Habitus, Hysteresis and Organizational Change in the Public Sector (original) (raw)
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‘It Was The Night Of The Long Knives’: When Public Management Collides with Group Identities.
Public Management Review, 2012
This article explores through ethnography how public servant identities are affected by organizational change. Using an organizational becoming perspective, it studies the introduction of Lean in a recently merged public logistics department. Lean divides the department into two groups and conflict arises. Later, another institutional change is introduced. Here, the employee attitudes towards Lean change, now unifying rather than dividing the department. Rather than a professional-managerial split, the article concludes that the interplay between public sector change and employee identity is shaped by the apprehension of uncertainty and related group conflicts.
Among the many ways of studying public administration, one orientation among social research has been gradually established: observing bureaucrats at work. Such a perspective can be seen to have two aims: a better understanding of the crucial role front-line employees can play in the daily delivery of public goods, and an empirical mapping of the different public organizations experiencing new public management measures. With an ethnographic approach based on French Administration cases and inspired particularly by science and technology studies and workplace studies, this paper focuses on these different points. JEL Classifications: D73, H11, H83 Among the many ways of studying public administration, one orientation among social research has been gradually established: observing bureaucrats at work. Such a perspective can be seen to have two aims: a better understanding of the crucial role front line employees can play in the daily delivery of public goods, and an empirical mapping of the different public organizations experiencing of new public management measures. With an ethnographic approach based on French Administrations cases and inspired particularly by science and technology studies and workplace studies, this paper focuses on these different points.
Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2022
Managers of street-level organizations play an important role in the successful implementation of public reforms. A prevailing view within the public administration literature is that this work involves the adaptation between reforms and local contexts, where divergence is viewed as a form of resistance to change. The article challenges this prevalent reform-centric view by introducing a situation-centric perspective and coining the concept of situational work as a significant form of managerial work during implementation. Situational work encompasses managerial actions that ensure functional and well-ordered service delivery in local street-level organizations by accomodating everyday situational contingencies, including reform objectives, but also the interests and expectations of workers, clients, and local service partners. The concept of situational work, then, broadens the recognized scope of managerial activities that contribute to successful reform implementation, reconceptu...
Public sector work intensification and negative behaviors
Journal of Organizational Change Management, 2015
Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to explore issues associated with sector specific change in the Australian Public Service (APS). Evidence is presented on the impact of New Public Management (NPM) on work intensification and subsequent negative behaviors by giving voice to APS employees who were subject to the NPM changes. Design/methodology/approach-Data were collected from APS employees, human resource managers and policy makers across 11 agencies on the nature of the changes, context of work, and workplace interactions. The study adopted a triangulated mixed method interpretivist approach using a survey instrument, stories, focus groups, and interviews. Findings-The NPM changes were aimed at creating a more professional and accountable APS. This resulted in individual agencies pursuing different approaches to productivity and efficiency while being accountable to the public and the government within a tight regulatory framework. These changes created competing priorities, affected the nature of the work through intensification, and fueled workplace tensions, thus affecting progress toward the goals of NPM. Practical implications-The findings of this study will be useful in alerting organizational leaders of possible unintended negative consequences of poorly implemented change programs. Originality/value-This current study provides evidence that the negative behaviors which arise from the implementation of efficiency focussed change can be damaging to individuals, the nature of work, and therefore organizations and the outcomes sought. Many change management activities in the public sector can lead to negative behaviors if implemented in a way lacking in respect for staff.
