Summary
Organizational professionals need to astutely promote the value they generate for their organization. Our study published in the Journal of Management studies shows that organizational professionals who try to impress their internal clients run the risk of being subordinated by them. Studying the case of quality managers in 12 hospitals, we present two alternative strategies (selflessness and selfishness) that organizational professionals can use to advance their organizational role
The organizational conundrum
Organizations rely heavily on specialists – such as HR, operations, IT, quality or CSR managers – responsible for arranging, standardizing and analysing the work of others. These specialists represent ‘organizational professionals’ who (i) possess formal qualifications related to a managerial or technical domain; and (ii) use their expert knowledge to support the overall functioning of the organization. Organizational professionals are expected to prioritize the interests of executives, line managers and frontline workers as their internal clients. Can these professionals perhaps serve their organization too generously, at their own expense?
Recent studies note a conundrum for organizational professionals. On the one hand, if they do not serve their internal clients, organizational professionals are perceived as incompetent, useless or dangerous. Hence, their role is replaced by others, such as management consultants, or even discarded from the organization. On the other hand, if organizational professionals serve others’ interests ‘too well’, their internal clients might learn their skills, tricks and knowledge ‘too much’, and not need their support anymore. As a result, organizations might devolve responsibilities (normally attributed to organizational professionals) to line managers.
The art of staying a specialist
Our study investigated how a group of organizational professionals navigated this conundrum without hurting themselves or their internal clients. We examined the work of quality managers in 12 Italian hospitals as they supported the implementation of integrated care pathways. Quality managers’ support to senior clinicians is fundamental, since clinicians are often reluctant to collaborate with each other across their professional domains in the design of new cross-functional services. Yet, quality managers are not typically rewarded for their support if they are politically naïve. They may generously share the main ‘tricks’ of the game, not anticipating that senior clinicians might eventually learn how to do that work by themselves, and push quality managers aside. Senior clinicians, for instance, are eager to learn Lean methods from quality managers to identify and eliminate wastes from integrated processes. Yet, they are also keen to exclude quality managers from the design of integrated services, to prevent non-clinicians from deciding what wastes should be eliminated, and how. Likewise, our study shows that naïve quality managers might try to impress senior clinicians and executives; for instance appropriating menial work and promising grand gestures. In this scenario, quality managers were exploited by their internal clients. For instance, quality managers often offer to organize and transcribe meetings, tasks which senior clinicians often delegate to junior staff or secretaries. While quality managers gained new access to precious clinical meetings, they were often treated as subordinates rather than specialists.
Being astutely selfless might open new doors
We discovered two tactics that organizational professionals can use to support their internal clients while improving their organizational status. First, we identified a selfless strategy, whereby the quality managers promoted themselves as change facilitators. These quality managers made an astute display of organizational generosity by showing their intention to share all their knowledge and resources with others, and support senior clinicians’ takeover. In this scenario, quality managers bonded with executives and senior clinicians to acquire new contextual knowledge about strategy and clinical practice; and combined these with their own operational expertise to create a unique knowledge blend – which executives and senior clinicians desired but could not replicate. These quality managers decided to share this new knowledge generously to executives and senior clinicians, to prove their value as organizational integrators, i.e. managers that can support collaborations between executives and departments, and across departments. In doing so, quality managers raised their profile in the organization, and were asked to replicate their ‘magic’ in other domains where integration was needed, e.g. clinical safety.
Being serviceably selfish might build a comfortable niche
We also discovered a selfish strategy, whereby the quality managers presented themselves as internal consultants. These quality managers also bonded with executives and senior clinicians to learn new contextual knowledge about strategy and clinical practice; and combined these with their own operational expertise to create a unique knowledge blend. These quality managers, however, exploited, rather than resolved, the fact that executives and senior clinicians desired their knowledge blend, but could not replicate it on their own. They rendered their new knowledge opaque to executives and senior clinicians and promoted themselves as service providers. In doing so, both executives and senior clinicians saw quality managers as consultants who went beyond their traditional tasks to offer an innovative service to the organization. Quality managers thus successfully raised their organizational profile and built a niche of autonomy and authority in the domain of integrated care.
To Whom It Matters
Our results suggest that organizational professionals need to be aware that their occupation might be perceived of limited, temporary or replaceable values. Hence, we suggest how professionals such as HR managers, operations managers, quality managers, or CSR managers can navigate relationships with their internal clients, build a unique knowledge base and enact alternative strategies of survival and thriving
Executives might encourage their organizational professionals to develop into integrators or service providers to gain more value from specialist functions. These have been often accused of being ‘red tape’, ‘paper pushers’, or ‘plumbers’. We suggest that part of this problem is how executives manage these specialist functions, and what they expect from them. Otherwise, underestimating the value of organizational professionals might be a self-fulfilling prophecy for executives.
Line managers and frontline workers represent the traditional internal clients of organizational professionals. Several studies imply that line managers would benefit from the devolution of responsibilities from specialist functions to their departments. As such, these actors might perceive organizational professionals as ‘servants’, ‘antagonists’, ‘intruders’ or ‘competitors’. We suggest that both line managers and frontline workers will benefit a lot more if they consider their relationship with professionals in a more collaborative and collegial way.
Looking Ahead
Our study focused on quality managers in a relatively safe environment, albeit with others suspicious of their added value. We want to focus now on how organizational professionals can navigate more turbulent circumstances, when their occupation is more directly threatened with marginalization or obsolescence. Organizational professionals are expected to be hit especially hard by the evolution of gen-AI, seemingly regarded as capable to replace their services. We question this narrative, suggesting that gen-AI might represent as much as an opportunity for organizational professionals to innovate their occupations, as much as a threat. Likewise, organizational professionals are cyclically threatened by organizational restructures, especially in the name of flat and agile organizations. We are keen to explore how organizational professionals do not simply survive these threats but use them as an occasion to re-structure their occupation and possibly increase their usefulness and profile.
