Values as fixed and fluid: Negotiating the elasticity of core values. Kap. 11

Abstract

This chapter explores how managers perform values work by negotiating organisational core values. By using an acute infection crisis in a Norwegian faith-based hospital as a case study, I examine how managers in two departments strategically evoke and interpret the hospital’s core values. The data illustrate how the inherent ambiguity of values is used by actors to their own interests. I analyse the mechanisms that affect this type of values work. I conceptualise the dynamics of values being simultaneously fixed—at an organisational discursive level—and fluid—at an individual managerial level—as value elasticity.