Search results

This paper first aims to examine how business process change decisions (BPCDs) were implemented in a government organisation bound by tightly coupled temporal constraints (TTCs). Second, it focuses on how to achieve optimal and efficient BPCDs that require tight compliance with regulators’ temporal constraints. Finally, it formulates a rigorous framework that can facilitate the execution of optimal BPCDs with maximum efficiency and minimal effort, time and cost.

Decision-making biases by individuals or groups in organisations can impede optimal BPC implementation; to demonstrate this, a case study is investigated and the formulated framework is applied to tackle these failings.

The case study analysis shows 76 per cent of the BPCDs implemented were inefficient, mostly because of poor decisions, and these resulted in negative ripple effects. In response, the newly developed hierarchical change management structure (HCMS) framework was used to empower organisations to execute high-velocity BPCDs, enabling them to handle any temporal constraints imposed by regulators or other exogenous factors. The HCMS framework was found to be highly effective, scoring an average improvement of more than 100 per cent when measured using decision quality dimensions. This paper would be of value for business executives and strategic decision makers engaging with BPC.

The HCMS framework has been applied in a single case study as a proof of concept. Future research could extend its application to broader domains that have multi-attribute structures and environments. The evaluation processes of the proposed framework are based on subjective metrics. Causal links from the framework to business process metrics will provide a more complete performance picture.

The outcome of this research assists in formulating a systematic BPCD framework that is otherwise unavailable. The practical use of the proposed framework would potentially impact on quality outcomes for organisations. The model is derived from decision trees and analytical hierarchical processes and is tailored to address this problematic area. The proposed HCMS framework would help organisations to execute efficient BPCDs with minimal time, effort and cost. The HCMS framework contributes to the academic literature on BPCD that leverages diverse stakeholders to engage in BPC initiatives.

The research presents a novel framework –HCMS – that provides a platform for organisations to easily determine and solve hierarchical decision structure problems, thereby allowing them to efficiently automate and institutionalise optimal BPCDs.

In management studies, assumptions surround the fixed, categorical and binary nature of male, ethnic and other privileges. Compared to white, middle-class men, “others” are typically assumed not to experience privilege. The authors counter this assumption by applying intersectionality to examine privilege's juxtaposition with disadvantage. The paper offers an elaborated conceptualisation of organisational privilege and insight into the agency employed by individuals traditionally perceived as non-privileged. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Using diaries and interviews, the paper analyses 20 micro-episodes from four senior minority ethnic women and men's accounts of intersecting ethnic, gender and senior identities. The paper identifies how privilege plays out at the juxtaposition of (male gender and hierarchical) advantage with (female gender and ethnic) disadvantage.

The fluidity of privilege is revealed through contextual, contested and conferred dimensions. Additionally, privilege is experienced in everyday micro-level encounters and the paper illustrates how “sometimes privileged” individuals manage their identities at intersections.

This in-depth analysis draws on a small sample of unique British minority ethnic individuals to illustrate dimensions of privilege.

It is often challenging to discuss privilege. However, the focus on atypical wielders of power challenges binary assumptions of privilege. This can provide a common platform for dominant and non-dominant group members to share how societal and organisational privileges differentially impact groups. This inclusive approach could reduce dominant group members’ psychological and emotional resistance to social justice.

Through bridging privilege and intersectionality perspectives, the paper offers a complex and nuanced perspective that contrasts against prevalent conceptions of privilege as invisible and uncontested.

The purpose of this research was to investigate how Mid South Building Supply, a 100% employee-owned company, survived the Great Recession. Research has found that employee-owned companies are more likely to survive recessions than other companies. Why this happens was unclear. Thus, this research was conducted to learn why this might happen.

The case study approach was chosen to uncover the causes because this approach has played a significant role in uncovering organizational phenomena. Moreover, the industry was chosen because of the vulnerability of firms in it to recessionary forces.

Mid South uses practices that enhance both financial and psychological ownership. Prior research has suggested that both are important.

Case study research is limited because only a single frim is investigated. Thus, additional studies need to be performed to confirm the results.

Although this is a single case study, the practical implication is that enterprises that want to improve their probability of surviving should apply the findings of this study.

Firms that provide employment stability to employees are more likely to survive. In turn, research would suggest that this is associated with greater family and community stability.