2006
Globalisation and the intensified economic competition it engenders are profoundly altering the way we live and relate to each other. For a start, work is undergoing such transformation that in future the notion of a job may change its meaning entirely. (Carnoy, 2001: 306) CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTS OF WORK LIFE There is a widely held view that, in the last quarter of the last century and now spilling into this century, there have been considerable changes to the kinds of work available, how they are practised and who engages in them. The world of work has become unstable with changes to global economic activity, technology and cultural practices (e.g. McBrier and Wilson, 2004). In many recent accounts of work, work practice and career development much is made of the disempowerment and anxiety caused by the constantly turbulent and uncertain nature of contemporary work (e.g. Bauman, 1998; Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1991). For instance, a common claim is that a continuous and logically coherent working life is now less available, thereby making continuity of work skills and identity problematic. Many new jobs are held to be contingent-fixed term and part-time (Carnoy, 1999), making work insecure and insufficient. According to Rifkin (1995) more than 75 per cent of the labour force in industrialised nations engages in work that is little more than simple repetitive tasks that do not provide any gratifying and meaningful identity for the workers. Leicht (1998) claims that contemporary workplaces are characterised as featuring: (a) flatter organizational hierarchies, as new information technologies eliminate the need for most layers of middle management; (b) the growing use of temporary workers e mp l o y e d o n a n ' a s-n e e d e d ' b a s i s t o p e r f o r m s p e cific jobs for the duration of single projects; (c) the extensive use of subcontracting and outsourcing to small firms; (d) massive down-sizing of the permanent workforce resulting from flatter hierarchies and the replacement of skilled workers by machine tenders; (e) a post-unionised bargaining environment where unions have no place and no structural ability to gain a foothold to bargain with employers; and (f) virtual organisations that exist not as distinctive structural locations but as webs of technologically driven interactions. Such characteristics are presented as significant trends that are transforming existing conceptions and practices of paid work that individuals encounter in their working life. Beyond the unpredictability of what constitutes much contemporary work is the claim that the kinds of work we engage in are increasingly subject to change. It is popularly claimed that individuals will need to engage in multiple careers and will be required to reinvent their occupational identity a number of times throughout their working lives. These work-related manifestations of change are held by some to reflect a broader and more ubiquitous set of conditions that create great uncertainty. Beck (1992) proposes that contemporary (modern) society presents greater risks than in former times, rendering a greater sense of insecurity and uncertainty. Giddens (1991) proposes that contemporary society is generative of anxiety and has individuals standing before it as anxiety ridden. Work and working life are not exceptions to this general c l a i m, p a r t i c u l a r l y i f L e i c h t ' s (1 9 9 8) s i x c l a i ms o u t l i n e d a b o v e a r e upheld. So, finding continuity in working life in late modernity is held to be a precarious enterprise for individuals because of its turbulent and transformative character (e.g. O' Do h e r t y a n d Wi l l mo t , 2001). All this fuels the notion that paid work which provides adequate and consistent remuneration, personal fulfilment, and pathways to selfidentity and sense of self is becoming less likely, and that jobs which are both secure and well regarded are becoming a rarity (Bauman, 1998). This suggests, rather bleakly, that high salary levels, the ability to enact social good, personal discretion in how individuals engage in work, for how long and to what level of intensity, and the prospect of engaging in interesting work, in the humanist tradition, may be becoming the privilege of fewer workers. Such propositions emanate most strongly from theoretical accounts of work that might be described as social theorising, and are admittedly speculative. Often, such accounts are premised in theoretical rather than empirical analyses. That is, these accounts are based on propositions deducted from the author s ' t h e o r e t i c a l (Gi d d e n s , 1991) or ideological stance (Beck, 1992) or their observations of the past and present, and speculations about the future (Bauman, 1998). These analyses extend from meta-analysis about changing societal conditions through to accounts that explain how individuals and society come together. For instance, the social structuring of work is often the key premise, with individuals by degree being viewed as captive, subjugated or resistant to these socially derived practices. So, the degree to which an individual is free to make decisions and act autonomously in work is subject to diverse viewpoints. For instance, in the risky and uncertain era of late modernity, it is s u g g e s t e d t h a t i n d i v i d u a l s h a v e b e c o me ' e n t e r p r i s i n g s e l v e s ' (Du Gay, 1996; Rose, 1990), engaging in self-regulation as they act in ways against their preferred sense of self. In so doing, they adopt an almost Machiavellian persona that seeks to project a self that meets the requirements of their work, while fostering quite different personal beliefs. Hence, in this view, it is suggested that individuals direct their critical faculties in ways that subvert and bury their real selves in efforts to secure continuity and advancement in their employment (Grey, 1994). The theoretical view here would be to see these individuals as socialised subjects, engaged in self-deception and regulation generative of a false consciousness. Clearly, this perspective privileges the social world and
Resistance to Change in Public Organization: Reasons and How to Overcome It
European Journal of Business Science and Technology
The objective behind this paper is to explore the main sources of resistance to change and how that resistance effects the whole organization. Employees `duty and overseeing resistance effectively are basic essentials for forceful change management. This paper implements qualitative approach to observe the employees` resistance to change in one of the government organization working under Ministry of Industries of Pakistan. This is a qualitative study in which sample of 10 interviews have been conducted from the managers, deputy managers and executives working in this government organization. As indicated by Kurt Lewin's force field analysisthis study shows, a manager looking for to "push" the procedure of organizational change must put all push to decrease the impact of preventing forces while expanding the impact of main driving forces and along these lines work with resistance of employees towards change.