When organization members strive to radically change routines, they face a puzzle: How can they bring about change in performances when these are guided by pre-existing ideas on how to perform the routine, that are themselves recursively reproduced? Drawing on insights from longitudinal case studies of two initiatives to change patient processes in hospitals, this paper suggests that two types of “spaces”—bounded social settings characterized by social, physical, temporal, and symbolic boundaries—are important mechanisms through which actors engage in deliberate efforts to alter both performances (performative aspect) and abstract understandings (ostensive aspect) of a given routine. Specifically, whereas reflective spaces are set apart by social, physical, and temporal boundaries and involve interactions that are geared toward developing novel conceptualizations of a routine, experimental spaces enable the integration of new actions into routine performances by locating them within the original routine, while establishing symbolic and temporal boundaries that signal the provisional and localized nature of experimental performances. As both types of spaces contribute to achieving change in complementary ways, they need to be enacted iteratively in relation to each other. The study offers a model of intentional routine change that articulates the role of spaces in interrupting and reorienting their recursive dynamics.
We examine how professions responded to a potential change in jurisdictional boundaries by analyzing the written submissions of five professional associations in reaction to a government proposal to strengthen interprofessional collaboration, relating these responses to the professions´ field positions. We identify four foci for framing used by the professions, represented by their professional associations, to discursively develop their boundary claims: (1) framing of the issue of interprofessional collaboration (that we call issue framing), (2) framing of justifications for favored solutions (that we call justifying), (3) framing of the profession's own identity (that we call self-casting), and (4) framing of other professions' identities (that we call altercasting). We find that professions employed these foci differently depending on two dimensions of their field positions -status and centrality. Our study contributes to the literature by identifying distinctive ways through which the foci for framing may be mobilized in situations of boundary contestation, and by theorizing how field position in terms of status and centrality influence actors' framing strategies.
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