A multilevel neo-institutional analysis of infection prevention and control in English hospitals: coerced safety culture change?

Despite committed policy, regulative and professional efforts on healthcare safety, little is known about how such macro-interventions permeate organisations and shape culture over time. Informed by neo-institutional theory, we examined how inter-organisational influences shaped safety practices and inter-subjective meanings following efforts for coerced culture change. We traced macro-influences from 2000 to 2015 in infection prevention and control (IPC). Safety perceptions and meanings were inductively analysed from 130 in-depth qualitative interviews with senior- and middle-level managers from 30 English hospitals. A total of 869 institutional interventions were identified; 69% had a regulative component. In this context of forced implementation of safety practices, staff experienced inherent tensions concerning the scope of safety, their ability to be open and prioritisation of external mandates over local need. These tensions stemmed from conflicts among three co-existing institutional logics prevalent in the NHS. In response to requests for change, staff flexibly drew from a repertoire of cognitive, material and symbolic resources within and outside their organisations. They crafted 'strategies of action', guided by a situated assessment of first-hand practice experiences complementing collective evaluations of interventions such as 'pragmatic', 'sensible' and also 'legitimate'. Macro-institutional forces exerted influence either directly on individuals or indirectly by enriching the organisational cultural repertoire

An organizational impression management perspective on the formation of corporate reputations

Researchers have only recently turned their attention to the study of corporate reputation. As is characteristic of many early areas of management inquiry, the field is decidedly multidisciplinary and disconnected. This article selectively reviews reputation research conducted mainly during the past decade. A framework is proposed that views reputation from the perspective of organizational impression management. Corporations are viewed as social actors, intent on enhancing their respectability and impressiveness in the eyes of constituents

Teaching the virtual generation

Using Gioia and Brass’ 1986 article, “Teaching the TV Generation,” as a point of departure for considering our current instructional environment, we focus on a relatively recent development that once again has implications for our teaching pedagogies: that we are, in fact, no longer teaching a verbal, nor even just a visual, but now a virtual generation of students. Technological and social changes in the wider environment can have major implications for teaching and learning pedagogies—i.e., optimal teaching and learning occur when teaching styles align with learning styles. For that reason, we consider some key learning principles in light of the learning styles of our current generation of students, who are quite facile with virtual technologies. We argue that the effective use of some electronic learning tools can provide useful and engaging means for their education by addressing this generation’s preferences for virtual media while also enabling student-directed interactivity (via online searches, games, simulations, etc.). We first articulate the conceptual grounds for arguing that there has been another shift in the teaching and learning environment we now face—which implies some necessary adaptation of traditional learning principles. We then discuss: (a) some technologies and applications (mainly Internet-based tools and videogames) that can facilitate the convergence between virtual generation (V-Gen) preferences and classroom interactions; (b) some guidelines for using these technologies to fulfil these learning principles and; (c) some pitfalls that can occur and how to avoid them