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Philip Selznick has been a central, historical figure in the development of institutional theory. In particular his contribution in TVA and the Grass Roots and Leadership in Administration has been key. However, we put forward the relevance of Selznick’s broader portfolio of ideas, to show that they could inform institutional analysis in new ways. There are important ideas and insights that can be brought to bear on contemporary issues within institutional theory. In particular, Selznick was concerned with the ways in which organizational goals are deflected because of different interest groups. Organizations use various kinds of cooptation to deal with interest groups. Selznick’s perspective implies that institutional theorists need to be concerned with both deflection of purposes and interests. These ideas are explored further in his work, The Organizational Weapon, showing a concern with the nefarious effects of organizational practices, an avenue that institutional theory needs to explore further. Indeed, Selznick was always concerned with the consequences of institutionalization. He dealt with issues of organizational governance, purposes and interests, ideas of unanticipated as well as anticipated consequences, negative as well as positive effects of institutionalization all of which require further analysis in contemporary institutional theory. Also at the heart of Selznick’s work was an emphasis on policy and practice, coming from American pragmatist philosophy. For Selznick, knowledge is to be utilized to produce good policy and practice. Institutional theorists need to consider the applications of their knowledge.

This study aims to map the dynamics of e-government rhetoric through a discourse analysis. The discussion and understanding is based on an identification and interpretation of emerging concepts in e-government reports and research journals. The goal is to unveil established concepts that influence e-government policy development in the public administration context.

Institutional discourse and a policy cycle model are initially selected to guide an inter-textual meta-analysis and meta-synthesis of relevant e-government and public administration outlets. Key concepts are analysed based on their frequency in order of appearance and proximity to each-other. Themes emerging from concept-ideas feed-back to the theory by helping us to suggest a new e-government policy development framework informed by practice and research domains.

The findings suggest that although a number of concept-ideas are being institutionalized in the field of e-government, there are persisting differences and discourses between public administration and e-government reports and journals. Most of the conceptual gaps identified by this study are related to emerging issues like e-government evaluation, engagement with end-users and connection gaps between policy, practice and research.

This study advances the use of discursive institutionalism in e-government research by suggesting that concepts and ideas are institutionalized not only through discourse assimilation, but also by attracting and being able to keep other concept-ideas closely related into themes. Different policy development paths identified in e-government practice and research domains should be jointly considered by policy makers, managers and researchers to improve their implementation.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of the process through which ideas are translated across disciplines. It does this by focussing on how the idea that people are corporate assets was translated between the accounting and human resource management (HRM) disciplines.

This paper is based on the interpretation of a historical case study of the travel of ideas between the accounting and HRM disciplines. Translation is used as an analytical lens as opposed to being the object of the study and is theorised drawing on insights from the Scandinavian Institutionalist School, Skopos theory and linguistic translation techniques.

Translation by individual translators involved the translator stepping across disciplinary boundaries. However, translation performed by interdisciplinary teams occurs in the “contact zone” between disciplines. In this zone, both disciplines are, at once, source and target. Ideas are translated by editing and fusing them. In both cases, translation is value laden as the motives of the translators determine the translation techniques used. Legitimacy and gravitas of the translator, as well as contextual opportunities, influence the spread of the idea while disciplinary norms limit its ability to become institutionalised. Also, differential application of the same translation rule leads to heterogeneous outcomes.

This is the first accounting translation study to use the theories of the Scandinavian Institutionalist School or indeed combine these with linguistic translation techniques. It is also the first study in accounting which explores the translation of ideas across disciplines.

The aim of this chapter is to highlight the role of organizational reflectiveness as a possible enabler for innovation. In order to support the process of innovation, we need to understand organizational learning on a more detailed level, including reflection as an elemental sub-process in experiential, transformational, and action learning.

We present a tool and preliminary empirical findings for measuring an organization’s level of reflectiveness. We also provide some preliminary empirical results regarding whether reflectivity results in the generation of new innovations relating to work practices and processes.

