A 'movement for improvement'? A qualitative study of the adoption of social movement strategies in the implementation of a quality improvement campaign

Given the difficulties of implementing 'top-down' quality improvements, health service leaders have turned to methods that empower clinicians to co-produce 'bottom-up' improvements. This has involved the adoption of strategies and activities associated with social movements, with clinicians encouraged to participate in collective action towards the shared goal of improvement. This paper examines the adoption of social movement methods by hospital managers as a strategy for implementing a quality improvement 'campaign'. Our case study suggests that, despite the claim of empowering clinicians to develop 'bottom-up' improvements, the use of social movement methods can be more narrowly concerned with engaging clinicians in pre-determined programmes of 'top-down' change. It finds a prominent role for 'hybrid' clinical leaders and other staff representatives in the mobilisation of the campaign, especially for enrolling clinicians in change activities. The work of these 'hybrids' suggests some degree of creative mediation between clinical and managerial interests, but more often alignment with the aspirations of management. The study raises questions about the translation of social movement's theories as a strategy for managing change and re-inventing professionalism.

The Interdisciplinary Career of a Popular Construct Used in Management

In this article, the authors trace how meanings of the construct empowerment evolved between 1966 and 2000 across six disciplines: religion, psychology, sociology, education, social work, and management. Meanings of empowerment expanded considerably during this time period, as the construct waxed, waned, and then waxed again in popularity. Empowerment was introduced in religion in the 1960s and expanded by sociology in the early 1970s, and in these disciplines it focused primarily on sharing real power. As empowerment was introduced into education, psychology and social work in the next several years, it added a focus on fostering human welfare. Its introduction in management led to a new emphasis on fostering productivity, something very different from the original use of the term. The authors’ findings have important implications for the understanding of the evolution of constructs and issues associated with their meanings in management scholarship.

Moving Management: Theorizing Struggles against the Hegemony of Management

How do groups resist the apparently all-encompassing discourse of management? Rejecting current theories of resistance as `re-appropriation' or `micro-politics', we argue that resistance may be thought of as a hegemonic struggle undertaken by social movements. We identify four major resistance movements that engage with management: unions, organizational misbehaviour, civic movements and civic movement organizations. We argue that these forms of resistance differ in terms of location (civil society or workplace) and strategy (political or infra-political). We chart out the possible interconnections between these different modes of resistance and detail how these interconnections are established. By doing this, the paper provides a framework for understanding the many forms of resistance movements that seek to disrupt the hegemonic discourse of management.

From Bridges to Trading Zones in Organizational Culture and Institutional Research

Scholarship on organizational culture and institutional analysis differ in their intellectual origins, modal research methods, and mechanisms explaining stability and change. At the same time, these two traditions share an underlying concern with systems of meaning. Against this backdrop the conto the symposium used two strategies to write across the boundaries separating cultural and institutional analysis. The first strategy involved developing common meta-theoretical languages and the second focused on identifying research problems and questions in scholarly “trading zones” where approaches drawn from both cultural and institutional perspectives can be developed. Trading zones suggest certain advantages in working across scholarly traditions with respect to problem scale, theoretical scope, methodology, and graduate education.

Acting at Work

Façades of conformity (FOC) is a theoretical concept coined to describe employees who act as if they embrace an organization's values when they really don't in order to survive and/or succeed within that organization. This exploratory study combines value theory and the sociology of the professions to explore manifestations of FOC among professionals (university faculty members). Respondents' experiences of “acting at work” reveal the presence, absence, and dynamic nature of FOC. Response patterns allow us to confirm, disconfirm, and extend Hewlin's (2003) theory by identifying two types of FOC, four issues respondents typically “façade” about, behaviors enacted during the use of FOC, and the perceived risks associated with not using FOC at work. These results have significant implications for the scholarly and managerial practice of assessing value congruence between individuals and organizations.