Organizational Tensions Research Articles

Lost in interpretation: Making sense of equivocalities and tensions in approaches to interoperability

Interoperability promotes data-driven practices by enabling the aggregation and sharing of data from distributed information systems. It thus offers potential benefits to organizations for delivering more efficient and sustainable services. Despite its potentials, achieving interoperability remains a significant challenge. In this paper, we shed light on the obscure landscape of organizational challenges that lead to low interoperability. Based on a 3-year longitudinal single-case study of a public agency’s attempts to enhance interoperability, we uncover how three major categories of equivocality – scope, needs, and priorities – hinder approaches to interoperability at the data, software, and IT levels. We also reveal that entangled organizational tensions explain why such equivocalities emerge. By analyzing interoperability challenges from the combined concepts of equivocality and tensions, this paper offers a unique perspective on their intricate nature, making sense of the obscure landscape of challenges in various approaches to interoperability.

Bounded professionalism nexus: HR professionalism within and across organizational boundaries

AbstractEven though the field of human resources is rife with tensions and contradictions, little is known about how HR practitioners experience and navigate these challenges. The impact of these tensions and ambiguities on HR professionalism remains understudied. Using the framework of “bounded professionalism”, this study explores how HR practitioners in business organizations (RBOs) and staffing agencies (RSAs) navigate professional and organizational tensions. Through a qualitative methodology, we conducted 60 semi‐structured interviews with HR practitioners from a variety of organizational settings. By examining the complicated experiences of HR practitioners, we highlight the nuanced ways in which they manage and mitigate professional and organizational tensions. This paper introduces and further develops the concept of “bounded professionalism nexus,” which implies that collaboration between professionals across organizational boundaries may exacerbate the experience of bounded professionalism. Specifically, we identify the triggers and implications of “bounded professionalism nexus”, demonstrating how cross‐border organizational relations contribute to suboptimal performance in both RSAs and RBOs. According to our findings, these tensions are not only prevalent, but also have significant implications for HR professionalism. This study concludes by examining the broader implications of the “bounded professionalism nexus” for HR professionals and offering suggestions for mitigating these tensions.

Industrial districts, multinational corporations, and their local/global paradoxes

Over the past fifteen years, several studies have used the organizational theory of paradoxes to understand some typical organizational tensions, including that between global and local dimensions typically faced by multinational corporations. ese studies analyze paradoxical tensions at the organizational or even intra-organizational level, while the paradox lens has not yet been applied to study systems such as industrial districts. is paper attempts to do so by analyzing and comparing the local/global paradox in multinational corporations and industrial districts. For the latter, the analysis rests on some empirical studies conducted on Italian districts. Moreover, as the presence of multinationals in these districts has become stronger in the recent phase, an attempt has been made to understand if and how this phenomenon impacts the local/global tension at the district level.

Marsden as organization theorist

AbstractI argue that David Marsden, lauded in Employment Relations (ER) and Human Resource Management, deserves recognition as an organization theorist. Viewing his works as a unified theory, I demonstrate how his focus on the interaction between individual actions, institutions and organizational structures aligns with the fields core concerns. Further, I apply an organizational dialectics approach to his analysis of organizational tensions like managerial authority and diffusion of employment systems. This reinterpretation offers new insights into organizational structure and design and the importance of ER‐specific factors and processes in shaping them. It highlights the enduring value of Marsden's framework for understanding organizations.

Treason and revenge: the emergence and continuation of ILSA contracting

ABSTRACT OECD and IEA International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSAs) contractors have remained largely invisible despite playing a key role in the making of education assessment data. With the help of Bourdieu’s thinking, this paper analyses data generated through document analysis of ILSA Reports and in-depth interviews with staff working on ILSAs at the IEA, the OECD and ILSA contractors. The paper traces education assessment developments in the USA and at the IEA and the OECD since the 1980s, and points to the critical role of Education Testing Services (ETS). Although the selection of ILSA contractors ostensibly occurs through a globally competitive tendering process, this paper reveals the pressures and struggles that emerged when economic capital became available at the IEA and the OECD. The struggles reveal PISA was created as a competing project to TIMSS. The paper demonstrates how the social and cultural capitals that individuals acquired, and in particular trust, shaped who can and who cannot produce ILSA data today. Overall, the paper makes visible the ILSA data chefs and their recipes: ILSAs are not raw, they are cooked under pressure with personal and organizational tensions, struggles, conflicts, and emotional bonds.

