Case Study using Metaphors

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Public Management Review

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Introducing strategic measures in public facilities management organizations: external and internal institutional work

Ingrid Svensson, Sara Brorström & Pernilla Gluch

To cite this article: Ingrid Svensson, Sara Brorström & Pernilla Gluch (2022): Introducing strategic measures in public facilities management organizations: external and internal institutional work, Public Management Review, DOI: 10.1080/14719037.2022.2097301

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2022.2097301

© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Published online: 07 Jul 2022.

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Introducing strategic measures in public facilities management organizations: external and internal institutional work Ingrid Svensson a,b, Sara Brorström c and Pernilla Gluch a

aDepartment of Technology Management and Economics, Service Management and Logistics, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden; bDepartment of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics, Medical Management Center, Leadership in Healthcare and Academia, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden; cDepartment for Business Administration, School of Business Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

ABSTRACT To increase knowledge about the consequences of introducing strategic measures in public organizations, for both intra- and interorganizational relationships, interviews in eight - and shadowing in two - public facilities management organizations were performed. Using a frame for data analysis based on institutional work, findings show that, when introducing strategic measures, public officials worked to place their organizations in a new position within the institutional field. During this process, officials engaged in both external and internal institutional work. The findings high- light how tensions between working externally and internally, influences public officials' day-to-day practices.

KEYWORDS Institutional work; public organizations; identity work; institutional change

Introduction

Prompted by administrative reforms such as new public management (Hood 1991), strategic management emerged in the public sector in the 1990s as a means to meet increased demand for improved performance (Poister, Pasha, and Edwards 2013; Mitchell 2021). Consisting of both strategic planning and implementation (Bryson, Berry, and Yang 2010), strategic management emphasizes the alignment of ‘an orga- nization’s mission, mandates, strategies, and operations, along with major strategic initiatives such as new policies, programs, or projects, while also paying careful attention to stakeholders’ (Bryson et al. 2003, 496), or what Poister, Pasha, and Edwards (2013, 524) have called the ‘big perspective approach’.

Although public organizations have increasingly introduced strategic measures as a means to shape performance (Andrews et al. 2009b; Rosenberg Hansen & Ferlie 2016), knowledge about the actual work conducted when applying strategic manage- ment measures in public organizations remains limited (cf. Bryson, Edwards, and Van Slyke 2018), as does knowledge about the intra- and interorganizational consequences of introducing strategic management (Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian 2018). In this

CONTACT Ingrid Svensson [email protected]

PUBLIC MANAGEMENT REVIEW https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2022.2097301

© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and repro- duction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

paper, we aim to narrow those gaps by investigating the work conducted by Swedish public facilities management organizations (PFMO) when introducing a new type of strategic planning measure known as strategic public facilities management (SPFM). To that end, we combine empirical insights into strategic management in public organiza- tions with the theoretical lens of institutional work (IW; Lawrence and Suddaby 2006), specifically with reference to models developed by Gawer and Phillips (2013) and Cloutier, Denis, and Langley (2016).

Most studies on strategic management in the public sector have followed a causal approach and assessed the practice according to whether its implementation has succeeded or failed (Candel and Biesbroek 2016; Tosun and Lang 2017). There are, however, exceptions to that rather static approach which instead see strategic planning as a complex process that involves thinking, acting, and learning amongst both human and non-human actors (Bryson et al. 2003). Brorström and Willems (2021), for example, have shown that middle managers often confront conflicts when introducing strategic measures by attempting to uphold the abstraction of strategic management while at once delivering concrete actions. For another, Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian (2018) have demonstrated how introducing strategic measures can entail power struggles between different types of actors within organizations (i.e. intraorga- nizational relationships) and even between organizations (i.e. interorganizational relationships). Even so, knowledge of how more ordinary actors with less formal power engage in institutional work when introducing strategic management measures remains quite limited (Pahnke, Katila, and Eisenhardt 2015).

Against that background, the context of our study is the management of public premises in Sweden. In Sweden, PFMOs own non-residential premises that represent approximately half of all heated spaces (Eriksson and Nilsson 2017) and are respon- sible for the maintenance of all municipal premises, including schools, preschools, sports centres, home for the elderly, heritage buildings, and administrative buildings. However, as the maintenance of public buildings has been downgraded for years (Hopland and Kvamsdal 2019; Uotila, Saari, and Junnonen 2019), there has been an extensive need for expensive, large-scale renovations. In response, both practitioners and researchers have called for a strategic approach to managing public premises (Olsson, Malmqvist, and Glaumann 2015; Ramskov-Galamba and Nielsen 2016; Bröchner, Haugen, and Lindkvist 2019), or what has been named strategic public facilities management (Gluch and Svensson 2018; Svensson 2021). Practices associated with that new orientation include strategic long-term planning for both rundown buildings and other types of structures (Vermiglio 2011). There have also been calls to deepen PFMOs’ collaboration with user organizations, including municipal schools and nursing administrations (Svensson 2021). Along with those changes, IT systems to calculate current and future needs have been introduced, and traditional public practices have increasingly been combined with more business-like practices (cf. Nielsen, Sarasoja, and Galamba 2016; Steen and Schott 2019; Svensson and Löwstedt 2021). On the whole, such new SPFM practices contrast how public buildings have previously been managed – that is, when the ad hoc renovation and maintenance of one premise at a time guided operations (Svensson 2021)—and thus challenge the organizational identity of PFMOs.

