension between management control and employee empowerment. Rather than positioning control and empowerment either as a managerial choice or dialectic, the authors identify three different ways in which organisations can engage with both paradoxical elements simultaneously.

This study uses a discursive perspective to analyze the way in which top managers legitimize change in official announcements. It focuses on the foundations of legitimacy invoked using both Weber's typology, based on modes of authority, and the conventionalist model, stressing the constitutive frameworks that justify collective action. We use a narrative approach to examine four texts intended for employees in the context of mergers‐acquisitions in the Canadian financial services sector. We look at those announcements as wedding narratives. A framework based on the canonical schema and Greimas's actantial model was applied to the texts. The analysis reveals that these narrations of corporate marriages, while describing the same event, give distinct versions of it. These distinctions bring out differences between firms in terms of the foundations of legitimacy invoked, the contribution of the various actors, and the narrative style favoured.

The study explored the experiences of undergraduate students during a semester-long, leadership development internship course offered at a large research university in the southern United States. The researchers employed qualitative content analysis to examine sixty-five student internship portfolios and identify the leadership capabilities that students applied and/or developed as part of the internship. Students identified self-awareness, growth, project planning, team management, and adversity management as the main leadership capabilities used during their internship experience. Results also indicated that students expanded their concept of leadership and built leadership self-efficacy. The study provides preliminary support for including a leadership internship within the curriculum to support student leadership development.

The study aims to test the color fastness of wool and linen fabrics dyed by simple immersion in ethanol dissolutions of fungal dyes.

Ethanol dissolutions of Talaromyces australis and Penicillium murcianum dyes were prepared to a concentration of 0.3% and used to dye wool and linen samples by immersion. Color fastness to washing, dry cleaning, wet and dry rubbing, perspiration and light, were tested according to AATCC standards.

Color fastness reached acceptable results at dry cleaning and wet and dry rubbing by crocking but did not performed well at laundering, perspiration and light exposure. Results indicate that ethanol dissolutions of tested dyes had better affinity for wool fabrics than linen, but the dyeing method requires further improvements to be considered attractive for full scale applications.

In this work sustainability of fabrics dyeing is improved by using natural pigments produced by filamentous fungi and a method to dye that requires no increment of temperature and mordants.

Knowledge- and communication-intensive domains still long for a better support of creativity that considers legal requirements, compliance rules and administrative tasks as well, because current systems focus either on knowledge representation or business process management. The purpose of this paper is to discuss our model of integrated knowledge and business process representation and its presentation to users.

The authors follow a design science approach in the environment of patent prosecution, which is characterized by a highly standardized, legally prescribed process and individual knowledge study. Thus, the research is based on knowledge study, BPM, graph-based knowledge representation and user interface design. The authors iteratively designed and built a model and a prototype. To evaluate the approach, the authors used analytical proof of concept, real-world test scenarios and case studies in real-world settings, where the authors conducted observations and open interviews.

The authors designed a model and implemented a prototype for evolving and storing static and dynamic aspects of knowledge. The proposed solution leverages the flexibility of a graph-based model to enable open and not only continuously developing user-centered processes but also pre-defined ones. The authors further propose a user interface concept which supports users to benefit from the richness of the model but provides sufficient guidance.

The balanced integration of the data and task perspectives distinguishes the model significantly from other approaches such as BPM or knowledge graphs. The authors further provide a sophisticated user interface design, which allows the users to effectively and efficiently use the graph-based knowledge representation in their daily study.