The chapter fills two research gaps, and in doing so contributes to measuring and controlling organizational learning and innovation activities. First, we complement the existing conceptualization of reflective practice by utilizing the management control system (MCS) (Malmi & Brown, 2008) in the analysis of reflectiveness on the organization level. Finally, in the conclusion, we present reflective practice as a potential concept and practical tool for enhancing the interactive use of MCS. The interactive use of MCS has been recognized for its potential in boosting learning, creativity, and innovations in certain contexts (Davila, Foster, & Oyon, 2009), but so far the definitions for interactive use remain descriptive and varied among management accounting theorists.

The approach in this study is predominantly conceptual, with empirical and exploratory findings derived from measuring the level of reflectiveness in three organizations. The study enhances the understanding of management control based on the theoretical notion of multilevel reflection on a practice-based level. Empirically, reflective practices are often studied as a learning phenomenon on the individual and collective levels. However, such an approach generally does not incorporate managerial pragmatism regarding the causes of institutionalized learning or the means of managerial control for enabling reflection and, in consequence, innovations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how healthcare professionals understand a new organisational brand and examine the ideas discussed in relation to it within healthcare organisations.

The research is based on a discursive approach that facilitates understanding how the informants perceived a new organisation brand and how that might shape their activities in the enterprise.

The study identified four distinct interpretative repertoires: the organisational brand as an economic solution, the magic wand, the factory and a servant to the customer. The new brand was understood in terms of economic and business-like functions marked by external branding and its signs (logos, etc.). The brand is not communicated to patients or colleagues and the factory metaphor is applied to work practices. Hence, several potential dilemmas arise concerning the brand promise, customer expectations, economic and efficiency gains and the professional values of employees.

Adoption of private-sector practices in semi-public or public-sector organisations is common. This study focuses on how private-sector ideas diffuse into the organisations and how they are translated within them.

The authors suggest a stronger emphasis on internal branding as a reconciliation to enhance legitimacy, high-quality customer service and staff wellbeing.

Theoretically, the unique contribution of the study is drawing upon healthcare branding, dilemma theory and discursive institutionalism in its interpretation. Consequently, it demonstrates how ideas about the brand and public healthcare are translated and communicated in the examined discourses and how those ideas reconstruct understanding and change behaviour within the organisations.

The purpose of the paper is to present a constructionist framework for reflection upon time in organizational change processes. The framework directs attention towards (1) institutionalized ideas on organizational change processes anchored in different theoretical epochs, (2) institutionalized norms and virtues that govern the development of specific time regimes in organizations and (3) subjective opportunistic expectations of the future.

The paper is essayistic in character.

The paper explores how constructions of time might be biased by managerial leaders' opportunistic enactment of specific institutionalized ideas anchored in different theoretical epochs in order to comply with culturally embedded and mediated managerial virtues such as being fast and vigorous.

The paper opens up for a differentiated understanding of time in organizational change processes, and it pinpoints the assumptions that guide both theoretical discussions on time, as well as empirical studies.

The framework proffers the reflective practitioner the opportunity to develop informed expectations on time in relation to organizational change processes.

A nuanced and differentiated understanding of how time is construed in organizational change processes might reduce the social costs of underestimating the time organizational changes take – or exaggerating the belief in managerial leaders as sovereigns of time.

The paper contributes with a critical understanding of how time is construed in organizational change processes.

The purpose of this paper is to report on ethnographic research that investigated how self-employed nurses perceive the contemporary healthcare field, what attributes they possess that facilitate their roles as change agents, what strategies they use to influence change, and what consequences they face for their actions, thus contributing to what is known about organizational change in institutionalized settings such as healthcare.

Focussed ethnography was used to explore self-employed nurses’ work experiences and elucidate the cultural elements of their social contexts, including customs, ideologies, beliefs, and knowledge and the ways that these impact upon the possibilities for change in the system.

These self-employed nurses reflected on the shortcomings in the healthcare system and took entrepreneurial risks that would allow them to practice nursing according to their professional values. They used a number of strategies to influence change such as capitalizing on opportunities, preparing themselves for innovative work, managing and expanding the scope of nursing practice, and building new ideas on foundational nursing knowledge and experience. They had high job satisfaction and a strong sense of contribution but they faced significant resistance because of their non-traditional approach to nursing practice.

