Slawek Magala

Sustainability and the need for change: organisational change and transformational vision

Purpose – This paper aims to provide an introduction to the special issue on the theme of sustainability and the need for change.Design/methodology/approach – The paper gives an overview of sustainability and its managerial and policy dilemmas for organizations. It also outlines the topics covered in the papers in the special issue.Findings – The question that the papers seek to answer is: how can organisations deal with the sustainability challenge? The papers cover the key sustainability dilemmas: how to balance short term priorities with long term vision, organisational change with stability, strategic goals with day to day implementation, domestic with international responsibilities; how to manage the corporate brand, image and reputation; how to influence policies nationally and internationally, and foster relations, all in the realm of effecting the change in attitude and behaviour that sustainability demands.Originality/value – The paper introduces an eclectic collection of papers that are intended...

Heather Höpfl's storytelling

ABSTRACT This paper brings to light stories of Heather Höpfl. Its purpose is to show how Heather was and is present for us. We also illustrate Professor Dr Heather Höpfl’s contribution to organization theory, specifically her discourse of the maternal organization.

Going Dutch, Remaining Indian: The Work Experiences of IT Expatriates

Indian IT/ITES (information technology/information technology-enabled services) organizations often portray their espousal of an “open” work culture including flatter and flexible structures, comparing this progressive organizational design with the rigid authoritarian and hierarchical structure of traditional Indian workplaces. Yet, even Indian IT/ITES firms operating in the Netherlands fail to truly internalize and enact Western industrialism. Instead, they continue to harbour and exemplify the typical features of Indian workplaces such as high power distance, politicized career progression paths and lack of transparency, reflecting a feudalistic mindset. Far from homogenizing in the global business context, Indian organizations hold on to their ethos when it comes to dealing with Indian employees. This does not mean that we support Hofstede’s static dimension of culture. First, we found that the Dutch or European employees were treated differently in Indian organizations especially in matters of work–life balance. Second, given that outsourcing is a low-cost strategy, many Indian managers had to delegate responsibility to subordinates in order to manage a large number of projects. Third, the interaction between the employees of different cultures highlighted the discrepancies in the discourse of Indian organizations—an aspect which becomes more glaring to Indian onsite employees who then want a better work–life balance and a more consultative and egalitarian relationship with their Indian managers, failing which they moved to Dutch organizations. Even so, rather than culture being static, interaction of employees from different cultures results in reformulating set values, meanings and norms. Finally, though employees welcomed changes to their work life, they were quite conservative with regard to changes in their social life.

Shifting sands of research domains, migrating knowledge clouds and academic journals as Zeppelins (editorial considerations in mid‐2012)

Purpose – Academic journals still navigate the relatively closed space of academic peer domains, but knowledge production explodes and blows up in a cloud of expanding “gases” of knowledges slowly solidifying into tectonically mobile continents. This paper seeks to address these issues. It also provides an overview of seven published papers.Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses a viewpoint approach as well as introducing the current issue.Findings – The paper finds that “everything in knowledge production and dissemination has changed”, which will have consequences and implications in areas such as research domain independence and the role of the academic journal.Originality/value – This paper raises the issues of change in knowledge production and dissemination, and of possible redefinition in the areas of change management and cross‐cultural knowledge. It also introduces the seven papers in the current issue.