Contributors to fatigue among nurses working in critical care units: A qualitative study.

Fatigue is a growing concern among nurses who provide care to unstable and critically ill patients in critical care wards. It has various negative consequences for both nurses and patients. To explore and describe contributors to fatigue among nurses working in critical care units. A qualitative content analysis. Participants were 21 nurses chosen using purposeful sampling. They were working in different critical care units at different hospitals in nine urban areas of Iran. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data, and conventional content analysis was used to develop categories and subcategories. The analysis of data on the nurses' perspectives and experiences led to developing nine categories as contributors to fatigue: 'compassion fatigue', 'extensive network of interactions', 'sound and alarm fatigue', 'psychological tensions', 'managerial and organizational tensions', 'lack of motivation and incentives', 'individual characteristics of nurses', 'physical and mental pressure', and requirements of special care and situational complexity'. Understanding the factors that influence the experience of fatigue among nurses working in critical care units is essential for maintaining a reliable and high-quality health care environment within health care facilities. The experience of fatigue by critical care nurses can increase the possibility of practice errors, reduce patient safety and quality of care, and enhance staff burnout and turnover. Proactive policies should be formulated to assess nurses' fatigue levels and implement strategies for effective fatigue management. This approach aims to enhance both patient safety and job satisfaction in the workplace.

Understanding the relationship between competitive strategy and product-service innovation: the role of the paradox of openness

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the relationship between strategy intent (product-service innovation intention) and outcome (product-service innovation outcome), and the role that external sources of innovation play in influencing this relationship.Design/methodology/approachUsing data obtained from the community innovation survey, we apply a logit regression to a sample of 1,419 Portuguese firms. By examining the moderating effect of open innovation breadth, we assess how the relationship between differentiation intent and outcome is contingent upon the involvement of external stakeholders.FindingsOur findings reveal that the relationship between differentiation intent and outcome is contingent upon the moderating effect of open innovation breadth. Our analysis suggests that the negative influence of different sources of innovation can be addressed by adopting a paradox lens.Practical implicationsThis research provides valuable insights for managers. By simultaneously pursuing a differentiation strategy and engaging in collaboration with external sources, firms may compromise their ability to effectively differentiate their offer. Managers should consider the potential tensions arising from internal and external stakeholder relationships to optimize their innovation strategies.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the existing literature by shedding light on the role of external innovation sources in influencing the relationship between differentiation intent and outcome and the importance that information systems may have in this relationship. By exploring the moderating effect of open innovation breadth, we provide a nuanced understanding of how firms can navigate organizational tensions and leverage innovation for competitive advantage.

On a critical walk: The politicisation of pedestrian planning as a tension in participatory planning

This paper analyses urban walking during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 as an object of urban planning in Helsinki. The paper investigates planners' experiences of planning for temporary spatial solutions during a time of exceptionality in urban life. The paper is motivated by the wish to determine the influence of residents' environmental critique on official urban planning processes. Analysis is primarily based on walk-along interviews with urban planners and residents in the densest eastern downtown neighbourhoods of Helsinki. Supplemental data, including a survey, chat group discussions and planning documents, are used to deepen analysis. Results discuss the politicisation of planning and the delicate relationship between public planners and the political steering of planning in a Nordic welfare planning system. The paper discusses how the politicisation of planning imposes barriers to participatory planning by tying planners' time and attention to organisational tensions, but also by not being able to direct public attention to contentious planning topics. To analyse the role of planners in advocating for pedestrian planning and citizen participation, the study incorporates concepts from organisational communication and urban governance: tensions, rational ignorance and guerrilla governance.

