"Public on the outside, private on the inside": the organizational hybridization, sense of belonging and identity strategies of the employees of a public unemployment insurance fund in Switzerland

Details

Serval ID
serval:BIB_0880BB510D07
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
"Public on the outside, private on the inside": the organizational hybridization, sense of belonging and identity strategies of the employees of a public unemployment insurance fund in Switzerland
Journal
International Review of Administrative Sciences
Author(s)
Buffat A.
ISSN-L
0020-8523
Publication state
Published
Issued date
03/2014
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
80
Number
1
Pages
70-88
Language
english
Abstract
A number of studies show that New Public Management reforms have altered the current identity benchmarks of public officials, particularly by hybridizing values or management practices. However, existing studies have largely glossed over the sense of belonging of officials when their organization straddles the concerns of public service and private enterprise, so that the boundary between public and private sector is blurred. The purpose of this article is precisely to explore this sense of belonging in the context of organizational hybridization. It does so by drawing on the results of research conducted among the employees of a public unemployment insurance fund in Switzerland. On the one hand, the analysis shows how much their markers of belonging are hybrid, multiple and constructed in negative terms (with regard to the State), while indicating that the working practices of the employees point to an identity that is nevertheless closely bound with the public sector. On the other hand, the analysis shows that the organization plays strategically with its State status, by exploiting either its private or public identity in line with the needs related to its external image. The article concludes with a discussion of the results highlighting the strategic functionality of the hybrid identity of the actors.
Keywords
identity strategies, NPM, organizational hybridization, public service
Create date
26/03/2014 12:54
Last modification date
20/08/2019 13:30
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