Organizational Landscape Research Articles

Exploring Factors Affecting Successful Acceptance of E-Learning: Innovative Technology Solutions in Oman

Abstract- E-learning is changing the landscape of many educational organizations globally. It has been embraced by many educational organizations in rapidly developing countries such as India, China and Malaysia. Wang (2003) stresses the importance of IT solutions in teaching and learning which is required to develop students’ skills by using more contemporary, resourceful and effective methods such as e-learning technology solutions in the universities. Recently, e-learning has become one of the IT tools which have emerged very strongly in the educational sector and specifically in the higher education. Yet, e-learning technology solutions offered by universities suffer from high cost and quality problems, and hence lack of acceptance. As such, this paper examines the factors affecting successful acceptance of e-learning technology solutions offered by colleges and universities in Oman from students’ perspective. The findings of this study will enrich the knowledge of students’ acceptance of e-learning in the Omani colleges and universities.

Looking beyond tasks to develop flexible leadership

There is a determination within health and social care to make leaders and leadership better and more able to face the challenges within an ever-changing social, political and organisational landscape. However, this presents difficulties, especially as workplace culture and climate may make people unlikely to take different leadership approaches. This paper reports on the findings of an evaluation of a leadership development programme delivered to senior leaders in health and social care. It uses qualitative data to demonstrate that, even in a safe, risk-free environment, health and social care leaders approach a hypothetical scenario in a defensive, hierarchical and expert-led manner; only after they were given ‘expert’ permission to change leadership style, did they act collectively and seek to adopt a transformational style of leadership.

Decentralization and Localization of Production

The future organizational landscape may change drastically by mid-century as a result of widespread implementation of 3D printing. This article argues that global will turn local; mega (factories, ships, malls) will become mini; long supply chains will shrink; many jobs will be broadened to combine design, consulting, sales, and production roles; and large organizations will make room for smaller ones. “A once-shuttered warehouse is now a state-of-the art lab where new workers are mastering the 3D printing that has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything.” [President Obama, State of the Union Address, 2013].

Mental health in the workplace: Towards evidence-based practice.

I come from a long line of short-lived men. Although most of the women in my family live into their late 80s and 90s, the men mostly die before the age of 65. Almost invariably, consistent with heart disease being the leading cause of death in Nova Scotia (Statistics Canada, 2004), they die of coronary heart disease. I have the advantage, however, of being represented by a union and working for an employer that provides a comprehensive list of health care benefits. If, or when, my time comes to have a cardiac incident I know that my health care will be paid for, and that I will have access to every form of treatment and rehabilitation required. Moreover, I will use the resources without second thought and can reasonably expect that my colleagues and employers will support me in my journey back to health.The prevalence rate for depression in Nova Scotia is also high (Latham, 2012). If I develop symptoms of depression, once again my employer and union are there for me with a comprehensive set of benefits that includes the availability of an employee assistance program (EAP), provisions for short- and long-term disability leave if required and, of course, payment for psychological services. In this case, however, if I am like most employees I will not access these services. When it comes to mental health issues, the resources provided by organizations are typically underutilized (Linnan et al., 2008; Reynolds & Lehman, 2003). EAP programs, for example, are often underaccessed and underutilized (Canadian Medical Association, 2013). Moreover, the people who could often benefit the most from these resources are also the least likely to use them (Hunt & Eisenberg, 2010; Linnan et al., 2008).Dimoff and Kelloway (in press) suggested several potential reasons for this underutilization of organizational resources: (a) individuals may not recognize that they require a program, service, or resource; (b) individuals may not be aware of what resources are available; or (c) individuals may not use available resources because of other concerns or fears (e.g., stigma). There are signs that at least some of these conditions are changing and, indeed, I go as far as to claim that we currently have an unprecedented opportunity to substantially change the mental health of Canadians for the better. A variety of policy and economic factors have resulted in a perfect that is changing the organizational landscape with regard to mental health issues. In short, organizations in Canada are getting involved with mental issues to an unprecedented extent and this movement creates both an opportunity and a challenge for psychology as a profession.The Perfect StormOn a policy front, the storm has been brewing for a considerable time. Senator Michael Kirby began a series of investigations into Canadian health care with his initial report on the state of the health care system (Parliament of Canada, 2002). A subsequent report focused more specifically on mental health and mental health care in Canada (Parliament of Canada, 2006). Ultimately this work led to the creation of the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC). Now in its second funding mandate the MHCC has focused on workplace mental health and with their corporate partners (e.g., the Bell Let's Talk campaign) has done much to identify workplace mental health as an area ripe for intervention.In 2013, the MHCC partnered with the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) to issue CSA Z1003-a Standard for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace (Canadian Standards Association, 2013). This is a voluntary management standard that provides guidance to organizations on how to develop a workplace mental health program-that is, the standard identifies what the authors believe are the core elements of such a program and the key considerations in implementing such a program. The MHCC has just completed the case study project in which 40 Canadian organizations agreed to serve as models during the implementation of the standard and to provide data on the process of implementing workplace mental health programs. …