Integrating advanced digital technologies in existing lean-based production systems: analysis of paradoxes, imbalances and management strategies

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of paradoxes, underlying tensions and potential management strategies when integrating digital technologies into existing lean-based production systems (LPSs), with the aim of achieving synergies and fostering the development of production systems.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopts a collaborative management research (CMR) approach to identify patterns of organisational tensions and paradoxes and explore management strategies to overcome them. The data were collected through interviews and focus group interviews with experts on lean and/or digital technologies from the companies, from documents and from workshops with the in-case researchers.FindingsThe findings of this paper provide insights into the salient organisational paradoxes embraced in the integration of digital technologies in LPS by identifying different aspects of the performing, organising, learning and belonging paradoxes. Furthermore, the findings demonstrate the intricacies and relatedness between different paradoxes and their resolutions, and more specifically, how a resolution strategy adopted to manage one paradox might unintentionally generate new tensions. This, in turn, calls for either re-contextualising actions to counteract the drift or the adoption of new resolution strategies.Originality/valueThis paper adds perspective to operations management (OM) research through the use of paradox theory, and we (1) provide a fine-grained perspective on why integration sometimes “fails” and label the forces of internal drift as mechanisms of imbalances and (2) provide detailed insights into how different management and resolution strategies are adopted, especially by identifying re-contextualising actions as a key to rebalancing organisational paradoxes in favour of the integration of digital technologies in LPSs.

Laying the foundations for implementing Magnet principles in hospitals in Europe: A qualitative analysis

BackgroundMagnet hospitals, a concept developed in the U.S., have been associated with improved nurse recruitment and retention, and better patient outcomes. Magnet principles may be useful to address workforce challenges in European hospitals, but they have not been implemented or evaluated on a large scale in the European hospital context. ObjectiveThis study aims to explore the initial phase of implementing Magnet principles in 11 acute care hospitals in six European countries. The specific objectives of the study were to investigate the type of work that characterises the early phase of implementation and how implementation leaders engage with their context. MethodsA multinational qualitative study was conducted, with data from 23 semi-structured, one-to-one interviews with implementation leaders in 11 acute care hospitals in six European countries. Thematic analyses guided the analysis of data. FindingsThree themes of core work processes during the early phase of implementing Magnet principles in European hospitals were identified. The first theme, ‘Creating space for Magnet’, describes how work was directed towards creating both political and organisational space for the project. The second theme, ‘Framing to fit: understanding and interpreting Magnet principles’, describes the translational work to understand what the Magnet model entails and how it relates to the local hospital context. Finally, the third theme, ‘Calibrating speed and dose’, describes the strategic work of considering internal and external factors to adjust the process of implementation. ConclusionsThe first phase of implementation was characterised by conceptual and relational work; translating the Magnet concepts, considering the fit into existing structures and practices and making space for Magnet in the local context. Understanding the local context played an important role in shaping and guiding the navigation of professional and organisational tensions. Hospitals employed diverse strategies to either emphasise or downplay the role of nurses and nursing to facilitate progress in the implementation.

Relationships influencing organisational culture in men’s elite football clubs in Norway

This paper examines the relationships within and outside organisations that have the leverage to influence culture in the context of men’s elite football clubs in Norway. Participants from three clubs held positions as Performance Director (n=2), sport psychology practitioner (n = 3), and physiotherapist (n = 2) and participated in semi-structured interviews focusing on the relationships, tensions, and dynamic organisational forces in their respective clubs. Using reflexive thematic analysis, we developed two overarching themes showing (1) Organisational cultures in time frames and (2) Relationships among stakeholders influencing organisational culture. Developing these themes indicated that an organisational culture is not only a point of arrival, but also a point of departure for future activities. Hence, those charged with organisational culture work must maintain awareness of the influence of a club’s history and how it influences dynamic tensions with stakeholders within and outside clubs. It is also critical that cultural practitioners are mindful of players’ and staffs’ individual journeys, which influence how they self-organise into fluid and temporary subgroups. The findings can sharpen our understanding of working with culture in elite football by emphasising other sources of culture besides leaders’ attempts at controlling or steering it in their preferred way. Using the findings provided in this study can help practitioners recognise organisational tensions or slippage towards cultural problems before they lead to traumatic organisational crises.

