THE APPROPRIATION OF NEW ARRANGEMENTS OF PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS: LOCALLY NEGOTIATE TO STRATEGICALLY ACT

The link between strategy and public organization is of growing interest since years and we especially question what organizations strategically do when they implement new organizational arrangements imposed by public policies. And we especially contribute to what public organizations strategically do when they face changes (Bryson and al., 2010). We especially focus on actors who face such changes which are both strategic and institutional (when changes modify the existing institutions). And we question what actors strategically do when they have to appropriate new organizational arrangements. Taking into account the complex and fragmented institutionalized context public organizations operate in, we observe that the literature has put little attention to this level of analysis as being strategically molded / created by organizations and we answer this gap by mobilizing the perspective of the Negotiated Order (NO) (Beaulieu and Pasquero, 2002; Strauss and al., 1963, Turcotte and Pasquero, 2001). Through this perspective, we analyze how actors negotiate and elaborate local and situated agreements to strategically implement new organizational arrangements in institutional contexts. We propose an additional strategy which rests on the process of constructing (i.e. enacting) stakeholders to build organization as local negotiated order. Through the process of stakeholders’enactment, the actors determined how these stakeholders may be identified and differentiated so as to better channel the institutional logics interplays which shape the actors during negotiations; and we have identified 5 ways of enacting stakeholders. We contribute to the literature on NO by enlightening the political process of NO building and proposing one additional strategy of NO building, as well as to the literature on strategy of public organization by better understanding how public organizations strategically mold the (local) rules of the game through negotiations and consensus.