Despite calls for strategic measures in PFMOs and in public organizations in general, few studies have elaborated how the actual work is carried out and what the measures taken implies for the organizations. Asking questions such as ‘What work is

2 I. SVENSSON ET AL.

conducted?’ ‘By whom?’ and ‘For what purpose?’, we rely on a theoretical framework based on institutional work (IW). The framework offers a fruitful perspective when studying processes in complex professional service organizations with novel ways of working that challenge existing practices in both the organization and the institutional field in which it is embedded (Lockett et al. 2012; Hampel, Lawrence, and Tracey 2017; Sartirana, Currie, and Noordegraaf 2019; Giacomelli 2020). We also build on previous research that has divided IW into externally and internally directed work (Gawer and Phillips 2013) and on Cloutier, Denis, and Langley (2016) framework that highlights the need for relational, conceptual, structural, and operational work during public sector reforms. Our empirical data were collected using ethnographically inspired methods that allowed examining IW in the moment. We focus on concrete actions – that is, different types of IW and how they relate, not abstract or conceptual notions of strategic management – and the work done by different actors (Smets and Jarzabkowski 2013; Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian 2018; Cardinale 2018; Gidley and Palmer 2020). Altogether, our approach contributes to knowledge about the consequences of introducing strategic measures in public organizations for both intra- and interorganizational relationships.

Theoretical framework based on IW

Institutions are traditionally defined as ‘a relatively stable collection of rules and practices, embedded in structures of resources that make action possible’ (Lawrence, Suddaby, and Leca 2011, 53). By extension, institutional theory seeks to understand how institutions affect the actions of organizations (Scott 1995; Gestel, Waldorff, and Denis 2020). For instance, researchers using institutional theory have recognized how macro ideas depend on meaning created by actors at local levels within organizations (Lawrence, Suddaby, and Leca 2009). Nevertheless, most studies on institutions have focused on the macro level, not on the ‘inner workings of organizations’ (Gestel, Waldorff, and Denis 2020, 1741). An exception is the recent stream of literature within institutional theory called institutional work, defined as ‘the purposive actions of individuals and organizations aimed at maintaining, creating, and disrupting institu- tions’ (Lawrence and Suddaby 2006, 215). The concept of IW aims to redirect institu- tional scholars’ attention to the purposive, distributed, and agentic dimensions of institutional change (Battilana and D’Aunno 2010; Lawrence et al. 2013). In that process, applying an IW-focused lens can pinpoint factors that affect individuals’ abilities to shape institutions, as well as how, why, and when actors work to shape institutions and practices and how they experience those efforts (Lawrence et al. 2013; Hampel, Lawrence, and Tracey 2017; Cardinale 2018; Gidley and Palmer 2020). IW also directs attention to the agency of so-called ordinary workers, not heroic institu- tional entrepreneurs, meaning that agency is viewed as fragmented and distributed across multiple actors and levels (Lok 2010; Raviola and Norbäck 2014; (Hampel, Lawrence, and Tracey 2017).

A foundation for successful IW is the ability of actors to understand the underlying fabric of the rules, norms, and perspectives of institutions and the relationships between them (Battilana 2009). Thus, if the aim is to change institutionalized ways of working, then the process of becoming familiar with the context to be challenged is necessary (Cardinale 2018). For that reason, some actors can challenge institutiona- lized practices more easily than others, especially if they have been in the organization

PUBLIC MANAGEMENT REVIEW 3

longer and know the rules of the game. For instance, in their study on public hospitals, Liff and Andersson (2020) found that strategy experts who once had worked opera- tively were better equipped to introduce strategic measures than experts with no contextual know-how. That finding suggests that if actors want to challenge institu- tionalized orders, then they need to be able to reflect on prior experiences and positions and relate them to the current circumstances (Cardinale 2018).

Although the concept of IW aims to capture the experience and work of individual actors (Lawrence et al. 2013), much research on IW remains ‘detached from practical work in its literal meaning as actors’ everyday occupational tasks and activities’ (Smets and Jarzabkowski 2013, 4). Furthermore, how individuals engage in IW in their daily activities requires in-depth analysis (Battilana and D’Aunno 2009; Lawrence et al. 2013; Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian 2018). In response to those trends, we next present research on institutional work conducted by actors trying to challenge insti- tutionalized practices. Such research forms the basis for our theoretical framework used in data analysis, in which we seek to capture how individuals engage in IW in their daily activities while introducing strategic measures in public organizations, specifically SPFM in PFMOs.

Externally and internally directed IW

Institutional work refers to work conducted to change not only practices within an organization but also in relation to other organizations within an institutional field (Gawer and Phillips 2013). Defined by Scott (1995, 56), an institutional field is ‘a community of organizations that partakes of a common meaning system and whose participants interact more frequently and fatefully with one another than with actors outside the field’. Members of a field share values and interests, and established ways of behaving and interacting, i.e. the nature of their interactions are all defined by one or more shared institutional logics (Gawer and Phillips 2013). Despite the institutional field’s centrality in institutional theory, its definition remains rather loose. Indeed, Zietsma et al’.s (2017) review of institutional research shows a trend in which the boundaries of an institutional field have become more dynamic and less distinct.

