Management Logic Research Articles

Corporate Reputation and Collective Crises: A Theoretical Development Using the Case of Rana Plaza

Banking scandals, accounting fraud, product recalls, and environmental disasters, their associated reputational effects as well as company response strategies have been well reported in the literature. Reported crises and scandals typically involve one focal company for example BP and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident. As business practices change and company supply chains become more complex and interlinked, there is a greater risk of collective crises where multiple companies are associated with the same scandal. We argue that companies are likely to behave differently in a group setting compared to when faced with a crisis individually. Using an inductive approach, we examine the case of the Rana Plaza building collapse. We find that organizations with a history of similar crises adopt defensive strategies and communicate much later compared to organizations which adopt accommodative strategies. Contrary to the individual case, in a collective crisis accommodative strategies result in more negative reputational damage and a higher burden of responsibility. We propose that the relationship between crisis response strategy and organization reputation is moderated by the crisis setting. We extend the logic of crisis management and corporate reputation to incorporate the case of a collective crisis.

Improved critical chain buffer management framework considering resource costs and schedule stability

The critical chain scheduling and buffer management (CC/BM) methodology has proven to be a favorable approach to schedule resource-constrained projects and to offer a valuable control tool for monitoring projects under uncertainty. The previous studies on CC/BM seem to have neglected the cost performance, which might render its wider applications to the modern economic activities that are mostly performed in a project way. This paper presents an improved CC/BM framework that allows additional resource allocation/reallocation to bring forward activity starting times based on cost and schedule stability criteria. In the planning phase, the decision is made concerning the regular resource availability period in order to minimize the expected resource costs. In the execution phase, a scheduled order repair method for rescheduling along with two reactive resource allocation procedures as the corrective action whenever delays are beyond a certain buffer threshold are presented and examined in order to exhibit a comprehensive project schedule/cost control system that is adaptive to the CC/BM management logic. Finally, our computational experiment demonstrates the benefits of the proposed reactive methods under different cost or availability parameters.

Accidental Neoliberalism and the Performance of Management: Hierarchies in Export Agriculture on the Zimbabwean-South African Border

South Africa’s export farms have shifted from racialised paternalism to corporate managerialism. But how have workforce dynamics changed? This article offers an ethnographic perspective on agriculture on the transient Zimbabwean border. An ‘actor-centred’ approach examines the causes and extent of transformation. Who furthers managerial logics? Why? With what effects? White farmers emphasise impersonal, rationalised business for diverse reasons. What looks like part of a single global process of neoliberalisation is an accidental result. At the same time, foreign supermarket-funded development projects become subjected to logics of workforce paternalism. Managerialism itself has limited effect on labour arrangements. Workers’ hierarchies and cross-border networks are built on different principles from global supply chains. From within each network, it is as if the other were invisible.

Géographie Volontaire and the Territorial Logic of Architecture

This article explores the architectural and intellectual history of geographie volontaire , a series of experiments in inserting design volition into the study of territory. From the 1940s until the 1970s, an important group of geographers, engineers, state administrators, urban planners, and architects in France used the novel term geographie volontaire , or ‘volitional geography,’ to convey their ambitions for a comprehensive organization of space, from the modernization of housing and industry to the shaping of the national territory at large. It was therefore less a subdiscipline of geography than a particular logic for intervention, originating in wartime national planning and carried by the ambitions of postwar reconstruction and development. Focusing on the relationship between knowledge and design, the article reveals how geographie volontaire circulated in the institutions of government and the hallways of academia and how it shaped state-led architecture and planning projects. Corresponding to postwar revisions of international modernism, geographie volontaire extended the conventional scales of architecture and urbanism to the territorial. Yet more than just a change in scale, it implied both a particular political economy and a particular organization of knowledge. Shaped by the intersection of architectural and geographical knowledge, territory became a central logic for the state-led management of postwar capitalism.

