Search

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate funding and performance monitoring practices in Zambia's health sector from an institutional and stratified ontology perspective. Such an approach was deemed appropriate in view of pluralistic institutional environments characterising most African economies that are also considered to be highly stratified. Design/methodology/approach: Blended with insights from stratified ontology, the paper draws on institutional pluralism as a theoretical lens to understand the institutional structures, mechanisms, events and experiences encountered by actors operating at different levels of Zambia's health sector. The study adopted an interpretive approach that helped to investigate the multifaceted and subjective nature of social phenomena and practices being studied. Data were collected from both archival sources and interviews with key stakeholders operating within Zambia's health sector. Findings: The study's findings indicate the high levels of stratification within Zambia's health sector as evidenced by the three sector levels that possessed different characteristics in terms of actor responses to donor influence. This study equally demonstrates the capacity of agents operating under highly fragmented institutional environments to engage in enabling and constraining responses depending on the understanding of their empirical world. Originality/value: Through blending insights from stratified ontology with institutional pluralism, the study contributes to the literature by demonstrating the enabling and constraining reflexive capacity of agents to exercise choices under highly fragmented institutional environments while responding to multiple demands and expectations to sustain the co-existence of diverse stakeholders. Accordingly, the study advances thinking on the application of institutional theory to critical accounting research in line with recent ontological and epistemological shifts in institutional theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context and background Colonial legacy and the continuous implementation of neoliberal policies have led to the creation of institutional pluralism in the planning of customary land in peri-urban areas in Ghana. During land commoditisation, peri-urban customary land planning regularly involves physical planning authorities, traditional authorities, and private surveyors. The community members are rarely involved in the planning of their communities, and the planning often leads to eviction of the community members from their ancestral land. The evictions usually lead to conflicts between traditional authorities and community members, and in other cases, the dispossession precipitates multiple sales of land by different people. Goal and Objectives: The study examines how the introduction of urban planning practices in peri-urban Ghana creates institutional pluralism, resulting in the breakdown of indigenous belief systems during land commoditisation. In this era of uplifting the rich culture heritage of African communities, this study aimed to contribute to the subtheme on land and spirituality in the African sociocultural context of the conference. The study recommends that to maintain land and spirituality in the African socio-cultural context, urban planning practices should be embedded in the indigenous land tenure systems, and the planning should involve community members. Methodology: This study deployed New Institutional Economics approach from the perspective of Social Anthropology to examine how the introduction of urban planning changed the institutional planning structure in peri-urban Ghana, leading to erosion of the indigenous belief systems on land during land commoditisation. The study was conducted in Aburaso and Kromoase in peri-urban Kumasi between 2018 and 2020. The researcher adopted a qualitative research method and data was collected through in-depth interviews from 2 Regional Lands Commission Officials, 2 Physical Planning Department Officials, 2 traditional authorities, 5 clans heads, and 33 household heads in both communities. Results: The findings from the study showed that sacred days were no more observed in the communities. In addition, customs regulating access to streams were broken down. Prior to the planning of the communities, goats were prohibited in the communities. However, presently, people sent goats to the communities. The study argues that the change in planning institutions in peri-urban Ghana evolving from the introduction of urban planning during land commoditisation leads to breakdown of indigenous belief systems regulating land. People do not recognise sacred days and other customs that regulate land relations again. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research question: The increased competitive demands placed on modern sports organisations, intensifies pressures on coaches to produce positive results. These factors may increase relational tensions between managerial-sports leaders (administrators) and the leaders of sports teams (coaches). Few studies have explored the challenges facing coaches when attempting to achieve performance success. Utilising institutional logics and the concepts of trust and power, this study investigated the relationship between coaches and administrators by exploring the various interactions and negotiations involved when in the context of competitive demands. Research methods: The views of thirteen highly experienced cricket coaches, with multi-layered coaching experiences operating in the South African cricket development environment, were recruited for semi-structured interviews, raising several significant themes. Results and findings: A significant challenge to coaches were administrators exhibiting a lack of understanding of the environment required to develop cricketers, providing areas of conflict such as; perceived differences in priorities leading to non-collaborative, ill-judged and, at times biased decisions; differences in priorities affecting resource allocation to drive and sustain long-term development due short-term financial decision-making and result-driven agendas. Implications: Theoretically, this research explores how institutional logics, trust and power enhance our understanding of the coach-administrator relationship and have potential research implications for understanding similar dynamic relationships in other sport organisations. Practically, one implication for sports organisations is the role and importance of developing and applying more effective coach performance management system to alleviate potential problems in these relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a systematic way of designing, planning, and implementing process and technology changes to address the complexity of information system (IS) landscapes. EA is operationalized when architecture visions move towards realization through concrete projects. We report a case study on the dynamics of operationalizing EA in the Norwegian hospital sector by exploring different EA project trajectories. Our empirical context is an institutionally pluralistic setting where multiple logics coexist. We show that the distinct logic of EA is added to the institutional context and we find that tensions among existing medical, technical, and managerial logics and EA principles and assumptions emerge. We contribute to the under‐researched topic of EA operationalization by suggesting a model that demonstrates how the meeting of multiple institutional logics can lead to varying degrees of differentiation or even disassociation from EA visions during decision‐taking in projects. Furthermore, we advance extant research on IS projects' implementation in institutionally pluralistic settings by providing an empirical account of actors' interactions and project leadership arrangements that contribute to the persistence of coexisting logics in a dynamic