Discursive practices of remedial organizational identity work: A study of the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration

Scandinavian Journal of Management (2014) 30, 231—241

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Discursive practices of remedial organizational identity work: A study of the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration Eric Breit * Norwegian Work Research Institute, Stensberggaten 25, Boks 6954 St. Olavs plass, 0130 Oslo, Norway

KEYWORDS Remedial organizational identity work; Discursive practice; Identity threat; Publicly criticized organization; Case study

Summary This paper examines organizational identity work among members of publicly criticized and discredited organizations. It does so by exploring the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration (NAV), an organization that has been the object of considerable persistent public critique over the years since its foundation in 2006. Based on a discursive analysis of how members of NAV have interpreted the critique and constructed senses of organizational identity, the paper highlights four types of discursive practice: ‘accepting,’ ‘condemning,’ ‘distancing,’ and ‘positively calibrating.’ These practices demonstrate how the critique was incorporated into members’ organizational identity constructions in various ways and with various outcomes, and how members navigated and articulated ambivalent conceptions of the critique, the organization, and their role as organizational members. Based on the findings, implications for the role of discursive practice in remedial organizational identity work are discussed. # 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Introduction The concept of organizational identity has become central in management and organizational research. As part of this research, studies have focused on how negative external events, or identity threats, influence organizational identity constructions (Dutton & Dukerich, 1991; Ravasi & Schultz, 2006) and the subsequent remedial identity work that is undertaken by members of the organization (Svenningsson & Alvesson, 2003). Studies have also paid increasing attention

* Tel.: +47 99 72 69 97; fax: +47 22 56 89 18. E-mail address: [email protected]. 0956-5221/$ — see front matter # 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2013.08.003

to the discursive processes through which organizational identities are crafted and reproduced (Ainsworth & Hardy, 2003; Coupland & Brown, 2012) and through which organizations and their members attempt to restore threatened, stigmatized, or tainted organizational identities (Ashforth, Kreiner, Clark, & Fugate, 2007; Dutton & Dukerich, 1991; Ravasi & Schultz, 2006). This paper aims to extend this research by examining how members of publicly criticized organizations (re)construct senses of organizational identity. It focuses on the discursive practices employed by members of the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration (NAV), an organization that has been the object of considerable public critique over the years since its foundation in 2006. Specifically, the paper identifies and discusses four types of discursive practice — ‘accepting,’

232 ‘condemning,’ ‘distancing,’ and ‘positively calibrating’ — that were central in members’ interpretation of the critique and their efforts to (re)construct organizational identity. These practices show not only how the critique was incorporated into their organizational identity constructions in various ways and with various outcomes, but also how members navigated and articulated ambivalent conceptions of the critique, the organization, and their role as organizational members. Based on the findings, the paper makes two contributions to the literature on organizational identity. First, it provides an account of the role of discursive practice in remedial organizational identity work by showing how members of a publicly criticized organization wove together their interpretations of the critique and their senses of organizational identity. The discursive practices thus provided different frames in which members reconstructed their organizational identity in ways that were congruent with their interpretations of the critique. Second, it highlights the productive implications of public critique for organizational identity constructions. In fact, as well as playing a defensive or neutralizing role, the discursive practices illuminated positive and buoyant remedial organizational identity constructions related for example to hope, compassion, empathy, and adjustment. The paper is organized as follows: It begins with a review of the theory of remedial organizational identity work. This is followed by an outline of the research context and the methods undertaken. In the following sections, the findings are presented and discussed in light of relevant theory. Finally, the paper concludes and outlines an agenda for future research.

Remedial organizational identity work Organizational identity has become a well established term within management and organization studies; it is commonly defined as ‘‘what members perceive, feel and think about their organization’’ (Hatch & Schultz, 1997: 357). Organizational identity is distinct from personal identity — how members perceive and articulate themselves — although the two are often related in complex ways. As Alvesson and Empson (2008: 1) argue, ‘‘organizational identity is [. . .] more than simply an answer to the question, ‘Who are we?’ as an organization (Gioia & Thomas, 1996). It presents, potentially, a partial answer to the question ‘Who am I?’ as an individual.’’ Hence, from a social constructionist point of view, organizational identity resides in the processes whereby its members negotiate and provide meanings for their experiences of the organization (Gioia, Schultz, & Corley, 2000; Ravasi & Schultz, 2006; Ybema et al., 2009). Studies of organizational identity have shown that organizations may have a myriad of complementary and conflicting identities (Golden-Biddle & Rao, 1997) and that identities can — and often do — change (Gioia et al., 2000). Recent studies have also underscored the ongoing and processual characteristics of organizational identity through an emphasis on ‘identity work’ (Kreiner, Ashforth, & Sluss, 2006; Svenningsson & Alvesson, 2003). Although it was mainly conducted at the level of personal identity, this research has questioned identity — both personal and organizational — as something