Negotiating Competing Institutional Logics at the Street Level: An Ethnography of a Community Mental Health Organization

AbstractThis article brings street-level organizational theory into conversation with the institutional logics perspective. It uses ethnographic methods to investigate how workers in one community mental health organization negotiated the competing therapeutic logic of the clubhouse and managerial logic of fee-for-service reforms, analyzing how their actions shaped the accessibility of services for those most in need. This article examines the organizational products of new managerial reforms and the structures that were most decisive in shaping them. It finds that reforms in financing and governance produced unresolvable contradictions at the street level, restructured workers’ perceptions of problem clients, shifted workers’ conceptions of the work role, and led to service rationing. I conclude by reflecting on what these findings mean for the development of organizational theory and the project of improving the accessibility of community mental health services.

The Identity Work of Professionals Entering Management Roles: A Process Perspective

In professional service organizations, tensions may derive from the coexistence of professional and managerial logics. The introduction of professionals into management roles is seen as a potential avenue to bridge these different logics and align professional and managerial interests toward a common goal. However, professionals entering management roles may be subject to pressures from administrators to adhere to the management logic, and from fellow professionals to stay true to the professional logic. Professionals in management roles need to navigate attempts at regulating their identity in different ways. This research project seeks to explore how professionals discursively handle identity tensions over time as they take on management roles. To answer this research question, I analyzed the discourse of 20 professionals who recently became managers within health care organizations. The findings suggest that professionals entering management roles perform five kinds of identity work: constructing conti...

The comparison between public and private sector efficiency: Are the bureaucratic procedures the source of inefficiency?

The article suggests the importance of the research of the public policies dimensions which indicate in which ways, ratios and forms the public spending funds supply and usage are defined and what the position of certain subjects included in the process is, using the experience of developed countries. It underlines the complexity of public decision making and the importance of bureaucrats', that is, state officials' role comprehension in the understanding of public management logic. Also, salary costs make almost one quarter of the total state spending, and they are an inflexible and often inefficient way of meeting the needs of the economy and citizens in public services domain. The paper will analyze the state of the public sector in the Republic of Serbia, with the accent on the creation of a new strategic orientation of the public administration, where the labor costs would decline by implementing the modernization of labor, while the labor flexibility and the state effect would increase. The final segment also suggests the need of social attitudes change, that is, public debates sometimes suggest that people have unrealistic expectations and exaggerated requests towards the political system. Thus we can conclude that in the following years it will be necessary to stipulate reasonable rules and legal budgetary procedures constraints. This suggests possible new research framework in the specific context of public management in Serbia.

All that is solid melts into air: the servicescape in digital service space

PurposeThe emergence of new social media is shifting the market place for business towards virtual market space. In the light of the emerging digital space for new forms of marketing, the traditional servicescape concept is critically examined. This paper aims to show why servicescape concepts and attitudes need to be adapted for digital media.Design/methodology/approachFirst, the authors explain how the traditional servicescape concept adds meaning to a service provider’s value-proposition by modifying customer expectations and customer experience. Second, recognising that the environment for service is no longer bound to a physical place, the authors discuss the implications of the epistemic shift involved.FindingsThe authors’ examination shows that digital service space challenges traditional concepts about what constitutes a customer experience and derived value. The authors conceptually “zoom out” into a virtual service eco-system and show with exemplar examples why the servicescape in digital space is more socially embedded and necessarily more fluid in its time-space design. In the more advanced sites, interactions between various artificial bodies (avatars) are co-created by controlling off-line participant-actors; yet, these participant-actors remain strangers to each other at an off-line level. This is entirely a new and radical development of old times.Research limitations/implicationsThe research findings are based on scholarly research of the relevant literature, from practitioner reports, and evidence emerging from the examination of many digital web-sites. It has not been the authors’ intention to objectively represent current servicescape functionalities but more to indicate the major directions of change with exemplar examples. The future cannot be predicted, but their interpretive conclusions suggest major challenges in service marketing and management logic ahead. New forms of digital servicescape are still being created as technology and service imagination enables, so further research interest in virtual atmospherics can be expected.Practical implicationsSocial media platforms are enabling organisations to learn more about their customers and also to engage them more. In these changing times, bricks and mortar stores would be well advised to review their servicescape presence to allow and encourage engagement with the more involved consumers. And, by integrating their digital space into their physical place, bricks and mortar stores might take on more relationship oriented process-like characteristics, both in the digital space and in their physical places, with developments on one platform leading to possible service innovations on the other.Social implicationsThe digital era is changing consumer behaviour. Service managers need to take into account that many customers are already equally as engaged with digital-space social networks as they once were with bricks and mortar stores. The more time consumers as participant-actors spend in social networks, the decision on what and where to buy is decided by interactions with friends and other influencers.Originality/valueNew forms of digital servicescape are being created as technology and service imagination enables. Further scholarly research interest in virtual atmospherics can be expected, impacting on the authors’ sense of place, and self-identity.

