Management Thinking Research Articles

IS IT EASY FOR MANAGERS TO MANAGE GLOBAL WORKFORCE DIVERSITY?

Workforce diversity is a concept which is kept on the backburner in the realms of the academic world. Is it easy to manage? The answer is easy - “NO”? It sounds like a simple solution, but hard to comprehend. Normally, such topics are brushed off as figment of imagination. No attempt has been seriously made to dwell deeper into this subtle but significantly important topic in era of globalization. Diversity though relevant in every frame, necessitate critical enquiry as the world strives to become a global village. In current times, managers are facing challenges which adds to their problem of uncertainties and unpredictability. This is hampering them in managing their functions of planning, leadership, organizing and control as the diversity spreads. During pandemic, serious diversity issues have emerged raising concern about prevailing fault lines in management. It raises questions on ethics, social corporate responsibility, decision-making and leadership areas functions. The research explains management concepts supported by secondary research and empirical evidence in depth. The research supports triangulation method to validate the underlying hypothesis. The primary aim is to upscale functional capabilities of managerial thinking. The speed of globalization is threatening managerial thinking to manage change and disruptions. For example, Climate change, Covid situation, Afghanistan crisis, Ukraine war etc. could have been mitigated if political managers were trained to manage diversity in the context of globalization. This is an initial research initiative with the hope that it will enhance the curiosity in others for deeper investigation and collaborative research.

The Evolution of Management Thought: reflections on narrative structure

PurposeThis paper aims to problematize the dominant narrative forms of disciplinary histories of management thought. Specifically, the authors explore the narrative mode of emplotment used in Wren’s (and later Wren and Bedeian’s) 50-year encyclical on the history of management thought, namely, The Evolution of Management Thought (EMT).Design/methodology/approachThe authors propose that management histories operate as powerful narratives that shape our understanding of management thought and, consequently, our disciplinary futures. This paper explores the textual narrative of EMT. Additional data are drawn from other scholars’ observations of this text. This paper is positioned in the debates of management history.FindingsWhile acknowledging the wealth of historical facts in EMT, the authors argue that the umbrella narrative orders events of the past in such a manner that the historical knowledge follows a form of Darwinian evolutionism. Thus, the narrative leads to problematic representations suffering from progressivism, presentism and universalism.Research limitations/implicationsDisciplinary scholars in management and organization studies need to carefully reflect on how we construct our representations of the past and histories. This will allow us to better craft transparent and reflexive histories.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to propose a remedy, albeit a partial remedy, which we believe is needed to avoid adverse epistemological consequences associated with the use of problematic narratives in management and organizational histories.

The Role of Leadership in Crisis Management in Islamic and Contemporary Management Thought

This study aims at comparing contemporary administrative thought with Islamic administrative thought in light of the role of leadership in crisis management, and then the tendency towards better management thought in application and urging organizations to apply it. For example, there is a conflict between Western theories and concepts with Islamic values such as the worship of, and reliance on, God. The limits of the study relate to contemporary administrative and Islamic administrative thoughts in crisis management’s methods. It develops a proposed future vision for developing leadership methods to confront crises within contemporary administrative and Islamic management thoughts. Managing and facing crises, in part, is one of the most important challenges related to leadership efficiency in various institutions; The efficiency and effectiveness of leadership in times of crises can turn the threats resulting from those crises into opportunities.

Who is Afraid of Generation Z? The Intergenerational Gap Affecting the World of Work Post-COVID-19 Era

In an era of rapid changes alongside a global pandemic (COVID-19) that changed rules in the world of work, a new generation of employees, Generation Z (born 1995-2010) has been absorbed, joining three older generations, baby boomers, Generation X and Generation y. Qualitative research with high-tech company managers in Israel examined management issues constituting intergenerational gaps and affecting the new world of work. It was found that although Generation Z workers are characterized by high both technological and independent learning personal abilities giving them an advantage in relation to previous generations, there is a sharp decline in its commitment levels to an organization and managers and its ability to persevere with long-term tasks. The new generation of workers expects a greater home/work balance and indulgent workplace enabling enjoyment and a social life within work hours. Research findings provide an infrastructure for different management and leadership thinking in light of the Generation Z challenge and the gap between the different generations.

HRSA's Investment in Public Health Training Centers.

HRSA's Investment in Public Health Training Centers.

