Contradictions of Ordered Trust: Trust-based Work and Conflicting Logics in Municipal Care
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18291/njwls.130174Keywords:
Learning & Competencies, Organization & ManagementAbstract
This article examines intra-organizational trust and institutional logics in municipal social care services in the setting of a trust-based developmental project. A case study was conducted in a Swedish municipal district. The data consists of 27 semi-structured interviews with care workers, first-line managers, and strategic staff as well as 11 observations. The study adds insights regarding trust in public sector organizations and shows how a strong focus on economic efficiency can relativize trust into a question of financial accountability. The results demonstrate how the governing managerial logic is not only in conflict with but also seems to overrule attempts to establish a more trust-based logic. Moreover, contributing to the institutional logics literature, it further shows how power structures affect institutional logics and how conflicts between logics play out differently at various organizational levels. The prospects of accomplishing a more trust-based governance without larger institutional or organizational changes are hence problematized.
Author Biography
Helena Håkansson, University of Gothenburg
PhD Student, Department of Sociology and Work Science. E-mail: helena.hakansson@gu.se
References
Alvehus, J. (2018). Conflicting logics? The role of HRM in a professional service firm, Human Resource Management Journal 28(1): 31–44. doi:10.1111/1748-8583.12159
Andersen, G. R., & Westgaard, R. H. (2015). Discrepancies in assessing home care workers’ working conditions in a Norwegian home care service: Differing views of stakeholders at three organizational levels, BMC Health Services Research 15:286 doi:10.1186/s12913-015-0945-6
Andersson, T., & Liff, R. (2018). Co-optation as a response to competing institutional logics: Professionals and managers in healthcare, Journal of Professions and Organization 5(2): 71–87. doi:10.1093/jpo/joy001
Andreasson, U. (2017). Tillid – det nordiske guld (Trust – the nordic gold), Copenhagen: Nordisk Ministerråd. doi:10.6027/ANP2017-744
Bachmann, R. (2003). Trust and power as means of co-ordinating the internal relations of the organization: A conceptual framework. In Nootebom, B. & Six, F. (Ed.) The Trust Process in Organizations: Empirical Studies of the Determinants and the Process of Trust Development, Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing. doi:10.4337/9781843767350
Bévort, F., & Poulfelt, F. (2015). Human resource management in professional services firms: Too good to be true? Transcending conflicting institutional logics, German Journal of Human Resource Management 29(2): 102–130. doi:10.1177/239700221502900204
Bévort, F., & Suddaby, R. (2016). Scripting professional identities: How individuals make sense of contradictory institutional logics, Journal of Professions and Organization 3(1): 17–38. doi:10.1093/jpo/jov007
Brante, T. (2014). Den professionella logiken: Hur vetenskap och praktik förenas i det moderna kunskapssamhället (The professional logic: How science and practice are united in the modern knowledge society), Stockholm: Liber.
Dahl, H. M., Eskelinen, L., & Hansen, E. B. (2015). Coexisting principles and logics of elder care: Help to self-help and consumer-oriented service?, International Journal of Social Welfare 24(3): 287–295. doi:10.1111/ijsw.12141
Diefenbach, T. (2009). New Public Management in public sector organizations: The dark sides of managerialistic ‘enlightenment’, Public Administration 87(4): 892–909. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9299.2009.01766.x
Eide, T., Nilsen, E. R., Gullslett, M. K., Olafsen, A. H., Aaberge, A. H., & Hilde, E. (2017). Tillitsmodellen – erfaringer med mini-pilotering av selvstyrende team i tre bydeler i Oslo kommune (The trust model – experiences of mini-pilots with self-governing teams in three districts of Oslo municipality), Skriftserien fra Høgskolen i Sørøst-Norge Vol. 13, Drammen: University of South-Eastern Norway.
Fincham, R., & Forbes, T. (2015). Three’s a Crowd: The Role of Inter-logic Relationships in Highly Complex Institutional Fields, British Journal of Management 26(4): 657–670 doi:10.1111/1467-8551.12102
Forsberg Kankkunen, T. (2010). Sociala relationer och makt i genusmärkta verksamheter (Social relationships and power in gender-marked businesses), In Bejerot, E. & Härenstam, A. (Ed.) Sociala relationer i arbetslivet (Social relations in working life), Malmö: Gleerups.
Forssell, A., & Ivarsson Westerberg, A. (2014). Administrationssamhället (Administration Society), Lund: Studentlitteratur.