Designing electronic information systems for the future: Social workers and the challenge of New Public Management

There is a well-established critique of current forms of electronic information systems (IS) in social work organisations and attention is now turning to their redesign for the future. In this article we go beyond critiques that have established how this occurred to explore one of the reasons why current forms of IS have been observed to undermine frontline practice. In the same way that technological artefacts are observed to mediate human action by ‘configuring the user’, IS have also been developed, or configured, according to ideas about how things should be done, known as ‘embodied structures’. In this article, examples of IS functionality are drawn upon to demonstrate how the logics of New Public Management (NPM) have been embodied in current forms of IS. It is argued that the logics of NPM must be challenged if new forms of IS are to be developed that amplify the ability of practitioners.

Australia and the Zero Lower Bound on Interest Rates: Some Monetary Policy Options

Could 'it' happen here?Australia survived the global financial crisis relatively unscathed, despite much higher interest rates than in other developed countries (see Figure 1). But our exceptional status may be short-lived. In May 2015, the cash rate was cut to 2 per cent, the lowest level since the current series began in 1990, and by some measures the lowest short-term rate since at least 1960. Nevertheless, unemployment has risen steadily, despite the fact that investment in the resources sector has yet to fall back to normal levels.It would seem prudent, then, to be prepared for interest rates to approach zero, as has already occurred in most other OECD countries.2 Sheehan and Gregory (2013) and Freebairn and Corden (2013) have called for increased infrastructure spending on this basis. Yet, as these authors acknowledge, such a policy faces considerable challenges. Furthermore, if warnings of 'secular stagnation' have any validity, near-zero interest rates may not be a once-in-a-generation emergency to be dealt with using ad hoc expedients, but an increasingly common situation requiring a more systematic response. In this case, changes to monetary policy would appear more desirable.This paper considers various means by which monetary policy may stimulate aggregate demand when its usual instrument - the short-term interest rate - is unavailable. The objectives of monetary policy are taken here to be the conventional ones of a stable value of money and full employment, analysed under the broadly 'Keynesian' assumption that fluctuations in nominal spending have significant effects on real output. Financial stability objectives are assumed to be dealt with separately via (macro)prudential regulation.3The paper begins by describing the problem of the zero lower bound, and the logic of expectations management in general and level targeting in particular as a solution. It then argues, however, that level targeting requires a more careful choice of target variable than the current regime of inflation targeting, and that the price level, nominal GDP and nominal wages all appear problematic. A more eclectic mix of policies is then considered.The zero lower bound, and the vital role of expectationsAs long as money can be stored at negligible cost, interest rates cannot fall below zero, because hoarding money would then be a superior alternative to lending it. This poses a problem for conventional monetary policy, under which the usual response to falling inflation or rising unemployment is a lower interest rate. What happens if the interest rate cannot be cut any further? The experience of Japan in the 1990s, and much of the world since 2008, shows that near-zero interest rates are perfectly compatible with low and falling inflation, high and rising unemployment, and output well below previous estimates of potential.Can monetary policy still be effective in such a situation? Theory suggests that expectations management is the key. In the standard permanent income or life-cycle model, current spending is determined by expected future income and interest rates. If promises about future policy are successful in changing these expectations, they may increase demand without any immediate change in the central bank's balance sheet. Conversely, even a very large balance sheet expansion may be ineffective if it is believed to be temporary and thus does not change expectations.4 Krugman (1998), motivated by the then unusual experience of Japan, showed that, while a temporary monetary expansion would fail to raise prices and output at the zero lower bound (since it cannot change the current interest rate, and, being temporary, will not affect any future variables), a credible permanent expansion could work, by increasing the expected future price level and therefore reducing the real interest rate. (This assumes that a permanently higher money supply must eventually create proportionally higher prices at some point in the future when the interest rate rises above zero. …