Draw it, Check it, Change it: Reviving Lewin's Topology to Facilitate Organizational Change Theory and Practice

The purpose of this paper is to explain and update Kurt Lewin's concept of topological psychology and show how it can improve how we think about and undertake organizational change. To illustrate the use of this concept, we have created an imaginary dialogue in which Lewin helps an organization to move from fixed- to hot-desking. In this dialogue, we draw on Lewin's writings to show how he might have responded to criticisms of his work (e.g., that his diagnostic approach is too mechanistic to work in a socially constructed world). Based on our discussion of topological psychology, we offer three recommendations to better connect theory building with managerial thinking: (1) use plain language to explain your concepts; (2) use drawings to illustrate and explain the change situation; and (3) focus on the exceptions and not the rules in order to generate a better understanding of the nature of organizational life.

A Global Review on a Business Planning Process: Case of a Small Business

Modern business organizations have continued to increase in not only size but also in complexity of operations. This has resulted to the need for strategic dimensional growth According to Cole (1994), “Strategic management is a process, directed by top management, to determine the fundamental aims or goals of the organization, and to ensure a range of decisions which will allow for the achievement of those aims or goals in the long term, while providing for adaptive responses in the short term.” We must go back to the "roots" of management thinking about management as an integrated activity with its many components or functions to evaluate how strategic management has developed.

Correlation between Senile Weakness and Cardiovascular Disease and Management Thought

Correlation between Senile Weakness and Cardiovascular Disease and Management Thought

COVID-19-induced governance transformation: How external shocks may spur cross-organizational collaboration and trust-based management.

AbstractPersistent efforts to meet the demand for cross‐organizational collaboration and trust‐based management have been halted by a mixture of bureaucratic inertia and entrenched New Public Management thinking. This article explores whether the COVID‐crisis has broken the reform deadlock. Based on a handful of recent surveys and interviews conducted by Danish public sector organizations, we look at the crisis‐induced transformations in local public administration. The main finding is that the pandemic has forced administrative agencies to collaborate with each other to solve new and pressing problems in a turbulent environment. Similarly, it has urged public managers to trust the skills and motivation of their employees, who must solve administrative tasks in innovative ways and with limited managerial support, supervision and monitoring. While changes may amount to little more than a temporary departure from normalcy, lesson‐drawing, learning retention and proactive leadership may help to produce a sustainable transformation.

Circ-CBFB exacerbates hypoxia/reoxygenation-triggered cardiomyocyte injury via regulating miR-495-3p in a VDAC1-dependent manner.

A large body of literature has identified that circular RNAs play critical roles in regulating the occurrence and development of cardiovascular disease. In the present study, we intended to provide new ideas and perspectives on the functional role of circ-CBFB in hypoxia/reoxygenation (H/R)-injured cardiomyocytes. We observed that circ-CBFB expression was enhanced which was accompanied by a miR-495-3p reduction in response to H/R exposure. Functionally, deletion of circ-CBFB obviously potentiated cell viability and restrained cell apoptosis, which was accompanied by a remarkable elevation of antiapoptotic Bcl-2 but the repression of proapoptotic Bax and cleaved caspase-3 in response to H/R. Additionally, the absence of circ-CBFB dramatically prohibited H/R-evoked cardiomyocyte oxidative stress, as revealed by a decrease in reactive oxygen species overproduction, diminution in MAD content, and enhancement in SOD, CAT, and GSH-Px activities. Moreover, elimination of circ-CBFB resulted in improvement of mitochondrial dysfunction, as assessed by mitochondrial membrane potential, adenosine triphosphate production, and the release of cyto-c. Interestingly, circ-CBFB inversely regulated miR-495-3p expression via acting as a competing endogenous RNA. VDAC1 was identified to be a functional target of miR-495-3p and positively modulated by circ-CBFB. Mechanically, dissipation of miR-495-3p or augmentation of VDAC1 manifestly counteracted the beneficial effects of circ-CBFB knockdown on H/R-elicited cardiomyocyte insult. Collectively, these observations demonstrated that absence of circ-CBFB offered cardio-protection against H/R-triggered cardiomyocyte injury by relieving apoptosis, oxidative stress, and mitochondria dysfunction through miR-495-3p/VDAC1 axis. This work unveiled an innovative axis of circ-CBFB/miR-495-3p/VDAC1 in H/R-challenged cardiomyocyte damage, exerting its potential in providing new thoughts in acute myocardial infarction management.