equilibrium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developmental citizenship, which assumes the qualities of both political and social citizenship, has decisively shaped the political, social as well as economic relations between many postcolonial states and their respective citizenries. It is the historical imperative of national development that has even induced many state-socialist countries to embark on ideologically self-contradicting paths toward various types of market economies. In China's so-called pragmatist reform, for instance, the nominally communist leadership still monopolizes political power under the premise that its developmental mission necessitates both dictatorship and the market economy. Its sociopolitical governance in the reform era presupposes the societal validity and necessity of developmental citizenship. However, it should be noted that China's accommodation of liberal socioeconomic institutions and practices has not necessarily required a full abolishment of socialist institutions and practices. China's developmental pluralism, insinuated in Deng Xiaoping's famous call for 'black cat, white cat', has ended up resuscitating many socialist-era institutions and practices as integral elements of the so-called socialist market economy. Chinese people's developmental citizenship in the reform era has closely reflected an extremely complicated socioeconomic order under which socialist institutions and practices both mitigate and amplify market-embedded inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Transformations in Business & Economics is the property of Vilnius University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate accounting and performance reporting practices embraced in the midst of a pluralistic institutional environment of an emerging economy (EE), Zambia. The research is necessitated due to the increased presence and influence of donor institutions whose information needs may not conform to the needs of local citizens in many EEs.Design/methodology/approach The study draws on institutional pluralism and Ekeh’s post-colonial theory of “two publics” to depict pluralistic environments that are typical of EEs. Primary data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 33 respondents drawn from the main stakeholder groups involved in health service delivery including legislators, policy makers, regulators, healthcare professionals and health service managers. Data analysis took the form of thematic analysis which involved identifying, analysing and constructing patterns and themes implicit within the data that were deemed to address the study’s research questions.Findings Findings indicate that Zambia’s institutional environment within the health sector is highly fragmented and pluralistic as reflected by the multiplicity of both internal and external stakeholders. These stakeholder groups equally require different reporting mechanisms to fulfil their information expectations.Social implications The multiple reporting practices evident within the health sector entail that the effectiveness of health programmes may be compromised due to the fragmentation in goals between government and international donor institutions. Rather than pooling resources and skills for maximum impact, these practices have the effect of dispersing performance efforts with the consequence of compromising their impact. Fragmented reporting equally complicates the work of policy makers in terms of monitoring the progress and impact of such programmes.Originality/value Beyond Goddard et al. (2016), the study depicts the usefulness of Ekeh’s theory in understanding how organisations and institutions operating in pluralistic institutional environments may be better managed. In view of contradictory expectations of accounting and performance reporting requirements between the civic and primordial publics, the study indicates that different practices, mechanisms and structures have to be embraced in order to maintain institutional harmony and relevance to different communities within the health sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we develop a structural model for studying how constellations of multiple institutional logics are instantiated at the organizational level. Conceptually, we complement an institutional logics perspective with structural interactionism and network theory and model a constellation as a nexus of organizational role identities and counterroles. The structure of such a nexus reveals degrees of differentiation and interconnectedness between logics as well as distinct interfaces. We validate and further develop our model through qualitative content analysis and semantic network analytical methods applied to the website of a large organization. Our study contributes to recent literature on institutional pluralism by further specifying the structural aspects of constellations of logics and different types of institutional pluralism (monolithic, fragmented, and modular). Specifically, we show how systems of role categories enable the identification of logics, and how multivocal roles create interfaces between them. We propose logic permeability as a structural attribute of a logic to describe the totality of interfaces it entertains with other logics within a constellation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institutionalizing a new organizational template in a pluralistic environment where multiple institutional logics coexist entails unique challenges where actors must negotiate conflict and carry out integrative and adaptive work. This paper examines how organizational actors in a large service sector trade union managed to craft integrative processes out of contentious processes in institutionalizing a new organizational template. Recently, renewed attention has focused on politics as a means through which integration is achieved in organizations under multiple institutional pressures. However, we know relatively little about how politics achieves organizational integration in pluralistic contexts. This paper sheds light on how successful institutionalization processes actually unfold in organizations. While extant literature on intra-organizational political processes has depicted politics mainly as a zero-sum game, findings in this study suggest that politics can be a generative process through which organizations adapt to changing conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper proposes a theory of institutional pluralism to deal with the question whether and to what extent limits should be placed on the market. It reconceives the pluralist position as it was presented by Michael Walzer and others in several respects. First, it argues that the options on the institutional menu should not be principles of distribution but rather economic mechanisms or 'modes of provision'. This marks a shift from a distributive to a provisional logic. Second, it argues that we should drop the assumption that any good should only be placed in one sphere, i.e. distributed according to one distributive principle. This marks a shift to 'complex pluralism': for at least some goods it is appropriate that they are provided through the market and through one or more non-market alternatives simultaneously. Finally, it argues that the often used conventionalist justification should be traded for a capability approach to the moral evaluation of markets and non-market alternatives. Any institutional option on our menu has value to the extent that it enhances the morally relevant capabilities of the producers and/or consumers of the good that is to be provided. This approach will be illustrated with two examples of goods for which it yields complex pluralist conclusions: the provision of care and the provision of media content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Economics / Ekonomija is the property of Rifin d.o.o. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)