Technology versus institutions

This paper claims that technology and institutions both epitomize the construction of artificial orders through which a primary reality is shaped to something other than it is by logical operations that share essential affinities. Drawing on this, we work our way to showing how technology operates as governing regime and how tasks and operations that are carried out by the human enactment of expert rules and procedures can considerably be embodied onto technological sequences with which human experts have limited and severely structured interaction. These ideas are illustrated by reference to cultural memory organizations (e.g. libraries, archives, museums) and the ways the deepening infiltration of their operations by computing technologies redefines their goals and the skills, practices and arrangements through which these goals have traditionally been pursued

Agency and institutions in organization studies

textabstractAgency and institutions are essential concepts within institutional theory. In this Perspectives issue, we draw on a select group of Organization Studies articles to provide an overview of the topic of agency and institutions. We first consider different ways of defining agency and institutions and examine their implications for institutional theory. We then analyse the relationship of actors and institutions through four lenses – the wilful actor, collective intentionality, patchwork institutions and modular individuals. Our analysis leads us to dissociate agency from individuals and view it as a capacity or quality that stems from resources, rights and obligations tied to the roles and social positions actors occupy. Roles and social positions are institutionally engineered. It is social actors qua occupants of roles and positions (not individuals) that enter the social ‘stage’ and exercise agency

Administrativa innovationer i organisationer

The aim of this paper is to develop a theoretical framework for the study ofadoption of new methods, techniques and ideas concerning organizing andcontrol of activities in organizations.A short review is made of the main stream in research on innovations. It isargued that the main shortcoming is the tendency to treat all innovations asstable entities which remain the same in the process of diffusion. Hence,research generally focuses on the question of adoption or rejection inorganizational settings. A different frame of reference is proposed; in short,focusing the transformation of innovations when they change location in timeand space.The central theme is to explore how “open” or “closed” innovations are. Thisquestion has two aspects: the longitudinal and the context. Over timeinnovations can develop a more closed character as a result of discursive andpractical action, i.e. equipment, instructions, established claims, motivations,explanations of causality. That development is “given” when the innovation isbrought to a new context. The crucial things, though, are the discursive andpractical capacities different groups of actors in the focal context have inrelation to the more or less elaborated version of the innovation. Further, itis also argued that adoption of new methods, techniques and ideas concerningorganizing and control of activities, can be be analyzed in those terms

Change in organizations : a critique of the dominant assumptions of identity and determinacy

The instituted assumptions of identity and determinacy are elucidated regarding their implications for our understanding of the sources of constitution and change of social and organizational action. Built upon these assumptions, mainstream organizational research locates these sources in exogenous environmental forces and ascribes to the significative aspects of action and language a reflective-representational ontological status. We question these assumptions and their implications upon two premisses. First, that practical aspects of action and perceived environmental constraints lack any intrinsic meaning, since meaning is ascribed to them by the significative aspects of action and language, mainly by the instituted central imaginary significations of society or civilization. Second, that these latter lack any inherent determination of meaning, for they constitute magmas of meaning. An alternative approach is outlined upon these premisses.Företag Organisationslära

Mötet ekonomi och medicin : konsekvenser av nya ekonomiska styrmodeller inom sjukvården

This paper discusses current administrative reforms in the SwedishHealth Care System. More specifically, changes in cost accounting,principles for resource allocation and criteria for evaluation ofresults in health care. Diverse and still developing models arereviewed and discussed in the light of what research inaccounting, infused with constructivist social theory, has arguedin later years.The reform ambitions can be categorized under two labels;panopticon and the market metaphore. Many of the well-knownproblems related to sophisticated management accounting seem toemerge also in the context of health care. Apart from those, wepropose that health care has some intrinsic characteristics thatcreate special problems. The social goals in terms of health,which motivate the entire system, cannot be measured in economicfigures and hence not used for cost-revenue purposes, which is thebase for much of management accounting. It is also problematic toapply the industrial logic of separation on medical staffs,patients, treatments and results, which intermingle in severalways in health care. Further, health care as a social field isconstituted by and through the medical profession and its praxis.Medical action and discourse are based on quite different forms ofcategorization, judgement and values compared to management ofproduction by economic figures.The merging of management accounting and medicine isconnected both to conceptual and moral problems. The politiciansand administrators pushing for administrative reforms are probablyfacing unintentional effects due to two factors.First, they overestimate management accounting as a means toeliminate or suppress micro-politics, opportunism and self-seekingguile. Second, they underestimate management accounting as aconstituting and transforming mechanism. They adopt a traditionalview that regards accounting as a neutral device, operating on aself-sufficient material world. In the long-run, the merging ofmanagement accounting and medicine can transform our conception ofhealth and health care in ways unpredictable today

Mötet ekonomi och medicin : konsekvenser av nya ekonomiska styrmodeller inom sjukvården

This paper discusses current administrative reforms in the Swedish Health Care System. More specifically, changes in cost accounting, principles for resource allocation and criteria for evaluation of results in health care. Diverse and still developing models are reviewed and discussed in the light of what research in accounting, infused with constructivist social theory, has argued in later years. The reform ambitions can be categorized under two labels; panopticon and the market metaphore. Many of the well-known problems related to sophisticated management accounting seem to emerge also in the context of health care. Apart from those, we propose that health care has some intrinsic characteristics that create special problems. The social goals in terms of health, which motivate the entire system, cannot be measured in economic figures and hence not used for cost-revenue purposes, which is the base for much of management accounting. It is also problematic to apply the industrial logic of separation on medical staffs, patients, treatments and results, which intermingle in several ways in health care. Further, health care as a social field is constituted by and through the medical profession and its praxis. Medical action and discourse are based on quite different forms of categorization, judgement and values compared to management of production by economic figures. The merging of management accounting and medicine is connected both to conceptual and moral problems. The politicians and administrators pushing for administrative reforms are probably facing unintentional effects due to two factors. First, they overestimate management accounting as a means to eliminate or suppress micro-politics, opportunism and self-seeking guile. Second, they underestimate management accounting as a constituting and transforming mechanism. They adopt a traditional view that regards accounting as a neutral device, operating on a self-sufficient material world. In the long-run, the merging of management accounting and medicine can transform our conception of health and health care in ways unpredictable today.

Change in organizations : a critique of the dominant assumptions of identity and determinacy

The instituted assumptions of identity and determinacy are elucidated regarding theirimplications for our understanding of the sources of constitution and change of social andorganizational action. Built upon these assumptions, mainstream organizational researchlocates these sources in exogenous environmental forces and ascribes to the significativeaspects of action and language a reflective-representational ontological status. We questionthese assumptions and their implications upon two premisses. First, that practical aspectsof action and perceived environmental constraints lack any intrinsic meaning, sincemeaning is ascribed to them by the significative aspects of action and language, mainly bythe instituted central imaginary significations of society or civilization. Second, that theselatter lack any inherent determination of meaning, for they constitute magmas of meaning.An alternative approach is outlined upon these premisses

Nya kontroll- och maktrelationer i sjukvården

Tredje vågen av New Public Management: Kvalitetsstyrning och professionell autonomi, FA