Fox, A. (1974). Beyond Contract: Work, Power and Trust Relations, London: Faber & Faber.
Freidson, E. (2001). Professionalism: The Third Logic, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Gilbert, J., & Tang Li-Ping, T. (1998). An examination of organizational trust antecedents, Public Personnel Management 27(3): 321–338. doi:10.1177/009102609802700303
Graneheim, U. H., & Lundman, B. (2004). Qualitative content analysis in nursing research: Concepts, procedures and measures to achieve trustworthiness, Nurse Education Today 24(2): 105–112. doi:10.1016/j.nedt.2003.10.001
Greenwood, R., Raynard, M., Kodeih, F., Micelotta, E. R., & Lounsbury, M. (2011). Institutional complexity and organizational responses, Academy of Management Annals 5(1):317–371. doi: 10.1080/19416520.2011.590299
Grey, C., & Garsten, C. (2001). Trust, Control and Post-Bureaucracy, Organization Studies 22(2): 229–250. doi:10.1177/0170840601222003
Hirsch, P. M., & Lounsbury, M. (2015). Toward a more critical and ‘powerful’ institutionalism, Journal of Management Inquiry 24(1): 96–99. doi:10.1177/1056492614545297
Hood, C. (1991). A public management for all seasons?, Public Administration 69(1): 3–19. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9299.1991.tb00779.x
Høyer, H. C., & Wood, E. M. (2011). Trust and Control: Public Administration and Risk Society, International Journal of Learning and Change 5(2): 178–188. doi:10.1504/IJLC.2011.044209
Høyrup, S. (2010). Employee-driven innovation and workplace learning: Basic concepts, approaches and themes, Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research 16(2): 143–154. doi:10.1177/1024258910364102
Kilhammar, K. (2011). Idén om medarbetarskap: En studie av en idés resa in i och genom två organisationer (The notion of employee-ship: A study of an idea’s journey into and through two organizations). Dissertation, Linköping: Linköpings universitet.
Liljenberg, M. (2020). Drivers of Improvement at Local Level – Tension and Support from Coexisting Logics, Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research. doi:10.1080/00313831.2020.1788157
Lok, J. (2019). Why (and How) Institutional Theory Can Be Critical: Addressing the Challenge to Institutional Theory’s Critical Turn. Journal of Management Inquiry 28(3): 335–349. doi:10.1177/1056492617732832
Martin, G., Currie, G., Weaver, S., Finn, R., & McDonald, R. (2017). Institutional Complexity and Individual Responses: Delineating the Boundaries of Partial Autonomy, Organization Studies 38(1): 103–127. doi:10.1177/0170840616663241
Mayer, R., Davis, J., & Schoorman, F. (1995). An Integrative Model of Organizational Trust, The Academy of Management Review 20(3): 709–734. doi:10.2307/258792
Ministry of Health and Social Affairs (2017). Framtidens äldreomsorg – en nationell kvalitetsplan, skr 2017/18:280 (The elder care of the future – a national quality plan), Stockholm: Government Office of Sweden.
Munir, K. A. (2015). A Loss of Power in Institutional Theory, Journal of Management Inquiry 24(1): 90–92. doi:10.1177/1056492614545302
O’Brien‐Pallas, L., Duffield, C., & Hayes, L. (2006). Do we really understand how to retain nurses?, Journal of Nursing Management 14(4): 262–270. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2934.2006.00611.x
Oskarsson, S., Svensson, T., & Öberg, P. (2009). Power, Trust, and Institutional Constraints: Individual Level Evidence, Rationality and Society 21(2): 171–195. doi:10.1177/1043463109103898
Pache, A.-C., & Santos, F. (2010). When worlds collide: The internal dynamics of organizational responses to conflicting institutional demands, Academy of Management Review 35(3): 455–476. doi:10.5465/AMR.2010.51142368
Pache, A.-C., & Santos, F. (2013). Inside the hybrid organization: Selective coupling as a response to competing institutional logics, Academy of Management Journal 56(4): 972. doi:10.5465/amj.2011.0405
Power, M. (1997). The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Reay, T., & Hinings, C. R. (2009). Managing the Rivalry of Competing Institutional Logics, Organization Studies 30(6): 629–652. doi:10.1177/0170840609104803
Reay, T., & Jones, C. (2016). Qualitatively capturing institutional logics, Strategic Organization 14(4): 441–454. doi:10.1177/1476127015589981
Reed, J. E., & Card, A. J. (2016). The problem with Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles, BMJ Quality & Safety 25(3): 147–152. doi:10.1136/bmjqs-2015-005076
Reed, M. (2001). Organization, Trust and Control: A Realist Analysis, Organization Studies 22(2): 201–228. doi:10.1177/0170840601222002
Scott, D. (2021). (Dis)assembling Development: Organizing Swedish Development Aid through Projectification. Dissertation, Karlstad: Karlstads universitet.