In their research, Gawer and Phillips (2013) conducted an in-depth case study involving archival studies and interviews on a private organization that had experi- enced a dramatic shift when transitioning from a traditional supply chain logic, dominated by computer assemblers, to a platform logic with new organizing principles and a new organizational identity as a consequence. Amongst their results, they detected a need to reconfigure the external environment and develop internal practices in order to challenge practices within the institutional field. As those findings show, external and internal IW are thus interrelated and can mutually reinforce each other. In their study, Gawer and Phillips (2013) refer to externally directed IW as work intended to engage other organizations within the institutional field, to introduce them and their members to new practices developed by the organization, and to influence the external acceptance of an organization’s new identity. Such endeavours include legitimacy work, geared towards creating and disseminating new practices to other organizations in the field to influence the organization’s position, and external practice work, geared towards creating new practices performed outside the organiza- tion that seek to engage other members in the field and reconfigure the field. Along those lines, they emphasize the importance of building trust, being persistent, and both

4 I. SVENSSON ET AL.

recognizing and managing external tensions that might arise amongst other organiza- tions in the same community or industry. By contrast, internally directed IW refers to the introduction of new practices and ways of working; it includes internal practice work, which is geared towards innovating new practices and enrolling organizational actors in them, and identity work, which entails aligning the organizational identity with individuals’ understanding of their professional identities and enabling new identity claims in light of ongoing changes.

Altogether, Gawer and Phillips (2013) found that whereas the effects of externally directed IW more obviously enabled changes sought by the organization, internally directed work made the externally directed work possible. Thus, organizations trying to change work practices and ‘challenge the rules of the game’ within their institutional field need sufficient resources and skills to manage internally and externally directed IW simultaneously. Moreover, as in past work (cf. Sartirana, Currie, and Noordegraaf 2019), Gawer and Phillips (2013) found that actors often have to negotiate their identities in relation to their institutional and organizational fields and that profes- sionals need support with working with their identities tied to their changing work roles during transitions (Sveningsson and Alvesson 2003). Thus, enacting work roles is not merely an issue in the organizational field. After all, professionals are increasingly engaged in so-called individual identity work (Doolin 2002; Sveningsson and Alvesson 2003; McGivern et al. 2015; Giacomelli 2020), meaning that the introduction of new practices oriented towards strategic management challenge not only existing work practices but also the identities of the professionals involved (Noordegraaf 2015; Shams 2021). Even then, not all employees within an organization negotiate their roles and identities in the same ways (Hemme, Bowers, and Todd 2020), since variations can stem from differences in their organizational positions and professional backgrounds.

IW and implementing public sector reforms

Whereas Gawer and Phillips (2013) conducted their study in a private setting, Cloutier, Denis, and Langley (2016) investigated the introduction of new practices due to a new reform in Canada’s publicly funded healthcare system – namely, the transformation from service-based to population-based care. Interested in what managers do when facing constraints and opportunities while introducing new work practices, Cloutier, Denis, and Langley (2016) developed a detailed understanding of the mix of activities that managers engaged in to purposefully put new arrangements in place, including navigating the ambiguities, pluralism, and contradictions associated with previously ingrained structures, incentives, ideas, and practices. They concluded that as some actors strive to disrupt previous institutionalized practices, others may reciprocally strive to maintain previous arrangements that seemingly favour them. The difference thus calls for different types of IW, categorized by Cloutier, Denis, and Langley (2016) into four forms: structural, conceptual, operational, and relational.

Structural work is a disruptive form of IW and the natural antecedent of the other types of work. Through structural work, new organizational charts are negotiated and work roles assigned. Structural work is also recursive, for new organizational charts might need to be renegotiated (Cloutier, Denis, and Langley 2016). At one of the hospitals studied by Cloutier, Denis, and Langley (2016), the CEO’s initial organiza- tional chart resulted in a highly conflictual process and thus had to be renegotiated, because doctors feared that they would lose influence due to the new organizational

PUBLIC MANAGEMENT REVIEW 5

structure proposed by the CEO. Conceptual work refers to efforts to establish new belief systems and norms by implementing new concepts and ideas. Such work needs to be repetitive and connected to the other forms of work, especially operational work, which entails efforts to implement concrete actions affecting the everyday behaviours of frontline employees. However, as shown by Cloutier, Denis, and Langley (2016), conceptual work tends to be detached from existing operations. They found that connecting new representations with operational activities was an ongoing challenge and that the people on the ground contrasted their daily operations with the overall aim of the new reform. Consequently, they did not understand how they could per- form the new practice given that their professions focus on personal one-to-one meetings. Last, relational work, referring to efforts to build linkages, trust, and colla- boration between people involved and affected by the introduction of new work practices, underpins the other three forms of IW and is therefore necessary to intro- duce new practices. Of all four types of work, relational work especially facilitates the other types.

Research methodology

To examine IW conducted while introducing strategic management measures in public organizations, we conducted a qualitative study designed to understand how different types of IW relate and their consequences for the organizations.

Data collection

As detailed in Table 1, the study entailed case studies in two PFMOs, an interview study involving 12 interviews with representatives from eight Swedish PFMOs, and a workshop. To strengthen the relevance of our research questions, we organized and supervised a workshop in November 2019. The workshop invited representatives from PFMOs across Sweden, as well as their collaborators and stakeholders, to discuss organizational challenges and changes related to their current introduction of new work practices in relation to SPFM in PFMOs.

The workshop also informed the design of the interview study, which along with the case studies was conducted between March and October 2020. All data were collected by the first author of the paper, hereafter referred to as ‘the researcher’. Although we initially planned to conduct the interview study prior to the case studies in order to gain an overview of the challenges at hand and better know what to look for in the in- depth case studies, the outbreak of the COVID-19 required some interviews in the interview study to be rescheduled and performed in parallel to data collection in the case studies.