An Imperfect Perfect Project Process in Research and Innovation

University researchers often need to plan for perfect research and innovation projects with other organizations to secure external funding. However, the unfolding process of the funded research and innovation projects is often far less than perfect. In this paper, we try to challenge the perfect project management thinking and explore the imperfect project managing processes from the perspectives of university researchers. Tensions in the project process exist both between the perfect management and imperfect managing and in university researchers striving for new knowledge exploration and learning while maintaining the exploration within predetermined project boundaries. In order to better understand how university researchers manage the tensions in an imperfect project managing process, we conducted ethnographic fieldwork in a Horizon 2020 research and innovation project. Inspired by Lefebvre’s spatial triad, we identified that university researchers enact boundary setting practices and pivoting learning practices in balancing the tensions across the conceived, perceived, and lived social space of the research and innovation project. We discuss and highlight the importance of accounting for projects’ embeddedness and temporariness in moving away from perfect management thinking and towards imperfect management thinking.

Morning Has Broken: Employees as the Intellectual Peers of Theorists in Management Thought

Mainstream management history invariably establishes sidelined theorists as the most consequential protagonists in the quest to create a generic template for employee superintendence. According to this orthodoxy, in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, the new capitalists and their agents (the emerging management class), where theoretically ill-equipped to oversee large scale productive transformation. Hence, they turned to experts, mostly scholars who straddled the worlds of academia and the fledgling enterprise of industrial consulting. In this version of events, employees are represented in strawman terms: as either passive or predictable and unduly hostile actors. This article asserts and defends an alternative portrayal. It argues that the key influence on the modern template was not a conflict of theoretical perspectives concerning the nature of modernity being played out on the margins but rather a clash between theory itself and what employees, acting as intellectual equals, taught their employers.

Orchestration of Natural Resources as a Sustainable Alternative to the Resource-Based View Paradigm

This article aims to solve a dilemma inherent to current management thinking: while natural resources have become increasingly scarce, the paradigm in which management scholarship is anchored has contributed to natural resource depletion. To solve this dilemma, we focus on the resource-based view of the firm (RBV), which is the dominant paradigm in studying management and resources. We show that the anchoring of this view in Ricardian economics cannot lead to a sustainable evaluation of natural resources. We thus offer an alternative model that focuses on the management of resources and adapt it to natural resources by borrowing three theories and concepts from other fields: the commons, the ecocentric paradigm, and the industrial symbiosis paradigm. Our model suggests that firms should orchestrate natural resources by structuring their portfolio to include natural resource access, bundling them by contextualizing their value, and leveraging them by favoring their natural life cycles. Our propositions offer a novel model of natural resource management, redefine the sources of competitive advantage with respect to the natural environment, and contribute to “reworking” management theories that consider the natural environment.

Are nurses being heard? The power of Freirean dialogue to transform the nursing profession

Nurses need to acquire knowledge about interactive communication, apply critical thinking in prevention and management of illness, and act as patient advocates especially among marginalized and vulnerable populations. This three-pronged approach usually begin during their student years and should include a dialogue framework for use during nursing encounters with patients, family members, and other healthcare providers and for improving the safety and effectiveness of patient care. Therefore, the nursing curriculum should not only include topics related to illness prevention and management, but also prepare nurses to identify and advocate for social justice and health equality by creating a lively and interactive learning environment to allow nurses to build their self-confidence to act and become change agents. Certainly, the COVID-19 pandemic, which exacerbated a nursing shortage and led to limited access to services and poor quality of care for all, underscores the urgency of the Freirean dialogic approach of action-reflection-action. Using this approach, all stakeholders collaborate, discuss, and implement solutions, grow together, and become change agents toward improving nursing care for all.

Türkiye'de Eğitim Yönetimine İlişkin Bilgi Üretimi: Öğretim Elemanlarının Görüşleri

Purpose: The study analyzes epistemic beliefs of field members qualitatively as to the knowledge base of Educational Management.
 Design/Methodology/Approach: The research design is descriptive phenomenology, and the data collection tool has semi- structured questions facilitating epistemological reasoning and thinking in Educational Management. The questions were posed through one-on-one, face to face interviews. The participants are 29 lecturers in departments of Educational Management in 3 state universities in Turkey. The interviews were hold during the first term of 2018-19 Academic Year.
 Findings: The results indicate the participants hold unique epistemic beliefs in their evaluations of possibility of knowledge, truth of knowledge, justifying knowledge and boundaries of knowledge in the knowledge base. It is observed participants’ personal epistemic beliefs also bear certain commonalities.
 Highlights: There is neither a priori knowledge nor absolute truth in the knowledge base implying the knowledge of Educational Management calls for hermeneutic explanations; it continues to be a struggle to study the highly dynamic epistemologies-both those of individual researchers and communities-emerging and ‘filtered’ and hence ‘refined’ in the knowledge of the field. Preserving the core of the field knowledge whilst expanding it can be realized through working in a collaborative fashion within the field and ‘beyond’.

