A temporal perspective on phronetic strategizing:exploring strategy making in unsettled times

Strategy making in organizations is a future oriented process and is fundamentally complex and full of uncertainties. Therefore there is a need to further improve our understanding of the way organizational actors exercise their judgment and how this informs strategic action and change. However, the role of temporality in such processes in poorly understood. In this paper we further take up this perspective and propose and apply a temporal perspective on practical judgement to study how situated actors embark on strategic action and change in respond to drastic institutional changes. By temporality is implied the dominant temporal orientations of situated actors towards either the past, present, or future that shape the way practical judgment unfolds and influences how and when strategic action and change comes about. We draw on a study of six nonprofit associations in the Netherlands who are usually concerned with the maintenance and protection of their local environments and preservation of the cultural value. We examined how members of these associations engage in practical judgement based on their dominant temporal orientations in response to a drastic change in the subsidy regimes forcing them to reconsider their strategies. We found three fundamentally different outcomes for strategic action and change: suspending (past oriented), desiring (present oriented) and adapting (future oriented). We elaborate on each of them and why practical judgement processes varied leading to these outcomes on how that relates to each dominant temporal orientation. Contributions are offered to the strategy as practice literature by proposing a temporal perspective and highlight the importance of agency in relation to outcomes in strategy practices. We also contribute to the literature on practical judgment especially in regard to the tensions that organizational actors undergo when they are forced to make tradeoffs between realizing internal goods through practice and external goods demanded by institutions

Challenges to the implementation of fiscal sustainability measures

Purpose: Fiscal sustainability is high on the global political agenda. Yet, implementing the needed performance-orientation throughout public-sector organizations remains problematic. Such implementation seems to run counter to deep-seated social structures. In this paper the aim is to shed light via key change agents' views on these social structures at the management level during the implementation of a performance-based budgeting scheme. Design/methodology/approach: The authors analyzed documentary data and conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with key change agents operative within central government ministries in The Netherlands. The data were analyzed using a structurational approach to identify the enablers and barriers to performance-based budgeting implementation. Findings: In total, 29 social enablers and barriers to performance-based budgeting implementation were derived. These were categorized into: Context, Autonomy, Traditional beliefs, Influence on results, and Top management support. Based on these categories five propositions were developed on how social structures enable and constrain performance-based budgeting implementation among public managers. Research limitations/implications: The study was executed in one country in a specific period in time. Although the problems with performance-based budgeting exist over the globe, research is needed to study whether similar social structures enable and impede implementation. Social implications: Policy makers and change agents aiming to improve fiscal sustainability by budgeting reform need to consider the found social structures. Where possible they could strengthen enablers and design specific comprehensive measures to tackle the barriers identified. Originality/value: This paper provides insight and develops knowledge on the social structures that enable and constrain performance-based budgeting, which in turn improves fiscal sustainability

Physician’ entrepreneurship explained: a case study of intra-organizational dynamics in Dutch hospitals and specialty clinics

Background Challenges brought about by developments such as continuing market reforms and budget reductions have strained the relation between managers and physicians in hospitals. By applying neo-institutional theory, we research how intra-organizational dynamics between physicians and managers induce physicians to become entrepreneurs by starting a specialty clinic. In addition, we determine the nature of this change by analyzing the intra-organizational dynamics in both hospitals and clinics. Methods For our research, we interviewed a total of fifteen physicians and eight managers in four hospitals and twelve physicians and seven managers in twelve specialty clinics. Results We found evidence that in becoming entrepreneurs, physicians are influenced by intra-organizational dynamics, including power dependence, interest dissatisfaction, and value commitments, between physicians and managers as well as among physicians’ groups. The precise motivation for starting a new clinic can vary depending on the medical or business logic in which the entrepreneurs are embedded, but also the presence of an entrepreneurial nature or nurture. Finally we found that the entrepreneurial process of starting a specialty clinic is a process of sedimented change or hybridized professionalism in which elements of the business logic are added to the existing logic of medical professionalism, leading to a hybrid logic. Conclusions These findings have implications for policy at both the national and hospital level. Shared ownership and aligned incentives may provide the additional cement in which the developing entrepreneurial values are ‘glued’ to the central medical logi

Exploring personal interests of physicians in hospitals and specialty clinics

Physicians' interests substantially influence intra-organizational dynamics in hospitals, though little is known about the actual content and structure of these interests. The objective of this study was to both identify and build a structured model of physicians' interests. Based on literature and 27 semi-structured interviews with physicians, a questionnaire containing 10 interests was developed. Next, 1475 physicians in the Netherlands filled out an online survey. Analyses of the data revealed a distinction between the primary interest of ‘helping patients as well as possible’ and nine secondary interests. Factor analysis identified the main secondary interest dimensions as work-related, setting-related, and life-related. Value attached to interests differs between specialties and types of hospitals. The influence of hospital type on the value attached to interests is stronger than the influence of specialty group on the value attached to interests. Insight in the relative importance of different interests may help policy-makers make decisions that foster shared interests

The structuration of managing for results : a practice perspective on middle managers in the Dutch Central Government

This study is driven by a desire to understand why organizational changes in general ‐but especially in government‐ are so difficult to achieve. For this purpose we contrasted the traditional legal‐rational bureaucracy with the Managing for Results (MFR) template. Next, we developed a structuration theory based lens to be able to study these competing templates in practice. With this lens we focused on middle managers’ behaviors during the implementation of MFR initiatives in the Dutch central government. Specifically, we first explored change agents’ views, after which we conducted in‐depth field studies in two Dutch ministries. Based on our data we iteratively developed propositions on middle managers’ behaviors. Among the concepts that surfaced in this study, we found mindfulness and bricolage to play a particularly important role in successful change efforts. Since these behaviors are present‐oriented they enable change agents and/or managers to overcome past‐oriented institutionalized responses to change impromptu. Similarly, we found that when middle managers actively and/or passively resisted MFR implementation they were mostly influenced by territoriality and traditional beliefs, moreover, by a low perceived behavioral control