Challenges in delivering brand promise – focusing on municipal healthcare organisations

Abstract

HEALTHCARE ORGANISATIONS PurposeTo investigate how healthcare professionals understand a new organisational brand and examine the ideas discussed in relation to it within health care organisations. Design/methodology/approachThe research is based on a discursive approach that facilitates understanding how the informants perceived a new organisation brand and how that might shape their activities in the enterprise. FindingsThe study identified four distinct interpretative repertoires: the organisational brand as an economic solution, the magic wand, the factory, and a servant to the customer. The new brand was understood in terms of economic and business-like functions marked by external branding and its signs (logos etc.).The brand is not communicated to patients or colleagues, and the factory metaphor is applied to work practices. Hence, several potential dilemmas arise concerning the brand promise, customer expectations, economic and efficiency gains and the professional values of employees. Research limitations/implicationsAdoption of private-sector practices in semi-public or public-sector organisations is common. This study focuses on how private-sector ideas diffuse into the organisations and how they are translated within them. Practical implicationsWe suggest a stronger emphasis on internal branding as a reconciliation to enhance legitimacy, highquality customer service and staff wellbeing. Originality/valueTheoretically, the unique contribution of the study is drawing upon health care branding, dilemma theory and discursive institutionalism in its interpretation. Consequently, it demonstrates how ideas about the brand and public health care are translated and communicated in the examined discourses and how those ideas reconstruct understanding and change behaviour within the organisations.

Examining the Core Dilemmas Hindering Big Data-related Transformations in Public-Sector Organisations

“…Th e view in this study is closer to that of Rittel and Webber (1973) and Hampden-Turner ( 1970, 1981, as developed by Laine (2018) and Hytti et al (2015), i.e. that public service organisations face dilemmas whose speed and range grows with BD-related transformations.…”

“…Th e paper explores dilemmas involving BD-related changes in two case organisations in the cities of Helsinki and Tampere and the tensions that arise in connection to BD-related transformation attempts. We show, following Hytti et al (2015) and Suomi et al (2014), that unresolved core dilemmas could create unforeseen paradoxical outcomes, hindering successful organisational change. Th e empirical cases, the cities of Helsinki and Tampere in Finland, are chosen not as early innovators, but, rather, as innovators using BD.…”

“…Secondly, this study does not follow the idea of a compromise in which both values lose instead of gaining (Hampden-Turner 1990;Hytti et al 2015). Hence, the fundamental idea of dilemma reconciliation is that "the combination of contrasting values is more precious and useful than their separation" (Hampden-Turner 2009, 5).…”

“…Over time, values, power and opportunities alter; if they did not, there would be no dilemma. Dilemma management and dilemma reconciliations require accepting reconciliations' transitory nature (Hampden-Turner 1990Hytti et al 2015). Further, dilemma resolutions can prevent dilemmas from ending as organisational paradoxes.…”

“…In the repetitive continuity / visionary-change dilemma pair, the dynamics of disregarding existing and adopting new practices also relates to organisational routines. Breaking emotional attachments to old ways of working requires more evidence than BD provides; it requires subjective acceptance by staff that new ways of working are better and more in line with organisational values (Hytti et al 2015). In each "time and operating environment", the opportunities and risks inherent in both continuous and visionary change pose challenges to managers that may be unique to the two case organisations.…”