Browsing Ph.D. theses (MPP/LPF) by Title

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Flertydig og emergerende ledelse i folkeskolen

Et aktør-netværksteoretisk ledelsesstudie af politiske evalueringsreformers betydning for ledelse i den danske folkeskole

Gylling Olesen, Kristian (Frederiksberg, 2014)

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Abstract:

Med en række evalueringsreformer har danske politikere siden sen-80´erne forsøgt at gøre op med lærernes autonome undervisning for at få lærere til gennem evalueringer at forbedre elevernes læring. I 90´erne blev der bl.a. introduceret frivillige kvalitetsprogrammer og teamarbejde, og i 00´erne fulgte nationale læringsmål, -test og skriftlige elevplaner. Mere indflydelse til skolelederen er blevet set som et politisk svar på, hvordan evalueringsreformerne kan blive gennemført ude i skolerne, så eleverne lærer mere. Samtidig har den evidensbaserede skoleledelsesforskning givet en række svar på, hvilke generelle ledelsespraktikker og succesfulde personlighedstræk hos skoleledere der kan fremme elevernes læring og faglige udbytte i folkeskolen. Ifølge denne ph.d.-afhandling er den politiske og evidensbaserede forståelse af skoleledelse for entydig. Afhandlingen argumenterer i stedet for, at skoleledelse ikke opstår entydigt eller klart, når politikerne introducerer nye evalueringsreformer i folkeskolen. Der er snarere tale om, at skoleledelse opstår forskelligt og med skiftende aktører – skoleledelse emergerer flertydigt. I lokale kontekster spiller en række forhold ind og får betydning for, hvem der leder hvem, hvordan, hvor og hvornår. Ud fra et toårigt studie i to folkeskoler på den københavnske vestegn og med brug af aktør-netværksteori undersøger afhandlingen, hvordan forskelligt praktisk udstyr og taktiske manøvrer ud fra lokale dagsordner oversætter de politiske evalueringsreformer ude i skolerne, og hvad disse oversættelser betyder for flertydig og emergerende ledelse. Skolerne, som i afhandlingen bliver kaldt ABC Skolen og Byskolen, er blevet undersøgt med interviews, fotos og logs samt observationer. Afhandlingen er en artikelafhandling, som består af tre videnskabelige artikler udarbejdet på engelsk og en dansk ramme, der introducerer afhandlingen, præsenterer baggrundsanalyser, reviewer dansk og international skoleledelseslitteratur, udvikler ledelsesanalytik og metodisk setup samt præsenterer analysestrategiske valg og foretager en samlende konklusion. Den teoretiske inspiration kommer primært fra aktør-netværksteori (Bruno Latour, Michel Callon og John Law). Samtidig inddrager afhandlingen Mats Alvesson og Andrew Spicers (2010) flertydighedscentrerede ledelsesanalytik samt postbureaukratisk ledelsesteori, teori om evaluering og læringsledelse samt teori om ledelse med social kapital.

URI:

http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8979

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From Disinterestedness to Engagement

Towards Relational Leadership In the Cultural Sector

Friis Møller, Søren (Frederiksberg, 2012)

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Abstract:

