From Adapting Practices to Inhabiting Ideas: How Managers Restructure Work across Organizations

Abstract

Organizations that adopt new practices employ managers to make decisions about how to materialize these practices. I examine how these managers move between the meanings and resources found in extra-local and local realms. I find that managers’ practices shift over time from adapting BPR practices to inhabiting BPR as an idea. Managers’ approaches are shaped by each organization’s history of efforts to introduce extra-local ideas. Rather than adapting BPR practices, managers draw on change tools, techniques, and methods that have worked in the organization and integrate BPR work into ongoing interactions, activities, and language in the local context.

Citation

Huising, R. (2016), "From Adapting Practices to Inhabiting Ideas: How Managers Restructure Work across Organizations", The Structuring of Work in Organizations (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 47), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 383-413. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20160000047025