ABSTRACT
Over the past 20-30 years, many public sector organizations have adopted organizational forms that include multi-located organizational units, in which leaders and part of their subordinates work in different geographical locations. The COVID-19 lockdowns have caused a similar trend with an increased use of home offices. Consequently, many leaders today have people working from different geographical locations, and virtual leadership (distant leadership) has become the possible normal practice. The situation before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic can be understood from multiple theoretical perspectives within organizational research: the technological, the performance gap and the institutional perspective. The purpose of this chapter is to present, illustrate and discuss these three organizational perspectives on the adoption of-and changes related to-telework and virtual leadership. The illustrations of these perspectives are conducted to the old normal and the lockdown period, while the discussion is in relation to possible "new normal practices.” The illustrations are drawn from Norwegian public organizations, and the perspectives build on classic and new contributions within organizational research. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023.
ABSTRACT
The significant scholarly productions of James G. March have contributed to and even shaped several research fields, including political and organizational science. For example, his contributions to the topic of organizational learning are widely known in organization research. Furthermore, recent studies on the impact of the specific publications of James March have identified organizational innovation as an emerging topic of inspiration from his publications over the years (e.g., Wilden, Hohlberger, Devinney and Lumineau 2019). This is not surprising. James March, Herbert A. Simon and Richard Cyert were among the first to connect the theoretical concept of innovation to processes inside organizations (March and Simon 1958;Cyert and March 1963). However, even though March has long influenced research on innovation, there are few, if any, scholars who have traced his ideas about innovation over his long and influential career. Motivated by this observation, this paper focuses on James March’s theoretical contribution to innovation in organizations. The objective is to identify, extract and discuss his ideas by asking the following question: how did March use the concept of innovation over time, and what relevance does it have today? The theoretical discussion is based on eight key publications from 1958 to 2015, which were selected because they introduce new theoretical ideas to innovation or innovation-related topics. The three examples (central findings) of the relevance today have the following implications or contributions. First, the idea that organizations must balance the pursuit of novelty and the pursuit of efficiency implies that internal innovation efforts are as important as adopting external innovations. Second, the idea of performance gaps is relevant in understanding organizational responses to the COVID-19 crisis and lockdowns. Third, the idea of sunk costs of innovation implies that innovations are investments that can (more or less) lead to inertia in connection to later changes. All of these implications contribute to the general discourse on innovation in organizations by adding the ideas of James March.
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: To investigate the peripheral nerve and muscle function electrophysiologically in patients with persistent neuromuscular symptoms following Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). METHODS: Twenty consecutive patients from a Long-term COVID-19 Clinic referred to electrophysiological examination with the suspicion of mono- or polyneuropathy were included. Examinations were performed from 77 to 255 (median: 216) days after acute COVID-19. None of the patients had received treatment at the intensive care unit. Of these, 10 patients were not even hospitalized. Conventional nerve conduction studies (NCS) and quantitative electromyography (qEMG) findings from three muscles were compared with 20 age- and sex-matched healthy controls. RESULTS: qEMG showed myopathic changes in one or more muscles in 11 patients (55%). Motor unit potential duration was shorter in patients compared to healthy controls in biceps brachii (10.02 ± 0.28 vs 11.75 ± 0.21), vastus medialis (10.86 ± 0.37 vs 12.52 ± 0.19) and anterior tibial (11.76 ± 0.31 vs 13.26 ± 0.21) muscles. All patients with myopathic qEMG reported about physical fatigue and 8 patients about myalgia while 3 patients without myopathic changes complained about physical fatigue. CONCLUSIONS: Long-term COVID-19 does not cause large fibre neuropathy, but myopathic changes are seen. SIGNIFICANCE: Myopathy may be an important cause of physical fatigue in long-term COVID-19 even in non-hospitalized patients.