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This paper aims to look at the role of the top and middle management of the Philips organization during the transition from one type of organizational change to another in the 1990s and the role the history of the organisation played in this process.

The paper analysis is based on historical records, literature and interviews with former Philips top managers.

The paper shows that Philips' leaders used different styles of leadership to create a deliberate atmosphere and willingness to change. The final emergent transformation, however, could only sufficiently materialise while it rejuvenated existing management concepts like Quality Management. The success was partly based on the fact that these concepts played a historical role in the Philips organisation.

The paper adds the historical style approach to leadership research and pays attention to the important role of the organization's history during processes of organizational change.

Our economies are rapidly evolving toward being primarily service-driven, with information and communication as fundamental drivers for the service deployment. Strategic choices are increasingly driven by other parameters than the traditional goods-driven industrial type of economies. In this paper, the major drivers for making strategic choices in a competitive service economy are examined. It is shown how the competition in services based on information and communication technology (ICT) is competence-based. Competition aims at bringing additional value through services, but may also deploy specific techniques to stop value from leaking in particular business processes. Value creation and prevention of value leaks cannot just rely on the traditional material-based techniques, which are grounded in the strong tangible nature of the traditional economies. Today ICT-based services involve creative combinations of technologies, resources, and assets to answer as well as anticipate the growing demand for flexible solutions that create sustained added value. In this paper, the particular role of imperfections in service systems is explored, extending the well-known theories of information imperfections. Imperfections are not always solved but are sometimes even maintained in favor of sustained competitive advantage. Various ways to realize service rent are discussed with extensive examples. The concluding part of the paper points to some crucial service configuration issues, including the need for a sufficient degree of corporate-wide standardized service components and interfaces to address the growing demand for agility in competence-driven markets.

This focused issue (Volume 6) of Research in Competence-Based Management provides a number of research papers – both theoretical and empirical – on what we have characterized in the volume title as “new industry dynamics.” It also contains papers that might just as accurately be described as providing “new competence perspectives” on industry dynamics. In effect, this volume both applies existing competence theory to the analysis of new industry dynamics, and provides new conceptualizations for representing and analyzing industry dynamics that are now emerging in many industries and product markets. While much competence theory has been developed through analysis of micro-level phenomena in individual organizations, we expect that the papers included in this volume will help point the way to further development of competence theory relevant to the macro-levels of industry and product-market phenomena.

This paper aims to explore, which characteristics of activity-based offices are related to the position of workers on the burnout – engagement continuum.

Literature review and an online survey amongst knowledge workers in the Netherlands, which provided data of 184 respondents from 14 organisations. The data has been analysed by descriptive statistics, bivariate analyses, factor analyses and path analysis, to test the conceptual model.

Five physical work environment constructs were identified of which three showed to have significant relations with employees’ position on one of the three dimensions of the burnout – engagement continuum. Distraction has a direct and indirect (through overload) negative relation with the individual strain (meaning increased exhaustion). Office comfort has indirect positive relations (through recognition and appreciation) with the interpersonal strain (meaning increased involvement). The possibility for teleworking has an indirect positive relation (through control) on the self-evaluation strain (meaning increased efficacy).

The findings show that in the design and management of a healthy physical work environment, corporate real estate managers and human resource managers should particularly pay attention to lowering distraction, providing comfortable workplaces and considering the option of teleworking to some extent.

This paper provides new insights into the impact of distinct activity-based workplace characteristics on workers’ position on the burnout – engagement continuum.

This study aims to uncover the extent to which cultural traits may explain the puzzling international divergence in COVID-19 outcomes, and how those traits interact with state action to produce compliance with pandemic health policy.

A theoretical framework illustrates the surprising possibility that culture and state action may not reinforce each other but rather act as substitutes in eliciting anti-pandemic behavior. This possibility is tested empirically in two specifications: a cross-sectional regression that includes several novel COVID-related measures, and a panel model that controls for contemporaneous disease burden. Across these models, we use the measures of national culture developed by Hofstede (1984) and a newer metric developed by Schwartz (1990).

Individualism and egalitarianism have a positive effect on disease prevalence, while cultural heterogeneity was associated with a more robust public health response. Consistent with our model, we find that culture and state action served as substitutes in motivating compliance with COVID-19 policy.

The results of this study imply that culture and state interact in determining the effectiveness of public health measures aimed at combating COVID-19; these results recommend culturally aware state intervention when combating pandemics.

This study offers several new contributions. First, it proposes a model to help contextualize the empirical analysis. Second, it examines a wider range of traits than previous studies, including cultural homogeneity and the Schwartz variables. Third, it employs a richer econometric specification that explores the interaction between state and culture in a panel context.

In this chapter a typology is presented that typically describes strategic patent management practices in four development categories. The underlying framework integrates patent functions with strategic planning attitudes. Policy makers can apply it to survey the actual use of patents in order to identify the potential for improvement in SME-owned patent exploitation. Managers of these organisations can use it to evaluate the current patent management practice for taking the next step towards a more active use of patents. Operationalisation of the framework into a questionnaire is grounded in a pilot study of three biotechnology firms, differing in size and age. The result has consequently been applied in a case study consisting of 16 small-sized biopharmaceutical companies in the Netherlands. After presenting results from this sample of patent management practices, we present our findings and discuss the validity and use of the typology for the above-mentioned purposes.

The circular economy (CE) is a sustainable economic model that has the potential to create new opportunities, reduce environmental impact and enhance social well-being. Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), the largest city in Vietnam, has experienced rapid economic growth in recent years, but at the cost of the environment and public health. The city could reduce waste, conserve resources and promote sustainable production and consumption by adopting CE principles. Employing qualitative research, including content analysis, we construct a SWOT analysis to assess HCMC's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in the CE context. The city possesses several strengths, such as a vast potential for a CE and a robust economic foundation. However, it also faces multiple weaknesses, including insufficient infrastructure, inadequate citizen and business awareness and participation, ineffective policy enforcement and a deficiency of standards for recycled products. This chapter will conclude that the CE presents an opportunity for HCMC to reduce its dependence on imported raw materials, increase local value creation and create new jobs in the CE sector.

The purpose of this article is to examine the governance of activation in relation to the decentralization and centralization of activation for social assistance recipients in Sweden, The Netherlands and the UK.

This paper outlines broad trends in the governance of activation policies in Europe, focusing on processes of decentralization and centralization in Sweden (characterized by a context of shifting national and local level governance of policies, cultivated within a strong tradition of active labour market policies); The Netherlands (where there has been a deliberate shift in governance towards the local level); and the UK (typified by highly centralized decision making in policy design but local variation in delivery).

The comparison identified different paths of decentralization and examines how these processes interact and overlap with modes of centralization/coordination of policies. Finally, the paper demonstrates the interface between the modes of decentralization and centralization.

The investigation of vertical changes in the governance of activation in three country case studies provides an original in‐depth analysis of types and paths of decentralization and centralization.