The New Public Management in hybrid settings: New challenges for performance measures

This study questions whether Performance Measurement Systems (PMSs) defined under the New Public Management (NPM) logic fit the needs of hybrid settings where inter-organizational relationships exist between multiple actors in charge of service delivery. After outlining the key characteristics of an NPM-based PMS and its limitations in hybrid settings, an exploratory case study was carried out on a public network in charge of delivering a local public transport service. The network was particularly appropriate, as it initially endorsed an NPM-based PMS. Findings show problems in using the PMS and adapting the model, which led to the development of new features and requirements. Using a theoretical triangulation, it was possible to draw a more general insight into the characteristics of a PMS in a hybrid setting, here called a relational and participative PMS.

Converging logics? Managing migration and managing diversity

ABSTRACTMigration management and diversity management are recognised as central paradigms in the context of migration and plural societies. A review of scholarly literature analysing the discourses and practices of migration and diversity management reveal that the two phenomena have been studied in isolation and that research on diversity management has predominantly been published in organisation and management literature rather than being integrated in the field of ethnic and migration studies. This article argues that it is relevant and fruitful to study migration management and diversity management in conjunction, since there are significant thematic and logical convergences, and to incorporate diversity management in the study of migration in order to obtain a deeper understanding of the entanglement of migration and diversity management. Based on a synthesis of scholarship and analysis of European reports, the article proposes to recognise three main convergences between the logic of migration management and diversity management: the presentation of migration and plurality as the ‘new’ norm; optimisation; and technocracy. Finally, I suggest directions for a shared research agenda, and, drawing on the prominence of a Foucauldian governmentality framework in critical studies of migration and diversity management, present this as a potentially useful point of departure.

Scripting professional identities: how individuals make sense of contradictory institutional logics

This article examines how individual accountants subjectively interpret competing logics of professionalism as they transform from practicing accountants to managerial roles and as their organizations transform from traditional professional partnerships to more corporate organizational forms. Based on a longitudinal ethnography of professionals in a Big Four accounting firm we analyse the process by which individual professionals make sense of their new roles and integrate the conflicting demands of professional and managerial logics. We find that individuals are active authors of their own identity scripts. We further observe considerable interpretive variation in how identity scripts are reproduced and enacted. We contribute to the emerging understanding of institutions as ‘inhabited’ by individuals and extend this literature by demonstrating that the institutional work of reinterpreting competing logics is based less of inter-subjective interactions, as prior literature has assumed, and is, instead, based on individual cognition and interpretive subjectivity. We also contribute to research in professional service firms by offering a conceptual model of the individual micro-processes required for successful archetypal change.

Public Organizations Between Old Public Administration, New Public Management and Public Governance: the Case of the Tuscany Region

This paper analyzes the presence of different managerial approaches in a public organization, the Tuscany Region of Italy. In particular, it highlights the phenomenon of the plurality of frameworks working in the organization, namely Old Public Administration (OPA), New Public Management (NPM) and Public Governance (PG). The transformation and coexistence of the above-mentioned models is tested with a content analysis based on the perspectives of policy makers and top-level managers expressed in interviews and on the context of administration planning and control systems found in documents. Each managerial logic has a different relevance in the organization.

Professionalism Redundant, Reshaped, or Reinvigorated? Realizing the "Third Logic" in Contemporary Health Care.