Paradoxes, problems and potentialities of online work platforms

Drawing from a critical synthesis of interdisciplinary literatures, this article presents the organisational landscape of online work platforms as embedding problems posed to ‘the crowd’ while holding clues for paths of resistance. Organisational mechanisms that underpin online work platforms paradoxically both deterritorialise and territorialise online work and encompass new processes of disintermediation and intermediation, producing unprecedented savings for firms while imposing precarity on crowdworkers. Online work platforms nonetheless have become a tool of ‘development’ in underdeveloped countries for ‘bottom-of-pyramid’ (BOP) populations, a situation I critically examine regarding unique organisational features. Despite principles of online work platforms that would seem to foster the deterritorialisation of work, close scrutiny reveals spatially differentiated labour markets, which matter because the implications for change and the affordances of the new digital infrastructure differ across contexts.

Through the Lens of Accountability: Analyzing Legitimacy in Environmental Governance

Environmental governance implies creation of novel interdependencies among actors and actions, and this innovation and diversity presents challenges. One of these challenges is the maintenance of legitimacy. To understand processes of legitimation at the level of individual organizations and at the level of the larger assemblages represented by governance arrangements, we develop a conceptual framework that analyzes accountability relationships. Within this framework, we use artifacts of accountability, material representations of accountability relationships, to understand the creation, maintenance, and erosion of legitimacy. We study the creation and administration of a multifunctional forested landscape in New Hampshire, USA. Empirical assessment of the varied institutional logics that structure and contribute to legitimacy in this material and organizational landscape allows us to advance understanding of persistence, change, and failure of environmental governance arrangements.

Quantitative imaging of mammalian transcriptional dynamics: from single cells to whole embryos.

Probing dynamic processes occurring within the cell nucleus at the quantitative level has long been a challenge in mammalian biology. Advances in bio-imaging techniques over the past decade have enabled us to directly visualize nuclear processes in situ with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution and single-molecule sensitivity. Here, using transcription as our primary focus, we survey recent imaging studies that specifically emphasize the quantitative understanding of nuclear dynamics in both time and space. These analyses not only inform on previously hidden physical parameters and mechanistic details, but also reveal a hierarchical organizational landscape for coordinating a wide range of transcriptional processes shared by mammalian systems of varying complexity, from single cells to whole embryos.

Client engagement and building design: the view from actor–network theory

ABSTRACTThe accommodation of client expectations in a construction project is challenging. This is, in part, because a client is rarely a single individual and their expectations are rarely static. This paper uses the actor–network theory (ANT) concepts of problematization, enrolment and durability to explore client engagement. The contribution of ANT lies in its (ontological) model of distributed agency, fluid heterogeneous networks and associated effects. A pilot study of a single building project provides an opportunity to theorize the different ways that clients engage in the development of a building. Client engagement differs with the direct versus mediated presence of different client actors, with the devices used to mediate negotiations and with the relative materiality of the network. The findings move the discussion of client engagement beyond the usual calls for better integration to an awareness of the mechanisms by which clients engage. Some decisions are fixed in material objects, while others remain open to ongoing negotiation. There is a need for explicit and continuous interaction and better awareness of when and how decisions are fixed. This would help all participants to deal with the complex and dynamic landscape of people, organizations and interests usually labelled as ‘client’.

