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- Borell, Anton, 1991-
(author)
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In Between Competing Ideals : On the Relationships among Accounting, NPM, and Welfare
- 2021
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- We know that public organizations today are expected to manage activities on multiple, and somewhat incongruent ideals. Since the development of the New Public Management (NPM) wave, public organizations have been increasingly subject to governance by markets, economic frugality and outputs for the purpose of improving efficiency. At the same time, they are also required to manage their daily work according to the ideals of needs, equity and professional expertise, which have traditionally been foundational to the realization of a welfarian agenda. Together, these requirements make up dual expectations of public organizations as well as the accounting technologies used to manage them: a form of paradoxical management that seeks to measure, evaluate and document both efficiency and welfare. But how do actors realize these plural ideals in practice? And what is the role of accounting in this? These are some of the aspects and problems with control that lie at the very heart of this dissertation.Based on 41 interviews and 28 observations in a Swedish school context, this dissertation shows how the paradoxical expectations become manifest in the design and use of accounting technologies. On the one hand, it shows how school actors attempt to integrate welfare and NPM in practice by relying on accounting technologies, which results in hybrid outcomes. On the other hand, the dissertation also shows the fragility of such a style of governance, which continuously leads to failures and breakdowns that actors have to readdress as a consequence of attempting to achieve competing ideals by relying on accounting.By leaning on governmentality as a metatheoretical framework, this dissertation contributes to some new understandings of control in public sector contexts. First, in contrast to the literature on colonization, which suggests that the expansive use of accounting is a direct threat to welfarian ideals, this dissertation shows that accounting can equally serve as a means for welfarian ideals to eclipse NPM. Second, in contrast to the stream of separation that treats the loose or minimal use of accounting as a mechanism for sealing off welfare from NPM-led intrusions, the dissertation shows that even a marginal or loose application of accounting can in fact be conceived as a threat to welfarian ideals. Third, this dissertation also provides additional understanding in relation to the hybridity approach, not only by illuminating how NPM and welfare were brought together through various hybrids, but also by showing how these hybrids were facilitated by accounting technologies, whose functions served to make integration a practically viable outcome amenable to both breakdowns and reintegration. Overall, the dissertation thus contributes to current knowledge on public sector governance in general, and more specifically about the relationships among accounting, NPM, and welfare, in terms of their entanglement, disentanglement, interdependencies, and modes of reproduction in public sector life, a gap also echoed by recent calls in research.
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| 2. |
- Borell, Anton, 1991-, et al.
(author)
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Transforming the management/profession divide : The use of the red–green matrix in Swedish schools
- 2022
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In: Management and Information Technology after Digital Transformation. - London and New York : Routledge. - 9780367612764 - 9780367628789 - 9781003111245 ; , s. 228-237
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The development of digital tools has provided new and easier means for organisational collaboration and communication. These new technologies potentially can bridge across organisational boundaries, enabling new forms of coordination between functions with different interests. In schools, traditionally organisations characterised by a strong divide between managerial and professional interests, technologies could break down this division by bridging between these conflicting views. Based on a study of a technology introduced in three Swedish schools, which the authors refer to as the red–green (RG) matrix, they examine the potential for technology to transform the management–professional divide. The chapter shows that despite its managerial and professional aims, the RG matrix reinforced the boundaries rather than reducing those boundaries. It certainly transformed the professional–management boundary but in unintended ways.
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| 3. |
- Börjeson, Love, et al.
(author)
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Accomplish change or causing hesitance – Developing practices in professional service firms
- 2017
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In: Scandinavian Journal of Management. - : Elsevier BV. - 0956-5221 .- 1873-3387. ; 33:3, s. 185-194
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The scholarly proclaimed truce between professionals and managers in professional service firms (PSFs) is presently being threatened by changes in the business environment, calling for coordination superordinate to the single professions. The issue of managing professionals in PSFs consequently needs to be re-addressed. We do so by using correspondence analysis to explore the interrelatedness between change initiatives and responses to these changes, in an interview-based case study. Our results suggests that managers can successfully change management related practices without particular consideration of the professionals in the firm, but also that professionals can successfully change professional practices in an unassuming and “practice-like” fashion: with actions rather than with words. Managers who wish to change professional practices, however, need to negotiate the content, scope and purpose of the change initiative with the professionals in the firm.
