Opposing views on the urgency for healthcare changes in the Netherlands: A temporal narrative struggle

This paper illuminates the way multiple narratives concerning urgency for
change dynamically interact on different levels and influence change
processes in healthcare organizations. It explores the processes of sensemaking
and opposing urgency narratives during a period of implementation for
new legislation within the Dutch healthcare sector. Building on recent debates
on process theory, narratives, and temporality, a new perspective on change
urgency is presented, which shows how urgency is not unilaterally created
from one position but is produced and reproduced by different editors in a
narrative struggle. A temporal framework for change urgency was developed
to study these narrative dynamics. Three urgency narratives contested the
dominant narrative in the public discourse. The article shows how directors
of healthcare organizations, dominated by these narratives, also hold narrative
power. Managing change processes implies managing discourse.