Working with “The Others”: Immigrant academics’ acculturation strategies as determinants of perceptions of conflict at work

Although workplace diversity is routinely associated with the expansion of talent pools and maximization of organizational productivity, research suggests that heterogeneous workplaces may also be more prone to organizational conflict. Studies have examined a variety of identity-based interpersonal differences as sources of organizational conflict, including gender, racial, ethnic, age, seniority, or personality type differences. In the light of the increasing effects of globalization on academic organizational landscapes, there is a dearth of research on the link between academic immigration and perceptions of organizational conflict. Using a sample of foreign-born professors at institutions of higher education in the United States, the present study examines how different types of acculturation strategies affect immigrant academics’ perceptions of conflict in the workplace.

Managing Mixed Messages

The organizational landscape is changing for sexual minorities in U.S. workplaces. A dramatic increase in organizational policy protections reflects a broader societal shift toward social acceptance of sexual diversity. However, as participant narratives demonstrate, discrimination and bias are still present in contemporary organizations. As such, sexual minority employees must manage their sexual identities in a changing environment that is rife with mixed messages. In this study, 20 employees from across the United States in a variety of occupations described policies and communication with coworkers as influential to their sexual identity management. Using the framework of the communication theory of identity, gaps between communal frame communication (organizational policy) and relational frame communication (coworker communication) resulted in mixed messages participants had to discursively navigate to manage their sexual identities. Implications for practitioners and scholars are discussed.

The Growing Integration of Physician Practices

Strategic alignment and integration is currently in vogue throughout the health care industry, but its diffusion and pace have not been documented in recent years. The full range of downstream implications from greater alignment between hospitals and physicians has also not been completely explored. We track the organizational landscape among all office-based US physician practices from 2009 to 2015 and document the degree of vertical integration over time. Then, we examine the implications of vertical integration on practices' acceptance of publicly insured patients. We use descriptive trends and linear regression models with practice level fixed effects to capture the relationships between within-office changes in integration behavior and changes in public payer acceptance. Independent (nonintegrated) physician practices are still the most common organizational type, but their share is declining as the share of practices integrated with a health system increases 3-fold between 2009 and 2015. Although >80% of practices that are part of a health system accept Medicaid, <60% of independent practices will see these patients. Vertically integrating with a health system makes it more likely a practice will start seeing Medicaid patients. Integration-and possibly consolidation-appears to be occurring and may be increasing over time in the United States. However, it also seems to increase the number of physician practices participating in the Medicaid program. This beneficial side effect has not been previously documented and should be kept in mind as policymakers weigh the pros and cons of a more integrated health care system.

Boundaries Not Drawn

The last five years have seen a global surge in political fact-checking, reporting that specializes in debunking political misinformation. A growing occupational movement, originating in the United States but increasingly international in scope, has sought to legitimize fact-checking as unbiased journalism, to establish common standards and practices, and to secure reliable funding for this emerging genre. As a genuinely transnational professional movement which includes practitioners from multiple journalistic cultures as well as other fields, fact-checking offers a new site to consider whether and how professional journalism is meaningfully becoming globalized. This paper models a novel approach to mapping a diverse organizational landscape in terms of institutional ties to the fields of journalism, academia, and politics. Drawing on fieldwork from two international gatherings of fact-checkers, I array fact-checking outlets on a ternary graph and review their competing understandings of the mission, the target, and the practices of fact-checking. I highlight areas of convergence as well as divergence in this organizational milieu, focusing particular attention on boundaries not drawn—the willingness of professional journalists in this global movement to share jurisdictional authority with non-journalists. I conclude with suggestions for a comparative research agenda focused on this emergent area of practice.

Environmental justice in the environmental non‐governmental organization landscape of Toronto (Canada)

Key Messages Energy policy in Toronto needs to be sensitive to residents' different social and economic positions. The study's findings highlight the extent to which ENGOs are adopting environmental justice in Toronto. In Toronto's neoliberal context, ENGOs have a bridging role between the state and communities.

Research Partnerships in Sport for Development and Peace: Challenges, Barriers, and Strategies

Research partnerships between scholars and sport for development and peace (SDP) organizations are common, but firsthand accounts of the challenges and barriers faced by scholars when forming and sustaining partnerships are rare. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine them, and to uncover strategies to overcome these challenges across different partnership contexts. Eight prominent SDP scholars were interviewed. Guided by collaboration theory and the partnership literature, findings revealed challenges included navigating the political and organizational landscape; securing commitments from organizations with limited resources; negotiating divergent goals, objectives, and understandings; and conducting long-term evaluations and research. Strategies to address these issues involved developing strategic partnerships, cultivating mutual understanding, building trust, starting small, finding the cause champion, and developing a track record of success. Key theoretical and practical implications are drawn forth, as well as intriguing future research directions.

