Max Visser

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• Dr.
• Professor (Associate) at Radboud University

For centuries, universities have proliferated and flourished around the world, playing an important role in societal knowledge production and diffusion. However, in the past four decades, this old organizational form has been subjected to neoliberal, managerialist policy doctrines such as New Public Management. Following this, universities have ten...

Purpose: Extensive research has been conducted on cross-cultural comparisons between Eastern and Western organizational cultures in major trading domains. However, there is a lack of examination of intra-comparative management nuances within Asian regions. This research paper focuses on the under-explored topic of the values, beliefs, and attitudes...

The American philosopher Thoreau was among the first to consider life time, rather than money, as the principal unit of economic value, imploring us to treat the minutes of our life as our most valuable substance. In this paper, we take Thoreau's admonition to heart in order to explore alternative and critical lines of thinking about work, producti...

In this Chapter 11, 'Learning Climate,' Max Visser examines that concept, claiming it is an important one to study since it ideally enables participation and democracy, but he also sees risks since everyone is uncritically in favor of it. He offers a linguistic analysis of the term and concludes that a learning climate is a climate for learning, ra...

In the past decade, the concept of recognition appears to have acquired an important theoretical position in the work and organization literature. While in principle recognition denotes a positive and social form of freedom, in current-day organizations recognition may be often negative or instrumental. In order to capture this ambivalence in organ...

IMPACT Rather than focusing on a functionalist implementation of Lean in a hierarchical, top-down manner, this article shows how public sector managers can look at Lean in a new way. They should be luring others into a Lean network by creating conditions in which they define problems and solutions, seek to interest others in these problems, enroll...

The psychological demands of the military profession have been a focal point of reflection in military studies, yet not from the perspective of organizational science. This chapter explores the relevance of the systems psychodynamic perspective for the military organization. It discusses historical examples to reflect on the differences between arm...

Searching for novel ways of organizing: Inspiration from the libidinal debris of ‘hippie radicalism’

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a more pragmatic critical management studies (CMS), by exploring the emancipatory intent of organizational (re)design concepts and ideas from the modern sociotechnical approach integral organizational renewal (IOR). Design/methodology/approach This paper is of a conceptual nature in that it eng...

This study provides theory and empirical evidence for how firms' sincerity of CSR actions and their proneness to tax avoidance are related to the political role of the state. To accomplish this, we adopt a pragmatic sociological perspective which views CSR as a regime of justification, and make a distinction between more progressive or conservative...

In the past decades, the Big Four accounting firms have embraced workforce diversity, in particular gender diversity, as an important value-adding element to their "business case," while at the same time maintaining organizational practices that have the net effect of discouraging women's career advancement. In this paper, this double-edged nature...

Samenvatting In dit artikel staat de ontwikkeling en performativiteit van Lean centraal. Onderzoek uit de management accounting en control (MAC)-literatuur laat zien wat een MAC-systeem (zoals bijvoorbeeld de balanced scorecard (BSC)) bewerkstelligt als organisaties een dergelijk systeem invoeren. Daarentegen is soortgelijk onderzoek naar een organ...

The rise of the platform economy in the past two decades (and neoliberal capitalist expansion and crises more in general), have on the whole negatively affected working conditions, leading to growing concerns about the “human side” of organizations. To address these concerns, the purpose of this paper is to apply Axel Honneth’s recognition theory a...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide insight in how military expeditionary task forces cope with the dual challenge of organizing and learning, by reflecting on the experiences of Dutch expeditionary task forces in post-conflict missions in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. Design/methodology/approach This paper reflects on the outcomes of...

This special issue assembles eight papers which provide insights into the working lives of early career to more senior academics, from several different countries. The first common theme which emerges is around the predominance of ‘targets’, enacting aspects of quantification and the ideal of perfect control and fabrication. The second theme is abo...

Four decades of neoliberal capitalist expansion and crisis, financialization and globalization, have on the whole negatively affected organizational employment and working conditions, leading to growing concerns about the "human side" of organizations. To address these concerns, the purpose of this paper is, first, to develop a more exactly delinea...

In deze studie bestuderen we de inpassing van Lean en beschrijven we wat er tijdens een vertaal- of inpassingsproces (ofwel 'translatie') van Lean bij een Nederlandse overheidsorganisatie gebeurt. 'Lean' wordt als een 'slanke' ofwel kostenbesparende en efficiënte handelswijze gezien. We analyseerden een Lean-inpassingsproces aan de hand van een Act...

This paper examines bi-cultural talent in relation to human resource management (HRM) practices in cross-cultural merger and acquisitions (M&A). The intersection of HRM, bi-cultural talent management and cross-cultural M&A literature proposes a conceptual framework to capture the complexity of bi-cultural talent management and reveals the dominant...