Whereas prior studies have used across-industry data to find that employee-owned firms are more likely to survive recessions than others, what such firms do differently was unclear. A literature review failed to reveal a prior study that looked at the internal practices that may cause this to happen.

Offers the concept that leadership narrative is the key to managing transformational innovation.

The author has studied the leading innovation theorists and corporate innovation efforts.

Transformational innovation is disruptive because it introduces products and services that change the business landscape by providing a dramatically different value proposition. And championing transformational innovation involves going to war with all the elements inside an organization that benefit from the status quo.

The author's research is primarily anecdotal.

If leaders, consistently use narrative tools, in combination with thorough strategic analysis, they can show their organization how to tackle the most difficult challenge facing management today – transformational innovation. Examples and a step‐by‐step process are provided.

First publication of the concept of how leaders can use narrative to achieve employee commitment to transformational innovation.

This chapter explores the potential for musical medievalism within metal, exploring the ways in which metal musicians have sought to include ‘authentic’ medieval musical languages within their music. The medieval repertoire poses many challenges even for early music specialists, and the musical idioms of metal and medieval music rarely overlap, leading many medievalist metal bands to rely instead on normative metal styles with occasional references to specific identifiable melodies. The chapter focusses particularly on the American metal band Obsequiae, who have drawn inspiration particularly from the medieval polyphonic repertoire, which required creating much more oblique musical connections. Obsequiae’s albums feature acoustic guitar and harp arrangements of medieval polyphonic works, but their metal songs likewise adopt some general qualities of medieval polyphony. The obscure nature of the connections is likely beyond many listeners, but paradoxically the lack of obvious musical medievalism can also cultivate the appearance of a deeper connection.

This paper draws on African anti-colonial thought and Black consciousness to propose critical conscious leadership (CCL) as a decolonising leadership approach appropriate for pursuing emancipation, social justice and innovation in a new African university.

I utilised the method of critical discourse analysis to study Ihron Rensburg’s language as he reflected on his leadership at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). The study engaged with Rensburg’s writings and texts on his account of leading the merger and transformation of UJ. The primary text draws from his book “Serving Higher Purposes” (2020).

Through the construction of CCL, the paper proposes alternative tenets for leading transformation towards a new African university. CCL grounds a decolonised and pluriversal new African university’s character premised on a consciously revitalised alternative thinking that will carry the communitarian spirit of Africa in knowledge production, dissemination and consumption in humanising all and serving the greater good. And it operates within the dialectical tensions of the social and economic purpose of higher education (HE), African and global relevance, African and Western paradigms, excellent performance and attainment of social justice.

The proposed CCL offers an alternative leadership approach that responds to the call to “Dethrone the Empire” by centring Blackness in HE leadership, which is crucial for authentic transformation and decolonisation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how knowledge is constructed and risk is induced within the workgroup environment of a large North American aerospace company.

Based on an epistemological position on knowledge and risk, an initial conceptual framework is proposed. This is then evaluated and re‐constructed across a qualitative and ethnographic case study approach involving direct observations and interviews, whereby empirical results were interpreted and analysed across discourse analysis.

A dialogical model is proposed describing both verbal and non‐verbal interactions between group members leading towards knowledge complexification on the one hand and risk mitigation on the other hand. Factors leading towards dialogical breakdown and subsequent risk induction are also presented.

This single case study prevents generalizing the findings across the entire firm in question, and by extension any manner of external validity outside of the firm's context. Additional workgroups/teams within the firm need to be evaluated, while similar studies in other institutions within the knowledge economy are to be envisaged.

Workgroup managers must nurture an environment conducive towards mutual trust and respect, where individuals are given the time and freedom to express themselves, all the while being open to differing viewpoints and experiences. Coercive dialogue between members should be discouraged. It is proposed that this can be achieved across a parental “safety net” approach.

The paper presents the “how” and “why” of an effective dialogical knowledge constructing process occurring at the interpersonal level, attempts to propose how management can to help achieve this within their organisation, and attempts to bridge the areas of knowledge creation and risk induction at the interpersonal/workgroup level.

This paper provides a review of the impact of three of the six work streams from the New Ways of Working for Applied Psychologists. The organisational change model of Beckhard and Harris (1989) is used to evaluate why the recommendations of the reports are being adopted at different speeds. Evidence that all are being used is presented. The paper starts with a restatement of the purpose of applied psychology that was developed during the work and is likely to stand the test of time.