Search results

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze how physicians and nurses strategically employ the managerial logic.

A qualitative case study incorporating interviews and observations.

Neither physicians nor nurses were prone to strategically employing the managerial logic. However, when doing so nurses were able to acknowledge the legitimacy of managerial impact on practice, whereas the physicians were not. Consequently, physicians might find other, more subtle, ways to strategically employ the managerial logic.

This paper argues for and makes explicit the applicability of qualitative methods in order to delineate actors’ strategic use of available and accessible institutional logics, the conditions for such usage, as well as the multiplicity of actors’ interactions that needs to be taken into account when conducting qualitative data analysis of such occurrences. By the merits of the qualitative research approach utilized in this study, novel insights concerning the strategic use of the managerial logic in the everyday work of physicians and nurses were obtainable. These insights emphasize the necessity of acknowledging situational, organizational and institutional context, incorporating inter-professional power discrepancies and relations vis-à-vis managers.

The aim of this paper is to analyze responses of public universities to the introduction of New Public Management (NPM) as the outcome of balancing between the managerial logics endorsed by NPM and the academic professional logics. Building on the institutional logics approach, we develop a framework concerning how universities will achieve compliance to conflicting claims by strategies like compartmentalization and blending stipulations of both logics. Empirical results based on a large-scale survey of 26 universities in eight European countries display how compatibility is achieved through highly differentiated adoption of logics that depends on the task considered. The results reveal that the strength of NPM pressures strongly affects the adoption of managerial practices within universities yet has no significant effect on the academic characteristics.

We bring together the institutional theory literature on institutional logics and the information systems (IS) literature that conceptualizes a relational view of affordances to explore the digital changes unfolding in the delivery of professional services. Through a qualitative inductive study of the development of an app led by a clinician manager in an Australian hospital, we investigate how multiple institutional logics shape the design of affordances when an organization develops new digital technologies for frontline professional work. Our findings show how a billing function was designed into the app by the development team over four episodes to afford potential physician users with billing usability, billing acceptability, billing authority and billing discretion. These affordances emerged as different elements of professional, state, managerial and market logics became activated, interpreted, evaluated, negotiated and designed into the digital technology through the team’s interactions with the clinician manager, a hybrid professional, during the app development process. Our findings contribute new insight to the affordance-based logics perspective by deepening understanding of the process through which multiple institutional logics play out in the design of affordances of digital technology. We also highlight the role of hybrid professionals in this digital transformation of frontline professional work.

This study aims to understand how reporting practices act as drivers of change in situations of conflicting institutional logics in a public sector organisation.

The findings are based on a case study of a German federal authority, where management accounting reports were introduced as part of a “new” managerial logic of control.

In the case organisation, management accounting reports were intended to change the behaviour of executives but were still guided by an “old” logic of justification. Nevertheless, over time, the addressees of the reports used the reports and reconciled different logics. This documents a process from decoupling to compromising and, finally, reconciling different institutional logics.

By examining the practices of management accounting reporting, this study elaborates the tensions placed on individuals by conflicting institutional logics and provides insights into how organisational practices are used to handle and reconcile conflicting logics in a public sector organisation. Therefore, this paper contributes to the discussion on how organisational practices act as drivers of organisational change.

For many years, universities have been confronted with the rise of a managerial logic, in line with the new public management movement. They have been encouraged to implement new accounting tools such as cost calculations. Literature shows mixed results regarding the institutionalization of such tools, and the logic they try to support. In most studies, the agency of actors is examined to explain the institutionalization of accounting tools and only few studies consider the specific characteristics of these accounting tools to understand this process. To enrich the literature on institutionalization, this article examines how the affordances of costing tools affect the institutionalization of these tools and the institutionalization of new logics in pluralistic organizations such as universities.

The data were collected at a French university which is considered as an example of successful institutionalization of the tool and is cited as a model to follow. The data include a four-month participant observation and 18 interviews. Access to internal and external documents was also available. The analysis of the data is based on a framework proposed by Jarzabkowski and Kaplan (2015), which draws on the concept of affordance of tools, to investigate how the possibilities and constraints of costing tools shape the selection, application and outcomes of cost calculations.

The results show that the affordances of cost calculations facilitate the institutionalization of a new logic and its coexistence with previous logics. Technical affordances are mobilized by actors aiming to bring in a new logic without directly confronting the old ones. Role affordances also play a major role in the institutionalization by facilitating the adhesion of the actors through multiple applications of the tool. Finally, value-based affordances reinforce the institutionalization of a managerial logic by emphasizing the values shared with the other logics and thus facilitating the coexistence of the three logics at stake in the university.

This research provides three main contributions. First, it contributes to the literature on the institutionalization of accounting tools. It shows the relevance of the concept of affordance (Leonardi and Vaast, 2017) to unpack the characteristics of accounting tools (including the constraints and the possibilities they offer) and to achieve a better understanding of the institutionalization of accounting tools. Second, this paper contributes to the literature dealing with the role of accounting tools in the institutionalization of logics. The results suggest that the institutionalization of tools and the institutionalization of logics are two different phenomena that move at different speeds. However, these phenomena interact: the institutionalization of accounting tools can facilitate the coexistence of different logics in pluralistic organizations. Third, this paper contributes to the literature on affordances. The data reveal several types of affordances for accounting tools: technical affordances that refer to the technical possibilities to shape and tweak the tool; role affordances that refer to the various roles and purposes that the tool can fulfill and value-based affordances that refer to the plasticity of the values and beliefs that the tool can convey. The study shows that each type of affordance is prevalent at a different time of the process of institutionalization and that the combination of these affordances contributes to the institutionalization of the tool and of new logics.

