Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on a Dutch healthcare organization and one of its experimental projects. More specific, on justification repertoires deployed during the process of setting it up. How does its experimental character play out in the justification work required to bring unlikely partners together?

Paper long abstract:

The paper focuses on Blue Care, a healthcare organization that has been selected as pioneer site by the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports and one of its projects, Primary Care Plus (PC+). These can be understood as experimental organizations: 1) Blue Care experiments with new forms of organizing health care, 2) in the context of the Dutch market-driven health care system, Blue Care is a collaboration of unlikely partners: the local hospital, the local organisation of primary care professionals, the local patient organization and a national insurance company, 3) the organizers of Blue Care often call the PC+-project "an experiment" or "a quest" implying that PC+ is a new phenomenon and that therefore, the conditions of success and the precise format are not spelled out in advance, but will arise along the way.

The paper draws on interviews with managers and directors of Blue Care that were involved in the early stages of the project. Interviewees elaborated on how the collaboration between the partners came into being. These stories give insight into the required justification work. Inspired by Boltanski and Thevenot I focus on justification repertoires deployed to describe decisions in the process and to criticize those of others. Thus, I gain insight into the conflicting values of the partners and how they manage to compromise these for the sake of collaboration. How does the experimental character of the organization play out in the justification work? Do ambiguities and uncertainties evoke additional justification, or is it rather deployed as possessing justificatory strength itself?