Banter and beyond: The role of humor in addressing gendered organizational tensions and belonging within the UK Fire and Rescue Service

AbstractThis article explores the role of humor, specifically banter, in addressing gendered organizational tensions within the UK Fire and Rescue Service during a period of modernizing change. Such tensions reflect who holds authority and who is deemed to belong, and we explore how banter is used to both contest and confirm authority associated with the formal rank system and the informal, masculinist ideal‐typical worker in this context. We discuss banter's various roles as a cohering mode of humorous workplace communication, one that can reduce tension and consolidate authority and belonging, as well as its boundary setting, testing, and crossing capacities. In terms of the latter, we ask whether banter can genuinely trouble masculinist organizational norms. We conclude that specific humorous episodes that go “beyond banter” create particular ambivalence, but their impact is significantly limited by widespread discursive acceptance of banter as a central and permissible communication mode in the Service's culture.

МАСШТАБУВАННЯ БІЗНЕСУ В УМОВАХ РОЗВИТКУ ЗОВНІШНЬОЕКОНОМІЧНОЇ ДІЯЛЬНОСТІ

The article examines scaling in the context of modern economic activity, which is becoming increasingly important in the current minds of globalization and digitalization. Scale plays a key role in securing access to international markets, new resources and strategic assets, which is important for both commercial and non-profit and hybrid organizations. The article emphasizes the fact that with advances in the field of digital technologies, businesses may have the opportunity to hyperscale, rapidly entering international markets and significantly expanding their activities. The author emphasizes that the process of scaling in external economic activity is accompanied by advanced foldability, which often involves transcordon control, intergranular spirogenesis and creation international ecosystems. Particular attention is paid to the need for integration between enterprises, departments and other subjects of the government sector to achieve successful scaling. It is also seen that scaling is important for nonprofit organizations to increase their social impact and achieve large-scale tasks that go beyond national borders. The article analyzes the remaining research on the power of global scale, hybrid and social enterprises, as well as the diffusion of innovations in international organizations. The authors note that while there is a significant amount of research in this galus, nutritional scaling in the context of modern economic activity is not fragmented and remains in development at the early stage. The meta-statistics lie within an expanded conceptual framework of scale in the context of foreign economic activity. The article highlights scaling as it continues to grow through the development of a viable business model, analyzes the main aspects of scaling in different minds and points to promising directions for future research, in particular areas of organizational tension, Swedish internationalization and digitalization.

When opposites attract: a review and synthesis of corporate-startup collaboration

ABSTRACT Research on corporate-startup coll aboration has accelerated during the last two decades, and scholars have started to distinguish underlying drivers and challenges when these two types of partners engage to innovate. Despite accumulating insights, however, the body of literature on corporate-startup collaboration is rather fragmented with little integration, impeding the extent to which different perspectives can inform and draw from each other in finding ways to improve the collaboration between corporates and startups. In this paper, we conduct a systematic literature review and apply a paradox perspective to bring together separated domains of research about corporate-startup collaboration. In particular, our framework identifies four organisational tensions that manifest in corporate-startup collaboration and explains distinct coping mechanisms across different levels of analysis. Our emergent framework highlights the multifaceted nature of corporate-startup collaboration and provides various new avenues of research moving forward.

How scientists become experts-or don't: Social organization of research and engagement in scientific advice in a toxicology laboratory.

Certain fields of research are deeply shaped by their proximity with policy-makers and administrations. The so-called 'regulatory sciences' and their corresponding expert communities emerge from this intermediary space between science and policy. Social studies of expertise and scientific experts show, however, that modes of engagement with policy-making vary greatly from one scientist to another. Two scientists that are part of the same research group or laboratory may engage the policy realm differently. How then does the social organization of research influence scientists' participation in scientific advice and the production of regulatory sciences? The paper looks at toxicology, a field in which knowledge production is centrally motivated by risk assessment, but one that has also seen the emergence of different knowledge-making motives, including advancement of fundamental knowledge and frontier research. A toxicology laboratory may thus harbor a diversity of moral economies of scientific advice. The paper argues that scientists' engagements with policy, through scientific advice and regulatory risk assessment, create organizational tensions and force changes to the standard, team-based social organization of research work.