The thesis is an inquiry into how leadership is performed narratively in the cultural sector. Chapter 1 draws the cultural sector as a narrative landscape, and the reader is invited on a tour around this narrative landscape as seen through the eyes of some of the top guns in the cultural sector. Seen from this vantage, leadership in the cultural sector seems to be predominantly performed by relating narratives with reference to the metanarrative of the Enlightenment. The inquiry, however, draws on Lyotard (1984) to argue that such extralinguistic legitimization is in a crisis of legitimacy, wherefore the inquiry embarks on a problematization of the dominant understanding of leadership in the cultural sector with the activist aspiration of suggesting a postmoderning understanding of leadership in the cultural sector being performatively legitimized. Chapter 2 argues in favor of a relational, non-entitative understanding of narratives and it points to emplotment as a process of finding the best fit. This relational understanding of narratives allows the project to inquire into leadership performed narratively in all kinds of empirical settings, not confining itself to formal leadership contexts. Chapter 3 offers a genealogic approach to what the project has defined as the dominant narrative in the cultural sector, the narrative of art for art’s sake (the AFAS narrative), which the project argues function as an implicit standard. This includes notions of aesthetic autonomy such as suggested by Kant in 1790, artistic freedom and art for its own sake such as claimed by artists in the Romantic era, and the arm’s length principle as the ‘constitution of cultural policies’ in the post WW2 Western world. Chapter 4 provides an overview of alternative voices which have challenged the dominant narrative. These include post colonial studies, cultural entrepreneurial studies and consumer behavior studies which in various ways propose alternative ways to lead and support the cultural sector. Chapter 5 links the discussions in chapter 3 and chapter 4 to leadership studies, notably to discussions of leader-centered orientations versus leading relationally orientations. The chapter concludes by suggesting a new sensibility towards understanding leadership and meditates on how this might be achieved, paying attentions to the possibilities of overcoming the putative crisis of legitimacy the inquiry is placed in. Chapter 6 relates a case-study of Malmoe City Library which endeavors into a difficult, yet very promising process of reformulating what a library may become in a contemporary context. This process challenges the dominant narrative and thus the current understanding of what a library should be, and this deviation from the dominant narrative challenges leadership. Chapter 7 assembles three different approaches to challenges the dominant narrative and to make new interpretive resources available to the understanding of leadership in the cultural sector. First, givrum.nu, a social movement working with arts, second, Mogens Holm, a leader in the cultural sector in a transition phase, and third, Copenhagen Phil, a classical symphony orchestra striving to avoid becoming a parallel society phenomenon. These case studies are conducted as written interviews with the cases, in an attempted un-edited form to also introduce relational processes informed by a power with relation to my own research project. Chapter 8 reflects on the case-studies in chapter 6 and chapter 7 in light of the two approaches to leadership discussed in chapter 5. It does so by linking my study to relational leadership theory in order to see how this theoretical field might inform my inquiry and how my inquiry might inform this field. It equally offers five possible reconstructions of the cases before concluding the research project by summing up contributions to the empirical field and the research fields, as well as by pointing to areas which could be further developed in future research. In line with the aspirations of the relational constructionist framework of the project, the inquiry does not offer a conclusion. Instead it encourages further reconstructions, thus submitting itself to the performative legitimization it argues in favor of.

URI:

http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8590

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Global Mindset as Managerial Meta-competence and Organizational Capability

Boundary-crossing Leadership Cooperation in the MNC The Case of ‘Group Mindset’ in Solar A/S

Nielsen, Rikke Kristine (Frederiksberg, 2014)

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Abstract:

This dissertation deals with global mindset leadership understood as border- and boundary-crossing leadership within the multinational corporation by exploring the concept of global mindset as both an individual managerial meta-competence, as well as a strategic organizational capability. The research project presented explores the practical and theoretical avenues for working with global mindset as a strategic lever and method of securing business strategy executional agility, which is explored in the context of a single-case study organization, Solar - an internationalizing medium-sized MNC seeking to work in practice with global mindset leadership development and enactment as a strategy execution facilitator. Internationalizing corporations often experience the liability of foreignness when moving into new markets, and in effect suffer a globalization penalty vis-à-vis local competition in different markets. At the same time, they are pushed to consider the potential non-transferability of domestic competitive advantages and business models, when moving into new territory and may have to make adjustments to cater to different customer preferences and other local specificities in a variety of markets simultaneously. Further, international and global collaboration is more complex than local collaboration and as a consequence, corporations need to be better at collaborating in order to receive the same effect compared to domestic operations alone. This is due to the fact that culturally and strategically employees and managers at all hierarchical levels understand each other less, while language barriers may at the same time place a strain on communication and collaboration. Transaction costs rise as corporations move from high-context collaboration with low psychic distance in a domestic setting or between relatively similar groupings, where many things are shared and taken for granted and thus need not be explicated to a low-context communication setting where little or no common ground can be taken for granted. This dissertation argues the case that leadership with a global mindset is relevant for companies and organizations that make strategic use of global mindset as a driver for global business strategy. As such global mindset is seen as strategic global mindset in that the rationale for developing global mindset is as a facilitator of business strategy. The context of the individual company is an indicator for what global mindset means in the particular company, and for who can benefit from it. Global mindset is not seen as generic, but highly contextual when looking at the practical implementation of the concept empirically. The aim of working with global mindset, then, is the optimization of global mindset in relation to the context, the managerial role and the business strategy, not an end in itself.