Recent decades have seen the influence of the professions decline. Lately, commentators have suggested a revived role for a "new" professionalism in ensuring and enhancing high-quality health care in systems dominated by market and managerial logics. The form this new professionalism might take, however, remains obscure. This article uses data from an ethnographic study of three English health care improvement projects to analyze the place, potential, and limitations of professionalism as a means of engaging clinicians in efforts to improve service quality. We found that appeals to notions of professionalism had strong support among practitioners, but converting enthusiasm for the principle of professionalism into motivation to change practice was not straightforward. Some tactics used in pursuit of this deviated sharply from traditional models of collegial social control. In systems characterized by fissures between professional groups and powerful market and managerial influences, we suggest that professionalism must interact creatively but carefully with other logics.

Language as a new instrument of border control: the regulation of marriage migration from Morocco to Germany

In 2007, the German government introduced the requirement of a language certificate for citizens of ‘third countries’ who want to join their spouses in the Federal Republic. Thereby, Germany followed the example of the Netherlands, Austria, the UK and France. German policy-makers have justified this language certificate as a measure to facilitate integration before entering the country. Drawing on the Moroccan case, this paper challenges this dominant integration argument and shows the actual consequences of this new instrument of border control. This paper argues that the language certificate leads above all to the hierarchisation of marriage migrants and even to the exclusion of certain candidates, depending on their educational background and financial means. The history of marriage migration from Morocco to Germany shows that family migration, especially of spouses, has a long tradition and has always been the special target of restrictions and control. However, the required language certificate leads to a new level of control. While marriage migration is traditionally based on a private matter, namely the decision to marry someone and to share life together, the utilitarian logic of a neoliberal migration management has found its way into the control of this form of migration. This is also visible in the externalisation of the border regime in the sense of an out-sourcing of migration management, whereby institutions such as language schools have become an integrated part of Germany's border control system.

Using fuzzy FMEA and fuzzy logic in project risk management

Risk management is one of the most important phases of project management and isthe most recently used by many researchers. In this paper, a fuzzy based method wasproposed which identifies different kinds of risks through the project life cycle.Then, the project risk magnitude can be obtained in regards to five factors, namely“severity”, “occurrence”, and “not detection” which form fuzzy FMEA and also twoother factors namely project phase weights and risks weights. These two factors inaddition to risk priority number (RPN) factors can lead to the application of betterrisk management. Based on the project risk magnitude, the appropriate risk responseshould be selected. The proposed model covers three parts of risk managementprocess: 1. Risk identification, 2. Quantitative risk analysis and 3. Risk responseplanning. Finally, this model was applied by a numerical example, and project riskmagnitude was calculated for an assumed company, to verify the proposed method.

Protecting people's livelihoods, restarting nuclear reactors: ‘risk recalibration’ in Prime Minister Noda's 8 June 2012 national address

Given popular concerns about nuclear accidents in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, the Japanese state shut down the last of its fifty-four reactors for inspections on 5 May 2012, the first time the country had been without nuclear energy since May 1970. However, on 8 June 2012, in a nationwide address, Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko justified a resumption of nuclear power generation at the Oi nuclear plant in Oimachi, Fukui Prefecture. This article examines Noda's speech as an example of ‘risk recalibration’. The first section outlines the underlying theoretical assumptions, while the second section provides the context behind the speech. This involved the input of political, economic and social actors as they vied for policy influence. The third section then analyses the risk rationality used in the speech itself. The argument is that while the speech is an important example of risk rationality operating through discourse as a medium of power, the overall ‘recalibration’ runs contrary to what recent studies have shown in other areas. In short, it is held that the speech follows a more traditional paternalistic logic of centralized risk management rather than a neoliberal logic of ‘individual responsibility’.

