Search

Changing demographics and a rising number of immigrants entering the labor market have posed new challenges to managers in work organizations. Within this context, Norway has been noted to have a highly regulated work sector that is considered beneficial for minorities and marginalized groups. Through a case study of three nursing homes in Norway, this paper analyzes how managers engage with diversity-related regulations when addressing their everyday challenges, and how their enacted practices affect the inclusion of immigrants in the workplace. The study applies a practice-theoretical approach and contributes to diversity management research by identifying how managers' differing enactments of inclusion-related practices are connected to competing institutional logics. The analysis shows how the co-existence of multiple institutional logics in this context represents an arena for political struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In past decades, hybrid organizations and institutional complexity have received growing attention, yet questions remain about how hybrids manage institutional complexity in the Nordic welfare states. This article investigates how Norwegian social enterprises (SEs), a subset of hybrid organizations, internally manage contradictory demands when externally engaging with multiple logics. The data consists of interviews of leaders and staff members from five SEs, and the findings show that most institutional referents hold a public-sector logic which may crowd out the hybrid nature of SEs. Depending on the conflicting demands, SEs mix decoupling and selective coupling when responding to them. Some were also found to rely on the structural responses of organizational compartmentalization. Compared to the blended hybrids, the structural hybrids experience less internal tension when managing institutional complexity since logic compartmentalization allows the organizations to attend both to their in-use logic and at-play demands. The data yield compelling insights into how the Nordic welfare state may incite a specific configuration of SE where logic compartmentalization appears as a pragmatic choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interagency collaboration among social workers, teachers, and police is key to countering violent extremism in the Nordic countries by securing comprehensive assessment of cases of concern. Yet, previous research indicates that different institutional logics—perceptions of fundamental goals, strategies, and grounds for attention in efforts to counter violent extremists—exist across professions and challenge collaboration and trust building in practice. In this article, we empirically investigate these claims across social workers (n = 1,105), teachers (n = 1,387), and police (n = 1,053) in four Nordic countries: Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. Using results from online surveys with professionals, we investigate the distribution of a 'societal security logic' and a 'social care logic' across professions and the degree to which these institutional logics translate into mutual trust. Through a comparison of institutional logics among practitioners with and without practical experience of interagency collaboration, we investigate whether and how institutional logics tend to mix and merge in hybrid organizational spaces. We conclude that differences in institutional logics across professions are differences in degree rather than in kind, but that such differences are important in shaping mutual trust and that experiences of interagency collaboration are correlated with a convergence toward a 'social care logic' conception of countering violent extremism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Departing from evolutionary economic geography, the objective of the article is to reveal the dynamics of institutional work by regional key actors with a need to achieve green restructuring in regions dependent on the oil and gas industry. The authors combine quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate how, why, and when regional stakeholders' institutional work contributes, or not, to changing institutional logics that enable green industrial restructuring in the regional innovation systems of two adjacent petroleum-dominated regions in Norway. The main finding is that despite shared positive visions in both regions for green industrial restructuring, the processes of institutional work and related institutional logics respectively legitimize a green shift in Hordaland and delegitimize it in Rogaland. Consequently, there is a need to remain mindful of institutional work's connection to regional and often taken-for-granted institutional logics. In conclusion, the authors argue that the findings challenge the current IW discourse within economic geography, which has tended to explain green regional industrial restructuring as outcomes of intended agency leading to successful outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: In a context of growing policy pressures to increase the societal impact of Higher Education Institutions (HEI), open access to research data has gained increased significance, in spite of the limited availability of standard procedures and protocols, particularly in the engineering disciplines. In this article, we explore how engineering researchers' engagement with such external environment pressures impacts the conventional dimensions of engineering research work, and how engineering researchers within engineering HEI resolve potential tensions and make sense of their research data sharing practices. Design/methodology/approach: We use an institutional logics theoretical perspective to qualitatively examine research data sharing behaviours of researchers in Norway and the UK as leading engineering research centres, through the use of policy analysis and narrative interviews. Findings: The findings indicate that research data sharing behaviours are heavily mediated by institutional rules and rationalities that inform researchers' attitudes, but the logics that prize openness and sharing co-exist with logics that favour control and self-interest. Originality/value: Our findings suggest that logics-specific variations in engineering researchers' identities and goals are of paramount importance to policymakers, research funders and academic leaders striving to support HEI in their efforts to augment the societal impact of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how the Norwegian Sámi women's movement developed at the crossroad of indigenous, anti-racist, and women's movements. How did Sámi women negotiate feminist and indigenous rights, and in what ways did they frame the three Nordic Forum conferences as opportunities for activism or threats? The article accounts for the making of the movement since the 1970s, and explores its' presence/ absence