The opinions of hotel managers about halal hotel concept: A research in Cappadocia

The number of halal business hotel concept in Turkey in recent years, especially in regions where intensive maritime tourism has been increasing. However, there are no such hotels in the Cappadocia destination. The main purpose of this study is to determine the thoughts of hotel managers in the Cappadocia tourist region on halal tourism and the concept of halal hotels. Using the semi-structured interview technique, open-ended questions were asked by the researchers to the managers of 17 four and five-star hotels with tourism management certificates in the region. The obtained data were subjected to content analysis and interpreted. The main findings obtained from the research are that hotel managers in Cappadocia see "halal tourism" as a rapidly developing market in the world that will become even more important in the future, and there is no need for a halal hotel concept to promote the demand for the region; they did not intend to make arrangements in accordance with the halal hotel concept and obtain halal hotel certification in their businesses. They kept prayer rugs in their hotel upon the requests of the guests, they turned their meeting rooms into masjids when requested; and hotel rooms have a sign showing qibla on nightstand drawers.

RECASTING PROJECT MANAGEMENT KNOWLEDGE: A HUMANE TACTIC TO DESIGN THINKING APPROACH

This paper describes the importance of design thinking in project management. Design thinking is critical in guiding managers to deliver elaborate projects. The paper reviews literature on project failure and its reasons, knowledge of project management and illustrate how design thinking can help. Through project formulation, design, implementation, execution and monitoring stages, project managers must think beyond project complexities-they must consider environmental enablers so as to deliver successful projects. Project externalities influence the successful implementation of projects. The need for managers to think critically on their projects design and implementation is discussed later in the paper. The paper concludes by stating that knowledge on project management must be rebuilt through design thinking. This would enhance better project execution and reduce project failures.

Circular bioeconomy potential and challenges within an African context: From theory to practice

A circular bioeconomy has the potential to minimize the environmental impacts of biowaste while simultaneously generating value-added bioproducts and bioenergy. Currently, most countries of the African Union lack well-defined policies, requisite infrastructure, and expertise for biowaste valorisation, thus limiting the potential development of the region. Against this background, it is necessary to deploy circular bioeconomy principles based on the awareness of the biocapacity of territories through the nexus of biowaste management and life cycle thinking. In the present study, a preliminary assessment of waste management practices in a tourist hotel in Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe is explored. The hotel produces about 3.26 tons per month of biowaste, which is often improperly disposed in non-engineered waste dumps. Furthermore, the disposal options for 1 tonne of biowaste are explored using City of Harare (CoH) as a case study. The preliminary results show composting as the most environmentally favourable option (9.6 kg CO2 eq), followed by anaerobic digestion (56.4 kg CO2 eq), and finally, biowaste incineration (140 kg CO2 eq). Anaerobic digestion and composting remain the most viable biowaste disposal alternatives in Africa, due to limited expenses and expertise for construction, operation, and maintenance. However, both technologies remain under-utilized, hence, a significant portion of the source-separated biowaste is still disposed of in waste dumps and this reflects the lack of supportive institutional, regulatory and policy frameworks. Overall, these early results point to the potential to develop a circular bioeconomy in Africa, while calling for shared responsibilities among the state, market, and civil society actors to develop and adopt appropriate institutional, regulatory, policy and funding models.

Health Care Science—Why another journal and why we will be different?

<i>Health Care Science</i>—Why another journal and why we will be different?

Embracing Design Thinking to Navigate Complex Program Management Challenges

This article explores the transformative potential of design thinking in navigating the complex challenges faced by program managers. By embracing the principles and strategies of design thinking, program managers can foster innovation, drive customer-centricity, and enhance adaptability in an increasingly dynamic business landscape. The article examines the key stages of the design thinking process, its applications in overcoming common program management challenges, and the strategies for implementing design thinking within organizations. Through practical insights, the article demonstrates how design thinking can be integrated into Agile methodologies, stakeholder engagement, and customer experience design to deliver superior program outcomes. The article concludes with a vision for the future of design thinking in program management and a call to action for program managers to adopt this approach as a core capability for success.