Hidden Attractions of Administration
This book argues that the expansion of administrative activities in todays working life is driven not only by pressure from above, but also from below. The authors examine the inner dynamics of people-processing organizationsthose formally working for clients, patients, or studentsto 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 todays 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 todays 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 an Eigendynamik: 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.
Malin kerstrm is a professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology, Lund University, Sweden.
Katarina Jacobsson is a professor of social work in the School of Social Work, Lund University, Sweden.
Erika Andersson Cederholm is an associate professor in the Department of Service Management and Service Studies, Lund University, Sweden.
David Wsterfors is a professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology, Lund University, Sweden.
Routledge Studies in the Sociology of Work, Professions, and Organizations
This series presents the latest sociological and social scientific research on professions, work and organizations, welcoming studies of careers, professional motivations, organizational change, entrepreneurship, workplace issues, working lives and identities, labor relations, and the transformation of work in a changing economy.
Titles in this series:
Identity, Motivation, and Memory
The Role of History in the British and German Forces
Sarah Katharina Kayss
Working Lives and in-House Outsourcing
Chewed-Up by Two Masters
Jacqueline M. Zalewski
The Construction Precariat
Dependence, Domination, and Labor in Dhaka
Selim Reza
Hidden Attractions of Administration
The Peculiar Appeal of Meetings and Documents
Malin kerstrm, Katarina Jacobsson, Erika Andersson Cederholm, and David Wsterfors
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-in-the-Sociology-of-Work-Professions-and-Organisations/book-series/RSSWPO
Hidden Attractions of Administration
The Peculiar Appeal of Meetings and Documents
Malin kerstrm, Katarina Jacobsson, Erika Andersson Cederholm, and David Wsterfors
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2021 Malin kerstrm, Katarina Jacobsson, Erika Andersson Cederholm, and David Wsterfors
The right of Malin kerstrm, Katarina Jacobsson, Erika Andersson Cederholm, and David Wsterfors to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-0-367-62227-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-62226-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-10843-6 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003108436
Typeset in Garamond
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Eigendynamik
The administration society
Seductive gatherings
Sneaky work and aways
A spark of magic
Beauty and boost
Spirals of meetings and documents
Dramatizing administrative skills
Muddy transparency
The devotion to teaching
Magic, emotions, and morality
Appendix
References
Index
We want to thank the following persons for valuable comments, suggestions, and inspiration during our work with this book: Goran Basic, Lisa Carlstedt, Lisa Flower, Teres Hjrpe, Maggie Kusenbach, Christina McKnight, Elizabeth Martinell Barfoed, Susie Scott, Helen Schwartzman, Ann-Mari Sellerberg, Joakim Thelander, and Sophia Yakhlef. We also want to thank the very encouraging reviewer of a sample of this manuscript, as well as the editor at SF Edit who made an exceptionally careful reading of our text. The Swedish Research Council has financed the project that made this book possible (project nr. 2016-02901).
It might seem that this is a critical book about the administration society and its contemporary expansion, and in a way that is right. It is easy to get appalledthere is something quite provocative in peoples engagement in paperwork and meetings at the expense of proper work, especially when there is a client somewhere in the organization, waiting for some attention.
Still we have turned this and other emotions into a topic rather than a motive for our writing (since field members may very well feel the same) and instead subsumed our efforts to something else: wonder. The book is written out of our amazement of the expanding administration. These relentless efforts to document more and more, and to call for more and more meetings, how do people go about making them accountable and attractive?
In Osebol, a prize-winning collection of poems written by Marit Kapla (2019) based on interviews with villagers, a whole community is portrayed, situated in Vrmland, a province in West-central Sweden. They talk about their life, their background, their mundane feelings, and their surroundings. It is surprisingand yet logicalthat an increased demand to administer have found its way also to this place and text, including the sighing and wonder.
