Understanding an integrated management system in a government agency – Focusing institutional carriers

Abstract

Working with an integrated management system (IMS) is a challenging task. In public organizations, the formalization of an IMS including the communication of control mechanisms, rules, goals and culture are crucial. Several types of carriers are used in order to communicate the content in an IMS – both human actors and artefacts. An artefact studied in this paper is an intranet, as one carrier of the IMS. The purpose of this paper is to explore how institutional theory – focusing institutional carriers – can help us to understand how an IMS is represented through human actors and technology in a government agency. The conclusion is that the application of an institutional carrier perspective on an IMS can help us to understand the past and present, the role, and the relative success of such a system. An IMS can be aligned or misaligned related to three dimensions of structure, process and people. Achieving an aligned and legitimate IMS is crucial in order to achieve goals in an organization. The implications of this study are that further research and practice should give more attention to institutional carriers when studying and improving IMS.