Gender Equality and Economic Entanglements in Male-Dominated Sport Organizations: The Disruptive Value of Australian Rules Football Women

Focusing on the Australian Football League and its development of a national competition for women, this article contributes toward broader debates around the inclusion and incorporation of women in professional sport. It traces the particular logics and desires (such as corporate expansion) that drove the Australian Football League to develop a women’s competition in the name of equality. We map the organizational tensions and affects that produce (the doing of) gender equality through different desires. Drawing on feminist new materialist conceptions of assemblage, we work to identify the material (numbers of women and girls participating, revenue, and expenses) and discursive (attitudes toward girls and women, meanings attached to sport, and gender) entanglements that contribute to the (de)valuing of women in male-dominated sporting organizations and how this might be disrupted both now and in the future.

Communicative Tensions in Remote Work During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Environmental changes can render latent organizational tensions salient, and tensions can be viewed as a lens through which to study the social interactions of organizational actors. This study aims to uncover what kinds of tensions and their entanglements arise in knowledge workers’ collaboration and technology-mediated communication practices during a transition to remote work. The qualitative dataset was collected through an open-ended online survey at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 from 569 remote workers, and the data were analyzed iteratively according to thematic content analysis methods and applying elements of contrapuntal analysis. The findings indicate emerging tensions and their entanglements in knowledge workers’ remote work and technology-mediated communication practices, here manifesting in process-, task-, and relationship-oriented interactions. The findings provide theoretical and practical implications for how entangled tensions in remote work could be managed to support effective communication, collaboration, and employee well-being during and beyond the pandemic situation.

Three tensions in governing energy demand: A social practice perspective on Nordic urban interventions

Affecting future urban energy demand will play a significant role in mitigating climate emissions. While the literature has amply focused on the outputs of successful urban climate governance, there has been less focus on the organisational challenge that affecting energy demand will represent. By foregrounding the work practices of civil servants engaging with these issues, this study offers new insights into the possibilities and constraints of affecting energy demand. Inspired by work on social practice theory applied to organisations, it maps the tools, materialities and identity-related dynamics that affect civil servants' work. Empirically, the paper builds on interviews, document analysis and field notes taken in ten Nordic cities. The paper finds that the local agency for governing urban demand is contingent on navigating three tensions: (1) broadening the benefits of climate measures beyond carbon emissions, (2) challenging often politically attractive technologies, and the associated range of actors seen as relevant and (3) clarifying the role and responsibility of municipalities in relation to intervening in citizen's energy demand. By identifying the organisational tensions that civil servants face, the paper helps to understand the challenges encountered in advancing a local climate agenda, and the novel forms of agency that organisations can mobilise.

Development and measurement of a resilience indicator for cyber-socio-technical systems: The allostatic load

Management of cyber-socio-technical processes often suffers from misalignments of process descriptions according to formal organization documents or manager views (Work-As-Imagined) with actual work practices as performed by sharp-end operators (Work-As-Done). Even if sometimes the accomplishment of a process requires workers to diverge from the Work-As-Imagined, the corresponding changes can potentially cause organizational tensions in the overall system and lead to safety incidents. This consideration led us to define a new resilience indicator, named allostatic load, to capture such misalignments, and the corresponding level of organizational tensions, a cyber-socio-technical system is exposed to. Then, we propose a method to measure it by leveraging semantic technologies, the Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM) to model industrial processes, the WAx conceptual framework to keep track of the variety of the different process perspectives, and a crowd-based approach to elicit industrial knowledge. Finally, we discuss the feasibility of the approach in two real case studies related to a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant and an enterprise in the aluminium sector.

Organizational Paradoxes and Metamorphosis in Collective Action

This paper addresses the subject of organizational paradoxes through the lens of complexity theory. The first part of the study focuses on the formalization of the key elements in order to better understand the concept of organizational tension through the presentation of related constructs, i.e., dilemmas, dialectics and paradoxes. The second part of the paper introduces the key to interpreting complexity theory, highlighting how the characteristic of emergence in complex systems makes it possible to identify two different levels: that of organizational elements and that of organizational forms, both of which are impacted by tension. That reflection leads the authors to postulate that metamorphosis is the process by which organizations, constantly crossed by tension, regenerate the organizational forms’ level on the basis of evolving tensions between organizational elements.