What is good work in a hybrid organization? On the efforts of sequencing registers of valuation

Abstract

PurposeThis paper investigates how different and sometimes conflicting approaches to performance evaluations are hybridized in the day-to-day activities of a disciplined hybrid organization–i.e. a public child protection agency at the intersection between the market and the public sector.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on a one-year ethnography of how employees achieve to qualify their work as “good work” in situations with several and sometimes conflicting ideals of what “good work” is. Fieldwork material was collected by following casework activities across organizational boundaries. By combining accounting literature on hybridization with literature on practices of valuation, the paper develops a novel theoretical framework which allows for analyses of the various practices of valuation, when and where they clash and how they persist over time in everyday work.FindingsThroughout the study, four distinct registers of valuation were identified: feeling, theorizing, formalizing and costing. To denote the meticulous efforts of pursuing good work in all four registers of valuation, the authors propose the notion of sequencing. Sequencing is an ongoing process of moving conflicting registers away from each other and bringing them back together again. Correspondingly, at the operational level of a hybrid organization, temporary compartmentalization is a means of avoiding clashes, and in doing so, making it possible for different and sometimes conflicting ways of achieving good results to continuously hybridize and persist together.Research limitations/implicationsThe single-case approach allows for analytical depth, but limits the findings to theoretical, rather than empirical, generalizability. The framework the authors propose, however, is well-suited for mobilization and potential elaboration in further empirical contexts.Originality/valueThe paper provides a novel theoretical framework as well as rich empirical material from the highly political field of child protection work, which has seldomly been studied within accounting research.

Money, time, or saving the world

“…Furthermore, valuation studies are concerned with valorising, the processes aimed at making things valuable, in addition to valuation as evaluating, the processes of assessing value and worth (Vatin 2013). Rather than seeing valuation as a separate and external activity, valuation is thus treated as embedded into the activity of the very practice it seeks to valuate (Schrøder et al, 2021). In our case, this means viewing the planning and doing of research in vertical farming as a practice which attempts to create 'good interdisciplinary research' (valorising) and bring out discursive understandings of what makes such interdisciplinary research good (evaluating).…”

Accounting, performance and accountability challenges in hybrid organisations: a value creation perspective

“…Mixing values can be related to multiple objectives. Some AAAJ special issue articles relate to “public benefit” objectives and private benefits in the case of benefit corporations (Baudot et al , 2022), market and social objectives in a federal power administration (Convery and Kaufman, 2022), financial, social and environmental objectives in social housing companies (Maine et al , 2022), short- and long-term humanitarian activities (Sargiacomo and Walker, 2022), the goals of cost-efficiency and the needs of individual childcare (Schrøder et al , 2022), and the mission of “care” and the value of “public service” with “efficiency” (Moriniére and Georgescu, 2022). Other articles demonstrated the existence of and tensions between the multiplicity of institutional logics, such as economic and social logics (Ferry and Slack, 2022); the logics of calculating the long-term social and economic impacts of preventive social investments (Kastberg Weichselberger and Lagström, 2022); regulatory/bureaucratic, market and service logics in the case of information and communication technology (ICT) service providers (Maran and Lowe, 2022); community, public and market logics in the case of public and private partnership (PPP) policies (Stafford and Stapleton, 2022) and healthcare (medical), administrative and political-institutional logics (Rautiainen et al , 2022).…”

“…Sargiacomo and Walker's (2022) work on disaster governance argues that financial and non-financial measures were taken for various purposes, ranging from internal planning, coordination, decision-making and deviance analysis to external accountability. The public child protection agency study shows that “sequencing” is how accountants, caseworkers, consultants and managers pursue conflicting ideals of good performance (Schrøder et al , 2022). Finally, control mechanisms are also helpful in supporting the legitimacy of hybrid organisations.…”

“…Mixing refers to the process of combining previously created or existing value categories with the aim of creating innovative variants, blends and layers of value (Convery and Kaufman, 2022; Rautiainen et al , 2022). Compromising concerns the governance of competing, contradicting and even conflictual values in hybrid arrangements through the reconciliation of different value propositions, owners and constituencies (Moriniére and Georgescu, 2022; Schrøder et al , 2022). Legitimising is a crucial concern for hybrid organisations as legitimacy demands from external audiences, society and media may impose constraints, limitations and important performance measurement and accountability problems.…”

Accountingization, colonization and hybridization in historical perspective: the relationship between hospital accounting and clinical medicine in late 20th century Britain

“…2. Whilst this paper focuses on the health services, accountingisation, colonisation and hybridisation in response to NPM-inspired accounting reforms have been observed in many other parts of the public sector. Recent examples include Ahrens et al (2018), Aleksandrov (2020), Ferry et al (2021), Kallio et al (2021) and Schroder et al (2021).…”