The hybridity of waste management: An in-depth exploratory case study from the Znojmo municipality

In the Western hemisphere, the hybridity of public service delivery is widely acknowledged to generate governance challenges arising from the mutual contestation of the competing institutional logics, such as those of the public and the private for-profit sector. The present paper explores these challenges by means of an in-depth qualitative case study of the waste management service delivery in the municipality of Znojmo, Czech Republic. Encompassing structured interviews of stakeholders and desk research, the case study was aimed at understanding the strengths and weaknesses of waste management hybridity, as well as the impact of hybridity on the relationship between innovativeness and accountability. The overall finding is that the engagement of the private for-profit sector does make this service delivery more innovative, but the useful impact of innovativeness is maximized through a hybrid arrangement. The key benefit of the hybrid arrangement is the stable intersectoral partnership allowing comprehensive control of the waste management service delivery. This benefit possibly rests on the accountability of the hybrid arrangement running on political rather than purely economic lines. Another finding was that the profit maximizing imperative was felt to constrain potential innovation, an outcome that could be prevented by the engagement of the municipality. At the same time, the hybrid mode of waste management service delivery in Znojmo is by no means free of governance challenges, such as the occasional lack of transparency and communication difficulties and disagreements among stakeholders.

Talk–Action Dynamics: Modalities of aspirational talk

This paper investigates talk–action dynamics in the context of organizations, focusing in particular on situations where the talk concerns complex organizational aspirations, that is, situations where the implied action takes considerable effort to unfold and therefore extends into an unknown future. Using corporate social responsibility (CSR) as recurrent exemplar, we address talk–action dynamics in four different modalities of aspirational CSR talk: exploration, formulation, implementation and evaluation. By conceptualizing the precarious relationship between talk and action in each of these modalities, the paper disentangles talk and action, all the while acknowledging that the two are mutually intertwined. Hereby, the paper extends theories of communicative performativity, recovering the perlocutionary dimension and focusing on uptake beyond the moment in which the speech act is uttered.

The Role of Strategic Ambiguity in Moral Injury: A Case Study of Dutch Border Guards Facing Moral Challenges

There is widespread agreement that lower level organizational members face moral challenges because their personal values conflict with organizational directions. Yet we argue that intentional strategic ambiguity, too, may lead to moral challenges, particularly among organizational members operating in high-stake situations. Drawing on interviews with border guards deployed during the European migration crisis, we use vignettes to present two coping strategies. First, members may disengage from moral challenges and redefine their work as a clear-cut duty. Second, they may embrace moral disorientation and conflicts, and follow felt moral obligations. Both may lead to “moral injury.” Moral injury refers to psychological suffering that is engendered by performing, failing to prevent, or falling victim to actions that conflict with one’s moral belief system. We make three theoretical contributions by (a) identifying the roots of moral challenges in strategic decision-making, (b) signaling different coping mechanisms, and (c) challenging pragmatic perspectives on strategic ambiguity.

Ethical Preferences among Business Leaders: Implications for Business Schools

Since 1976, the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) has encouraged business schools to include ethics in their curricula. Because lan guage is the means for conveying values, including ethical values, business com munication faculty play an important role in deciding what should be taught, and how. But until very recently, most researchers failed to look specifically at actual practices and perceptions in the workplace. To address that need, we conducted a survey of 250 business leaders concerning their ethical preferences and compared our results with an earlier study of business faculty and students. The survey, adapted from one used in the Arthur Andersen Business Ethics Program, consists of 20 narratives which presented respondents with the need to judge the impor tance of certain issues and their approval or disapproval of the action or decision described. We found no significant differences in responses to the 14 items which addressed ethical issues in such areas as creating health and environmental risks, taking credit when credit is not due, focusing on disability issues, deceiving cus tomers with products and services, and using insider information to gain personal advantage. We did find significant differences in responses to six narratives focused on ignoring wrongdoing in the workplace, doing special favors for others to gain personal advantage, and covering up flaws in merchandise or operations. Our results, and the survey instrument itself, provide useful tools for the business com munication classroom.

Circuits of Power in Practice: Strategic Ambiguity as Delegation of Authority

Most power relationships between organizations and stakeholders are episodic circuits of power whereby resource dependence is exacerbated by prohibitive rules. Such relationships are usually constraining rather than empowering and generate resistance and reluctant compliance rather than co-operation and creativity. Clegg's (1989) concept of facilitative circuits of power, however, suggests that some power relationships, particular where high amounts of discretion are delegated, can result in innovation by stakeholders. Public sector agencies have multiple and diverse external stakeholder groups that they need to influence in order to implement their strategies. In this paper, we explore a facilitative circuit of power using a case study of a public sector research funding organization that employed strategic ambiguity to delegate considerable authority to stakeholders, stimulating a variety of creative responses during a period of major system restructuring. Risks associated with such a practice include the generation of active and passive resistance as well as a propensity for the system to revert to an episodic power circuit over time. Despite these risks, we propose that the deployment of strategic ambiguity is a previously unrecognized mode of high discretionary strategic agency in authority delegation that can generate creative responses on the part of stakeholders within a facilitative circuit of power.

An exploration of ambiguity logic in organizations

Organizations often face the challenge of institutional complexity, which involves incompatible prescriptions from multiple institutional logics. To deal with this challenge, prior researchers have proposed several strategies to tackle conflicts within and between organizations. The success of these solutions fundamentally hinges on achieving clarity. However, while clarity often brings further conflicts for both internal and external stakeholders, I argue that ambiguity logic is an alternative approach to deal with institutional complexity as it creates space for negotiations and potential solutions. As such, this paper proposes five research propositions that examine when ambiguous language and behavior can be better used to deal with institutional complexity. In general, the use of ambiguity logic is associated with power. Specifically, ambiguity logic is better applied in organizations when power is more evenly distributed among the stakeholders.

Public ICT Innovations: A Strategic Ambiguity Perspective

Public Information and Communications Technology (ICT) innovations are seen as having the potential to usher in a new era of technology-enabled models of governance in emerging economies. While it may be desirable for the implementation of such innovations to be underpinned by precise planning, structure and clarity, policy implementers in emerging economies are confronted instead by situations where ambiguous goals and means are standard. This paper considers high levels of ambiguity as a relatively enduring and intrinsic aspect of public ICT innovations in emerging economies. Drawing on an ethnographic study of Bangalore one, an innovative public ICT project implemented in Bangalore, India, the paper examines how strategic ambiguity is deployed by key public actors to chart the course of the implementation process and to steer it towards reasonable outcomes. Theoretically, the paper suggests that although strategic ambiguity is a precarious and unsettling condition in general, it can work effectively in contexts that are reasonably tolerant of ambiguous norms. The findings of the study also present arguments for why evaluation mechanisms need to be fundamentally reframed in order to assess the extent of implementation success of public ICT innovations in emerging economies.