Interview study Initially, an email was sent to municipalities in Sweden requesting interviews with individuals who had an overview of current challenges for PFMOs and insight into working with SPFM. Based on the responses, 12 interviews were conducted in eight PFMOs, for a sample representative of PFMOs in Swedish municipalities with 40,000 to 560,000 residents. The interviewees are described in Table 1. The interviews took approximately 1 hour and were conducted face-to-face either on-site or online; they were all semi-structured (Flick 2014) and the interviewees were encouraged to openly

6 I. SVENSSON ET AL.

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PUBLIC MANAGEMENT REVIEW 7

discuss whatever came to mind related to the questions asked. Overall, the interviews focused on experiences with strategic measures, current challenges facing PFMOs, new roles and collaborations.

Case studies Two case studies were conducted at FacilityDep and FacilityUnit. Sampling for the case studies was purposive (Flick 2014), with the criterion that the organizations had to be in the process of introducing strategic measures (i.e. SPFM) that were altering current practices. In that respect, the organizations were selected to fit our study’s objectives and deemed to be ‘appropriate cases’ (Flyvbjerg 2006). FacilityDep was identified via contacts generated in connection to the workshop, whereas FacilityUnit was chosen for convenience’s sake because it is located near our home municipality and could be visited during the COVID-19 pandemic.

FacilityDep and FacilityUnit operate within a growing metropolitan area in Sweden, and each serves approximately 50,000 inhabitants with public facilities. Both organiza- tions had been highlighted within the public facilities management community as frontrunners in introducing and developing SPFM practices, which made them sui- table contexts for our study. The two cases were also compatible with the change process occurring within PFMOs at the time of the study.

Typically, the workforce of PFMOs is approximately 1–2% of the total workforce in a given municipality and consists of employees with various levels of education, ranging from no higher education to master’s degrees. Some have previously worked within user organizations (e.g. schoolteachers and healthcare personnel), while others have worked in the private real estate and construction sector. Several are employed as facility managers. With the introduction of SPFM, the occupational role of facility managers at the time of the study was undergoing change, and they were expected to act both operatively and strategically.

In addition, a new category of employees working strategically, called strategists, was found to have gained influence over issues related to strategic planning in relation to facilities within municipalities. To capture their view on SPFM, one strategist in each organization was shadowed. Shadowing is a form of observation that enables an understanding of daily work practices (cf. Czarniawska 2007). From late March until early June 2020 (10 weeks), a strategist at FacilityUnit responsible for planning future public care premises, libraries, and parking garages was shadowed. The strategist, a former occupational therapist, had worked as a planner at FacilityUnit for a few years with less responsibility and authority than in her new role. Between May and October 2020 (15 weeks), a strategist at FacilityDep was shadowed as well. The role had only recently been introduced, and the strategist’s primary responsibility was to conduct an inventory project during which all facilities and their inventory were coded. The objective was to develop a plan to manage the total building stock within the municipality in a more strategic, long-term way. The person in the position had previously worked in FacilityDep as an administrative facility manager responsible for budgeting. Throughout the shadowing period, the researcher had weekly scheduled interviews with the two strategists to discuss key activities and how they had experi- enced the week. All interviews were recorded and transcribed in verbatim. In addition, conversations were held following activities such as meetings with external stake- holders, and informal conversations were conducted during lunches, coffee breaks, and car rides to meetings.

8 I. SVENSSON ET AL.

About 200 hours of observations were conducted during the shadowing: approxi- mately 150 hours in FacilityDep and 50 hours in FacilityUnit. During meetings and presentations, the researcher was introduced as ‘a researcher who is following the work with SPFM’, adopted a silent role, and took extensive field notes. During meetings with less participants, the researcher sometimes asked follow-up questions if observations were unclear. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the researcher observed meetings both online and on-site.

Interviews were also conducted with the strategists’ closest colleagues, who were sometimes followed to meetings to gain a broader picture of what was happening within the PFMOs studied and in the municipality in relation to FM. The questions asked during interviews varied depending on the respondent but were all geared towards experiences of strategic measures, current challenges for PFMOs and SPFM, and perceptions of the strategist’s role. The researcher also had access to organizational documents, including role descriptions and PowerPoint presentations, which provided background descriptions of PFMOs’ organization and work.

Data analysis

All recorded material was converted into text and along with notes and documents was read through several times. The first round of analysis was inductive, and to capture lived experiences, we conscientiously sought to use the informants’ terms (Gioia, Corley, and Hamilton 2013) when describing the work conducted and the organiza- tional and individual consequences of working with SPFM. In the first round of analysis, we allowed the data to surprise us (Maanen et al. 2007) and ended up with 19 codes sorted into six categories. The empirical codes were then sorted into six general themes (Braun and Clarke 2006) that encapsulate what introducing SPFM has meant for public facilities management. Those themes were finally related to (Gawer and Phillips 2013) framework of internal and external IW (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Overview of coding structure after first inductive round of analysis.

PUBLIC MANAGEMENT REVIEW 9

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10 I. SVENSSON ET AL.

Thereafter, in a second, more abductive round of analysis, we employed the frame- work informed by both Gawer and Phillips (2013) and by Cloutier, Denis, and Langley (2016). Our data analysis captured the presence of an additional type of IW (cf. Gidley and Palmer 2020), which we have named positioning work. Thus, data analysis was informed by both our theoretical framework and the empirical material (see Table 2).

