Search results

The Agents of Change program is a two-year, project-based learning program to develop Extension Professionals’ capacity to engage in Adaptive and Transformative Leadership. Its primary goal is to develop the capacity of Extension Professionals to engage in leadership to create more diverse, equitable, inclusive and just Extension programs and community change initiatives. This manuscript describes the program and an initial evaluation and results.

Results of an evaluation of the first year of the program indicate that regular training sessions and support are appropriate for leadership development and that Extension Professionals are using the learning, awareness and tools from this program to address challenges with Adaptive and Transformative Leadership elements. Also, Extension professionals demonstrated commitment to personal growth, community engagement and understanding of their multifaceted roles as change agents.

Participants are sharing resources from the program with colleagues, leading meetings differently, questioning the status quo and pushing others to try new ways forward.

The COVID-19 pandemic has substantially affected China’s tourism industry. Tourism small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), with limited crisis response ability, might be difficult to recover after the pandemic. Regarding the impacts of the pandemic on rural tourism, income for rural attraction sites was almost zero; sightseeing, agri-tourism activities were ceased; and large amount of rural bed-and-breakfasts (B&Bs) faced business closure. However, through three cases, our study found that through either content innovation or process innovation, some B&Bs are able to recover speedily from the pandemic and develop sustainably. These innovations are important for their business strategy adjustment. Innovation creates more value for tourists and stakeholders by developing new service products or adjusting existing products. This chapter discusses the linkages between innovation and leadership. Through the investigation and analysis of three cases, the researchers found that the advantages of transformational leadership were reflected in the post-crisis management in different ways and effectively improved the innovation ability and sustainable development of post-crisis organizations. This study has enriched the literature on transformational leadership and post-crisis recovery of small tourism enterprises and has practical reference value for managers of small rural tourism companies.

As the developing nations grow and experience rapid institutional transformation, research has begun to investigate the roles of culture, cognition and institutional context on entrepreneurship and innovation. This chapter aims to advance the entrepreneurial cognition literature by juxtaposing entrepreneurial effectuation, domain-specific expertise and ambiguity. By conducting a qualitative study of Chinese high-tech domestic and returnee entrepreneurs, the authors propose a spectrum between causation and effectuation and argue that the entrepreneur’s perceived level of ambiguity may better explain differing logic orientations among entrepreneurs, contributing to our understanding of entrepreneurial cognition. The authors theorize that (1) individual actors and the level of institutional development jointly comprise the entrepreneur’s logic orientation; (2) the level of perceived ambiguity mediates the strategy adopted by high-tech entrepreneurs; (3) the entrepreneur’s logic orientation can be regarded as a continual spectrum from effectuation to causation. Finally, the logic orientation concept is applied to the context of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A) from a process perspective and the implications and fit of logic orientation with the stages of cross-border M&A are discussed.

Undoubtedly, digital transformation is permeating all domains of business and society. We envisage this volume as an opportunity to explore how manifestations of digital transformation require rethinking of our understanding and theorization of institutional processes. To achieve this goal, a collaborative forum of organization and management theory scholars and information systems researchers was developed to enrich and advance institutional theory approaches in understanding digital transformation. This volume’s contributions advance the three institutional perspectives. The first perspective, institutional logics, technological affordances and digital transformation, seeks to deepen our understanding of the pervasive and increasingly important relationship between technology and institutions. The second perspective, digital transformation, professional projects and new institutional agents, explores how existing professions respond to the introduction of digital technologies as well as the emergence of new professional projects and institutional agents in the wake of digital transformation. The third perspective, institutional infrastructure, field governance and digital transformation, inquires how new digital organizational forms, such as platforms, affect institutional fields, their infrastructure and thus their governance. For each of these perspectives, we outline an agenda for future research, complemented by a brief discussion of new research frontiers (i.e., digital work and sites of technological (re-)production; artificial intelligence (AI) and actorhood; digital transformation and grand challenges) and methodological reflections.

This chapter introduces electroencephalography (EEG), a measure of neurophysiological activity, as a critical method for investigating individual and team decision-making and cognition. EEG is a useful tool for expanding the theoretical and research horizons in organizational cognitive neuroscience, with a lower financial cost and higher portability than other neuroimaging methods (e.g., functional magnetic resonance imaging). This chapter briefly reviews past work that has applied cognitive neuroscience methods to investigate cognitive processes and outcomes. The focus is on describing contemporary EEG measures that reflect individual cognition and compare them to complementary measures in the field of psychology and management. The authors discuss how neurobiological measures of cognition relate to and may predict both individual cognitive performance and team cognitive performance (decision-making). This chapter aims to assist scholars in the field of managerial and organizational cognition in understanding the complementarity between psychological and neurophysiological methods, and how they may be combined to develop new hypotheses in the intersection of these research fields.

Since the early years of the Cold War, two countervailing trends have been present in the treatment of officially held information in the United States. On the one hand, as the foundations of U.S. information policy were being set after World War II, wartime practices were remade and made permanent in a crisis atmosphere, with the establishment of a classification system (essentially the same one used to this day) by executive order, as well, as the passage of the Atomic Energy Act in 1946 and the National Security Act in 1947. However, even as the practice of official secrecy took root, the United States took the lead in formalizing standards of openness by statute, beginning with the 1946 passage of the Administrative Procedures Act and culminating in the passage (and 1974 strengthening) of the Freedom of Information Act. This article traces the development of U.S. information policy since World War II and describes the impact of official secrecy on decision making and democratic practice more generally.

Roots of global Terrorism are in ‘failed’ states carved out of multiracial empires after World Wars I and II in name of ‘national self‐determination’. Both sides in the Cold War competed to exploit the process of disintegration with armed and covert interventions. In effect, they were colluding at the expense of the ‘liberated’ peoples. The ‘Vietnam Trauma’ prevented effective action against the resulting terrorist buildup and blowback until 9/11. As those vultures come home to roost, the war broadens to en vision overdue but coercive reforms to the postwar system of nation states, first in the Middle East. Mirages of Vietnam blur the vision; can the sole Superpower finish the job before fiscal and/or imperial overstretch implode it?