En beretning om forvaltningsrevisionens beretninger

This dissertation is about state performance auditing in Denmark – a practice that the National Audit Office of Denmark (NAOD) is mandated to undertake. My analysis of performance auditing takes as a starting point the fact that performance auditing is a kind of writing and that one immediate and obvious output of performance auditing consists of written reports. In a sense it could be argued that performance auditing is a particular kind of writing. However, not much research has paid attention to the question of how the writing of audit report is performed in concrete settings. What characterizes such processes? Does it follow certain rules? How are different actors involved? What kinds of effects follow from the writing and how, and to what extent, are the possible effects constrained by the particular kind of writing? The dividing line between the auditors as the writers, the auditee as the object of writing and the public as readers of the message conveyed by the report also seems to be questionable. In the dissertation, I show that in processes where it is difficult to determine in what sense a report is an output or an input and where these processes begin and end, the roles between writing and reading, active and passive may get blurred too

Merproduktion af målbarhed: Synlighed og nye ledelsesopgaver

Målinger af arbejde til ledelsesformål kan konstrueres på mangfoldige måder. Når vi taler om evalueringer, kvalitetsmålinger, produktivitetsmålinger, rankings og mange andre former for målinger, er det fælles for dem, at de ofte har til formål at kontrollere og vurdere de ansattes præstationer på arbejdet, samt at de baserer sig på en eller anden form for data og på specifi kke måleapparater. Forskningen om præstationsmålinger rummer mange interessante analyser af, hvordan den slags målinger konkret designes og anvendes af ledere, og hvordan målingerne påvirker organisationen og medarbejderne på intenderede, men i høj grad også på ikke- intenderede måder. Uforudsete og ofte uhensigtsmæssige konsekvenser af målinger er bredt beskrevet og diskuteret i den kritiske organisationsforskning, mens den mere præskriptive ledelseslitteratur til stadighed søger at fi nde mere effektive – og retfærdige – måder at måle på. I begge tilfælde handler det typisk om at rette blikket mod konkrete teknologier, der er designet med målinger for øje og på det grundlag frembringe analyser af disse teknologier og deres implikationer

Problemets anatomi – Fra ledelsesproblem til vidensproblem

Formålet med denne artikel er at bidrage til forståelsen af, hvordan praktiske problemer (herunder ledelsesproblemer) og vidensproblemer er forskellige og alligevel kan berige hinanden. Artiklen henvender sig til ledere, som skal lave en akademisk problemorienteret opgave i samfundsvidenskabeligt regi. Man benytter sig her ofte af problemorienteret projektarbejde, dvs at man strukturerer sine analyser ved hjælp af en problemformulering. Artiklen stiller – og besvarer – derfor spørgsmålet om, hvad et problem er. Endvidere argumenterer den for vigtigheden af at skelne mellem videns- og ledelsesproblemer

Or how the natural environment may qualify as a stakeholder in the firm’s business environment

In its general form, stakeholder theory posits an extension of the ecology. It claims that there are other stakes and interests than those posited by shareholder value theory (Freeman et al. 2004; Jensen and Sandström 2011), and some stakeholder theory proponents argue that the natural environment is also to be considered as a stakeholder (Driscoll and Starik 2004; Norton 2007). It is a positive claim – there are more stakes and interests – and a moral one – we should look towards more interests in order to complete the analysis. With this framing, stakeholder theory seeks to identify stakes and interests which may be difficult but in principle achievable; it also seeks to make analysis of organized activity such as (global) business into a concern with the relative power of stakes and interests. These concerns are highly relevant but they face the barrier that if stakes and interests are positively there, the analysis becomes static and will pay less attention to both the formation and to power-effects of stakes and interest

Fotografi som visuel metode i ernærings- og sundhedsfaglige studier

Denne artikel er en praktisk indføring i, hvad det vil sige at arbejde med fotografi som metode til indsamling af empiri. Artiklen introducerer en række fotografiske metoder, der kan anvendes i observations- og interviewstrategier. Gennem case-eksempler, med udgangspunkt i metoderne Participant Driven Photo Elicitation, Research Driven Photo Elicitation samt Kollaborativ Fotografisk Metode, sætter vi fokus på praktiske greb for studerende såvel praktikere, der selv vil i gang med studier inden for det ernæringsfaglige og sundhedsfaglige felt. Artiklen behandler, hvordan man skaber og håndterer fotografisk empiri i konkrete ernærings- og sundhedsrelaterede studier samt beskriver, hvad fotografisk empiri kan i sammenligning med andre empiriske metoder baseret på mundtligt og skriftligt materiale alene. Desuden gennemgås etiske og juridiske aspekter ved brug af fotografi i empiriske studier og til sidst beskrives en række fototekniske overvejelser, der kan kvalificere fotografiernes tekniske kvaliteter

Organizing space and time through relational human-animal boundary work: exclusion, invitation and disturbance

In this paper we examine the role that animals play within human organizational boundary work. In so doing, we challenge the latent anthropocentricism in many, if not most, theories of organization that locate animal agencies outside the boundary work that is said to constitute organizing. In developing this argument we draw together diverse strands of work mobilizing Actor-Network Theory that engage the entanglement of human/nonhuman agencies. In bringing this work together we suggest humans may organize, even manage, by conducting relational boundary work with animal agencies, spacings and timings. Our argument is empirically illustrated and theoretically developed across two cases of the spacings and timings of construction project organizations – an infrastructure project in the UK and a housing development in Scandinavia. Construction projects are well-known for their tightly managed linear timings and for producing the built spaces that separate humans and animals. Three concepts – Invitation, Exclusion and Disturbance – are offered to help apprehend how such organizings of space and time are themselves dependent upon entanglements between human and animal agencies. We conclude by suggesting that animals should not be negatively constituted as an ‘Other’ to human organizing, or indeed management, but rather acknowledged as sometimes constituting human capacities to organize, even managerially control, space and time

Building with wildlife: project geographies and cosmopolitics in infrastructure construction

Across many construction projects, and especially infrastructure projects, efforts to mitigate potential loss of biodiversity and habitat are significant concerns, and at times politically controversial. And yet, thus far, very little research has addressed the interplay of humans and animals within construction projects. Instead those interested in the politics and ethics of human-animal relations, or animal studies, have arguably focused far more on more stable and contained sites, whether organizations like zoos, farms or laboratories, or other places like homes and parks. These largely ethnographic studies inevitably perhaps downplay the unplanned, unexpected and highly politically and ethically charged, collision of hitherto rather separate human and animal geographies. Yet it is often within such colliding spaces, where animal geographies are unexpectedly found at the heart of human projects, that we formulate our respect and response to both animals and indeed other humans. We develop an examination of such encounters, with conceptual reference to actor-network theory, and documented empirically through case studies of two infrastructure projects; the findings of our research are relevant to both construction project management and future animal studies