Commentary: Beyond Morgan’s eight metaphors

This article focuses on the interplay between metaphor and metonymy in the construction of organization theory. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the relationship between the use of metaphor as a way of thinking and a way of being, and the specific metaphors that are produced through this process. It suggests that too much emphasis is often placed on metaphors as abstracted epistemological constructs rather than on understanding the more dynamic and changing role they play in the interactive modes of engagement through which people seek to grasp, concretize and act on their world. Developing the approach and ideas first presented in Images of Organization, this article suggests that a flexible use of metaphor can help us engage and understand the multidimensional and paradoxical nature of organizational life and help us to deal with the emerging issues shaping the contemporary socio-political–technological–organizational landscape. The article suggests that because most current approaches in social science are overly-focused on the study of abstracted metonymical constructs, they will have difficulty dealing with the multidimensional complexity we now face.

Population-based 3D genome structure analysis reveals driving forces in spatial genome organization

Conformation capture technologies (e.g., Hi-C) chart physical interactions between chromatin regions on a genome-wide scale. However, the structural variability of the genome between cells poses a great challenge to interpreting ensemble-averaged Hi-C data, particularly for long-range and interchromosomal interactions. Here, we present a probabilistic approach for deconvoluting Hi-C data into a model population of distinct diploid 3D genome structures, which facilitates the detection of chromatin interactions likely to co-occur in individual cells. Our approach incorporates the stochastic nature of chromosome conformations and allows a detailed analysis of alternative chromatin structure states. For example, we predict and experimentally confirm the presence of large centromere clusters with distinct chromosome compositions varying between individual cells. The stability of these clusters varies greatly with their chromosome identities. We show that these chromosome-specific clusters can play a key role in the overall chromosome positioning in the nucleus and stabilizing specific chromatin interactions. By explicitly considering genome structural variability, our population-based method provides an important tool for revealing novel insights into the key factors shaping the spatial genome organization.

From IT Auditor to Data Scientist

Current Information Systems Audit principles, methods and techniques are based on a paradigm formed in the 1970's. We argue that changes in the technological and organizational landscape and the abundance of data necessitate a paradigm shift, with Information Systems Auditors transforming into data scientists.

The Intersectionality of Religion and Social Welfare: Historical Development of Richmond’s Nonprofit Health and Human Services

Studying the intersectionality of religion and social welfare in Richmond, Virginia requires going back to the beginning of the Virginia colony. In the crucible of the colony, the religious and social welfare functions of a parish community were one and the same. However, after the Revolutionary War it was just a matter of time before the entire system was disassembled. The process of disentanglement of church and state created an identity crisis in Virginia. In the late 1700s, the emergence of charitable efforts began with leading men of Richmond who tried to address the temporary needs of travelers, followed by groups of women who discovered new roles they could play through charitable works. The new “system” became a potpourri of societies, congregations, associations, and county units attempting to provide for the social welfare of the populous. The intersectionality of religion and social welfare continued as a diverse landscape of small and large organizations and congregations performing the social welfare functions in Richmond and throughout the Commonwealth emerged. Today, to attempt to separate the church from the state in this conglomerate of agencies is neither possible nor desirable. However, understanding its’ historical complexity is essential if one is to engage in contemporary practice within Richmond’s health and human service system.

The role of non-economic goals in facilitating financial performance in family and non-family firms: a moderated mediation model

The relevance of non-economic goals has long been recognised as significant in understanding the idiosyncratic behaviours and strategies of family firms. However, non-economic goals are not unique to family firms and are becoming an increasingly common part of the strategic landscape of organisations. We develop arguments, nested in behavioural and emotional agency, that suggest that non-economic goal salience may play a facilitating role in the relationship between the importance of economic goals and financial performance and that the presence of shared family ties among the ownership of firms moderates this mediated relationship. Our findings contribute to the current understanding of non-economic goals in terms of their impact on the financial performance of organisations as well as provide initial arguments for clarifying the presence of such goals as commonly associated with family firms but not uniquely derived within them.

Navigating the political landscape of organizations: An emergent model of group political climate

Navigating the political landscape of organizations: An emergent model of group political climate