The English Public Boarding School is considered from a sociological perspective, and more particularly in the context of research in the field of complex organizations, as a residential organization. Concepts are used which have been developed in studies of other residential organizations such as military units, hospitals and prisons. The account is of an exploratory, descriptive case study of 'the research school', using a variant on the method of participant observation as the principal technique of data collection supplemented with data collected during visits to certain other public schools and an examination of published and unpublished documents by staff and past pupils. The size of these schools and their residential nature, which involves them in the custody of their pupils, give rise to certain specific organizational problems to which similar solutions have been devised by most of the schools. Certain aspects of the social process in the education provided by the schools are indicated in the examination of their admission procedures, processes of socialization on entry and the concomitants of organizational membership, of the agents and means of social control, together with a discussion both of the boys' perception of relative gratifications and deprivations with respect to various reference groups both within and without the school system and of the boys' different modes of adaptation to life in the socio-cultural context of the school. These schools belong to that category of complex organization which in addition to working through and with people work on them. The role of the school in socializing the boy and regulating his behaviour while a member of the school is emphasized, as education in the public boarding school is as much the attempt to socialize its pupils as to enable them to pass formal examinations or otherwise achieve academic ends, and it is with this former aspect of the schools that this account is primarily concerned. The schools' combined custodial and educational commitments make the maintenance of social order within them of fundamental significance. By anticipatory socialization in the home and at 'preparatory' school, and by their recruitment selection and admission procedures, by a formal system of control exercised partly through the prefect system, by the privilege system and certain ritualistic activities and ritualistic symbolization, the staff combine a high degree of organizational control with high scope and pervasiveness. During term a boy is engaged almost exclusively in activities involving other members of his school and organizational status embraces his life to an extent which is approached by few other types of organization in English society. Aspects of life at these schools are described which involve the pupils experiencing, rather than a sense of relative gratification, one of relative deprivation. The extent to which a particular boy experiences this is discussed in terms of disparities between his presenting culture on entry and the way of life associated with organizational membership, and in terms of his expectations and of the mode of adaptation and constellations of reference groups he has adopted at the time. The boys' responses to life in the socio-cultural context of the public boarding school are presented within the framework of a revised form of Merton's Typology of Individual Adaptation, and discussed in relation to the availability of the various modes of adaptation and to some of the determinants of their adoption by particular boys at certain stages of their school careers.

This research applies institutional economics theory to management challenges arising in connection with e-business related transformational change. The research was carried out in response to widely recognised problems in managing IT-enabled change in complex organisations. A cyclic approach builds researcher competence in both the chosen theory, New Institutional Economics (NIE), and its application through a series of four contrasting case studies. The case situations, which derive from the researcher’s work as a technology management consultant, are treated as action research experiments which investigate e-business related transformational change in financial services, retail and government settings. A constructivist stance is adopted within the case situations with the researcher acting as a participant observer. Reflective practice is used to improve the experimental method for the case studies through the course of the research, leading to the use of participatory action research (PAR) for the final case. A literature review of NIE shows it to be loosely defined as a theory, so an analytic NIE framework is created to provide a cognitive model. This model is then modified and extended to produce a final theoretical framework. In parallel, a conceptual map of NIE is created from the research as a practical aid to illustrate NIE concepts and linkages. These two models, the theoretical framework and the conceptual map, evolve through the four case situations which were selected from a range of e-business consulting opportunities available to the researcher over the period of the research. The second case study drives the main development of the two models and draws out the necessary and complementary contributions of both transaction cost economics (TCE) and agency theory (AT) as parts of NIE, neither of which is sufficient on its own. The final case study demonstrates application to practice. The overall sequence of case studies shows the researcher’s cognitive growth from being a novice in the theory and its application in the first case through to a level of proficiency in applying NIE to the rigours of e-business practice in the final case. The research makes several contributions to knowledge. It makes a significant methodological contribution by bringing research methods developed for other forms of professional practice to the management discipline. It also makes a significant contribution to theoretical knowledge. It develops two theoretical models of NIE – a conceptual map and a theoretical framework – which present a way of linking NIE concepts in a meaningful way, and a structure by which NIE can be used in the analysis of highly complex organisational situations. These models clarify the complementary roles of TCE and AT, and indicate a reason why so many studies limited to TCE alone have been inconclusive. Applying NIE to the rigours of e-business management produces, in turn, a contribution to IT strategy formulation. The research makes a practical contribution by showing how NIE can be applied to e-business practice, subject to a number of significant caveats. NIE, as a descriptive theory, is shown to provide a powerful conceptual framework when combined with PAR, although both require deep knowledge and skill. In particular, adopting PAR as a case study method depends on an experienced, skilled and committed practitioner for its effective use. Finally, the research finds that NIE’s strengths as a framework for strategic analysis of large scale and complex e-business situations involving transformational change, which make it unduly sophisticated for less challenging situations, mean that NIE is suited to use by highly skilled, specialist consultants rather than by general managers.

År 2014 valde Söderhamns kommun att anta en ny styr- och ledningsfilosofi baserad på värderingar som ökat medborgarfokus, medarbetares engagemang samt en verksamhet präglad av tillit i alla led. Dessa värderingar utgör även grunden för offensiv kvalitetsutveckling och förändringsledning. Syftet med denna kvalitativa fallstudie var att erhålla mer kunskap kring implementeringen av den nya filosofin samt hur organisationens högre ledning upplevde förändringsarbetet. Åtta chefer har intervjuats. De semistrukturerade intervjuerna har sedan transkriberats och sammanställts varpå empirin har tolkats utifrån ett hermeneutiskt perspektiv med utgångspunkt i arbetets teoretiska ramverk. Resultatet visade att förändringsarbetet är komplext till sin natur och att ledarna tolkat och arbetat med värderingarna på olika sätt, vilket skulle kunna ses som skillnader i såväl individuell som organisatorisk mognadsnivå. Vidare har kommunen en ekonomistyrning som ännu inte anpassats efter den nya filosofin. Författarna drar slutsatsen att de begrepp som präglar kommunens värderingar lätt blir abstrakta och svåra att översätta i praktisk handling samt att det finns utrymme för förbättringar inom implementeringsarbetet. / In 2014, the municipality of Söderhamn initiated a new control and management philosophy, characterized by core values such as increased citizen focus, employee commitment and trust in all operative aspects. These values are the same as the core values of Total Quality Management and leadership for change. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to gain more knowledge about the work involved in implementing the management philosophy as well as the experiences of senior management. Eight managers were interviewed. These semi-structured interviews were then transcribed and collected, after which the empiricism has been interpreted from a hermeneutic perspective based on the theoretical framework of the study. The results indicate that the change process is complex and the leaders have interpreted the guiding values differently, leading to the conclusion that there are differences in the degree of matureness between individuals as well as within the organisation. Moreover, the financial steering in the municipality is not yet accustomed to the new philosophy/ management. The authors conclude that the concepts characterizing the values of the municipality easily become abstract and are hard to implement in practise and, furthermore, there is capacity for improvement in the implementation work. / <p>2017-06-28</p>