Statistics Sweden [SCB] (2020a). The Swedish Occupational Register with Statistics 2018, Official Statistic Sweden. Statistical Report: AM 33 SM 2001, Stockholm: SCB.
Statistics Sweden [SCB] (2020b). Trender och prognoser 2020. Befolkning, utbildning och arbetsmarknad i Sverige med sikte på år 2035 (Trends and Forecasts 2020 – population, education and labour market in Sweden, outlook to year 2035) Statistical Report: AM85 - Trender och Prognoser, SCB: Stockholm
Suddaby, R. (2010). Challenges for Institutional Theory, Journal of Management Inquiry 19(1): 14–20. doi:10.1177/1056492609347564
Svensson, L., Aronsson, G., Randle, H., & Eklund, J. (2007). Delaktighet i hållbart arbetsliv: Projekt som gästspel eller strategi i hållbar utveckling (Participation in sustainable working life: Projects as special performances or strategies in sustainable development), Malmö: Gleerups Utbildning.
Swedish Research Council (2017). Good Research Practice, Stockholm: Vetenskapsrådet.
Tillitsdelegationen (2018). Med tillit växer handlingsutrymmet – tillitsbaserad styrning och ledning av välfärdssektorn (SOU 2018:47) (With confidence the scope for action grows – trust-based governance and management of the welfare sector), Stockholm: Ministry of Employment.
Thompson, P. (1989). The Nature of Work, Basingstoke: Macmillan. doi:10.1177/017084069101200318
Thornton, P. H., & Ocasio, W. (2008). Institutional logics, In Greenwood, R., Oliver, C., Sahlin, K., & Suddaby, R. (Ed.) The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism, London: SAGE Publications. doi: 10.4135/9781849200387
Thornton, P. H., Ocasio, W., & Lounsbury, M. (2012). The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure and Process, Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199601936.001.0001
Uslaner, E. (2002). The Moral Foundation of Trust, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511614934
Vabø, M. (2006). Caring for people or caring for proxy consumers? European Societies 8(3): 403–422. doi: 10.1080/14616690600821990
Vallentin, S., & Thygesen, N. (2017). Trust and control in public sector reform: Complementarity and beyond, Journal of Trust Research 7(2): 150–169. doi:10.1080/21515581.2017.1354766
Wærness, K. (1984). The Rationality of Caring, Economic and Industrial Democracy 5(2): 185–211. doi:10.1177/0143831x8452003
Willemyns, M., Gallois, C., & Callan, V. (2003). Trust me, I’m your boss: Trust and power in supervisor-supervisee communication, International Journal of Human Resource Management 14(1): 117–127. doi:10.1080/09585190210158547
Willmott, H. (2015). Why Institutional Theory Cannot Be Critical, Journal of Management Inquiry 24(1): 105–111. doi:10.1177/1056492614545306
Yin, R. K. (2002). Case Study Research: Design and Methods, Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2020 Author and Journal
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The Copyright Holder of this Journal is the authors and the Journal. Normally the journal use the CC-BY NC-ND 4.0 licence.
Exceptions to the license terms may be granted
If you want to use content in the Journal in another way then described by this license, you must contact the licensor and ask for permission. Contact Bo Carstens at bo.carstens@gmail.com. Exceptions are always given for specific purposes and specific content only.
Sherpa/Romeo
The Journal is listed as a blue journal in Sherpa/Romeo, meaning that the author can archive post-print ((ie final draft post-refereeing) and author can archive publisher's version/PDF.
Copyright of others
Authors are responsible for obtaining permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere.
Archives policy
All published material is archived at Roskilde University Library, Denmark, and transmitted to the Danish Royal Library in conformity with the Danish rules of legal deposit.
Plagiarism screening
We do not screen articles for plagiarism. It is the responsibility of the authors to make sure they do not plagiate.