E. Breit that people or organizations have, and shown instead how identity is constituted, negotiated, reproduced, and threatened as organizational members try to make sense of themselves and their organization. Negative events or experiences are likely to intensify members’ identity work and subsequently lead them to engage in ‘intensive remedial identity work’ (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002; Lutgen-Sandvik, 2008). Such forms of identity work can be understood in contrast to more uncritical or routinized identity work, which is comparatively unselfconscious and unchallenged (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002: 626). As an example, Lutgen-Sandvik (2008) has shown how intensive remedial identity work among bullied individuals involves extensive use of stabilizing, sensemaking, reconciling, repairing, grieving, and restructuring throughout the various phases of the bullying process. Although the focus in these studies has been on personal identity, the concept of intensive remedial identity work is also useful for understanding and exploring organizational identity constructions. Studies of identity threats have shown how, in the face of potential threats such as negative publicity, organizational change, or conflicts in or around the organization, members will attempt to more clearly articulate organizational identity (Dutton & Dukerich, 1991; Elsbach & Kramer, 1996; Ravasi & Schultz, 2006). For example, Dutton and Dukerich (1991) show how specific actions to restore organizational identity are undertaken in organizations as a result of such threats (i.e., media or political pressure). Ravasi and Schultz (2006) have highlighted the role of organizational culture as a remedial resource as members make sense of what the organization is and give sense through actions aiming to change perceptions of the organization. Other studies, in turn, have shown how members may make new sense of organizational identity as a result of threats following organizational change (Fiol, 2002; Gioia & Thomas, 1996). While the above-mentioned studies have focused on organizational identity work as the results of distinct and relatively isolated threats, studies of ‘dirty work’ have drawn attention to the ongoing remedial features of identity work (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999; Ashforth et al., 2007; Simpson, Slutskaya, Lewis, & Ho ¨pfl, 2012). Dirty work broadly comprises work that is considered socially, morally, or physically tainted, and includes occupational groups such as sex workers (Tyler, 2011), prison guards (Lemmergaard & Muhr, 2011), and, after the financial crisis, even investment bankers (Stanley & Mackenzie-Davey, 2012). In terms of identity work, Ashforth et al. (2007) have shown how ‘dirty workers’ engage in a variety of normalization tactics to remove or remedy senses of taint. These include mobilizing occupational ideologies (reframing, recalibrating, or refocusing the taint), creating social buffers through in-groups, confrontation of clients and public perceptions, and defensive tactics such as avoiding, gallows humor or accepting. Although this research concentrated on the interplay between individual and occupational identification, such normalization tactics are also likely to be central in how members of tainted organizations (re)construct senses of organizational identity. An organization like NAV can be considered socially tainted because it engages in various aspects of social work. Many of its employees are ‘street level bureaucrats’ (Lipsky, 1980) who have to make difficult decisions, often with potentially devastating effects on specific individuals or

Study of Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration the public at large. Social work is likely to involve ‘diluted stigma,’ that is, work places ‘‘in which the taint is omnipresent but not strong’’ (Kreiner et al., 2006: 622). Although this suggests that members of tainted occupations or organizations are likely to engage in restorative identity work such as normalization tactics, cases involving more or less persistent and distinct identity threats have, however, received less attention. Such kinds of organizational contexts are interesting, not least because they involve various kinds of threats or taints and also offer the potential for different kinds of restorative organizational identity work. According to Kreiner et al. (2006), members of tainted or criticized organizations are likely to go through processes of more or less simultaneous identification and dis-identification with the organization. This process, which has been referred to as ambivalent identification (Lemmergaard & Muhr, 2011; Pratt, 2000), is likely to produce different and perhaps even contradictory organizational identity constructions. Some constructions may be favorable and positive, for instance as variants of impression management (Elsbach, 1994), they may be negative and entail a dis-identification with the organization (Costas & Fleming, 2009; Humphreys & Brown, 2002), or they may involve variants of both (Pratt, 2000). An example of the latter has been provided by Lemmergaard and Muhr (2011), who demonstrate how Danish correction officers manage ambivalence through the concept of professional indifference. Hence, it is likely that remedial organizational identity constructions include different types or vocabularies of (dis-) identification with the organization. However, despite these studies, there is still a lack of knowledge of the processes through which members of publicly criticized organizations construct or reconstruct senses of organizational identity. This paper is an attempt in this direction, and is aligned with studies that have focused on the role of language and discourse in identity construction processes (Ainsworth & Hardy, 2003; Coupland & Brown, 2012; Humphreys & Brown, 2002). Here discourse is understood broadly as sets of texts (spoken and written) that ‘‘systematically form the objects of which they speak’’ (Foucault, 1972: 49, in Ainsworth & Hardy, 2003: 154). Discourse thus enables a focus on the performative or constructive nature of texts and language, but also on how they are constructed by social and organizational actors and are interrelated with other texts (Fairclough, 2003). Discursive studies of organizational identity construction have focused for example on how members may draw on opposing discourses in constructing identity (Clarke, Brown, & Hope-Hailey, 2009), how identity discourses may vary and evolve over time (Humphreys & Brown, 2002), and how local identity discourses may be tied with macro-discourses such as national or regional identity (Vaara & Tienari, 2011). However, we know less of how they are enacted or mobilized in stigmatized or tainted organizational contexts. The argument is that discourse plays a central role in the meaningmaking processes whereby members of such organizations navigate and articulate senses of their organizational identity. Finally, the paper is also aligned with studies that have focused on organizational identity constructions in the interactions between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ (Coupland & Brown, 2004; Elsbach, 2009). Although the insider/outsider dynamic may mean different things in different contexts, we

233 know little of how media critiques (as representations of an ‘outsider) impact organizational identity construction processes (Kjærgaard, Morsing, & Ravasi, 2010). More specifically, there seems to be a lack of knowledge on how members of mediatized or celebrity organizations (Rindova, Pollock, & Hayward, 2006) construct organizational identity. While media coverage, both positive (Kjærgaard et al., 2010) and negative (Dutton & Dukerich, 1991), undoubtedly has a great impact on members’ organizational identity constructions, knowledge about how persistent media critique impacts such constructions is important to further understandings of such insider/outsider interactions, especially in the context of remedial organizational identity work. With these ideas in mind, the paper turns to a description of the empirical setting and the methodology.

