The baseline: 44 briefings and two threads that run through everything

What stands out in each organisational condition

Structure. The largest organisational condition, with the most briefings. Strikingly often, the design of the organisation itself is named as the brake. In the automotive industry, executives point to slow decision-making, and in construction the delays sit in the planning phase, where local authority, client and contractor work one after the other. At the same time, organisations are cutting management layers, increasingly with AI as the argument. The managers who remain have twelve direct reports on average and still do hands-on work of their own.

Culture. Employee wellbeing is under pressure. One in five Dutch employees has burnout symptoms, a record level, and employers in retail and public transport say their own measures against aggression fall short. Trust is the second point. Employers are the institution people still trust most, while executives overestimate how much trust they enjoy on their own shop floor.

Leadership. This month is all about the middle manager. Gallup sees managers' engagement falling faster than that of their teams, and in the US more than half of managers are on the lookout for another job. There is movement at the top too: CEO turnover hit a record in 2025 for the second year running. In Dutch education, one in three school leaders say they have too little time for instructional leadership.

Technology. The main story is the gap between use and control. Employees use AI widely, often with their own tools and without training, while policy, oversight and ownership lag behind. This is visible in healthcare and in financial services. The measurable results remain modest: over a third of organisations see the gains from AI in their bottom line.

New this month

44 briefings were added. 5 are listed here; the rest are in the overview.

1. Agent-washing and the cost and value of agent projectsTechnology · AI agentsGartner expects over four in ten agent projects to be cancelled by the end of 2027. Meanwhile use at large companies is growing fast. The difference lies in whether an agent was needed in the first place.
2. The manager's role in how employees use AILeadership · Middle managementResearch links employees' use of AI to support from their own manager. HR doubts whether managers are up to that role.
3. Job losses and reskilling in the European car industryStructure · Skills-based organisationEuropean suppliers announced a combined 104,000 job losses in 2024 and 2025. Reskilling lags behind, partly because HR is often brought into the restructuring late.
4. Engineering managers writing code and engineers directing AI agentsLeadership · Middle managementIn software teams, managers are doing more technical work themselves, while engineers increasingly direct agents. The two roles are moving towards each other.
5. Cuts to the Dutch civil service and the choice of which tasks to dropStructure · Decision-makingDutch central government must save €3.4bn on its own operations by 2035. The Court of Audit sees no plans for which tasks will go, and new rules almost always require extra staff.

See all 44 new briefings

Strongest new figures

1. 47%of Americans think businesses should take a public stance on current events; in 2025 it was 51%.Gallup and Bentley University, 7 October 2026 · not yet checked · Public support for CEOs who speak out on social issues
2. ~90%of CEOs think employees trust their leadership; 46% of employees say the same.Boston Consulting Group, 14 October 2026 · not yet checked · Trust and culture as seen by executives and by employees
3. 4%fewer students on the audit route at three professional bodies in 2025, while the UK and Irish total rose slightly.Financial Reporting Council, 5 October 2026 · not yet checked · Graduate hiring and how juniors learn the trade in law and accounting

Most discussed themes per condition

For each organisational condition, the publications of the past year and the themes they cover most often.

1. Structure139 publications in the past yearLabour market and flexible workforce (in 26 of 139 ↑ share in the last three months more than one and a half times that of the three months before), Work design (in 23 of 139), Organisation design (in 16 of 139 ↑ share in the last three months more than one and a half times that of the three months before)
2. Culture146 publications in the past yearWellbeing (in 30 of 146), Organisational culture (in 26 of 146), Job satisfaction and vitality (in 25 of 146 ↑ share in the last three months more than one and a half times that of the three months before)
3. Leadership75 publications in the past yearDecisions under uncertainty (in 9 of 75 ↑ share in the last three months more than one and a half times that of the three months before), Public sector leadership (in 9 of 75), Succession (in 8 of 75)
4. Technology96 publications in the past yearAdoption (in 33 of 96), AI at work (in 24 of 96), Digital skills (in 18 of 96)