Like its twin concept organizational learning, the concept of learning organization is characterized by many different approaches and perspectives. While many of these ap­proaches outline in some detail the organizational conditions considered beneficial for learning, the specific nature of that learning is often less precisely defined. The purpose...

Op maandag 30 oktober 2017 vond in het oude faculteitsgebouw aan de Thomas van Aquinostraat in Nijmegen een opmerkelijke ontmoeting plaats tussen wetenschappers uit de hoek van genderstudies en management accounting. Aanleiding was de komst van Yves Gendron, een Frans-Canadese accounting hoogleraar die interessante dingen had geschreven over zowel...

In deze studie bestuderen we de inpassing van Lean en beschrijven we wat er tijdens een vertaal-of inpassingsproces (ofwel 'translatie') van Lean bij een Nederlandse overheidsorganisatie gebeurt. 'Lean' wordt als een 'slanke' ofwel kostenbesparende en efficiënte handelswijze gezien. We analyseerden een Lean-inpassingsproces aan de hand van een Acto...

There is a “Pragmatist turn” visible in the field of organization science today, resulting from a renewed interest in the work of Pragmatist philosophers like Dewey, Mead, Peirce, James and others, and in its implications for the study of organizations. Following Wicks and Freeman (1998), in the past decade Pragmatism has also entered the field of...

Under 21st century neo-liberal capitalism, the question of freedom has become particularly urgent for current-day organizations. In this paper freedom is conceived as a struggle for recognition, as theorized by the American philosopher Judith Butler in her more recent work. The pur-pose of this paper is to discuss to what extent recognition confers...

Like many public sector organizations, in the past decades the Dutch judiciary has come to adopt New Public Management (NPM) practices and processes. In this article, we analyze this adoption from a management and organizational control perspective. Using data from a large survey among Dutch judges, we see a “mismatch” between the nature of the NPM...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the processes of open innovation in the context of a fraudulent organization and, using the infamous Bernie L. Madoff Investment Securities fraud case, introduces and elaborates upon the concept of dark open innovation. The paper’s conceptual framework is drawn from social capital theory, which i...

Samenvatting: De zorg in Nederland wordt geconfronteerd met een steeds groter en fijnmaziger geheel aan vooral kwantitatieve management controlmethoden en-technieken. In dit essay staat de vraag centraal of en in welke mate deze methoden en technieken passen (of 'matchen') bij de aard van de activiteiten in de zorgsector. Daartoe wordt de specifiek...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the crossing of knowledge and power boundaries within a bureaucratic organization using Enterprise Social Media (ESM). Carlile’s (2004) boundary crossing framework is used to guide this research. Design/methodology/approach This is a qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews and obs...

Purpose While theories in organizational science seem gender neutral at the surface, a closer analysis re-veals they are often based on men’s experiences. This paper challenges the alleged gender neutral character of Argyris and Schön’s theory of organizational learning (1978). Design/methodology/approach The paper uses the method of gender subt...

The aim of this paper is to theorise about the performativity of accounting. In order to increase the understanding of the contribution of the performativity concept on accounting knowledge, this paper first outlines a number of different seminal conceptualisations of performativity and provides an understanding of their connectedness. The conceptu...

Purpose This paper aims to discuss the “truism” that learning organizations cannot be large organizations and, conversely, that large organizations cannot be learning organizations. This paper analyzes learning in the German and US armies in the Second World War, based on a four-dimensional model of the learning organization. Design/methodology/ap...

Purpose Organizational learning and unlearning are often viewed as different and distinct concepts in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the unlearning concept and reassess its position vis-à-vis learning, in particular second-order and double-loop learning. Design/methodology/approach The paper entails a conceptual analysis....

Purpose While intended as a bridge between the concepts of learning organization and organizational learning, current conceptualizations of organizational learning capability still predominantly lean toward the learning organization side, specifically directed at profit firms. The purpose of this paper is to propose a four-dimensional model of orga...

There is a ‘Pragmatist turn’ visible in the field of organization science today, resulting from a renewed interest in the work of Pragmatist philosophers like Dewey, Mead, Peirce, James and others, and in its implications for the study of organizations. Following Wicks & Freeman (1998), in the past decade Pragmatism has also entered the field of bu...

PurposeIn the past decades, Dutch public sector organizations (PSOs) have been encouraged to become more “business-like” in their internal control and accountability processes, following a more general trend toward New Public Management (NPM) in Western societies. However, in the Netherlands, this trend has met with increasing resistance and discon...