The empirical case context The Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration (NAV) was founded in 2006 as the result of one of the most comprehensive structural reforms in recent Norwegian administrative history: a merger of the employment and national insurance administrations combined with more formal collaboration with the local government social services administration. A result of the reform was the establishment of local NAV-offices around the country. These are organized as ‘one-stop shops’ where citizens can meet up in person and receive counseling on their inquiries (Alm Andreassen & Fossestøl, 2011; Askim, Christensen, Fimreite, & Lægreid, 2010). The overarching ideas behind this merger were to increase vocational rehabilitation rates and decrease the number of people on welfare benefits, enhance user satisfaction and interaction (e.g., through customization of services to specific user needs), and ensure a more coherent employment and welfare administration. NAV thus showcases postNew Public Management thinking, which is commonly characterized by partnerships and mergers (Askim et al., 2010; Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2011). What is interesting for this paper is that NAV has faced immense public critique ever since its foundation. While the critique has evolved in different media — e.g., political discussions, blogs, internal fora in NAV, academic discussions — the news media have been central. The critique in the news media has mainly revolved around slow or messy administration of welfare payments (arrears), inadequate follow-up of welfare users (e.g., related to vocational rehabilitation), and integration problems such as ICTor co-operation between the state and the municipalities. In NAV’s early years (2006—2007), the critique was targeted mainly at the integration problems, but rarely evolved into overarching media scandals. NAV was criticized in the media, but the critique was seemingly explained or accounted for quite easily among members of NAV on grounds that the NAV reform was only in its infant years. In 2007 and 2008, NAV’s performances (and public reputation) did not improve much, and the critique intensified accordingly. In 2009, the critique peaked as the result of growing unemployment and the rising volume of overdue welfare payments. For instance, in their annual audit report on the fiscal year 2008, the Officer of the Auditor General of Norway went as far as to claim that NAV lacked control over the money it was supposed

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to govern. In the years after 2009, the critique has steadily decreased, although NAV still receives a considerable amount of negative media attention and has a low reputation in public. It is in this context, as a criticized, stigmatized and discredited organization, that NAV is understood and approached in this study.

aim has not been to elucidate any specific negative images in the media, but instead to explore the media material in an attempt to understand the ongoing public understandings and main criticisms of NAV and to discern the relations between understandings of NAV among the members and the public discourse more broadly.

Research design and methods

Data analysis

Data collection

The focus in the analysis was on identifying senses of organizational identity constructed by members of NAV in light of their understandings of the critique. The paper has adopted a discursive approach, which has involved elucidating types of discursive practice, understood as ‘‘ways of activating and utilizing specific discursive resources in particular contexts’’ (Vaara, Kleymann, & Seristo ¨, 2004: 5). Along these lines, discursive practices are regarded here as essential facets of members’ attempts to remedy and (re)construct senses of organizational identity. They enable a focus on ‘‘subjectively construed discursive identities’’ (Coupland & Brown, 2012: 1), i.e. organizational identities as they are constituted through language. Hence these discursive practices offer insight on the organizational identities as such, but also on the language that is mobilized and on how this language relates to other social and organizational practices (Fairclough, 2003). Overall, the analysis has been characterized as a process of reframing and specifying the ideas and concepts from general descriptions into more distinct categories. It has involved abductive reasoning, which is broadly characterized by continuous movement between theory and data in the development of the analysis and the analytical categories (Alvesson & Sko ¨ldberg, 2009). More specifically, the analysis consisted of three overlapping phases. First, the analysis involved coming to grips with the main themes related to organizational identity in the material. This kind of thematic analysis was important not only in obtaining a descriptive overview of the data material, but also in mapping out some of the underlying logics behind the reflections and identity constructions. Organizational identity was understood here in broad terms as statements by the members about what NAV is or should be. At times this was evident in vocabulary such as ‘‘us,’’ ‘‘we,’’ and ‘‘NAV’’. Nevertheless, it most often had to be deduced from the context. As examples, key themes were related to specific identity constructions of NAV: ‘work-inprogress,’ ‘misconceived benefactor,’ and ‘innocent villain.’ These were mobilized in different ways and were dominant at different points in time. For instance the ‘work-in-progress’ theme appeared to be mobilized quite early in NAV’s history, whereas the other two gradually became more prominent ways of relating to and living with the critique. Second, the analysis involved searching for broader discourses or discursive categories in the material. This involved a focus on members’ representations or interpretations of the critique. Here a distinction was made between a discourse of ‘acceptance’ and discourses of ‘reframing’ or ‘meta-critique,’ thereby illuminating rather different ways of describing and evaluating the critique. The analysis also focused on how members constructed NAV; here a distinction was made between a ‘traditional’ discourse emphasizing a

Empirically, the study draws on a variety of data sources. First, the study draws on interviews with 24 members of NAV conducted in 2011: managers of regional NAV administrations (4), administrative personnel in the central administration (2), managers of local NAV offices (4), communications managers in the central administration (3) and communications managers in the local administrations (3), and front-line personnel (5). About two-thirds of the interviewees were based in Oslo, and the rest in three neighboring regions; 9 were female and 12 were male. The interviewees were recruited through a snowballing method that typically involved starting with communication officers and then probing other areas of the organization. Not all potential interviewees, however, were willing to be interviewed, reflecting perhaps the anxieties around their work situation or perhaps less sensitive matters such as time constraints. The interviews were conducted with the help of a semistructured interview guide built around three key themes: the interviewees’ understanding of the critique of NAV, their reflections on NAV and their role in the organization as a result of the critique, and specific actions or measures taken to remedy/improve/change, etc. their understanding of the organization. Although the specific issues within these broader themes depended on the interview situation, typical questions included ‘How has the critique affected your conceptions of NAV?’; ‘In what ways do you (and your colleagues) talk about the critique at your work place?’; or ‘How do you compare the critique of NAV with other criticized organizations or other public organizations?’ Most of the interviews lasted approximately 90 min, though some also lasted up to 2 h. All interviews were recorded and later transcribed verbatim. Second, the analysis draws on internal archival data such as press releases, internal magazines, and transcribed speeches by the top management to members of the organization. These documents provided an interesting source of ‘naturally occurring’ texts in NAV, and also provided background material about issues brought up by the interviews. Third, the analysis draws on news media texts as illustrative and enriching empirical material beyond the interviews and the internal data sources. Some 50 media texts (news items, commentaries, and editorials) were collected from the years 2006 to 2010; these were quite equally divided between the years and all were drawn from four of the main newspaper and news sources in Norway: Aftenposten (daily newspaper), Dagbladet (tabloid), Verdens Gang (tabloid), and The National Broadcasting Association (NRK, the government-owned radio and television broadcasting company). In addition, specific texts mentioned in the interviews were collected and examined. Given the focus of the paper, the