Results

Internally directed IW

Increasing knowledge about buildings To be able to engage in strategic planning, many PFMOs have recently implemented the measure of inventorying their building stock. With help of information technology (IT), PFMOs have placed all information regarding their premises collected from the inventorying into IT systems and produced reports containing future costs and planned maintenance. That digital, fact-based type of working has deviated from how the past was narrated, when a major part of the knowledge was supposedly built tacitly upon individual know-how, as the project manager for maintenance at FacilityDep described: ‘An old man with his own little toolbox [. . .] had all of the information in his head’ and ‘Before, information was stored in folders, somewhere where no one could find them’. New developments have deviated from that status quo, as the project manager described: ‘It’s black and white now. We build everything on hard facts’.

The knowledge that the inventorying brought with it – namely, the possibility of conducting strategic planning – was viewed as a means to advocate positioning PFMOs differently within the municipality. While discussing the benefits of such inventorying in a meeting, the head of FacilityDep suddenly realized, ‘With that information, we’ll be able to have a much higher status and another role within the municipality’. However, while managers reported that facilities maintenance work was becoming digital, several non-managers did not commit to the direction indicated by computer simulations, as suggested by their manager. A building inspector at FacilityUnit explained during an observed meeting:

You’re supposed to follow what the IT system declares, for example a red line in a spreadsheet shows when a building is finished. But those of us who work with it in practice disagree on what the system is stating. I don’t personally think that a building can be finished, for example. [So] I don’t commit to that line.

Thus, not all PFMO officials were equally engaged in developing and implementing new work practices connected to SPFM.

Introducing strategically oriented work roles It used to be common for facility managers and other related roles to come from the user’s side (e.g. former teachers) without any background in the real estate or con- struction. With PFMOs now identifying and adopting work practices and routines from the primarily private sector, the development of existing work roles and influ- ences from the private sector has guided the change. As a consequence, facilities managers were given the same type of roles and responsibilities that they would have had if they were employed in the private sector. For that reason, while many facility managers had been responsible for multiple buildings at one location, they have

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become responsible for different ‘knowledge areas’—for example, all schools in a municipality. That transition was viewed as complicating the alignment of new, more strategically oriented roles with previous organizational and individual profes- sional identities:

For those who’ve worked with us for a long time, to go from ‘I do planned maintenance and give additional support on demand’ to on their own embrace the overall picture of the needs, for example, of a social service unit, has not been painless. It’s required a substantial adjust- ment. (Interviewee 5a, Head of facilities department)

Several facility managers and strategists felt that they lacked the proper knowledge to take on those new responsibilities. One manager (PFMO 6) said, ‘Nowadays, facility managers should be reasonably good in many areas and act as project managers. It can be a challenge, in terms of skills, to find such staff’. One interviewee even stated, ‘It goes against the nature of being a facility manager to think strategically’ (Manager PFMO 7). Thus, the findings reveal a tendency for managers to be rather harsh in their conclusions, including that some employees cannot be strategic and that facility managers cannot think strategically. Internally, those perceptions were believed to influence individuals’ possibility to conduct successful identity work, which results in their feeling unfit for the job upon sensing that their competencies are no longer needed.

Making sense of new work roles and positions In several of the PFMOs, people were hired to work strategically: to ‘solve the puzzle’ and ‘see the big picture’. However, the content of that ‘big picture’ was described differently by the interviewees and was not well defined. Consequently, it was difficult for the strategists to meet the expectations placed upon them. The newly hired strategist at FacilityUnit described her work as being ‘fuzzy’:

I work with fuzzy work. I’m everywhere! I translate my managers’ ideas into reality, develop shared languages, mediate coordinate, and collaborate. I’m a detective.

As a consequence, it had been difficult for some interviewees to find a place and professional identity within their organizations. An interviewee from PFMO 4 in a position similar to the strategists in FacilityUnit described being ‘thrown into’ situations and being expected to collect information from various sources, create new forms of collaboration, develop practices, and work strategically. However, after two years in the role, she claimed that none of what she expected from her new role had been achievable and that she still conducted conventional financial tasks (e.g. budget- ing) in line with her previous work role.

The new role has often involved being engaged in processes at different organiza- tional levels and becoming knowledgeable in several competencies. For example, the strategist at FacilityUnit felt that she had to be knowledgeable in advanced building terminology:

I’m supposed to create a summary of how we at the facilities department view the new SportsCenter. There are many people from our department involved in that endeavour, and all of them have their different views. To make the summary, I have to be more knowledgeable than I’ve ever been before. [. . .] For example, I don’t know the right terms for a badminton court or what it’s made of.

12 I. SVENSSON ET AL.

Similarly, the strategist at FacilityDep expressed that she had to know how to use specific IT systems as well as technical aspects related to planned maintenance. Her manager described the role as that of a ‘midfielder’ who knows a little bit of everything.

According to the strategist, her time in the role was both rewarding and frustrating. That perception aligns with the reported experience of the strategist at FacilityDep: ‘You have to work on your self-confidence and remember that you’ve learnt a lot. [. . .] It’s been frustrating yet rewarding. Oftentimes I feel stuck. I feel like I don’t know anything about anything’. Such experiences bear witness to roles that imply learning by doing and being carved out by the employees themselves.

Externally directed IW

Changing the scope of FM practice and developing a new organizational identity To become more strategic, several managers described wanting the PFMOs to shift from primarily being a service unit to becoming active in planning and decision- making regarding current and future public facilities. To do that, the interviewees mentioned needing to shed the previous organizational image and fight for their new position. One manager said:

The problem is that everyone else within the municipality has the expectation that we [the PFMO] are a service unit that fixes whatever others want us to fix. That image must be shed! (Interviewee 6)

In their struggle for a new position, the PFMOs have sought a role as an organization that works for everyone’s best interest. However, several interviewees claimed that to assume the new role, the PFMO, as an organization, needs another formal organizational position, preferably one located centrally within the muni- cipal organization. According to the interviewees, they need a strengthened orga- nizational mandate to make decisions regarding, for example, whether a particular building should be kept or demolished and/or what the use of a particular building should be. One interviewee said, ‘We don’t want to be a pure ‘deliverer’, so we need to have another position within the hierarchy of the municipality. [. . .] That would benefit everyone within the municipality’ (Interviewee 5b, Improvement Manager).

