Management researchers and practitioners have developed a marked interest for the notion of “good companies to work for”, “exemplary workplaces”, “meaningful work”, “virtuous organization”, “truly healthy organizations” or “authentizotic organizations”. We complement the...

This paper advances a theory about the way patterns of positive and negative organizing unfold. It is grounded in data collected from 58 individuals. We followed an inductive logic and used critical incidents to collect information on positive and negative processes and outcomes. From this we...

Globalization and localization seem to be opposite concepts – a thesis and its antithesis. Nonetheless, managers seem to be able to handle the paradox posed by these two contradicting tensions by enacting, via action, a synthesis that allows for the co-presence of a high level of global...

Increasingly, managers live in a world of paradox. For instance, they are told that they must manage by surrendering control and that they must stay on top by continuing to learn, thus admitting that they do not fully know what they do. Paradox is becoming increasingly pervasive in and around...

We discuss why surprises, defined as events that happen unexpectedly or expected events that take unexpected shapes, are important to organizations and should be considered in the organizational literature. The concept of organizational surprises is unpacked on the basis of a typology built...

The long march of modernization of the Western societies tends to be presented as following a regular sequence: societies and institutions were pre-modern, and then they were modernized, eventually becoming post-modern. Such teleology may provide an incomplete or distorted narrative of societal...

F. W. Taylor is often celebrated as a founding father of organization and management theory, one whose commitment to efficiency is legendary. If we define efficiency in terms of maximizing output from a given - or lesser - number of workers it can be considered that, in some cases, Taylor's...

This study uses structural equation modeling to test a model of the impact of human resources management practices on perceived organizational performance, on a large sample of European companies. The influences of competitive intensity, industry attractiveness and strategic management are...

This paper discusses how new competitive landscapes invite organizational scholars and practitioners to adopt a new organizational mindset. The proposed new mindset does not negate the importance of the traditional functions of management, but invites a reexamination of how they are expected to...

We present a qualitative analysis of organizational improvisation and provide a preliminary insight into the following question: how is improvisation present in tightly controlled work environments? We conducted in situ observations of, and interviews with, several emergency medical teams and...