Study of Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration need for the status quo in NAV and a more ‘radical’ discourse revolving around the need for altered understandings of NAV. In addition, the analysis focused on descriptions of members’ relation to the critique; here a distinction was made between a ‘passive’ or ‘neutral’ discourse and a more ‘positive’ discourse. Third, the analysis focused on specific types of discursive practice. It characterizes how these discourses were mobilized and authored in the material. Although the identified discourses provided interesting material, the categories mentioned above were refined and specified to incorporate the most dominant and influential types of practice: ‘accepting,’ ‘condemning,’ ‘distancing,’ and ‘positively calibrating.’ A common denominator in these practices was that they rarely involved rejections of the critique; instead, it was generally interpreted in ways that enabled more favorable or at least less unfavorable constructions of NAV. Hence, they demonstrate the different ways in which members of NAV, as members of a criticized organization, explicitly related to the critique in (re)constructing senses of organizational identity. This kind of discursive analysis involves methodological challenges. Given the size and scope of the NAV organization, there are limitations to the generalizability of the discursive practices to members of the organization more broadly; hence, the discursive practices should not be regarded as representations of any discursive totality in NAV or among its members. This also relates to how the data were shaped and possibly biased by the research sample; for instance with respect to which employees were willing to participate in the study (they were perhaps the most vocal, emotional, or sensation-seeking) or to the possibility that the discursive practices were ‘provoked’ into existence (by the interviews), and hence somewhat artificial. Moreover, since the extracts from the data material were translated from Norwegian to English, some meanings may have been lost (or new ones created). These challenges were tackled by discussing the extracts with two native English speakers.

Four discursive practices in NAV members’ remedial identity constructions Accepting A key discursive practice in the material involved accepting the critique. Here the term acceptance represents the types of responses that went well beyond passive acknowledgments of the critique and instead involved relatively strong expressions of emotion and (self) reflection regarding their perceptions and descriptions of NAV. In this sense, the discursive practice reflects how the critique was taken up or internalized as a belief among members of NAV, and how it impacted and confirmed their organizational identity constructions. At the same time, it also had powerful proactive implications as it helped members absorb or fend off the critique, thus providing some stability to the identity constructions. The interview responses indicated that NAV as an organization was something that the respondents identified with and felt passionate about. During the interviews, many talked extensively about the critique and how it influenced

235 them, both in their organizational lives as NAV employees but also on a more personal level given the severity of the underlying problems it referred to. Several respondents described the critique through metaphors such as ‘tsunami,’ ‘waves,’ or ‘explosion,’ to highlight the powerful (and recurring) implications of the critique for their perceptions of NAV: When you sit there and just watch the tsunami. . . If I want to start the day in a bad fashion, I start my day by looking through the press clips [about NAV]. (Regional manager) The notion that ‘you can never win,’ or that there will always be some kind of critique revolving around NAV seemed to pervade respondents’ view of the organization. To illustrate this, some compared NAV to a sports referee. Moreover, NAV has been subject to considerable negative attention in the news media — examples of which are news headlines such as ‘‘NAV is a violation [of the citizens]’’ (Aftenposten, 16 September 2010) and ‘‘Messy and offensive service practices in NAV’’ (Dagbladet, 30 March, 2011) — and many of the respondents accepted these predicaments about NAV. Some of the respondents also compared themselves with other tainted or stigmatized organizations, such as the Directorate of Immigration, which is another public administration that has been heavily criticized in the news media: If an applicant [for citizenship] receives a ‘yes,’ then there are those who will react negatively to it. And if an applicant receives a ‘no,’ then there are some who will react negatively to that. So you can never win, like 100%, you will always have someone who is against, no matter what you do. (Communications manager) On the organizational level, responses to the critique involved emphasizing NAV as a long-term political and organizational project, and hence a work-in-progress. This emphasis on liminality and progression entailed conceptions according to which the critique was not undeserved, surprising or too harsh, but instead a natural, inevitable, and largely expected part of such a massive reform and merger project. The following quote, taken from a chronicle by the Minister of Labor on the occasion of NAV’s fifth anniversary, is an example of such constructions: It was five years ago that the Parliament adopted the NAV reform. Since then, the criticism has come down like hail — from users, from employees and from the Auditor General. [. . .] In many areas, the experts point to problems that must be expected when a new system is implemented. No five-year-old is devoid of childhood diseases. (Dagbladet, 1 July, 2010). This construction of NAV as a great project in the making, or in the above example as (perhaps clumsily) a ‘‘five-yearold,’’ with diseases that are inevitable and most often quite harmless, was the dominant response to the critique. It was especially evident in the early years of the reform (2006— 2007), where it appeared to be a convenient and effective response to the escalating public critique. For instance, responses by NAV in the media emphasizing its start-up problems or describing the problems as symptoms of reform rarely gained extra attention and thus appeared to be perceived as legitimate. Similar formulations were also evident in the internal documents, thus representing what appeared

236 to be a dominant discourse of positive (self-) perceptions of NAV’s performance and societal role. In all, this discursive practice of accepting provides an angle for understanding how the critique was made sense of by NAV members and, accordingly, how it affected their organizational identity constructions. Previous studies have emphasized how, in the wake of stigmatizing or identitythreatening events, organizational members try to project a more favorable image of what they are and what they stand for (Dutton & Dukerich, 1991) and/or emphasize factors not mentioned in such critique (Elsbach & Kramer, 1996). Studies have also shown how members craft or reproduce normalizing discourses that are more or less decoupled from the external perceptions (Ashforth et al., 2007). However, as illustrated in the above section, the responses in NAV point instead to an incorporation of the critique into NAV members’ conceptions of themselves and their organization, thus reflecting processes whereby public critique is internalized into the targeted organization and, more specifically, accepted by members in their constructions of organizational identity.

