116 research outputs found
Röster frÄn socialtjÀnsten
The aim of this study is to analyze how the Social Services personnel interpret, define and perceive, on the one hand, the project âMotverka VĂ„ld och GĂ€ngâ meaning âCounteract Violence and Gangsâ, and on the other hand the role of the Coordinators employed in this project. Heads of units and Social Secretarys were interviewed, as well as observed and recorded at meetings. The personnel of the Social Service often state that the project came âfrom aboveâ, from the state, and they construct the project as pointing out the Social Service as incompetent of handling juvenile care. Both appreciative as well as criticizing voices were heard about the Coordinators and their role. The criticism deals with the Coordinator portrayed as a controller and competitor when representing the young ones. Positive comments deal with the mediating role of the Coordinator, in contacts with the young one and the parents, as well as their administrative contributions
Hidden Attractions of Administration
This book argues that the expansion of administrative activities in todayâs working life is driven not only by pressure from above, but also from below. The authors examine the inner dynamics of people-processing organizationsâthose formally working for clients, patients, or studentsâto uncover the hidden attractions of doing administrative work, despite all the complaints and laments about "too many meetings" or "too much paperwork." There is something appealing to those compelled to participate in todayâs constantly multiplying and expanding administration that defies popular framings of it as merely pressure from above. Hidden Attractions of Administration shows in detail the emotional attractiveness, moral conflicts, and almost magical features that administrative tasks often entail in todayâs organizations, supported by ethnographic studies consisting of over 200 qualitative interviews and participant observations from ten organizational settings and contexts across Sweden. The authors also question and complement explanations in administration-related research that have previously been taken for granted, arguing that it is a simplification to attribute all aspects of the change to New Public Management and instead taking into account what the classic sociologist Georg Simmel called anEigendynamik: a self-reinforcing tendency that, under certain circumstances, needs only a nudge in an administrative direction to get going. By applying ethnography to issues of bureaucratization and meeting cultures and by drawing on findings in emotional sociology and social anthropology, this volume contributes to both the sociology of work and the study of human service organizations and will appeal to scholars and students working across both areas
Meetings or Power Weeks? Boundary Work in a Transnational Police Project
Meetings are common in contemporary working life, but they are often overlooked in academic studies and sometimes defined as empty or boring by employees. Yet, the meeting society is being reproduced again and again. There seem to be hidden ways to incorporate meetings into todayâs working life without arousing critique about pointless activities and deviations from what should really be done. One strategy was illustrated in a study of a transnational police project. Police culture celebrates visible crime fighting, which is associated with action, physical toughness, and capturing criminals. The police officers involved in the project emphasized the need to avoid âa lot of meetings,â but de facto constructed their project as meetings. Nonetheless, the project was declared a success. We analyze this paradox in terms of boundary work concerning meetings; the police officers turned some meetings into âreal police workâ by discursively and practically removing them from the category of bureaucracy and its associations with formalities, rigidity, and documentation. The most important example is how an âoperational action group meetingâ was renamed âpower weeks,â eradicating the very word âmeetingâ from the term. This was closely associated with increased informality and multi-tasking during these gatherings
The Merry-Go-Round of Meetings : Embracing Meetings in a Swedish Youth Care Project
Modern society has been called âa society of organizations,â and meetings are considered indispensable. However, a recurring cultural theme in contemporary working life is complaints about excessive and time-consuming meetings. The present article analyzes a contrasting case concerning a Swedish youth care project that employed a set of âcoordinatorsâ to maintain close contact with young people and their parents. Over time, these coordinators adopted an exceedingly administrative approach in which meetings with other professionals became more and more central. This article explores how an expanding meeting culture with strong social commitments can be generated from within interorganizational contexts, such as âprojects,â and successfully competes with other concerns. Thus, the administrative orientation represents an example of the type of social interaction process that Simmel discerned as Eigendynamik or autonomous processes of social interaction
Doing Ambivalence: Embracing Innovation â at Armâs Length
This article considers the social organization of responses among human service staff to changes in public policy, using a study of a Swedish treatment center for juveniles as an illustration. The stance towards a new treatment ideology, âfamily-work,â was not one of either accepting or rejecting the new policy; the staff conveyed both embracing and distancing. Policy innovations, it is argued, create conditions that work as a catalyst for âdoing ambivalence,â an accommodative rhetoric that integrates the new and delicately express reservations
Crooks and Squares - Lifestyles of Thieves and Addicts in Comparison to Conventional People
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