Structural Embeddedness and Organizational Change: The Role of Workplace Relations and the Uptake of New Practices

Emily Rowe () and Leroy White
Additional contact information
Emily Rowe: University of Warwick
Leroy White: The University of Exeter

A chapter in Understanding Workplace Relationships, 2023, pp 167-200 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Despite the plethora of research on organizational change, we still have little understanding of how actors’ workplace relations influence change within their organizational environment when new practices are introduced. As such, we investigate workplace relationships as structural embeddedness, with its focus on the degree to which actors are engrained in cohesive groups. We adopt this perspective in a study of selected hospital trusts (in the UK) that are attempting to introduce and integrate new practices to enhance the quality and provision of patient care. We take a social network approach to test hypotheses on the relationship between structural embeddedness and the uptake of new practices. We used Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) to understand the interactions among organizational actors and their effects. We find that the presence of structural embeddedness does not constrain the uptake of new practices. Rather, it is the lack of these relations that constrains the opportunities for organizational change.

Keywords: Structural embeddedness; Organizational change; Workplace relationships; Social networks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-16640-2_6

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783031166402

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-16640-2_6

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().