Condemning In reflecting on the critique, respondents often provided rather accurate descriptions of specific news items, headlines, or even formulations, often going several years back. For example, a common reference in the interviews was a critical documentary produced by NRK in November 2010 about how NAV refused to pay occupational disease compensation to women, who, according to ‘‘collective medical expertise,’’ as stated in the description of the show, were entitled to such claims. The following is an example of how this incident was interpreted: The way I saw it [the documentary], they represented us as a bunch of newcomers who had just finished studying [. . .] and who just walk around thinking we can do whatever we want despite researchers claiming otherwise. [. . .] There was obviously a tremendous burden on those who worked in the office — it was terrible to be portrayed like that. We looked like someone who hid away in an office that no one knew about. (Manager in the central administration) This response signifies a discursive practice in NAV revolving around variations of the concept ‘condemnation of the condemner,’ which was first introduced in a study of moral justifications among juvenile delinquents (Sykes & Matza, 1957) and more recently taken up as a tactic by members of dirty work organizations (Ashforth et al., 2007; Kreiner et al., 2006). As part of this practice, members of NAV would ‘‘criticize those who criticize them, thereby impugning their legitimacy as critics’’ (Ashforth et al., 2007: 159), and in this process construct a clearer and more coherent image of themselves and their organization. Many respondents targeted the news media for producing distorted images of NAV. In this sense, NAV was considered by many to be itself newsworthy and was often an easy target of criticism by journalists, political actors, and its users as well. As a local manager put it: ‘‘Suddenly NAV was a word that equaled ‘financial interest,’ ‘sex,’ ‘robbery,’ and so on.’’

E. Breit More specifically, a common theme among members was how the media portrayed them as inhuman and rigid bureaucrats: We are portrayed [in the media] as inhuman robots that have no compassion. . .who are extremely rigid and who don’t understand human issues, not flexible, not solutionoriented, who are nobody at all. NAV employees are portrayed as ‘rule-riders’ [. . .] sitting on these resources as if it were our own money. (Regional manager) In the above quote, the manager constructs senses of organizational identity by emphasizing what members of NAV are not, thus positioning the members in relation to a stigmatized or criticized ‘other.’ This also involves the position of being a victim to the (allegedly false) media portrayals (Garcia & Hardy, 2007). Similar elements were also evident in more formal communications material, where constructions of the media as an ‘enemy’ at the same time facilitated constructions of coherence. Such articulations are illustrated in the following proclamation by the Minister of Labor in a speech to NAV’s top management on April 14, 2010: Problems and failures in NAV, whether these are factual or more or less fictive, are captivating media material. When things are functioning well in NAV, then the media are not interested anymore. Of course, it is not possible to run such a massive and diverse organization as NAV without occasional failures. The problem is that all the good work done, and all the well-functioning aspects, are rendered invisible. A picture is crafted in public of a NAV in crisis. There were also occasional (self-) critical responses. Condemnation was therefore a practice that was not only directed externally, but also internally toward the members’ own organization. This was especially evident in NAV’s internal magazine (MEMU), which from mid 2007 onwards began publishing self-critical pieces more or less regularly. For instance, in May 2009, it published a large section piece in which NAV employees and external actors (journalists, researchers, etc.) were asked to comment on NAV’s performance and rate it. The comments and ratings of not only the external actors but also the employees were (self-) critical. This suggests a growing internalization of the critique in NAV. NAV rarely engaged in public condemnation; hence, this practice was predominantly undertaken among internal audiences. As the communications managers explain, this was in part because user cases were confidential and in part because any public response was more likely to result in more rather than less criticism. When NAV on occasion did respond in public, the condemnation was often quite explicit. However, it was typically the users, rather than the news media, that were condemned. This is illustrated in the following statement made by the CEO of NAV to NRK on May 31, 2011: When it comes to the content of our services, we believe that people’s expectations are too high. This is because, firstly, some of our users probably want us to take over responsibility for their lives. This we cannot, and we should not. Secondly, NAV benefits often provide less money than active work. We believe some people have unrealistic expectations about what NAV can provide within the regulations. Such attempts to condemn the (critical) users were typically met with harsh responses from a variety of sources

Study of Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration (employee unions, NGOs, political commentators). Since NAV had enormous arrears to take care of, and generally had a low reputation in public, converting such accepted, internal understandings of the critique and the criticizers into public arguments was difficult. In other words, although this practice entailed an explicit engagement with the media and the public more generally, it appeared to gain the most legitimacy among the members of NAV. This is captured in the following formulation by a manager of a local NAV office: This story cannot have more than one villain. NAV has been given the role of villain, and it is very difficult to change this position or to project it onto others. In sum, the discursive practice of condemning represents how NAV members (re)constructed organizational identity by depicting themselves as a victim of the critical media portrayals, or more broadly as a misconceived or misplaced public benefactor. Furthermore, the process of creating a common (external) enemy while at the same time engaging in self-criticism, also illustrates the ambivalence in the organizational identity constructions.