Purpose – Health care organizations often experience difficulty in aligning competing and changing demands, tasks and other organizational conditions in a consistent way, so that they uniformly influence employee outcomes in desired directions. The purpose of this paper is to theorize about the ways in which inconsistent organizational conditions a...

The importance of learning has since long been acknowledged for both business and public sector organizations. However, learning theory and research have tended to neglect the differences between these organizations, and to develop in separate and unrelated directions. To address these developments, this paper purports, first, to develop a theoreti...

In de Nederlandse publieke sector is de afgelopen decennia een duidelijke trend zichtbaar in de richting van een meer bedrijfsmatige en kwantitatieve manier van werken en aansturen (‘New Public Management’). Hiertegen is echter de laatste jaren veel verzet gerezen. In dit artikel wordt een raamwerk aangereikt waarmee publieke organisaties zelf kunn...

Both management control and organizational learning are of vital importance to organizations, yet they are not often considered together in the literature. The purpose of this paper therefore is to shed some conceptual light on the concepts of management control and organizational learning, to explore their commonalities and differences, and to poi...

Under the influence of the 'Reinventing government' and 'New public man-agement' trends in the past two decades, public service organizations (PSOs) increas-ingly faced public and political pressures to become more efficient and effective in their public services delivery and more transparent and accountable in their administrative processes. Howev...

In the organizational learning literature a variety of concepts exists denoting some third order of organizational learning, notably that of ‘triple-loop’ learning. Despite this there has been no systematic, critical consideration of this concept or its origins, impeding both theoretical development and empirical research. Whilst ‘triple-loop learn...

Purpose Research on antecedents of organizational learning generally ignores the fact that organizational learning is at least a two‐dimensional construct and that its dimensions may be conflicting. This research often fails to investigate the simultaneous effects of antecedents on these dimensions. To address this gap in the literature, this paper...

A prominent theme in the HRM literature is the organizational impact of configurations or “bundles” of human resource practices, mostly researched in business firms. A recurrent empirical finding here is that configurations of high performance HR practices generally have a more positive effect on employee attitudes and behavior and on organizationa...

Purpose In recent research the strength and nature of the relationship between coaches and executives appears as a critical success factor in successful coaching outcomes. However, little theory has as yet been devoted to an analysis of how relationships are used in executive coaching. Such an analysis requires going from the monadic, individual le...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a rapprochement between the field of critical management studies (CMS) and what is constructed here as the “mainstream” of organization theory and research. Design/methodology/approach The paper contains a comparative analysis of relevant literature from the fields of organization theory, political s...

In the literature learning and knowledge increasingly are regarded as socially constructed in organisations. In this paper, an interactional perspective is proposed to shed more light on the processes underlying the social construction and on the situated, relational nature of knowledge and learning. Here, knowledge is regarded as second-order know...

In the literature learning and knowledge increasingly are regarded as socially constructed in organisations. In this paper, an interactional perspective is proposed to shed more light on the processes underlying the social construction and on the situated, relational nature of knowledge and learning. Here, knowledge is regarded as second-order know...

To survive in and adapt to dynamic, turbulent, and complex environments, organizations need to engage in learning. This truism is particularly relevant for army organizations in times of war and armed conflict. In this article a case of army operations during World War II is analyzed on the basis of Őrtenblad’s integrated model of the learning orga...

In this paper a theoretical approach to group facilitation is introduced, based on the work of the so-called Palo Alto school in communication and psychotherapy. This approach permits an analysis of group facilitation processes on the basis of several important principles that also inform system dynamics model building and simulation. On the basis...

Higher-order learning in and by organizations is often conceptualized in the literature as deutero-learning. However, current definitions and descriptions of this concept suffer from conceptual confusion and terminological ambiguity, impeding a proper theoretical understanding and hindering empirical research. Following Bateson and Argyris and Schö...

In this paper a theory of group facilitation and communication is introduced, based on the work of Gregory Bateson and the Palo Alto schools he founded and inspired. This theory permits an analysis of group facilitation processes on the basis of the same principles that in-form system dynamic model building and simulation. Through this theory exist...

Organizations differ in their ability to achieve consistency in norms and values, policies and routines on the one hand and employee behavior and attitudes on the other. Although inconsistency in organizational con-ditions negatively affects employee behavior, not much is known about the processes mediating between conditions and behavior. In this...

Organisatieverandering is een moeizaam en weerbarstig fenomeen. Een ruime meerderheid van veranderingsprocessen leidt niet tot het beoogde resultaat. In dit artikel onderzoeken we de invloed van de kwaliteit van communicatie op de veranderingsbereidheid van medewerkers in een proces van organisatieverandering. Uitgaande van een pragmatische benader...

