The appropriation of new organizational forms within networks of practice: Founder and founder-related ideological power

Abstract

In this article, we address the question of how organizational practices are diffused within networks of practice. We do so by drawing on the results of an ethnographic study of the diffusion of a complex mental health care treatment modality — the Democratic Therapeutic Community — that involved the attempted spread of novel work practices within a professional network of psychiatrists and their associated multi-disciplinar y teams at two new clinical sites. We orientate the study within the networks of practice (NOP) literature on the diffusion of new work practices, considering in par ticular the issue of organizational power, which has been neglected hitherto. After presenting our ethnographic material, we draw attention to the role of clinical ideology, derived from founders and upheld by new, local clinical leaders in the appropriation process. By bringing in a concern for organizational power, we add to the existing literature through stressing the impor tance of ideological power, in supplying collective meaning, and the influential role of founders as creators and `institutionalizers' of underlying ideologies.