Distancing Another discursive practice involved attempts to create distance between the critique of NAV and the identity constructions. Similar responses have been found in studies of professional indifference (Lemmergaard & Muhr, 2011), organizational dis-identification (Elsbach & Bhattacharya, 2001), or othering (Davis & Harre ´, 1990), wherein members construct themselves as different or distant from the group. Although the focus in these studies has been on individual identity and identification, the studies are relevant here because they highlight how members of criticized organizations may position themselves more or less strategically vis-a `vis the perceived taint. In the vocabulary of distancing, NAV members differentiated between themselves and what they regarded as the criticized or disgraced aspects of NAV. One such boundary was related to the size and complexity of NAV; in fact, NAV is one of the largest organizations in Norway, with 19,000 employees, several hundred local ‘one-stop-shops’ around the country, and governing roughly one-third of the national budget. The following reflection by a middle manager was common: NAV is so much, NAV is so large. And even us working here have problems keeping up to date with the organization. [. . .] When I tell people I work in NAV, they are likely to discuss sickness and disability issues and things like that. And that’s far away from my work life. I don’t have anything to do with such issues. Another boundary involved those members of NAV that were perceived to be the primary focus of the critique. Frontline workers were often mentioned specifically in such responses. In these examples the front-line employees were constructed as the criticized or tainted group within NAV (and the ‘rest’ of NAV as relatively free from critique/taint). This is illustrated in the following example: I don’t take it [the critique] personally, I don’t. But I do feel sorry for those people who work in contact with the public. [. . .] Those with public contact must have a

237 terrible strain on themselves, with angry users and all that. We don’t have that, because we [employees in the central administration] work in the background. (Manager in the central administration) However, an interesting feature here was that discussions with the front-line workers often indicated that they used similar tactics, but directed in the opposite way. Many responded that they did not feel personally involved, but instead felt sorry for those in NAV that held ‘‘positions with responsibility,’’ as one of the front-line staff members formulated it. This illustrates interesting dynamics through which the critique was not only distanced from but also exteriorized to relevant others in the organization (Garcia & Hardy, 2007; Humphreys & Brown, 2002). This process therefore rendered the senses of taint as something ‘present’ and ‘non-present’ at the same time. Another way of distancing involved efforts to construct a difference between the true and the false elements of the critical claims made in the media. This is exemplified in the following quote taken from an interview with a front line counselor at a local NAV office: We don’t react to the criticism. It’s not something that impacts us and our way of working. [. . .] I don’t know if that’s being callous, but we see things differently than outsiders. We see that in reality it’s not like it’s described in the media. We see that it’s different. Another interesting feature was the apparent ambivalent identification with other areas or locations of NAV. On the one hand, the organizational structure and size of NAV appeared to impede senses of a common identity, as in this formulation by a PR manager: I think that probably NAV Lillesand [a city] has a kind of identity, and I also think that NAV Aust-Agder [a region] is likely to have it. But NAV in Norway? No. Yet, on the other hand, it enabled members to construct a distance between their understandings of NAV and the critique. Thus, one could argue, given the lack of senses of a distinct organizational identity (or identities) in NAV, it was easier for the NAV members to insulate themselves from the stigmatizing aspects of the critique in their daily organizational lives. In contrast to the two afore-mentioned discursive practices, the discursive practice of distancing involved efforts to remove or minimize senses of taint by constructing boundaries between the criticized and the non-criticized parts of NAV. Unlike the two mentioned above this discursive practice was not mobilized as distinct responses to the critique; instead, it was less ‘formal’ and more evident in the conversations with the NAV members. Overall, these types of discursive practice suggest an interplay between contrasting constructions of NAV’s identity in light of the critique. Based on the studied material, NAV was constructed partly as a publicly disgraced organization (acceptance), partly as a falsely accused organization (condemnation), and partly as a wrongly accused organization (distance). This overlap between the discursive practices is interesting because it further illustrates processes of ambivalent identification in which members of NAV simultaneously or dialectically constructed senses of identification/dis-identification with the

238 organization and/or senses of internalization/externalization regarding the relevance of the critique. This ambivalence is higlighted further in the the following section.

Positively calibrating A fourth discursive practice, labeled here as positively calibrating, was evident in responses that highlighted the positive implications of the critique. The concept of calibration is borrowed from Ashforth et al. (2007), who describe it as a response tactic through which members adjust implicit standards used to assess their work. However, responses in NAV appeared to go beyond this definition and to assign positive values to the critique, such as senses of hope, pride, and dignity in their work place or profession or senses of public benefit and effectiveness in the work they were doing. This links with studies that have emphasized the positive expressed emotions resulting from such situations, such as excitement and enthusiasm (e.g., Huy, 2002). As an example, several respondents would reflect on how the critique forced NAV to become better and more efficient. Rather than being put down and made defensive by the critique, they would emphasize its inspirational value. As a senior communications manager argued: If you look in the rear view mirror regarding the impact of the critique, you can see that during the toughest times we have had the highest production internally. Thus, it may be that we need this kind of negative attention in order to whip us a little and give us energy and motivation to improve. The manager continued by highlighting an important, yet implicit paradox in NAV’s governance system: It’s a kind of paradox: we benefit from negative representations in the sense that we receive additional funds to improve our services. If we are doing well, the funds will decrease. Although this was said in a somewhat ironical tone, it does point to the prevailing conceptions among members of NAV, at least, perhaps, among the senior bureaucrats or those working in the central administration. It also suggests that NAV was constructed in less favorable manners (rather than more favorable, cf. Dutton & Dukerich, 1991) in discussions with the political administration. Nevertheless, in the personal interviews, several of the senior managers emphasized the positive relationship between NAV and the political administration. After all, it was claimed, NAV was the preferred actor for new public responsibility areas: If the consequence of [the critique] was that the political administration did not have confidence in us being able to solve social tasks anymore, then they should definitely not look to NAV as a problem solver. But they do. (Regional manager) While no clear examples of positive calibration were identified in the news media material, it was, however, evident in the internal magazines. For example, an article in the internal magazine MEMU in May 2008 which emphasized the different reactions in NAV to the criticism included