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| 4. |
- Börjeson, Love, 1973-
(author)
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Förtroendets Organiseringsmetod : samarbete, svek och dilemman
- 2011
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Firms tend to engage in interorganizational relationships (IORs) to an increasingly large extent. IORs are however problematic. On one hand, they entail expectations of continued possibilities. On the other hand, they entail expectations of complete explicitness – business partners simply expect intentions to be transparent and fixed. Co-workers in IORs manage these expectations with trust: in the context of IORs, trust is both a promise of continued possibilities and explicitness. Continued possibilities require changeable intentions however, making explicitness hard to maintain. The given promise is consequently very hard to keep, and the result is accusations of betrayal. The management method of trust is comprised by dilemmas originating from a complex interplay between strong ideas about what to (and not to) do and the dynamics of IORs. This could be described as an interplay between ideology, cooperative situations and dilemmas of practice. Ideology is investigated using corpus linguistics and functional grammar applied on concordances extracted from academic articles about Trust and the contrasting terms Control and Betrayal. Cooperative situations are investigated using correspondence analysis applied on an indexed interview material. Underlying interviews concern IORs, and informants come from a broad sample reflecting different types of firms, industries and professions. Dilemmas of practice, finally, are represented by in-depth interviews with individuals whom possess rich experience of IORs. The interviews are transcribed in detail and analyzed using functional grammar. Results show that IORs are profoundly dilemmatic and that co-workers use trust as a mean to bridge the dilemmas of IORs. Result also reveals that dilemmas of IORs have an ambiguous quality; dilemmas are not just a problem that needs to be handled, but to an equal extent a resource that can be used for deliberation and decision. In the management method of trust, dilemmas are as inevitable as they are indispensable.
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| 5. |
- Choi, Soki, et al.
(author)
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Managing clinical integration : a comparative study in a merged university hospital
- 2012
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In: Journal of Health Organization & Management. - : Emerald. - 1477-7266 .- 1758-7247. ; 26:4, s. 486-507
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Purpose - This paper explores critical factors that may obstruct or advance integration efforts initiated by the clinical management following a hospital merger. The aim is to increase our understanding of why clinical integration succeeds or fails.Design/methodology/approach - We compare two cases of integration efforts following the Karolinska University Hospital merger in Sweden. Each case represents two merged departments of the same specialty from each hospital site. We conducted 53 interviews with individuals representing various staff categories and collected documents to check data consistency.Findings - The study identifies three critical factors that seem to be instrumental for the process and outcome of integration efforts – clinical management’s 1) interpretation of the mandate, 2) design of the management constellation and 3) approach to integration. Obstructive factors are: a sole focus on the formal assignment from the top; individual leadership; and the use of a classic, planned, top-down management approach. Supportive factors are: paying attention to multiple stakeholders; shared leadership; and the use of an emergent, bottom-up management approach within planned boundaries. These findings are basically consistent with the literature’s prescriptions for managing professional organisations.Practical implications - Managers need to understand that public healthcare organisations are based on multiple logics that need to be handled in a balanced way if clinical integration is to be achieved – especially the tension between managerialism and professionalism.Originality/value - By focusing on the merger consequences for clinical units, this paper addresses an important gap in the healthcare merger literature.
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| 9. |
- Ejenäs, Markus, et al.
(author)
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Fusion eller härdsmälta? : Om kompetenssynergier
- 2002
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In: Scener ur ett företag: organiseringsteori för kunskapssamhället. - Stockholm, Sweden : Ekonomiska forskningsinstitutet vid Handelshögskolan i Stockholm (EFI). - 1650-4054. - 9144026773 - 9789144057637 - 9789144026770 - 9144057636 ; , s. 223-242
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Book chapter (other academic/artistic)
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