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The purpose of this paper is to explore how organizational design could support teamwork and to identify organizational design principles that promote successful teamwork.

Since traditional team training sessions take resources away from production, the alternative approach pursued here explores the promotion of teamwork by means of organizational design. A wide and pragmatic definition of teamwork is applied: a team is considered to be a group of people that are set to work together on a task, and teamwork is then what they do in relation to their task. The input – process – output model of teamwork provides structure to the investigation.

Six teamwork enablers from the healthcare team literature – cohesion, collaboration, communication, conflict resolution, coordination, and leadership – are discussed, and the organizational design measures required to implement them are identified. Three organizational principles are argued to facilitate the teamwork enablers: team stability, occasions for communication, and a participative and adaptive approach to leadership.

The findings could be used as a foundation for intervention studies to improve team performance or as a framework for evaluation of existing organizations.

By implementing these organizational principles, it is possible to achieve many of the organizational traits associated with good teamwork. Thus, thoughtful organization for teamwork can be used as an alternative or complement to the traditional team training approach.

With regards to the vast literature on team training, this paper offers an alternative perspective on how to improve team performance in healthcare.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an introduction and overview of the various papers in this special issue.

A short discussion of the main quests of interventionist research and how these are related to the papers in this special issue, is undertaken.

The essence of interventionist research is its methodological location, researching where practice and theory meet.

Interventionist research places strong demands on the individual researcher's interpretative, social, and abstracting skills in order to carry observations to ontological and epistemological levels.

Interventionist research is rich in research designs and specific intervention types. Selecting the “right” one is strongly related to the connection the researcher makes with the social context she/he will operate in. Changes over time in both design and intervention can be expected, given the dynamic, longitudinal and interactive nature of interventionist research.

This special issue provides examples of a varied set of interventionist research situations, including the selection of typical intervention methods and how knowledge contributions were extracted.

The purpose of this paper is to test an intervention technique developed earlier. The technique builds on an action research approach with a threefold aim: to produce change in a practical context, in our case to enhance the problem‐solving capacity in an operational team in an authentic construction project, and at the same time; test the technique and finally, extract additional knowledge about the problem area.

The technique is based on “the Skilled Facilitator” approach and the “krAft” concept, extended with knowledge about unconscious behaviour and focusing on counteracting counterproductive behaviour. The intervention was performed by the first author and studied through joint reflection, in part with the second author and in part with the participants, on documentation from meetings (notes and audio recordings), individual interviews, questionnaires, and observations.

The intervention technique developed was found to be effective in the aspect of creating efficient learning processes in the operational team. Results show that change occurred compared to the participants' experience from earlier construction projects, and indicates that the intervention was, at least partly, reason for the change. Even though the changes were apprehended both positive and negative, the positive changes were in the majority.

The paper creates new knowledge about how communication problems and other practical problems in the construction industry can be overcome with the help of an interventionist. The concept of the interventionist as a “liberator,” is introduced.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse and describe the learning that takes place in the interaction between academics from different disciplines and perspectives in collaboration with practitioners.

The research draws on theories of learning that view it in relation to context, where the most significant features of the learning process concern discerning new aspects of a phenomenon. The study focuses on the workplace learning of researchers in a multidisciplinary programme at the National Institute for Working Life in Sweden (NIWL). Data was collected from semi‐structured interviews. In the analysis the learning experienced was discerned by identifying how the participants spoke of developing and changing in their work as researchers.

The investigation identified five categories of learning of the academics in the multidisciplinary research programme, namely: deepened awareness of perspectives and concepts; practical development; new awareness of one's competences and professional learning process; flexible professionalism and practical usefulness; insights into research and development processes.

The study contributes to an increased understanding of how knowledge production and academics' workplace learning is constituted in multidisciplinary contexts and research programmes involving practitioners from outside academia.

In organising and supporting learning and knowledge exchange in inter‐ or multidisciplinary research programmes with (or without) practitioners, it is essential to be aware of the importance of relational and contextual implications for academics' learning processes.

This paper aims to propose an interventionist research model for cost measurement in small manufacturing companies.

The study was based on an interventionist model that consisted of two phases – training and intervention. The innovative model used in the study combined Labro and Tuomela’s (2003) framework with the socialization, externalization, combination and internalization model developed by Nonaka et al. (2001), and it was subsequently applied to two Brazilian manufacturing companies.

The main findings were as follows: the training phase is the one that generated the greatest impact on the cost calculation; competitors should not be invited to participate in the same program; it is necessary for the researchers to have professional experience of the subject being investigated and to have experience of micro and small enterprises; the training phase must be presented using appropriate language; and a better understanding of the costs can increase entrepreneurs’ confidence when negotiating prices with clients.

The main limitation was the small number of companies that were included in the study. Future research could involve longitudinal studies to evaluate the long-term results of interventionist studies.