E. Breit a section on how members ‘‘Want to hang on,’’ as it was entitled. The section included positive statements from different NAV members, as exemplified in the following extract: Not all [employees in NAV] let themselves be influenced negatively by the press coverage. One of these is Berit Paulsrud. ‘I always read the negative media stories carefully and like to keep myself updated on what the press has focused on in NAV. I think that much of what has been written negatively about NAV is correct, but I get motivated by it and want to work a little harder’, she says. And Paulsrud is not alone. Although there was occasional positive emphasis in subsequent MEMU material, this extract is taken from one of very few articles citing an influence of this kind. It is interesting, however, because it showcases different responses to and perceptions of the more dominant efforts to avoid or neutralize the perceived stigma resulting from the critique. On the whole, calibration of this kind shows how NAV members were able to find positive meaning in their work during the public critique (Cameron, Dutton and Quinn, 2003). While some, as the female employee quoted above, may have found inspiration and energy in the critique alone, others displayed self-aggrandizement as they struggled to manage the meanings associated with their occupational or organizational role in NAV. For instance, as a local manager put it: ‘‘Many, even if they are tired, live according to our vision: to give people opportunities.’’ Another manager put it as follows: ‘‘Why do we accept lower salaries than in private? Well, it is perhaps because we believe we have an important job to do.’’ In a related fashion, NAV’s societal mandate or position as perhaps the institution in the Norwegian welfare system was also emphasized. For instance, several managers talked about how they deliberately used the concept of ‘‘NAVians’’ [NAVianere] to create positive internal associations with the organization. This indicates the creation of identity markers as means of building a collective organizational identity. In a similar fashion, a communications manager talked about how he used the metaphor of ‘‘building a cathedral’’ and how people should feel pride in ‘‘laying the stones of the Norwegian welfare system’’ in his speeches or conversations with employees. Thus, in refocusing attention on being a cornerstone in the Norwegian society, in spite of the critique, respondents seemed able to clarify senses of organizational coherence and purpose (see also Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991), while at the same time acknowledging the difficult predicaments for NAV and themselves. In sum, this emphasis on the positive — or at least less negative — aspects of NAV was important for many in regaining control over the meanings of what NAV was and what it should stand for. In particular, it was useful because it calibrated the critique into something less threatening and potentially damaging — thus being a key premise for how many people perceived themselves as NAV members.

Discussion This study has focused on remedial organizational identity work in a publicly criticized organization. The starting point

Study of Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration for the analysis was to investigate how members of NAV made sense of the critique and their organization and how this impacted their constructions of organizational identity. As a result of the analysis, four types of discursive practices have been identified and described: ‘accepting,’ ‘condemning,’ ‘distancing,’ and ‘positively calibrating.’ Although these practices represent rather broad concepts and thus do not capture all the various kinds of remedial identity work in NAV, they have provided frames or positions (Clarke et al., 2009; Davis & Harre ´, 1990) for the interpretation of the critique and constructions of organizational identity in NAV. Several points should be emphasized when considering these discursive practices. First, given the broad, seemingly naturalized acknowledgment of the critique in NAV, they enabled members to incorporate or ‘translate’ elements of the critique into their organizational identity constructions. Based on an understanding of identity work — both at the individual and the organizational level — as not only an internal self-focusing process but a process that involves overlaps between self-perceptions and perceptions of other’s perceptions (Elsbach, 2009; Watson, 2003), the study has shown how members of critical or tainted organizations like NAV are likely to heed media critique and (re)construct organizational identity accordingly in manners congruent with the critique. In this process, the findings suggest that discursive practices enabled members to navigate the contradictions between the critique and their self-perceptions by integrating it with their more coherent organizational identity narratives (Clarke et al., 2009). Second, the discursive practices were in reality not as straightforward as presented here; they were not mutually exclusive and were often interrelated in different ways, either in the same texts or in processes whereby respondents or narrators moved between different angles or perceptions of the critique or NAV. On the one hand, this highlights the complexities of discursive organizational identity constructions (Humphreys & Brown, 2002). On the other hand, it demonstrates the wide variety of organizational identity issues focused on by the members and how they were constructed (Alvesson & Empson, 2008; Pratt, 2000). It questions the presence of organizational identity in criticized organizations (Alvesson & Empson, 2008) by highlighting the ambiguity in NAV concerning different types of identity threat and subsequent restorative identity work. Whereas some organizational identity conceptions were damaged or threatened (and members sought to change/reconstruct them), some continued as they were (and members seemingly did rather little about it and perhaps were a bit cynical), and some were perceived as improved (and members used them as inspiration and motivation). Third, and closely related to the above point, the findings illustrate the role of discursive practices in the (re)construction of organizational identity among ‘dirty’ or tainted occupations (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999; Lemmergaard & Muhr, 2011; Tyler, 2011). The analysis suggested that most NAV members experienced some ambivalence in their relationship with and perception of NAV in light of the critique (cf. Kreiner et al., 2006). Hence the described discursive practices illustrate the kinds of restorative processes that may arise when such ambivalence is accentuated in tainted organizational contexts. Moreover, it also suggests that members may to some extent exercise agency in their remedial

