M., Van den Hooff, B., Huysman, M., Soekijad, M. (2010). Keeping the wheels turning: The dynamics of managing networks of practice. Journal of Management Studies, 47(1), 85–108.
Agterberg, M., Van den Hooff, B., Huysman, M. (2011). Cracking the core: How core members of electronic networks of practice contribute to organizational learning. Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, San Antonio, Texas, 1–19.
Boiteau, K. and Baret, C. (2017). La conduite du changement en hôpital psychiatrique : le rôle des centres de traduction dans la valorisation des innovations lors d’un projet de promotion du bien-être au travail. Politiques et management public, 34(3–4), 231–246.
Bootz, J. (2015). Comment concilier auto-organisation et contrôle au sein des communautés de pratique pilotées ? Une scoping review. Management international, 19(3), 15–30.
Callon, M. (1986). Éléments pour une sociologie de la traduction : la domestication des coquilles Saint-Jacques et des marins-pêcheurs dans la baie de Saint-Brieuc. L’Année sociologique, 36(3), 169–208.
Carlile, P. (2004). Transferring, translating and transforming: An integrative framework for managing knowledge across boundaries. Organization Science, 15(5), 555–568.
Chesbrough, H. and Haas, W.A. (2006). Open innovation: A new paradigm for understanding industrial innovation. In Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm, Chesbrough, H., Vanhaverbeke, W., West, J. (eds). Oxford University Press, Oxford.
De Vaujany, F.X. (ed.) (2005). De la conception à l’usage : vers un management de l’appropriation des outils de gestion. EMS, Caen.
Garud, R. and Karnøe, P. (2003). Bricolage versus breakthrough: Distributed and embedded agency in technology entrepreneurship. Research Policy, 32(2), 277–300.
Grenier, C. and Denis, J.L. (2017). S’organiser pour innover : espaces d’innovation et transformation des organisations et du champ de l’intervention publique. Politiques et management public, 34(3–4), 191–206.
Grenier, C., Ibrahim, R., Duprat, L. (2020). Comment organiser un tiers-lieu éphémère pour favoriser l’émergence d’innovations institutionnelles ? Le cas d’un pôle d’opérateurs de services à domicile. Innovations, 66(1), 89–115.
Hargadon, A. (1997). Technology brokering and innovation in a product development firm. Administrative Science Quarterly, 42(4), 716–749.
Imbert, G. and Chauvet, V. (2012). De la capacité d’absorption à la capacité d’insémination. Revue française de gestion, 221, 111–127.
Lamont, M. and Molnár, V. (2002). The study of boundaries in the social sciences. Annual Review of Sociology, 28(1), 167–195.
Levi-Strauss, C. (1962). La pensée sauvage. Plon, Paris.
Mintzberg, H. (1993). Structure in Fives: Designing Effective Organizations. Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River.
Moore, M. and Hartley, J. (2008). Innovations in governance. Public Management Review, 10, 3–20.
Sahlin, K. and Wedlin, L. (2008). Circulating ideas: Imitation, translation and editing. In The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism, Greenwood, R., Oliver, C., Suddaby, R., Sahlin, K. (eds). SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks.
Schulman, P.R. (1993). The negotiated order of organizational reliability. Administration & Society, 25(3), 353–372.
Tirole, J. (2016). Économie du bien commun. PUF, Paris.
Todorova, G. and Durisin, B. (2007). Absorptive capacity: Valuing a reconceptualization. Academy of Management Review, 32(3), 774–786.
Wenger, E., McDermott, R., Snyder, W.M. (2002). Cultivating Communities of Practice. Harvard Business Publishing, Brighton.
Zietsma, C. and Lawrence, T.B. (2010). Institutional work in the transformation of an organizational field: The interplay of boundary work and practice work. Administrative Science Quarterly, 55(2), 189–221.
1 1 EHPAD: Etablissement d’Hébergement pour Personnes Agées Dépendantes; retirement home.
2 2 SAAD: service d’aide et d’accompagnement au domicile (social homecare service); SSIAD: service de soins infirmiers à domicile (home nursing service).
Introduction written by Corinne GRENIER and Ewan OIRY.
PART 1
Innovations as Seen by Stakeholders
Introduction to Part 1
Taking up the challenge of “altering frontiers” through organizational innovations raises the double question of the place of different individuals in this profound transformation.
Individuals are first and foremost at the heart of this transformation because they are the driving force behind it. They are singular individuals – the innovators – who develop new interdisciplinary practices, implement decompartmentalization and transform usual routines (Gherardi 2008). They transform their practices by experimenting in “innovative spaces” typically outside the organization, sometimes protected from the rules that usually govern it (Bucher & Langley 2016). They are sometimes tired of the multiple social norms to which they cross in order to innovate (Alter 2011). However, they are clearly, for many, the heart and driving force of the organizational innovation process that enables decompartmentalization.
As for the rest of the professionals, even if they are not exactly innovators, are they not also the target of organizational innovations that aim to decompartmentalize? In this way, they discover and experience on a daily basis the transformations that have been designed for them and that they must appropriate and implement. These innovations transform their ways of working, shake up their skills and sometimes their professional identities (Robelet et al. 2005). This can also make them more efficient and even satisfy them by giving more meaning to their work, emphasizing that a decompartmentalized organization ensures better and more effective patient care or support.
“Altering frontiers” through organizational innovations is therefore bringing about interplay of identity dimensions as well as questions of competence or performance.
Finally, we must not lose sight of the fact that compartmentalization cannot be overcome without taking into account the major consequences that this can have. Indeed, in healthcare organizations, compartmentalization is merely a fortuitous and damaging consequence of significant bureaucracy (Weber 2003). Compartmentalization is also that. The sheer amount of bureaucracy means that employees are gradually losing out the overall vision and meaning of the work they do there and reduce their field of intervention to what is their only day-to-day work.
However, silos are also a simple and relatively effective organizational solution for maintaining and deepening employee expertise (Currie et al. 2012). In a healthcare activity where expertise is crucial and where its shortcomings can have immediate consequences on the lives of patients,