Contracting with General Dental Services: a mixed-methods study on factors influencing responses to contracts in English general dental practice

BackgroundIndependent contractor status of NHS general dental practitioners (GDPs) and general medical practitioners (GMPs) has meant that both groups have commercial as well as professional identities. Their relationship with the state is governed by a NHS contract, the terms of which have been the focus of much negotiation and struggle in recent years. Previous study of dental contracting has taken a classical economics perspective, viewing practitioners’ behaviour as a fully rational search for contract loopholes. We apply institutional theory to this context for the first time, where individuals’ behaviour is understood as being influenced by wider institutional forces such as growing consumer demands, commercial pressures and challenges to medical professionalism. Practitioners hold values and beliefs, and carry out routines and practices which are consistent with the field’s institutional logics. By identifying institutional logics in the dental practice organisational field, we expose where tensions exist, helping to explain why contracting appears as a continual cycle of reform and resistance.AimsTo identify the factors which facilitate and hinder the use of contractual processes to manage and strategically develop General Dental Services, using a comparison with medical practice to highlight factors which are particular to NHS dental practice.MethodsFollowing a systematic review of health-care contracting theory and interviews with stakeholders, we undertook case studies of 16 dental and six medical practices. Case study data collection involved interviews, observation and documentary evidence; 120 interviews were undertaken in all. We tested and refined our findings using a questionnaire to GDPs and further interviews with commissioners.ResultsWe found that, for all three sets of actors (GDPs, GMPs, commissioners), multiple logics exist. These were interacting and sometimes in competition. We found an emergent logic of population health managerialism in dental practice, which is less compatible than the other dental practice logics of ownership responsibility, professional clinical values and entrepreneurialism. This was in contrast to medical practice, where we found a more ready acceptance of external accountability and notions of the delivery of ‘cost-effective’ care. Our quantitative work enabled us to refine and test our conceptualisations of dental practice logics. We identified that population health managerialism comprised both a logic of managerialism and a public goods logic, and that practitioners might be resistant to one and not the other. We also linked individual practitioners’ behaviour to wider institutional forces by showing that logics were predictive of responses to NHS dental contracts at the dental chair-side (the micro level), as well as predictive of approaches to wider contractual relationships with commissioners (the macro level).ConclusionsResponses to contracts can be shaped by environmental forces and not just determined at the level of the individual. In NHS medical practice, goals are more closely aligned with commissioning goals than in general dental practice. The optimal contractual agreement between GDPs and commissioners, therefore, will be one which aims at the ‘satisfactory’ rather than the ‘ideal’; and a ‘successful’ NHS dental contract is likely to be one where neither party promotes its self-interest above the other. Future work on opportunism in health care should widen its focus beyond the self-interest of providers and look at the contribution of contextual factors such as the relationship between the government and professional bodies, the role of the media, and providers’ social and professional networks.FundingThe National Institute for Health Research Health Services and Delivery Research programme.

Market Economy vs. Risk Management: How Do Nomadic Pastoralists Respond to Increasing Meat Prices?

A growing body of evidence shows that for nomadic pastoralists herd accumulation is an efficient strategy for buffering environmental variation and maximizes long-term survival. Pastoralists may thus view livestock as investments, or ‘banks on the hoof,’ that work as insurance against unpredictable environmental conditions. This perspective differs from strict market logic where producers are expected to follow the ‘law of supply,’ i.e., that when the price of a product rises suppliers should be willing to offer more of the product for sale. In terms of insurance, increased meat prices may make it possible for pastoralists to slaughter fewer animals for the same financial gain as when prices are low and subsequently convert unslaughtered animals to herd capital. This study investigates to what degree Saami reindeer herders follow a market driven or risk management logic by investigating how slaughter strategies are influenced by increasing meat prices. While slaughter strategies vary regionally in Norway, our results indicate that reindeer herders follow neither risk nor market considerations alone, but rather a combination, and support the general hypothesis that slaughter strategies entail balancing the benefits of increasing herd size against economic gain through meat sales. This has important management implications since current management schemes aiming to reduce the number of reindeer by stimulating slaughter rates through economic subsidies is based on the assumption that herders are meat producers motivated by monetary gains alone.