239 organizational identity constructions by selectively mobilizing discursive resources and employing these to position themselves vis-a `-vis the taint (Davis & Harre ´, 1990; Garcia & Hardy, 2007). Fourth, the discursive practices in NAV have also illuminated identity work in a mediatized organization. The news media have a great impact on constructions of organizational controversy and newsworthiness (Gamson, Croteau, Hoynes, & Sasson, 1992) and are thus likely to ‘produce’ many of the events or strains that compel more intensified identity work (Dutton & Dukerich, 1991; Kjærgaard et al., 2010). As we have seen, negative media coverage had considerable impact on the organizational identity constructions in NAV, especially as many of these constructions provided resources around which members could alter or reconfigure the media stories into less unfavorable stories of NAV. It is arguably precisely this kind of ability to integrate negative portrayals into their organizational identity constructions — rather than simply ignoring or dismissing it as false or unjustified — that enables members of such mediatized organizations to create (positive) meaning in their working lives. Fifth and finally, while it is interesting to study the distinct discursive practices of organizational remedial identity work, it is also important to see them as part of a wider interdiscursive totality in NAV, that is, as representations of (a) certain discourse(s) in NAV. The analysis has suggested that an acceptance practice was clearly dominant in the early years and that it operated as a rather formal discourse and proactively oriented toward the future and prosperity of NAV. However, this practice was difficult to sustain because of the continued critique, and the condemnation practice became more salient. In addition, the members also appeared to engage more in distancing from the critique and to calibrate it into more positive connotations. While this only scratches the surface of the broader remedial organizational identity work in NAV, it provides some examples of the members’ agency in these processes, as the practices were employed in different ways at different points in time.

Conclusion By focusing on the discursive practices through which members of a publicly criticized organization made sense of and gave sense to the critique and to their organization, this paper has contributed to a more comprehensive understanding of remedial identity work at the organizational level, labeled here as remedial organizational identity work. This kind of identity work is different from more uncritical or routinized identity work, and thus highlights the processes whereby threatened or damaged organizational identities are remedied as organizational members negotiate their organizational experiences and provide meanings for them. Moreover, an emphasis on remedial organizational identity work adds nuance to understandings of organizational identity work as a relatively comprehensive and indiscriminate process (cf. Alvesson & Empson, 2008; Lutgen-Sandvik, 2008). The findings suggest that members of mediatized and criticized organizations like NAV are likely to heed the media critique and that the critique therefore plays a crucial role in the construction and reconstruction of organizational iden-

240 tity. More specifically, the analysis has shown how members of such organizations may more or less selectively incorporate the critique in their constructions of organizational identity. In so doing, they are able to negotiate the contradictions between the critique and their self-perceptions without disrupting their self-narratives (Clarke et al., 2009). This emphasis on incorporation as a coping mechanism distinguished our findings from those of studies that have emphasized constructions of favorable images (Dutton & Dukerich, 1991), highlighting of other favorable issues not captured by the critique/stigma (Elsbach & Kramer, 1996), or attempts to normalize of justify the stigma (Ashforth et al., 2007). The study also contributes to research on organizational identity work that has highlighted the positive and productive implications of public critique on organizational identity constructions. The analysis not only indicated negative reactions to and understandings of the critique, but also senses of pride, optimism, and motivation. Hence the findings, which are consistent with the views of proponents of positive organizational scholarship (Cameron, Dutton, & Quinn, 2003), provide a different picture of remedial organizational identity work than studies that have focused mainly on the negative implications for organizational identity. In fact, the identified discursive practices all entailed a key positive component: hopeful orientations toward a prosperous future (‘accepting’), collectivizing efforts to overcome a common ‘enemy,’ i.e. the criticizers (‘condemnation’), senses of compassion and empathy with the perceived disgraced members of the organization (‘distancing’), and not least a positive adjustment of assessments standards (‘positively calibrating’). The theoretical ideas of remedial organizational identity work can, with due caution, be extended to other settings. Although the identified discursive practices are specific to the NAV setting, they are also likely to be parts of the discursive repertoire in other organizations that have been (or are) subjected to massive negative portrayals in public discourse. However, it should be emphasized that since NAV is a central welfare institution and, accordingly, a public organization, it is subject to different ‘critique dynamics’ than, say, a private organization would be, in the sense that it is more publicly accountable for its activities and hence also more interesting for the media. At the same time, one may also argue, and this was also exemplified at various points in the analysis, employees in NAV may mobilize this position of social accountability to serve a higher interest or purpose in society. Such features of self-aggrandizement were thus crucial coping mechanisms by helping to take some of the edge off the critique. While this study has focused on remedial organizational identity work in a single organization, future studies could examine such identity work more systematically across different social, cultural and political settings. It would be interesting to explore in detail the relationships between specific mechanisms (e.g., the types, timing or sources of critique) on the kinds of remedial organizational identity work undertaken. It would also be interesting to study the effects of such identity work, for instance related to types of external or internal image constructions (Dutton & Dukerich, 1991) or in terms of how mediatized or criticized organizations attempt to plan ahead and avoid or downplay future

E. Breit identity threats (Elsbach, Sutton, & Principe, 1998). Finally, future studies could also go further into the micro-level discursive details of identity work among members of such scrutinized settings (see for instance McInnes & Corlett, 2012). The study also has managerial implications. Based on the findings, it is important for managers of criticized organizations to acknowledge, and perhaps even nurture, employees’ engagement with and incorporation of the critique into their conceptions of the organization. Rather than undertaking distinct activities intended to improve employees’ conceptions, discursive practices such as those identified in this paper are arguably vital in the remedial processes whereby organizations and their members come to grips with understandings of who they are and who they should be, even if these understandings have been undermined by conflicting images in the media or elsewhere. Overall, it is clear that NAV and similar kinds of mediatized and politicized organizations will continue to be in the public limelight — for better or for worse — and thus deserve special attention in order to understand what goes on inside organizations that are subject to this kind of massive public scrutiny.

Acknowledgements This paper is based on the project ‘‘Image, branding and identity: Organizational, occupational and individual interfaces’’ at the School of Economics and Management, Lund University. The author is very grateful to the editor and the three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and advice during the revision process. The author also thanks Tone Alm Andreassen, Knut Fossestøl, Lars Klemsdal and members of the LUMOS research group, Lund University for their comments and support on earlier versions of the manuscript.

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