URI:

http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8974

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In Search of Entrepreneurial Learning

Towards a Relational Perspective on Incubating Practices

Henriques, Christine Thalsgård (Frederiksberg, 2016)

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Abstract:

The world wants more entrepreneurs so badly, that it has become a major priority of governments all over the world trying to produce them. Based on Industrial PhD collaboration between the Danish Science Park, Symbion A/S and Copenhagen Business School, this dissertation presents a unique opportunity to study how the interactions between technology-based entrepreneurs and an Accelerator programme may lead to increased entrepreneurial capacity, learning and growth. The Industrial PhD setting offers privileged access to entrepreneurs, advisors, incubator management and investors, and we get to listen to stories seldom told in this field. As follows, the write-up of the ethnographic fieldwork is a narrative multi-voiced analysis in search of entrepreneurial learning in an incubator context. The phenomenon of business incubation – in this dissertation referred to as incubating activities - is originally intended as a forum that is shielded off from the everydayness of things, with the purpose of adding resources and removing barriers to venture creation. The idea is that entrepreneuring actors will be offered complementary resources and forced to spend time on planning and strategies in a helicopter perspective, which in the end will benefit the process and make venture success more likely. Policy makers together with researchers of entrepreneurship policy and incubation, to a large degree assume that entrepreneurial actors somehow lack skills and resources and cannot easily acquire these themselves, and furthermore that it is possible to affect the resources, behaviour and skills of entrepreneurs. It has nevertheless been shown that enhancing entrepreneurial growth from support activities is not as easy, even if the intentions are good and the resources invested considerable (Blackburn and Schaper 2012, Bruneel et al. 2012, Mason and Brown 2013). It is also taken for granted that entrepreneurs are open to learning and foreign intervention (help and support). This study shows that this is not always the case. Hence, the dissertation explores a highly political and delicate matter touching upon the legitimacy of business incubation.

URI:

http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9305

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Institutions and Legitimations in Finance for the Arts

Lunde Jørgensen, Ida (Frederiksberg, 2016)

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Abstract:

The thesis contributes to a more nuanced understanding of art support by investigating the underlying legitimations and institutional logics of two of the most significant foundations supporting visual art, in Denmark, the private New Carlsberg Foundation and public Danish Arts Foundation. Drawing on insights from neo-institutional and French convention theory, the thesis makes its central contributions within the fields of neo-institutional theory, cultural policy and philanthropy studies. The first paper shows the suitability of neo-institutional theory, particularly the theories of isomorphism, cultural and institutional entrepreneurship, institutional logics, and rhetorical work to address a number of key debates in cultural policy pertaining to the evaluation of aesthetic performance, the justification of investment in the arts and how ideas and meanings become taken for granted in the cultural policy field. In addition, the first paper theorizes the wider field of cultural policy, suggesting twelve institutional arenas where cultural policy is unfolded, of which the thesis focuses on public and private foundations. In the second paper, the thesis focuses on uncovering the key legitimations of art support in the New Carlsberg Foundation and the Danish Arts Foundation at critical points in time, drawing on and contributing to the literature on institutional logics and convention theory. Specifically, the thesis shows the importance of nine particular logics of legitimation underlying art support; the industrial, market, inspired, family, renown, civic, projective, emotional and temporal. Most central to the foundations’ operation are the professional (industrial), artistic (inspired) and civic logics. The thesis shows that the invocations of these logics are highly reflective upon wider societal institutions, prevailing institutional logics, the nature of the critical moment and the organisations’ practices and purpose. In the third paper the thesis hones in on the temporal logic, and draws attention to the micro-level use of this logic, which suggests that logics are invoked in characteristic ways. The third paper illuminates five distinctive uses of the past in the New Carlsberg Foundation, pertaining to the charter, the founding family, place, the moment and anecdotes and importantly shows that while some of these uses are reflected and instrumental, others are institutionalised and show propensity towards institutional reification.

URI:

http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9337

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Kontraktledelse

Relasjonen mellom virksomhetsledelse og kontraktshåndtering, belyst via fire norske virksomheter

Similä, Jan Ole (Frederiksberg, 2010)

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Abstract:

Why do we focus on the internal arrangements of the contractual process from a leadership perspective? Through empirical research where we have asked questions about the internal organizational arrangements, what kind of knowledge the organization need, and how institutional arrangements affect the contract process, we have tried to answer the main research question. We have also carried with us a question of if the organization's attachment to the public or private sector affects the arrangements. I have conducted a comparative case study where data has been generated from two public sector organizations, The National Road Administration, Helsebygg Midt-Norge, one private sector organization, Siemens, and one hybrid organization, NTE. Data was primarily generated from the governance system of the different organizations, and informant interviews. The analysis was carried out by two steps; first an empirical analysis, then a theoretical analysis, based on contractual theory, of the empirical findings. The empirical analysis shows that the organizations share the same thoughts on how to organize the contractual work; the division between the line and the project organization, the distribution of decision-making authority, and the institutionalization of a specific governance system. The organizational processes are formalized, and the governance system gives the clear recommendation on desired actions. The empirical data gives a clear understanding that the contract process is dominated by one profession — the engineers. Regarding the question on knowledge, I found the organizations to be interested foremost on problem solving competencies (engineering competencies). Other competencies, for example economic or legal competencies, where viewed as support competencies. We also found that personal skills in handling the complex and difficult processes and attitude toward ethics seemed to be of importance. On the question on how institutional elements in the organizational environment affected the contract process, we found that the overall interest of the organizations was stability and predictability. We also found that the market mechanisms cause the organizations some worry. In the end, the empirical findings did not give us any strong reasons to differentiate between public sector organizations and private sector organizations in how to deal with contractual work processes. The theoretical analysis has been carried out within classical and relational contract theory. The analysis shows that the empirical findings, to a great extend, can be explained through classical contract theory. It also gives us some ideas on what areas of the theory, especially relational contract theory that should be improved. Regarding the main research question, the conclusions indicate a need to establish a comprehensive approach to the contract process, to ensure a good balance between different partial processes. There also seem to be necessary to work on improvements on contract theory to increase the applicability of the theory, especially the relational contract theory.

URI:

http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8011

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“Let’s Go Outside”

The Value of Co-Creation

Lopdrup-Hjorth, Thomas (Frederiksberg, 2013)

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Abstract:

Co-creation has emerged today as a concept which thinkers across otherwise largely opposed traditions have come to embrace. This dissertation substantiates how the concept of co-creation, from proponents of Strategic Management Thought to thinkers coming out of Autonomist Marxism and Critical Management Studies, appears as designating either: (1) a new win-win mode of value creation where businesses co-create value with various sorts of outsiders; (2) a new social, commons-based value creation autonomous from business interests; or (3) a mode of value creation intimately intertwined with new modes of management capable of harnessing and exploiting productive capacities outside established organizations. Behind these contemporary differences, the dissertation discloses a more encompassing history. Through this, the emergence of a widely shared co-creation vocabulary is brought forth. While this vocabulary is used persistently to express a whole new mode of value creation, in whatever form, the dissertation argues that the co-creation vocabulary actually undermines the very possibility of speaking about value creation in a consistent manner. At the same time, however, it is not a vocabulary which can just be dispensed with, since its emergence is intimately intertwined with an accelerated emphatic injunction; an injunction advanced by a reformulated managementality that throughout the twentieth century has tempted management ‘to go outside’. Accounting for this history, the dissertation claims that a complex experience has been born, an experience of the outside. Through this experience, the outside has emerged not merely as a source of value creation and an object of management; it has also emerged as an obligation that has to be met, an obligation which is forcefully expressed today through the co-creation vocabulary. In order to inquire into contemporary accounts of co-creation, as well as the historical trajectories through which this phenomenon has come to emerge, the dissertation develops what is designated as the historical problematization analysis, inspired by and reconstructed from the very late work of Michel Foucault. By utilizing this mode of analysis, it becomes possible to bring together otherwise separate accounts of co-creation on the same level of analysis, to inquire into central historical conditions of possibility through which the phenomenon of cocreation has come to emerge and to take stock of what difference the arrival of cocreation introduces in relation to yesterday.

URI:

http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8701

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Making Ensemble Possible

How special groups organize for collaborative creativity in conditions of spatial variability and distance

O’Donnell, Shannon (Frederiksberg, 2013)

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Abstract:

The enormous challenges and opportunities impacting the world community today increasingly require people to practice collaborative innovation effectively both in person and across geographic boundaries. Simultaneously, advances in technology such as social networking tools, digital 3-D representations, virtual worlds, and open source practices are inspiring generations of users to develop new kinds of adaptive collaborative networks and capabilities. But when people work across organizational and geographic boundaries, new challenges arise that make it difficult for groups to achieve the levels of excellence they are capable of achieving together in close proximity. Practitioners need help determining how best to perform collaborative creativity given unique and dynamic work conditions. Meanwhile, as new forms of creative group work emerge at an accelerating pace, researchers struggle to keep up with and develop nuanced understanding of the variations in collaborative processes we increasingly see performed. With this PhD research, I aim to increase our understanding of a particular, specialized form of collaborative creativity called “ensembling.” I investigate this phenomenon by studying it in diverse—including “stretched”—conditions. By stretched, I mean that, literally, groups are stretched apart in space as membership size and spatial distance between members increase and work configurations vary. The groups I study are those both capable of achieving and driven to achieve a peak-performance state of ensemble, and do so via the enactment of an interdependent set of methods that call ensemble into being, a process I call ensembling. In their ideal form, these work methods support the emergence of ensemble and result in the creation of aesthetically coherent and novel outcomes that are particularly responsive to the contexts in which they are made. To investigate the phenomenon of ensemble, I first develop a construct of ensemble based on informant descriptions, and use theory and data to develop a detailed description of how ensembling is performed in natural conditions (i.e., in close physical proximity). Then I look at an extreme example in which a set of expert groups’ ability to ensemble was put under stress by an unprecedented work task. In 2009, multiple string quartets (many considered world class) organized to perform a new musical composition. The composition challenged four quartets at a time to perform as an integrated ensemble while sitting apart, in various configurations, and at spatial distances of up to 70 feet. To help them address the difficulties produced by increased membership and distance, the musicians integrated a simple coordinating technology into their process. To learn how participants made ensemble possible given these new conditions, I engaged multiple qualitative methods for generating data and multiple perspectives for interpretation. I first considered their process as an iterative approach to exploring strategies for addressing constraints, in order to show how the methods of ensembling interacted with conditions of increased group size, increased spatial distance and configurational variability, and to elicit their evolving beliefs about what methods made ensemble more likely to occur given these conditions. Then I performed an alternative interpretation, disrupting this logic and exploring the ways in which participants used methods of ensembling—particularly openness to uncertainty and reconceiving—to create unanticipated potentialities for ensemble to emerge despite constraints. I show how they worked with a coordinating technology called a “click-track” in important new ways that went beyond “merely” achieving synchronous coordination to increasing their autonomy, relatedness, and ability to demonstrate artistic virtuosity, enabling them to engage equally in leadership and participation and to play. Finally, performing a comparative analysis across sub-units of the case, including examples of breakdown in the process, I generated additional insights into what conditions, beliefs, methods and behaviors enable or inhibit processes of ensembling. Integrating learning from analysis and interpretation, I propose a new range of conditions in which ensembling is possible, and a revised and expanded description of the methods by which groups ensemble. Conditions can expand to include larger groups with limited-tenure consisting of enduring-tenure sub-groups, multiple task interdependencies at group and sub-group levels, balanced tenure at sub-group level, a balance between proximity and distance, opportunities to work with and without technological mediation, and self-determined configuration variability. I show that the emergence of ensemble depends on, for instance, a shared purpose to ensemble, and methods such as a “struggle” phase, episodes of close physical proximity, collective leadership, “dueting” in different configurations, reconceiving constraints, living with the paradox of one-and-four, opening the process to uncertainty and to the emergence of consent, and subliminal technology engagement. Ultimately, these groups demonstrated an increasing ability to adapt to new conditions faster and more creatively, making new configurations possible, and suggesting ways in which ensemble might be performed in other kinds of group settings. I summarize findings in the form of a “framework of ensembling” that is meant to serve as a tool to further enrich our yet nascent understanding of this complex phenomenon and to aid in the exploration of ensembling in contexts outside the usual places we expect it to occur.

URI:

http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8653

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Management consulting in action

Value creation and ambiguity in client-consultant relations

Smith, Irene Skovgaard (København, 2008)

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Abstract:

Et godt og effektivt samarbejde mellem kunde og konsulent fremhæves generelt som en afgørende betingelse for at få succes med brug af eksterne konsulenter. Dansk Industri har sammen med Dansk Management Råd (DMR) og Copenhagen Business School (CBS) etableret et udviklingsprojekt, der under overskriften 'Vækst i Vidensamfundet' har til formål at udvikle det afgørende samarbejde mellem kundevirksomheder og konsulentvirksomheder. Nærværende ErhvervsPh.d.-afhandling er en del af dette udviklingsprojekt og sætter fokus på, hvad der sker i kunde-konsulent samspillet i konteksten af konsulentopgaver, hvor det handler om at implementere forandring. På sådanne forandringsprojekter forventes konsulenterne at bidrage med viden, værktøjer og løsninger samtidig med, at de fungerer som forandringsagenter i kundeorganisationen og involverer og arbejder med ledere og medarbejdere på forskellige niveauer. Det gør kunde-konsulent samspillet til en kompleks størrelse, der ikke bare handler om den personlige relation og godt samarbejde mellem konsulent og opdragsgiver/projektsponsor. Når vi har at gøre med ydelser, hvor konsulenterne går i clinch med organisationen for at implementere forandring, må kunde-konsulent relationer ses i et bredere perspektiv end fokus på personlige relationer mellem enkeltindivider tillader. Kunden er en organisation; en kompleks social konstellation af mennesker med forskellige positioner og interesser. Det afgørende er, hvilken rolle konsulenterne får, når de bevæger sig ind i denne sociale sammenhæng, og hvilke muligheder og begrænsninger det indebærer for at være med til at skabe forandring som ekstern part i processen. Afhandlingen stiller skarpt på disse sociale aspekter af samspillet mellem konsulenter og interne aktører i konteksten af kundeorganisation. Forskningen, der ligger til grund for afhandlingen, er udført som antropologisk feltarbejde på to forandringsprojekter; den ene i en industrivirksomhed og det andet på et hospital. Dette indebar både observation af konkrete situationer, hvor konsulenter og interne aktører arbejdede sammen, og efterfølgende interviews med både konsulenter og de relevante ledere og medarbejdere om deres oplevelse af samspillet.

