Financial constraints in public sector organisations have attracted a considerable amount of research and political debates in many countries around the world (Ahrens and Ferry, 2015, Bracci et al., 2015). However, a gap exists in the literature regarding how organisational actors learn to improve performances of their organisations when faced with political and financial constraints (Crossan et al., 2011). It is important to address the gap because access to health care services financed by public funds is a constitutional right in welfare countries, such as Finland. The purpose of this study is to address the gap by asking how performance culture motivates organisational actors to improve their organisational performances when facing financial and political constraints from hierarchy?
The study used a theoretical framework for motivating organisations to learn and change proposed by Chadwick and Raver (2015) as a starting point to design and conduct a field study in one social and health care district of Finland from 2015 to 2017. The district has recently taken initiative to merge all its social and health care organisations into one organisation and expects to save a considerable amount of money without decreasing the quality of social and health care services. This is a revolutionary change, because social, primary care and specialised care have traditionally been managed as separate entities in Finland (Hyvönen and Järvinen, 2006). Data are gathered through interviews, document analysis and contacts with influential local politicians, medical professionals and social servants. Potential contribution is to show the ways in which aspects of performance cultures have potentials to motivate organisational actors with different political and professional backgrounds to agree on changing their ways of working by increasing collaboration to save costs to the community. A theoretical contribution is to show that because performance culture does not operate in a closed system, such as a laboratory, aspects of institutional logics, power and politics must be taken into account when analysing the process of organisational changing through learning, and performance outcomes.
References
Ahrens, T. & Ferry, L. (2015) Newcastle city council and the grassroots: Accountability and budgeting under austerity, 'Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal', Vol.28, No.6, pp.909-933.
Bracci, E., Humphrey, C., Moll, J. & Steccolini, I. (2015) Public sector accounting, accountability and austerity: More than balancing the books?, 'Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal', Vol.28, No.6, pp.878-908.
Chadwick, I. C. & Raver, J. L. (2015) Motivating organizations to learn: Goal orientation and its influence on organizational learning, 'Journal of Management', Vol.41, No.3, pp.957-986.
Crossan, M. M., Maurer, C. C. & White, R. E. (2011) Reflections on the 2009 AMR decade award: Do we have a theory of organizational learning?, 'Academy of Management Review', Vol.36, No.3, pp.446-460.
Hyvönen, T. & Järvinen, J. (2006) Contract-based budgeting in health care: A study of the institutional processes of accounting change, 'European Accounting Review', Vol.15, No.1, pp.3-16.
G1 - Accounting and Accountability – Constructing society – History, culture, politics and