The goal of this chapter is to review the potential of institutional logics theory for the study of higher education. After providing a concise introduction to institutional logics, the chapter reviews the small number of studies in higher education that have adopted this approach. It is concluded that most uses of New Institutionalism in the field are still based on its original formulation in the late 1980s, which emphasized the importance of compliance and isomorphism; it is suggested that logics theory could provide a more nuanced and flexible framework, which takes into account the role of (embedded) human agency and the multi-level nature of societal dynamics. The last section of the chapter therefore provides a few directions for future research grounded in logics theory. We distinguish in this respect between the investigation of the field-level coexistence and the interaction between managerial and professional logics; studies of how higher education institutions manage conflicting institutional pressures, for example, through selective compliance; and analyses of the emergence of hybrid practices in academic work and higher education management.

The research aim of this chapter is to understand how different institutional logics affect the day-to-day activities of healthcare providers and whether the cohabitation of professional logics with business-like logics increases medical providers’ effectiveness and gives chance to constrain healthcare costs. This research is based on longitudinal case study about the restructuring of the Canadian healthcare system in Alberta in 1992–2008, described in two papers (Reay & Hinings, 2005, 2009). We identify the situation after encroachment of a new, business-like logic into a healthcare system as more complex than described in the extant literature. We challenge the findings of the case study authors that there are two cohabitating logics in healthcare: the business-like logic supported by the government and the logic of medical professionalism. From our research it appears that there are two other logics: a managerial logic derived from business-like logic, and a hybrid professional logic that is a modification of the logic of medical professionalism. Across the healthcare field in general, business-like logic has been competing with the logic of medical professionalism, but on the medical providers’ level these logics become uncoupled. Within a medical provider, on the external, symbolic layer, physicians follow their professional logic and managers show conformity with governmental principles. But on the backstage layer, where the day-to-day work is actually performed, these two logics are subject to modification, creating a space for compromise and cooperation, leading to a growth of the number of unnecessary medical services preventing cost containments in healthcare.

Literature shows that a strong link between sustainability control systems and sustainability management (SM) fosters sustainability development (SD) and compliance with regulatory requirements and stakeholder expectations. Research on the integration of SM and its control mechanisms in corporate business remains scarce. This study aims to focus on Sustainability Management Control Systems (S)MCS applied in Electric Utility Companies (EUC), which experience close scrutiny by its stakeholders in as much as they play an important role in climate change agendas.

The methodological approach includes in-depth expert interviews within seven Austrian EUC followed by qualitative content analysis. This study builds on “MCS as a package” by Malmi and Brown (2008). Institutional logics (IL) are used for the theoretical approach.

Results show that several IL are involved in implementing strategic SMCS in EUC. Managers cope by integrating emerging hybrid logics, selectively coupled SMCS and making sense by building a communication bridge between the strategic and operative levels to create awareness.

Results show that managers in EUC have to acquire a new hybrid logic for SD. This implies the use of informal controls and a strong focus on administrative and cultural controls as the main control mechanisms for SM.

The paper contributes to MCS research by using the scarcely applied theoretical framework of IL. Findings facilitate a better understanding of the control mechanisms behind SM and the coping strategies of managers in applying SMCS.

Participatory budgeting (PB) is considered a suitable tool for supporting and promoting citizen engagement in government work. Previous studies of PB have deeply investigated its design and effects, but paid little attention to the underlying logics of adopting and implementing PB. The purpose of this paper is to, accordingly, investigate the development over time of the institutional logics of PB and attempt to explain their effect on PB.

Using a longitudinal multiple case study design, this research analyzes the evolution of institutional logics over time and across five municipalities in Italy. The analysis integrates documents with interviews conducted at two times to investigate the evolution of PB logics.

The development of PB is characterized by the spread of two emerging logics–i.e. managerial and community-building logics–that replace or coexist with the traditional political logic. Indeed, these different logics can coexist within governments, with different degrees of conflict or coexistence, resulting in what can be considered a hybrid logic.

Although the number of examined cases is limited, this research elaborates an original conceptual approach and provides new insights that could help in better designing and implementing PB.

This research builds knowledge of PB by shedding light on its different logics, linking them to diverse specific models of PB and exploring their changes over time.

The purpose of this study is to analyse organizing professionalism and its consequences for the work of lawyers in large Brazilian corporate law firms.

The study used qualitative interviews with lawyers linked to six of the Brazilian’s leading law firms. The focus of the interviews was to explore the work organization form considering the changes to the legal profession in recent years.

The results indicate that the institutional changes had substantial consequences for lawyers: a need to organize work, to integrate professional and management logic and to develop typical managerial skills to be more connective when performing tasks in work teams.

Socio-economic changes that gave rise to more flexible forms of work organization have imposed professional restructuring and leading law firms to adopt a business model of organizing. The study is based on qualitative interviews, meaning that the findings cannot be generalized.

Lawyers need to develop typical managerial skills to align their competencies with the management logic incorporated by law firms.

Despite the increase of studies on professions, the integration of professional and managerial logic and its consequences to lawyers has been underdeveloped. Furthermore, research has focussed mainly on macro-level changes and given less attention to how institutional changes impact individual level.