Abstract
The business performance of an organization depends – among other things – on an organization’s capability to continuously improve its administrative process. To do so, organizations frequently adopt popular management ideas. Since these ideas typically come from other sectors or organizations, organizations usually translate them to fit their own specific situations.
How such translations can be carried out, and what they can mean for the adoption of a specific management idea, is the subject of this chapter. It presents insights into how three government agencies translated the management idea of shared services to fit their specific contexts.
Although the organizations shared a common background, the agencies made individual translations of the shared services idea. Each translation took contextual elements into consideration. However, the agencies could not benefit from the idea equally.