The interviewees also claimed that a stronger position within the municipal orga- nization would imply that the PFMO is not an expert administration but rather a central administration that serve other administrations:

The school administration, for example, they work for the well-being of the school. However, we and those who are in the city management administration work for the whole city; we can’t work for one or the other. [. . .] We always have to think big and not forget the bottom line. (Interviewee 10, Head of FacilityUnit)

That way of claiming a new position has signalled a shift in identity at both the organizational and individual level. One example mentioned was transitioning from being the ‘nice guys’ to ‘the angry doorman’. One interviewed manager said,

We used to be the nice guys and focused on service. [. . .] But now the pendulum has swung; good service is not just saying ‘Yes’. [. . .]. For example, if the school wants a wall repainted but we think that they need a new key cabinet, then we opt for the key cabinet. (Interviewee 5, Manager, PFMO 6)

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Another interviewee used the metaphor of a bus to describe the current situation:

They [representatives from user organizations] used to drive the bus, but we have turned that around. Now we’re driving the bus. We decide which premises are in bad condition. (Facility manager, FacilityUnit)

At the same time, facility managers working hands-on with buildings also need to be customer-oriented. One interviewee explained that shift:

We work a lot with customer service. Previously, the facility manager who worked hands-on with the buildings could get away with being rude if the problems were fixed. Nowadays, you have to solve the problem and be nice. (Interviewee 4a, Head of Technical Administration Unit)

In both examples, the interviewed professionals perceived that they had to adjust their behaviour and personal treatment, including mood, as they participated in work aimed at changing the organizational identity and, in the long run, the role and organizational position within the municipality.

Introducing new work practices influenced by outsiders To become strategic, several municipalities recruited managers from outside the public sphere who were experienced with working strategically. Some even argued that the ongoing changes imply that the PFMOs have primarily been viewed as belonging to the real estate sector. The head of the Head of FacilityUnit said,

It’s important to bring the facilities forward; that’s the core of our business, it’s what we do. [. . .] To us, the industry sector that we belong to is real estate. We’ve been forced into the public sector, but what we do is something else.

Even so, adopting new work practices and routines influenced by the private real estate sector has caused problems for relations with the user organizations. At the FacilityUnit, employees have been given positions of power and missions equal to similar positions in the private sector. However, because there were no equal counter- parts at other units, at meetings the new roles had caused uncertainty about how decisions were to be made. One example concerned the healthcare administration, which typically wanted to discuss issues regarding their facilities at meetings with top managers from Facility Unit; nevertheless, at FacilityUnit, that topic was now dis- cussed at a lower organizational level. According to a facility manager at FacilityUnit, it has resulted in confusion about whom to send to meetings.

The same problem was brought up during a regular meeting between representa- tives from the municipal healthcare administration and FacilityUnit. According to the financial officer representing the municipal healthcare administration,

It feels odd that our head of unit isn’t here. None of us here have any idea of what she thinks, and none of us have a mandate [to make decisions] about the issues that you want to discuss. Before, those things were discussed at other types of meetings. (Observation of meeting at Facility Unit, spring 2020)

Such uncertainty created tensions within the municipality as the work by PFMO officials to change the PFMOs’ organizational position was not anchored with the user organizations.

14 I. SVENSSON ET AL.

Introducing new work practices internally at a PFMO was not easily translated to the external environment and entailed changes in previous working relationships. It could even result in negative feelings, as expressed by a facility manager at Facility Unit:

For instance, the school administration, it hasn’t been easy. Suddenly, someone else is making the decisions. It’s a culture clash. The person that I used to collaborate with on the school’s side, I cannot collaborate with her now. I’ve moved up one level in the organization. [. . .] There’s been a shift in responsibilities. (Interviewee 9d, Facility manager, schools and preschools)

Changes in external relationships Interviews also showcased that besides uncertainty about whom to collaborate with, the new position also meant that they had to deal with people’s jealousy. The head of FacilityUnit said,

Others have been jealous. They wonder how we as a department can take command and make decisions on such huge issues that have major consequences linked to [municipal] finances.

Questions arose about who the interviewed employees were in relation to whom they were before and in relation to others. As a consequence, the ‘culture clash’ was said to consume a great deal of time because the PFMO professionals had to commu- nicate and educate others about the change and new work practices. Managers, strategists, and facility managers described themselves as ‘ambassadors’ for PFMOs’ new positioning and associated practices, as expressed by the Head of FacilityUnit: ‘I’m an ambassador, and I’m talking about that, I think, every day, every minute. And my manager is too’.

The change has also affected the strategist at FacilityUnit, who is tasked with presenting the new way of working to user organizations at various meetings. However, precious time was spent convincing and negotiating with user organization’s representatives to make them accept ideas put forward by FacilityUnit. At one pre- sentation that she made on SPFM, the strategist was supposed to ask the representa- tives to develop 10-year plans for the facilities needed. However, doing so proved difficult because the representatives from the user organizations argued that the way in which the municipality is organized prevents those types of ideas from becoming realities, which makes the suggested changes challenging to conduct in practice. One representative of a healthcare administration even argued the following:

We can’t plan 10 years ahead in public organizations because the politics can change from one day to the next. For example; Suddenly a tennis court can be suggested out of nowhere!