URI:

http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7127

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Modstandens Politik

Kampagnestyring i Velfærdsstaten: En diskussion af trafikkampagners styringspotentiale

Speiermann, Sabrina (Frederiksberg, 2010)

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URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8199

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The Organization(s) of Well-being and Productivity

(Re)assembling work in the Danish Post

Mogensen, Mette (Frederiksberg, 2012)

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Abstract:

The well-being of employees is currently a central matter of concern both in public and private companies. If employees do not feel well, in the last instance they might experience a burn out or fall ill from stress and thus add to the highly costly yet ever growing number filling up the statistics of this modern epidemic. In short, well-being is key to productivity. For sure this is not a new story, but at the core of organization and management theory: how to best organize the human resources of production balancing off the need for increased productivity and the preservation of physical and mental resources of the worker? In contrast to classic principles such as Taylor’s scientific management, it seems today generally agreed that well-being thrives when work is organized by principles of ‘flexibility’, ‘learning’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘creativity’. However, at the same time workplaces and organizations are under an enormous pressure towards standardization and optimization. This dissertation investigates empirically competing or intersecting ways of organizing well-being and productivity, with an analytic outset in the work task, departing from historically generated, however still prevalent, dichotomies and normativities of standardization and flexibility respectively. The empirical case of the dissertation is the organization of postal work in a big and formerly publicly run distribution company in Denmark. Based on an ethnographic field work and the employment of an auto-photographic method, the dissertation investigates how the current and simultaneous efforts of standardization and flexibility configure the well-being(s) and productivities of postal work. The theoretical framework is primarily informed by Actor Network Theory and the dissertation attend to a detailed investigation of how well-being and productivity are enacted in the daily work practices and the constant shifting/delegation going on between the inscribed postal worker of work tools, standard procedures and management programs on the one side and the routinized bodies of the postal workers on the other. Most of the time this results in ‘working compatibilities’ silently enacting bodies-with-standards that are both productive and well. At other times, however, controversy and conflicts arise, pointing to the fact that the presence of multiple modes of organizing are not always productive. The empirical chapters departs from selected auto-photographs that prompt different unfoldings of the way postal work is organized – or sought organized – and the way well-being and productivity arise as effects of these organizations. In this unfolding the analysis proceed on a tension between phenomenological and actor-network theoretical readings of empirical material creating a patchwork-like assemblage of postal work. This involves a stitching together of highly mundane, corporeal practices and material such as bicycles and kickstands, personal experiences, the researcher’s interpretations, the technical scripts of electric bikes, the norms of postal workers, the discourse of management and the political-economic developments of European postal markets. Through the empirical chapters, the dissertation depicts postal work not as a story of standardization versus flexibility, but as a constant ‘juggling’ and balancing act between them. This is not a story of humanization or the opposite, it is both at once. It is not a story of stabilization or perpetual change, it is both at once. It is a story of the hanging-togetherness of an organization that displays multiple versions of well-being and productivity as well as multiple controversies as a result of this. Depending on the stakes one has in this complex organizational set-up, whether one is the postal worker, the local manager, the HR consultant or perhaps the customer, preferences will differ, and indeed this is an important discussion. What is the better way to organize postal work? The analysis presented in the dissertation will not deliver the answer to this, but hopefully make the discussion a more qualified one, by displacing old truths. Having as point of departure and final emphasis a heuristics of the work task, the thesis aims to contribute to a specification of organization theory, HRM and work environment theorizing, which otherwise tend to have lost its primary object: work.

URI:

http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8589

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