Dashboard-driven change: Reshaping relational dynamics in professional frontline–screen-level networks

Dashboards are increasingly used in public service organizations to enhance service provision and reorganize professional work. However, their impact on professional roles and relational dynamics between frontline professionals, such as work coaches, and screen-level professionals, such as managers and quality officers, remains unclear. This article presents a qualitative case study of a dashboard that was implemented in the work and income department of a large Dutch city. This article examines how the relational dynamics in a frontline-screen-level network are reshaped by the implementation of a dashboard. The results present the analysis of (1) the discrepancy between the intended scripts and the actual enactment of functions and roles that were introduced during the dashboards’ implementation, (2) how professionals navigate tensions caused by contradictory logics due to the implementation of the dashboard, and (3) how the dashboard’s implementation reshaped relational dynamics. Our results revealed that some professionals resisted using the dashboard because they experienced a tension between their client-driven professional logic and the managerial logic equating client-driven work with data-driven work. This divided professionals into those who did not experience the tension between the logics and thus embraced the scripts of their new functions and roles, from those who did experience the tension and therefore resisted adopting the scripts of their new functions and roles. This division manifested in two key themes: (1) competition and (2) the pursuit of autonomy. The dashboard’s implementation reshaped the relational dynamics in this frontline network, constituting profound changes in the fabric of organizational life.