Therefore, meetings with representatives from the user organizations often became tense, as explained by the strategist at FacilityUnit:

Those meetings: They’re on edge. They can be heaven or hell. The three of us [i.e. the school administration, the city administration, and the FacilityUnit] represent two perspectives, with us on one side and the school administration and the city administration on the other, and those perspectives can collide uncontrollably.

The tensions visible when new work practices were introduced have thus prompted conflicts between organizations within the municipality. That development signals that the new work practices and positions developed by and within PFMOs have not been

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anchored or negotiated with their collaborators. In turn, the situation has meant that despite efforts to work in everyone’s best interest, a great deal of time were spent convincing others of certain perspectives and defending one’s own perspectives.

Analysis and discussion

In our study, we aimed to investigate the work conducted when strategic management is introduced into public organizations. Our findings illustrate how that introduction has made actors within PFMOs engage in different types of IW and how those forms of work have been related to and affected each other. For one, ‘being strategic’ was clearly viewed as being responsible for the ‘big picture’, which closely connects with Poister et al’.s (2015) ‘big perspective approach’. For the managers at PFMOs, that circum- stance was expressed as a wish for a role and position that would enable them to make decisions affecting other individuals and organizations. The shift was expressed as becoming more than a service unit and instead being responsible for future directions with effect for the whole municipality. Corroborating previous research (Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian 2018), we also observed how ‘being strategic’ made PFMOs claim a higher status than they had before. Along with working both externally and internally, our findings also show that making the shift implies all four forms of IW described by Cloutier, Denis, and Langley (2016), all with both internal and external dimensions (Gawer and Phillips 2013).

The change of practices when it came to operational work meant that being able to see the ‘big picture’ required the actors to have complete knowledge about the build- ings in their charge. Doing that in a strategic manner has meant collecting information about the buildings and entering it into a database as a means to aid future decision- making. To make actors, both internally and externally, see the necessity of that change, it was also necessary to create a narrative showcasing how those new practices would improve organizational performance. One way to do that was to describe the old organizational practices as being insufficient. To narrate past practices as being inade- quate is a form of conceptual work aimed at legitimizing changes, both internally and externally (Cloutier, Denis, and Langley 2016; Gawer and Phillips 2013). However, such work was not done without tension, for some actors within the PFMOs disagreed with the new role or wanted to comply with new work practices. That shift towards become strategic thus meant that there was an internal struggle and ongoing negotia- tions about what new practices were needed and why.

At the same time, external work occurred alongside relational and conceptual work because the new working practices meant that actors at PFMOs received new, addi- tional responsibilities but did not always have a counterpart at collaborating organiza- tions. To answer to the new roles of the PFMOs, the user organizations have also needed to adjust to the new practices, which has been done by holding many meetings at which the new order has been presented and discussed. Here, there was a primary focus on presenting, rather than discussing. That process illustrates an instance of external conceptual work. However, such attempts to make other organizations recog- nize the need for the ongoing change was probably also important for internal practices, since a fine line separates internally from externally oriented conceptual work.

16 I. SVENSSON ET AL.

Our findings also reveal tension between, on the one hand, relational work at meetings and the conceptual work of narrating the organization in a new way and, on the other, structural work. In our case, structural work has implied a need to not only take greater responsibility voluntarily but also to have another formal organiza- tional position and to be able to formally make decisions that affect others. At the time of our study, however, we detected a discrepancy between the conceptual work and the structural work as the roles and positions of employees at PFMOs became discussed in new ways and as the employees received more responsibility internally. Those devel- opments were not decided upon at any formal level within the municipality, and their responsibilities thus remained undefined and somewhat uncertain, as seen in the expressions of ‘being everywhere’ and doing ‘fuzzy work’. Arguably, those roles were introduced without preparing the organization for them, even when the IW currently undertaken was liable to effect structural and formal changes in the future (Cloutier, Denis, and Langley 2016). Nevertheless, the ongoing work and the new operational practices introduced precipitated discussions of what kind of organizations PFMOs should be in the future, meaning that all of those forms of IW together prompted a shift in organizational identity and ongoing identity work.

Beyond that, changes to become strategic were discussed in terms of the conse- quence that new actors were entering the organization. For instance, when managers from the private sector entered the organization, they transferred their experiences to the new organizational context, albeit sometimes without being sufficiently attentive to their new surroundings or personnel (Cardinale 2018). That being said, our empirical data show how new work practices that challenge the organizational identity of PFMOs were described in ‘harsh’ ways, specifically when it came to facilities managers’ ability to work strategically, which was described as non-existent. Cloutier, Denis, and Langley (2016) have underscored the importance of providing occasions to accom- modate the ambiguity inherent in changes that drastically challenge previously taken- for-granted ideas, including the introduction of strategic management measures. We argue that engaging in identity work could be such an occasion.

The employees themselves responded in diverse ways to the changes, some by adapting to the new practices, while others refused to follow new directives. Moreover, representatives from the user organizations were confused by the new orders of PFMOs. In that sense, SPFM is not a reform delivered from above (cf. Cloutier, Denis, and Langley 2016; Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian 2018) but rather a combination of different directives and requirements that are introduced from the top-down as well as from the bottom-up (Svensson 2021). Thus, different types of actors have shown different types of engagement and relations to SPFM; some part of developing it while others were forced to adapt to it. That dynamic has implications for the identity work since it portrays a tension between the change sought by managers, their new context, and the work practices and experiences of employees. It also stresses the need to allow employees to engage in figuring out their new work roles and identities for themselves. Here, it is important to understand the individual socializa- tion process needed if the once private managers want their employees to become and act strategic.

