Clinicians' psychological empowerment to engage in management as part of their daily work

This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and noncommercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcodePurpose – The purpose of the article is to analyze how physicians and nurses, as the two major health care professions, experience psychological empowerment for managerial work. Design/methodology/approach – The study was designed as a qualitative interview study at four primary care centers (PCCs) in Sweden. In total, 47 interviews were conducted, mainly with physicians and nurses. The first inductive analysis led us to the concept of psychological empowerment, which was used in the next deductive step of the analysis. Findings – The study showed that both professions experienced self-determination for managerial work, but that nurses were more dependent on structural empowerment. Nurses experienced that they had competence for managerial work, whereas physicians were more ignorant of such competence. Nurses used managerial work to create impact on the conditions for their clinical work, whereas physicians experienced impact independently. Both nurses and physicians experienced managerial work as meaningful, but less meaningful than nurses and physicians’ clinical work. Practical implications – For an effective health care system, structural changes in terms of positions, roles, and responsibilities can be an important route for especially nurses’ psychological empowerment. Originality/value – The qualitative method provided a complementary understanding of psychological empowerment on how psychological empowerment interacted with other factors. One such aspect was nurses’ higher dependence on structural empowerment, but the most important aspect was that both physicians and nurses experienced that managerial work was less meaningful than clinical work. This implies that psychological empowerment for managerial work may only make a difference if psychological empowerment does not compete with physicians’ and nurses’ clinical work.publishedVersio

The face of nonbinary beauty communication on Instagram : a content analysis

Gender is a feature of beauty marketing, used in marketing segmentation and communication images, where binary images are predominant. Recently, the social identity of gender has become increasingly nuanced as a more complex set of identities, including genderqueer and nonbinary, influences marketing communications. As part of cultural expression, advertising reflects and impacts how consumers perceive themselves and others, with Generation Z consumers increasingly rejecting gender labels and stereotypes. Consequently, our study involves the visual meaning making of 222 Instagram images of beauty brands’ marketing communications with models other than “female” in traditional Western society’s conceptualization of gender. The findings reveal a group of models who are not female; while most of these images are genderqueer, a group that may be considered agender is evident. Both groups have distinctive although differing characteristics, suggesting the development of new stereotypes. This study contributes to understanding the changing representations of models: While beauty brands primarily use female models, the increased use of genderqueer and agender models can attract alternative target markets. It also highlights advertising’s place in cultural expressions that both reflect and impact how consumers perceive themselves and others.https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ujci20hj2023Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS

Lärandekulturer : en studie av organisatoriskt lärande under olika institutionella betingelser

Organizational learning is a research area which has grown rapidly in importance the last decade. It is often argued that modern organizations have to increase their ability to learn in order to survive in rapidly changing environments. The literature on organi­zational learning is characterized by a normative bias. Lot of emphasis has been put on giving sound advice on how to create a learning organization. Less emphasis has been put on the actual conditions for learning in different types of organization. The purpose of this study is to answer the question how organizational learning arise, and how it is affected by the institutional conditions the organization work under. The research strategy is based on in-depth case-studies of 6 organizations. The organiza­tions have recently implemented large re-orientation projects, which make up the empirical focus for studying learning. The organizations come from two different organizational fields - municipalities and technical consultancy firms. The two fields are characterized by different insti­tutional conditions, which makes the learning processes vastly different in the two fields. The concept of learning-cultures is used to capture the different institutional conditions in the two fields. The municipalities are characterized by bold re-orientation ideas from the top mana­gement. All three organizations have started projects inspired by the "new" ideas of market orientation. In that sense they seems to be learning from each other which projects are legitimate in the field. On the other hand they have difficulties imple­menting the ideas internally, due to heterogeneous conceptions in different sub-groups. The learning-culture in the municipalities is summarized as reformative-split. The technical consultancy firms are characterized by more conservative attitudes towards re-orientation. The firms are using established techniques in the field, thus learning which projects are appropriate. Internally they are characterized by homo­geneous conceptions among subgroups. The learning-culture in the technical con­sultancy firms is summarized as adaptive-unified. A major finding in the study is the organizations from the two groups use different mechanism for learning, both externally (that is, from the field) and internally.digitalisering@um

Interprofessional barriers : A study of quality improvement work among nurses and physicians

This article studies interprofessional barriers between nurses and physicians in the context of quality improvement work. A total of 17 nurses and 10 physicians were interviewed at 2 hospitals in Sweden. The study uncovered a number of barriers relating to both the relative status of each group and their defined areas of responsibility

Interprofessional barriers : A study of quality improvement work among nurses and physicians

This article studies interprofessional barriers between nurses and physicians in the context of quality improvement work. A total of 17 nurses and 10 physicians were interviewed at 2 hospitals in Sweden. The study uncovered a number of barriers relating to both the relative status of each group and their defined areas of responsibility

Till invånarnas tjänst : om marknadsorientering i kommuner

digitalisering@um

A contextual understanding of projects--The importance of space and time

Summary This article analyzes the managing of high-tech projects in complex and dynamic settings. Building on recent developments in organization theory and knowledge management, we focus on the importance of understanding the ways in which project-centered activities are shaped in time and space, both in the organization itself and in a wider context embracing customers, consultants and suppliers. A longitudinal case study including semi-structured interviews, observations and secondary data will substantiate our findings. The study offers both theoretical and practical insights suggesting that projects are exposed to a varying degree of complexity and dynamics, calling for different managerial approaches. The analysis shows that boundary spanning has many dimensions that have to be considered in the management of projects in space and time. The article concludes by suggesting seven analytical categories for analyzing and understanding projects in their spatial and temporal contexts.Project Context Space Time Boundary spanning

Exploring barriers to collaborative innovation in supply chains : a study of a supplier and two of its industrial customers

Purpose: The purpose is to identify and explore barriers to overcome for developing collaborative innovation between a global service supplier and two of its industrial customers in Sweden. Design/methodology/approach: The research had an action-based research approach in which the researchers were interacting and collaborating with the practitioners in the companies. The empirical part includes primary data from multiple interviews, and two workshops with dialogues with participants from the involved companies. The use of complementary data collection methods gave rich input to understanding the context for collaborative innovation, and to uncovering barriers, to develop solutions for collaborative innovation. The empirical barriers were analysed using theoretically derived barriers from a literature review. The analysis generated four broad themes of barriers which were discussed and led to conclusions and theoretical and practical implications on: the customer's safety culture, the business model, the parties' understanding of innovation and the management of collaborative innovation in supply chains. Findings: The thematic analysis generated four broad themes: the customer's safety culture, the business model, the parties' understanding of innovation and the management of collaborative innovation. These themes where analysed using theoretically derived barriers from a literature review. The industrial context, the understanding of innovation and its management created barriers. Originality/value: The unique access to the service supplier and its two independent industrial customers adds a rich contextual framing to the process of identifying and exploring the barriers to collaborative innovation. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of an industrial business context, the business logic in terms of business models and for the understanding and management of collaborative innovation