Although it is currently common to speak of organizational learning, this notion is still surrounded by conceptual confusion. It is unclear how notions like learning, knowledge and cognitive activities can be applied to organizations. Some authors have tried to unravel the conceptual and ontological problems by giving an account of the role of individuals in organizational learning. However, this has not yet led to an agreed upon analysis. In this article we use structuration theory to overcome the dualism of individual and organization in organizational learning. We support, illustrate and elaborate our structurationist perspective by an ethnographic and historical study of an industrial research laboratory. We show how organizational learning evolves from distributed social practices, creatively realized by knowledgeable individuals, and illustrate how these practices are enabled and constrained by existing structures.

Coordination theories are characterized primarily by a focus on integration, in which coordination is aimed at achieving a coherent and unified set of actions. However, in the extreme settings in which fast-response organizations operate, achieving integration is often challenging. In this study we employ a fragmentation perspective to show that dealing with ambiguity and discontinuity is not only inevitable for these organizations, it is a key characteristic of coordinating. We undertook an inductive, qualitative field study on how officers in command from the fire department, medical services, and police coordinate during emergency response operations. Our data are based on a four-year multi-site field study of 40 emergency management exercises in the Netherlands, combined with 56 retrospective interviews. Our inductive analysis of this data shows that officers use three coordination practices to deal with ambiguity and discontinuity: working around procedures, delegating tasks, and demarcating expertise. We theorize our findings by showing how these practices lead to conditions in which fragmentation can become an effective method of coordination. In doing so, we provide a more complete understanding of the process of coordinating in fast-response settings that will benefit both crisis management practice and organizational theory.

Our main concern in this article is whether nation-wide information technology (IT) infrastructures or systems in emergency response and disaster management are the solution to the communication problems the safety sector suffers from. It has been argued that implementing nation-wide IT systems will help to create shared cognition and situational awareness among relief workers. We put this claim to the test by presenting a case study on the introduction of 'netcentric work', an IT system-based platform aiming at the creation of situational awareness for professionals in the safety sector in the Netherlands. The outcome of our research is that the negotiation with relevant stakeholders by the Dutch government has lead to the emergence of several fragmented IT systems. It becomes clear that a top-down implementation strategy for a single nation-wide information system will fail because of the fragmentation of the Dutch safety sector it is supposed to be a solution to. As the US safety sector is at least as fragmented as its Dutch counterpart, this may serve as a caveat for the introduction of similar IT systems in the US.

There is an increasing interest in the application of Structuration Theory in the fields of management and organization studies. Based upon a thorough literature review, we have come up with a data-set to assess how Structuration Theory has been used in empirical research. We use three key concepts of this theory (duality of structure, knowledgeability, and time-space) as sensitizing concepts for our analysis. We conclude that the greatest potential of Structuration Theory for management and organization studies is to view it as a process theory that offers a distinct building block for explaining intra and interorganizational change, as exemplified through concepts such as routine, script, genre, practice, and discourse.

Social media in and around the emergency shelter for refugees near Nijmegen, the Netherlands To cope with the limited capacity of the established reception centres during the refugee crisis of 2015, the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) set up emergency reception centers for refugees such as Heumensoord nearby the Dutch city of Nijmegen. At the peak of the crisis, the Heumensoord centre hosted about 3,000 asylum seekers. COA's organizational approach to manage reception centers was characterized by a topdown policy. At the same time, host communities of local residents around the emergency reception center developed horizontal relations within and beyond the walls of the center, actively using available social media platforms such as Facebook. These horizontal relations enabled the development of social relations, and facilitated the exchange of goods and services. This article demonstrates the different communication strategies used by the stakeholders at Heumensoord, and how the different worlds of asylum seekers and the receiving, host communities came together. It also presents bottom-up alternatives to the top-down crisis approaches by unravelling cooperation options and the use of social media platforms that can lead to a more resilient interaction between asylum seekers and local communities.