Despite dramatic restructuring in the Canadian healthcare system, the system remains physician-centered and hospital-based. Nursing ' s professional potential has been largely untapped in any change efforts. Self-employed nurses have positioned themselves to deliver care based on nursing values and to promote alternative conceptions of health and healthcare. This study offers a rare exploration of this unique form of nursing practice and its potential to influence health system reform.

New institutionalisms in economic and organizational sociology need grounding in theories of capitalism. Comparative studies show that multiple, viable forms of capitalism have been constructed through the interplay of institutions, mobilizations of political power, and state policies. Further theoretical development requires attention to the contradictions of capitalism. Promising theoretical sources for this task are examined. The political process produces new forms of capitalist institutions, but contradictions built into those institutions cannot be fully resolved and provide the basis for new acts of social construction and power mobilization. The power and cultural arguments of the comparative institutionalists are joined, at least in aspiration, to theories of capitalist contradictions.

The paper proposes that public sector organizations facing institutionalized reform pressure may not only integrate the reform into their operation when it fits but also pace the integration while undergoing organizational cultural transformations to fit with the reform. The newly cultivated cultural characteristics, nonetheless, need to be compatible externally with the ideational basis of the reform and internally with existing values and beliefs embodied by the organizations.

Building on a neo-institutionalist perspective, the paper develops a model which considers the possibilities and conditions that local cultural change in the reforming organizations may facilitate reform integration. To test the model's analytical potential, the paper analyzed reform responses of semi-autonomous agencies from Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden under the New Public Management (NPM) reform. Ordinary least square (OLS) regression models were performed on the survey data collected from agency heads (or representative) during the peak of the reform trend. Analyzing this sample of later adopters whose government generally enjoyed high degrees of capacity and autonomy provided a preliminary test to the model's potential.

Significant statistical relations were found between the adoption of operation-level NPM practices and the extent that an agency's cultural characteristics fit with both the ideational basis of NPM and the exiting value-belief mix the agency embodied. Agency characteristics of “proactive responsiveness” and “goal-oriented cooperation” were found significantly related to adoption of NPM practices, showing the possibility of cultivating local cultural changes in reforming organizations.

While compatible with neo-institutionalist emphasis on local continuity, the paper describes an alternative scenario of reform integration for public managers.

The implications of new public management (NPM) have been studied from several theoretical perspectives. The present paper sets out to argue that there is a missing dimension to the theoretical debate regarding NPM reform – that of time and space. On the basis of two different notions of time‐space logics, the present paper seeks to develop a framework that contributes to a fuller understanding of NPM reform and organizational change/inertia in general.

The theoretical framework of the paper draws on studies of time and space in organizations, research on public‐sector reform, and neo‐institutional theory. The empirical case study presented here focuses on an attempt to change geriatric care using NPM initiatives.

The paper describes two paradigms of time‐space logics – the paradigm of “speed” (as used in finance and manufacturing) and the paradigm of “closeness” (as used in health care and associated care‐giving practices). The study argues that speed is a feature of almost all NPM programs, but that NPM programs are often directed at practices institutionalized by a time‐space paradigm of closeness. The study utilizes the two time‐space paradigms to understand the effects of NPM in the case reported. The use of time‐space paradigms in studies of public‐sector reform adds to the arsenal of theoretical tools for the analysis of NPM‐reform.

Although the methodology of a case study is an appropriate vehicle for introducing the time‐space paradigm to this area of research, the methodology is not well suited to generalizing the findings to other contexts. Future research could elaborate on the present study by applying quantitative approaches to the subject‐matter.

The study presents an analysis of an NPM‐reform program in geriatric care – a context in which ideas of “speed” clash with the traditional practice of “closeness”. This potential clash has important practical implications for managers.

The paper introduces notions of time and space into research on NPM‐reform. This novel approach to the study of NPM reform might be of value in future research.