Table 1

The construction of legitimacy in managerial discourse

Legitimization strategyMeaning-making themesExamples
rationalizationstrategic decisions“When you think about these things and think that how to organize this activity from now on, so that it will last then, to go to new building.”
“I don’t think there’s any reason to imagine that, going into the new environment, with the current approaches. There’s an opportunity to do things differently and there’s a reason to do things very differently ….”
“I think this development project has come at an excellent time, and this is one of the components in the design of the new hospital.”
resource discipline“We shouldn’t imagine that we’re going to have a substantial increase in staff numbers, even though our age group, the old-age group, the over-seventies, they’re going to almost double by the year -30.”
“If we add teams in the evening, we should get more of those job vacancy with which we are in trouble anyway at the moment.”
“The truth is that we cannot increase the number of employees at the moment, so we should kind of by Leaning to see where we could get the resource there for the nights”
competence management“There’s been talk about these competence centres for the new hospital, it’s quite a big change in concept. So if things like this are going to happen there, it would probably be worth taking them into account in the division of labor that is being planned here …”
“These competence centers have been thought up for new premises … The one direction of solution is that it is necessary to get smaller domains in order to, competence can be managed because, we talked about the fact that there will be more and more new types of surgery, surgical methods, anesthesia forms and so on.”
well-being at work“We are constantly in a race to survive and to be able to cope, and I have understood that the unit has come to the end of the road in the ‘back skinning’ … You must find, in every place where you work, a new model that saves the backbone.”
“That’s why there have been so many challenges in coping, and actually the remedy is to develop the activity, so that I can make it smoother, so that I can do it, and be able to succeed in the work, in the job, whether I’m a doctor or a nurse or any other professional or manager.”
normalizationsuccessful development in the past“I remember that the working model at the time, for example, reduced sick leave for nurses by 30% the following year, so yes, it did matter.”
narrativizationexperiential message from a larger teamI mean, the same kind of message you hear now is that you don’t have energy and there’s a lack of work management and lack of skills. And from the surgeons there is a bit of the same message, that is how their own team can’t really get together and can’t function well enough.”
visionary narrative“There is a general feeling that things are not under control, and on the other hand, we also know that operations have grown since 2006 … Maybe now, with the bigger size, it would be easier to find a better model to manage this, to manage skills, to make the staff able to cope better and to improve their well-being at work.”
Source(s): Authors’ own work

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