In the literature learning and knowledge increasingly are regarded as socially con-structed in organizations. In this paper an interactional perspective is proposed to shed more light on the processes underlying the social construction and on the situated, relational nature of knowledge and learning. Here knowledge is regarded as second-order knowl...

The concepts of deutero-learning and double bind have acquired an increasingly important status in various fields of social and behavioral science, particularly in psychiatry, psychotherapy, organization, and policy science. With this proliferation, however, their original meaning and significance has become increasingly muted. In this article it i...

This article introduces the work of the Palo Alto groups on communication to a Gestalt audience and analyzes their claim that communication processes may be regarded as Gestalten. After an exposition of the basic principles of communication of the Palo Alto groups, their claim that communication processes may constitute Gestalten is analyzed on the...

current theories of organizational learning tend to concentrate on the mental states of organization members. Knowledge management is a good example in case. In this article a number of objections are raised against this emphasis on mental variables, elaborated in a critical analysis of the concept of knowledge management. As an alter-native, a beh...

Sometimes the life of an ordinary management scientist contains unexpected surprises. Such a surprise happened when, on my last office day before Christmas break 2000, I happened to browse through the Gestalt Theory home page and clicked on the contents of the 1999 volume. It turned out that two eminent Gestalt scientists, Abraham and Edith Luchins...

Binnen de bedrijfskunde wordt geen begrip zo vaak gebruikt als management. We spreken van strategisch management, personeelsmanagement, financieel management, organisatiemanagement, informatiemanagement, integraal management en zelfs watermanagement. Elke vorm van management begint echter met communicatie: van de top naar het middenmanagement, van...

This paper contains a Gestalt theoretical analysis of organization as a macro-phenomenon. After distinguishing between subjective articulations (images, metaphors) and empirical Gestalten of organizations, a Gestalt image is developed on the basis of philosophical considerations. By capturing the essence of three existing images of organization, th...

The behavior of voting for a party in an election has important social implications, yet, due to strong mentalistic influences in electoral research, it has rarely been studied from the behavior analytical perspective. In this article a behavioral analysis of voting is presented and a derived behavioral model is empirically tested on data from a Du...

In this article di$erences between rational, policy-based, and rationalized voting are discussed, and it is argued that these forms of electoral decision making are not properly analyzed in existing electoral studies. Policy voting, persuasion, and projection are then redefined as three possible ways of restoring balance among imbalanced triads of...

The analysis of long-term social and political developments in Western countries is often difficult because of a lack of sufficient survey data. Almost always official election and census statistics are available over long periods, yet the use of these data for individual-level inferences runs the risk of the ecological fallacy. In this paper we pr...

The analysis of long-term social and political developments in Western countries is often difficult because of a lack of sufficient survey data. Almost always official election and census statistics are available over long periods, yet the use of these data for individual-level inferences runs the risk of the ecological fallacy. In this paper we pr...

This article examines the development of psychologically oriented voting behavior research between 1939-1964. It intends to show the psychological basis of the Columbia and Michigan approaches and its implications for the analysis of electoral behavior. It is argued that, in spite of the large differences commonly perceived between these two approa...

This article examines the development of psychologically oriented voting behavior research between 1939?1964. It intends to show the psychological basis of the Columbia and Michigan approaches and its implications for the analysis of electoral behavior. It is argued that, in spite of the large differences commonly perceived between these two approa...

This dissertation is an exercise in political psychology and psychologically oriented political science. The approach it takes to the study of voting is inherently psychological, yet the choice and scope of psychological theories is bounded by the discussion of voting behavior as it appears from the political science literature. Digressions into ps...

This article contains a rudimentary 'group theory' of voting behavior. People may attach themselves to various groups, but only in the cases that a clear relationship is being perceived between the group and political choice do these group identifications have relevance for voting behavior. Such a relationship exists when parties are explicitly gro...

Organisaties moeten leren zich aan te passen aan een steeds dynamischer, complexer en turbulenter wordende omgeving om te kunnen overleven. Dit geldt in het bijzonder voor legerorganisaties ten tijde van oorlog. In dit artikel analyseren we een casus van een legerorganisatie in de Tweede Wereldoorlog met behulp van de actietheoretische benadering v...

In this paper the question of power in administrative behavior is approached from two perspectives. Following the internal perspective, power is commonly conceptualized with reference to certain mental states of power wielder and power subject. From an external perspective, one should look at the environment for determinants of behavior, in which c...

In this paper the alleged gender neutral character of the work of Senge (1990) on learning organizations is challenged. This work is selected because of its major influence on the theoretical discussion of and its practical support of learning organizations. The method used is intersectional gender subtext analysis, centering on the interaction bet...