We use organizational justice theory to examine how perceptions of fairness affect the decision‐making process of line managers. In‐depth interviews were conducted with 35 Irish managers to explore ...how managers make organizational allocation decisions in cases where it is impractical to offer work–life balance accommodations to all employees. The findings suggest that firstly, managers construct the ‘life’ aspect of work–life balance within a heteronormative framework, where the emphasis is on caregiving and most usually parenting. Secondly, managers actively use their decision‐making powers around both formal and informal work–life balance supports to minimize injustice within their departments. By bringing together ideas about organizational justice and managerial decision‐making, we indicate how managers determine fairness through a decision‐making process narrowed by embedded gender role beliefs. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.
Institutional abuse is a global issue, sometimes ascribed to the behaviour of a few wicked people. It persists despite regulatory measures, interventions from enforcement and protection agencies, ...organisational policies and procedures. Therefore, the accurate recognition and early detection of abuse and taking corresponding steps to deal with perpetrators are critical elements in protecting vulnerable people who live in institutions. However, research is less clear about why and how abuse (re)occurs. Using the tame and wicked problem analysis of Rittell and Webber (1973) as a lens, we examine the ways institutional abuse is formulated in care settings. Drawing on case study data from eight care homes for older people, we show how solutions seeking to reduce institutional abuse and improve care quality can cause additional problems. The article reconceptualises institutional abuse through the lens of wicked problem analysis to illustrate the multifaceted and recurring, wicked problem characteristics of residential care provision.
This paper examines how space in care homes is experienced and negotiated by people who live and work in them. The analysis of qualitative data of five in-depth case studies of care homes in England ...revealed three key ways in which space is negotiated: a) the way in which values affect interactions inside versus outside the care home environment, b) the negotiation of boundaries and domains within the homes, and c) the sense of being at ‘home’. The paper illuminates how the design of the buildings and organisational factors can reinforce or bridge dichotomies between inside and outside spaces. Residents’ abilities to re-negotiate boundaries, domains and communal spaces within homes are shown to be affected by organisational factors such as priorities of staff members. Despite ‘home’ being a common discourse, the spaces within care homes were often organised, ordered and experienced as two distinct, co-present worlds: the dwelling place of residents and the workplace of staff.
•Organisational dynamics affect how residents and staff value spaces in care homes.•The design of care homes can bridge or reinforce divisions between inside and outside.•Residents’ abilities to negotiate spaces were affected by priorities placed on staff.•Care homes could often be seen as two separate worlds for residents and staff.
This paper advances participatory methods in management research. We propose the term participatory organizational research to describe this adjunct to action research. We illustrate the potential of ...the method to allow sometimes unheard organizational members to generate alternative perspectives that can offer the potential for the co‐production of new forms of knowledge that are locally relevant. Participatory methods originate from work with marginalized groups and have been used more commonly in community and organizational development. The aim of such research is, generally, to change the social and organizational conditions within which participants operate by using their perspectives as active participants to develop alternative possibilities. As such, this research method has significant potential for management researchers in providing the means for unheard organizational members to voice their perspectives: a central component, we argue, in knowledge co‐production. Based on a participatory study of care quality in elder care institutions, we examine in detail how participatory organizational research can enable voice and explore some of the structural limitations particularly in respect of research ethics.
Recent changes within UK healthcare have had dramatic consequences for management and put managerial capabilities firmly under the spotlight. Yet, despite extensive research on managers, ...comparatively little is known about how they acquire and apply their management knowledge and how this is influenced by their professional background and organizational context. Drawing upon work that distinguishes between different forms of knowledge, managers’ mobilization of management knowledge is examined in the light of recent changes in healthcare. Case study evidence is presented from diverse managerial groups across three types of hospital trust (acute, care and specialist). The analysis demonstrates the mediating effects of interactions between professional background and organizational context on knowledge mobilization and highlights how current pressures on public services are reinforcing a reliance on existing management practices, creating enormous challenges for management learning in this sector.
Pro-social organisational behaviour (PSOB), i.e. the willingness of workers to both fulfil and go beyond formal job requirements, has long been recognised as a valuable contributor to organisational ...performance. It is particularly important in health organisations where service provision involves high levels of task interdependence, task complexity and uncertainty, and delivery often depends on the spontaneous actions of employees as they co-produce services with the patient. This paper presents a study of PSOB exhibited by National Health Service employees in England. The paper identifies types and antecedents of PSOB and notes a potential erosion of PSOB for senior staff with their role requirements having no upper limit. As HR managers cannot prescribe in advance the precise sequence of skills required from health workers in each set of circumstances, value-driven HR may offer one means of maintaining and encouraging both altruistic and conscientious act of PSOB on which health care depends. This indicates a specific role for human resource management in building shared values that can service both the care needs of patients and the business needs of health organisations.
Based on fieldwork in residential homes, arrangements for the care of older people are examined with reference, primarily, to Deetz’s theory of ‘corporate colonization’. Extending this theory, it is ...argued that grouping such people in care homes can result in a form of social segregation, one that reflects the management of the aged body in relation to normative constructions of dependence. Focusing on the experiences of residents, the everyday effects of narratives of decline on disciplining the lives of older people are assessed, with this analysis taking recourse to the work of Foucault (1979). The result is the identification of three related concepts at work in the colonizing process of the aged body: (i) appropriation of the body – the physical and social practices involved in placing older people in care homes; (ii) separation from previous identities – how a range of new subjectivities are produced in the process of becoming a ‘resident’; and (iii) contesting colonized identities – the ways in which residents can attempt to challenge normative concepts of managed physical and mental decline. Overall the disciplining of the body is theorized not only as an adjunct to the notion of corporate colonization but also, more generally, as a prominent and powerful organizing principle of later life.
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of stories in a mental health environment. It includes an account of learning to read and recognise stories as a particular form of ...organizational narrative in the National Health Service (NHS).Design methodology approach - The study involved a retrospective search for stories contained within ethnographic data collected from a mental health organization. A small number of stories were analysed in an attempt to discover how stories were used in one particular organizational setting.Findings - The stories told by staff ranged from heroic action on behalf of a patient and in spite of the organization, to tragic stories of staff coming to harm. Stories told by patients concerned their experiences of meaningful relationships with the staff. Alongside this small collection of stories, two particular phenomena associated with storytelling are described; the first involves counter-stories, which involved either discrediting accounts of patient as storytellers or offered different stories to suggest competing interpretations. The second involved collapsed story forms exchanged between staff as a means of convergent sense-making.Originality value - The paper works with stories as a particular narrative form in one particular mental health setting. These stories have the potential to draw attention to aspects of organisational life such as fears about harming patients or coming to harm and possibilities for relationships between patients and staff. Two forms of exchange related to storytelling are detailed and are described as counter- and collapsed stories.
The economic downturn that began in 2008 led to massive cuts in spending targeted at managerial activities in the UK National Health Service (NHS). Although the appellation “manager” once conferred ...status in the NHS, managers have borne the brunt of reform and the term itself is in danger of falling into disrepute. Drawing upon perspectives on leadership that emphasize its constitutive nature, we examine the growing alternative emergent culture of “leaderism” in the NHS and how this relates to managerial practices and identity. Empirical case study research from three hospital trusts in the UK is presented. The findings highlight not only the many tensions associated with this purported shift toward “leaderism” in practice but also how interpretative flexibility associated with the concept of leadership has itself an important bearing upon understanding attempts to bridge long-standing managerial divides within health care.
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