The study showed that even small business owners can implement costing techniques, but that this requires the development of an environment of knowledge creation, followed by an implementation phase. The model can be replicated on a large scale, with affordable costs.

Improving the performance of small and medium-sized enterprises, which are high employers, with low implementation cost is a demand of society.

The model proved to be valid, and it could easily be replicated on a larger scale; the study therefore helps to demonstrate the benefits of interventionist research.

The purpose of this paper is to report on an action research project carried out in an Italian university hospital that was facing a strategic challenge. The role of intellectual capital (IC) for university hospital strategic management is discussed after developing and applying an IC framework to enhance the visualisation of strategic IC elements.

An action research process has been applied in the studied setting based on Susman and Evered’s (1978) definition of the engaged research cycle.

The action research process allowed a gap between theory and practice to be bridged; the strategic control process resulted supported by new measures; a different approach to strategy management was launched, and other organisations perceived the relevance of the IC representation and wished to import it.

Research limitations are related to those recognised for the interventionist research approach.

The paper contributes to the improvement of managerial and accounting technologies for practitioners managing university hospitals and discusses a university hospital’s strategic goals.

The paper represents a methodological contribution related to the interventionist research stream of literature, and enriches the limited studies focused on IC in health care organisations. Furthermore, the paper enables appreciation of the role of academics in the convergence of theory and practice.

This paper aims to investigate the intersection between corporate governance and management accounting information within the board meeting of an English further education college.

The empirical fieldwork uses an interventionist approach. Board members’ mental models of a management accounting boundary object are analysed.

The paper supports Parker (2007) and Cornforth and Edward’s (1999) observation that within a board meeting, collaborative “micro-management” type talk is considered to lie outside the acceptable remit of non-executive and executive board member interaction. Such an attitude can prevent an intertwining of management accounting information and other mental models of an organisation occurring. This can preclude management accounting information from rendering an organisation visible, in an expansive manner, within a boardroom.

Interventionist researchers working within the black box of the board are encouraged to design more radical and collaborative interventions than the interview/report format used here.

Non-executive directors might benefit from being offered the opportunity to interact with management accounting information outside the formal board meeting and committee structure.

A deeper understanding of how directors’ mental models, boardroom behaviours and attitudes influence their interaction with management accounting information is offered. Insight into the limitations of using management accounting information in the boardroom is developed.

The purpose of this paper is to improve production effectiveness of equipment by facilitating the implementation of the key principles of total productive maintenance (TPM).

A sequential TPM-based scheme consisting of 13 procedural steps is proposed. The steps cover the basic aspects of a generic improvement system, i.e. planning, implementation, checking, corrective action and control.

The proposed scheme was effective in increasing the overall equipment effectiveness by 62.6 percent over a nine-month period only. This was a direct reflection of improvements in equipment availability, efficiency and product quality. A positive feedback regarding the smooth implementation of the scheme was also received from the responsible maintenance staff.

The proposed scheme is intended mainly to the manufacturing industrial sector, which utilizes failure-prone equipment in running operations.

This study presents an original scheme that tries to avoid the many barriers of success frequently encountered during the implementation of TPM schemes, as reported in the literature. This scheme is unique in integrating between 5S and safety, health and environment initiatives, by capitalizing on the close relation between the two initiatives, and simplifying procedures for measuring how well the two initiatives are implemented in an organization in one score card. Different from previous studies, the scheme treats both “education and training” and 6S as a foundation to the core TPM principles.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a model to disclose, report, and manage intellectual capital (IC) in a network of companies. To this end, it provides a monetary evaluation of core competencies (CCs), which may be defined as a bundle of various types of intangibles, aggregating their value into a network statement, called a network competence report (NCR).

The paper utilises the interventionist approach. The intervention was conducted by the authors and studied through joint reflections on documentation from meetings and individual, semi-structured interviews.

The NCR makes IC more transparent, thereby allowing companies and network managers to assess the strengths and weaknesses of CCs with a consequent potential insight into their potential earnings.

This method is labour-intensive, especially in its first application, and the data collection requires considerable company involvement. The interventionist approach may have influenced the empirical results, which may be affected by subjectivity. As the paper involves a single network, care should be taken in generalising its empirical evidence.

In making IC management more effective, the NCR is valuable for academics, management, political authorities and, more generally, for a network’s stakeholders. The NCR is a tool for internal and external communication purposes, creating the conditions to mobilise IC. The proposed model supports the diagnosis of networks by providing CC maps and assessments relevant to their governance and competitiveness. The NCR depicts company and network CCs, allowing intertemporal comparisons that facilitate understanding of the effectiveness of the network’s actions and the importance of belonging to it.

This paper represents a first attempt to evaluate, in monetary terms, CCs in a network. Its value lies in its practical implications. Moreover, the paper investigates IC in applied terms, contributing to reducing the gap between theory and practice.