The contextualization of human resource and quality management: a sensemaking perspective on everybody's involvement

Abstract

The principal idea of this paper is that human resource management (HRM) and quality management (QM) ideas require contextualization when used to change organizations. Here, contextualization stands for the process that leads to a shared meaning, i.e. the majority of the co-workers in an organization understand and define a concept or change in terms that are shared and accepted. In the present paper, we study a strategic change project, based on HRM and QM ideas, conducted at the County Council of Värmland (CCV), the public healthcare authority in the County of Värmland in Sweden, where the focus was on everybody's involvement. Our interpretation of the project shows that a shared meaning of the concept of everybody's involvement was not reached in this particular case, i.e. contextualization did not occur. One important result of the study is that contextualization is a prerequisite for realizing HRM and QM thoughts. The paper also stresses how important it is that general and ‘non-contextualized’ HRM and QM ideas are adapted to local practices when used to direct organizational change.

Keywords:

• Contextualization
• sense making
• human resource management
• quality management
• everybody's involvement
• health care

Notes

1  We are thus interested in both the process and effect of sense making, which can be seen as a partial departure from Weick's (1979, 1995) focus on process/organizing. There are, however, structural tendencies in Weick's theory as well; for example, the concept of the cognitive frame discussed above.

2  Thus, we do not use the concept of fragmentary meaning in the same way as Ericson (2001).

3  According to some research into organizational culture, fragmentary meaning is a very natural thing (Alvesson, 2002; Martin, 2002; Parker, 2000), because complex organizations call for a high degree of differentiation of meaning contingent upon the various practices people are engaged in. A similar argument has been put forward by some of the proponents of QM, who have suggested its ambiguity is a great virtue (Wilkinson et al., 1998; Wilkinson and Willmott, 1995). We also believe that complex organizations, especially in healthcare, are fragmented and in the ambiguity of QM and that both these things can be good for the organization. However, in this paper, we focus on the idea of everybody's involvement in quality improvement work. Everybody's involvement concerns how the process of quality work should be organized throughout the entire organization. Thus, it is important to achieve, as we have argued, shared meaning, i.e. ‘identical, or at least similar, meaning’ (we thus allow for some differentiation). On the other hand, we think it is natural and good that the effect (as opposed to the process) of quality improvement work in different departments (as opposed to the whole organization) should differ significantly, since the department's objectives and tasks vary substantially.

4  Sweden's healthcare is geographically divided into twenty-one county councils. Each county council has a political assembly. The politicians of the CCV decided to embark upon quality improvement work but were not engaged in the actual quality work itself. Thus, the political level has not been studied in depth.

5  A complete account of the rules of the MCD analysis can be found in Silverman (1993).