during the three specific Nordic women's conferences, the Nordic Forum of 1988, 1994 and 2014. In what ways were the Nordic Forums framed as opportunities for activism, and what kind of new actors and institutional logics were produced (or not) in relation to the three events? The article illuminates how the political opportunity structures differed across time, and how Sámi feminists framed them and took advantage of them. The analysis is inspired by post-colonial and indigenous feminist theories, and firstly examines what enabled Sámi women to organise on their own, secondly it explores how alliance formations played into the movements' startling presence at the two first Nordic Forums, and its absence from the last one. The analysis draws on new empirical material, such as extensive archival work and semi-structured interviews with Sámi women, stakeholders and participants in the three conferences. Methodological considerations of insider and outsider dynamics lend support to the relevance of postcolonial and indigenous feminist theories in research practice, but also critically question indigenous epistemology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Wild cod is a scarce and valuable natural resource. However, cod fishing along the coast of northern Norway has largely been about fishing as much as possible with the least possible resource effort, and thereby at the lowest cost. This traditional volume logic is rooted in biology, meteorology, and small scale capture technology. The logic is further enhanced by new large scale capture technology and a raw fish market where quality differences essentially are not reflected in the price of the fish. The intention of this paper is to address the extent to which the institutional framework in the Norwegian cod fisheries encourage or moderate this volume logic. In the paper fishing gear usage and the post-harvest industries' product mix the last decade are analyzed. The findings show that the volume logic is still at work although this result in reduced quality of the catch landed, a product mix dominated by low-end products, and limited socio-economic value creation. This institutionalized volume logic is highly resistant to change. Moreover, the paper address how a competing and more customer-oriented quality logic can help create greater export values in Norwegian cod fisheries. Finally, implications are highlighted for how institutional measures can moderate the dominant volume logic and strengthen the emerging quality logic more in line with key policy objectives for Norwegian cod fisheries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Reforms in current health policy explicitly endorse health promotion through group‐based self‐management support for people with long‐term conditions. Health promotion and traditional medicine are based on different logics. Accordingly, health professionals in health‐promoting settings demand the adoption of new practices and ways of thinking. Objectives: The objective of our study was to investigate how health professionals perceive the health‐promoting group‐based self‐management support that is politically initiated for people with long‐term conditions. Design: This study had a qualitative research design that included focus group interviews and was guided by a social constructivist paradigm in which group‐based self‐management was viewed as a social construction. Different logics at play were analysed through the theoretical lens of institutional logic. Discussions among participants show frames of references seen as logics. Setting and participants: We recruited health professionals from group‐based health‐promoting measures for people with type 2 diabetes in Norway. Two focus groups comprising four and six participants each were invited to discuss the practices and value of health promotion through group‐based self‐management support. Results: The analysis resulted in three themes of discussion among participants that contained reflections of logics in movement. Health professionals' discussions moved between different logics based on the importance of expert‐based knowledge on compliance and on individual lifestyle choices. Discussion and conclusion: The study indicates that health promotion through self‐management support is still a field "in the making" and that professionals strive to establish new logics and practices that are not considered difficult to manage or do not contain incompatible understandings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevalence of chronic conditions in Europe has been the subject of health-political reforms that have increasingly targeted collaboration between public, private and voluntary organisations for the purpose of supporting self-management of long-term diseases. The international literature describes collaboration across sectors as challenging, which implies that their respective logics are conflicting or incompatible. In line with the European context, recent Norwegian health policy advocates inter-sectorial partnerships. The aim of this policy is to create networks supporting better self-management for people with chronic conditions. The purpose of our qualitative study was to map different understandings of self-management support in private for-profit, volunteer and public organisations. These organisations are seen as potential self-management support networks for individuals with chronic conditions in Norway. From December 2012 to April 2013, we conducted 50 semi-structured interviews with representatives from relevant health and well-being organisations in different parts of Norway. According to the theoretical framework of institutional logic, representatives' statements are embedded with organisational understandings. In the analysis, we systematically assessed the representatives' different understandings of self-management support. The institutional logic we identified revealed traits of organisational historical backgrounds, and transitions in understanding. We found that the merging of individualism and fellowship in contemporary health policy generates different types of logic in different organisational contexts. The private for-profit organisations were concerned with the logic of a healthy appearance and mindset, whereas the private non-profit organisations emphasised fellowship and moral responsibility. Finally, the public, illness-oriented organisations tended to highlight individual conditions for illness management. Different types of logic may attract different users, and simultaneously, a diversity of logic types may challenge collaboration at the user's expense. Moral implications embed institutional logic implying a change towards individual responsibility for disease. Policy makers ought to consider complexities of logic in order to tailor the different needs of users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]