The work conducted when introducing strategic measures within PFMOs and promoting it to collaborators, especially the work to reposition PFMOs, resembles the types of IW described by Gawer and Phillips (2013) and Cloutier, Denis, and Langley (2016). However, parts of the IW observed in our study cannot be fully

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captured by what has previously been reported in studies on IW. Although it bears similarities, it cannot be captured within legitimacy work, for the work that we observed not only involved influencing other actors but also physically occupying organizational space. It can neither be fully captured by what Cloutier, Denis, and Langley (2016) has called structural work, defined as work that establishes formalized roles. For instance, the roles that we observed to be developed were not only estab- lished but also placed in a different organizational context than before. This work, what we call positioning work (see Table 2), represents a form of work that specifically challenges both the existing organizational identity and previous positions. Thus, it implies work conducted to claim a new position.

In our case, positioning work stemmed from the tension between the conceptual work and (the needed) structural work, for a gap might exist between how the shift towards becoming more strategic is not, at least not in our case, received by a similar shift in structural work. It was believed by PFMO-officials their organizations needed a new position within the municipal hierarchy, in addition to empowered missions and changes in positions for individual employees, to be able to implement new work practices, and work strategically. For PFMOs, the new ways of working was in a sense developed ’bottom-up’ or from within the meso-levels i.e. managerial levels of the organizations, in a normative process, during which several PFMOs have identified the same needs.

In the case of Cloutier, Denis, and Langley (2016) the change started with a new general, organizational structure, followed by a need for conceptual work, as in that case new working practices came with a top-down governmental reform initiative. In such cases, the reform might result in positioning work for different work categories that are impacted by the new reform in different ways, rather than positioning work that aims to shift the position for the whole organization, as in the case of PFMOs. When it has come to introducing strategic measures in PFMOs, not formally decided upon, this was a need that surfaced after the conceptual work and the tensions that this work created with existing structures.

Cloutier, Denis, and Langley (2016) have argued that relational work underpins the other forms of work, and that structural work is needed from the outset. In our case, the conceptual work was present early on, followed by positioning work. Relational work was present but, we argue, insufficient. For Cloutier, Denis, and Langley (2016), the repetitiveness and tendency to get stuck in a cyclic form of work was present during conceptual work. We can thus identify a risk of the same with positioning work if it is not underpinned by relational work and externally and internally directed efforts are unaligned.

Conclusion

Our study focused on both the IW conducted while introducing strategic management measures in public organizations and the relations between different types of IW. Using ethnographically inspired methods, we studied IW in the moment, and this paper thus contributes to research seeking to unpack the complex process of strategic management (Bryson et al. 2003; Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian 2018; Brorström and Willems 2021). The paper highlights the intra- and interorganizational conse- quences of introducing strategic measures by describing how PFMOs reposition themselves in new roles and positions. It also shows how IW in PFMOs is complicated

18 I. SVENSSON ET AL.

by the organizational setting, which needs extensive coordination across organiza- tional boundaries and between different work roles (Hopland and Kvamsdal ; Gluch and Svensson 2018; Svensson and Löwstedt 2021). Such complexity implies a need for various forms of IW simultaneously that target both internal and external dimensions.

Our study has demonstrated how IW, while introducing strategic measures in public organizational settings, is both externally directed (i.e. via legitimacy work and external practice work) and internally directed (i.e. via internal practice work and identity work; (Gawer and Phillips 2013) as well as entails conceptual, relational, operational, and structural forms of work (Cloutier, Denis, and Langley 2016). The introduction and development of strategic management measures in PFMOs have increased public actors’ confidence and made them question their roles as primarily being service functions, which has resulted in identity work towards becoming actors who lead the development of public property management with everyone’s best interests in mind. In that process, we observed how PFMO managers actively worked to reposition PFMOs within their municipalities. Extending previous IW frameworks (Gawer and Phillips 2013; Cloutier, Denis, and Langley 2016), we propose an addi- tional type of IW for public organizations: positioning work. That type of work challenges existing practices in being conducted by organizational actors that want their organizations to assume new positions, both within the formal municipal orga- nizational structure and in relation to external organizations.

With its overall focus on both managerial and non-managerial roles, our work also offers insights into the literature on IW by discussing aspects of distributed agency and how different types of IW relate to each other, which expands Cloutier, Denis, and Langley (2016) focus on the efforts of managers. Likewise, in this paper, we have focused on the relations with user organizations and organizations within a municipality.

Future studies could investigate how PFMO managers’ actions, as a result of their aims to position PFMOs differently, may influence the wider institutional field – that is, the broader group of PFMOs, their regulators, partner companies, and the end users of the premises. In future research, it would also be interesting to study other public organizations to determine whether they also seek to assume new positions in con- nection with the introduction of strategic measures. A follow-up question is thus how that dynamic affects the collaboration between organizations within municipalities. If being strategic means being above others, then what does it mean if several organiza- tions want to assume that position?

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding

The work was supported by the CMB Centre for Management in the Built Environment [126].

ORCID

Ingrid Svensson http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2339-2097 Sara Brorström http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5070-8491

PUBLIC MANAGEMENT REVIEW 19

Pernilla Gluch http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0026-0112

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