The synergies and trade-offs between the various dimensions of sustainable development are attracting a rising scholarly attention. Departing from the scholarly debate, this article focuses on internal relationships within social sustainability. Our key claim is that it is difficult to strengthen substantive social sustainability goals unless there are key elements of social sustainability contained in the very procedures intended to work toward sustainability. Our analysis, informed by an organizing perspective, is based on a set of case studies on multi-stakeholder transnational sustainability projects (sustainability standards). This article explores six challenges related to the achievement of such procedures that can facilitate substantive social sustainability. Three of these concern the formulation of standards and policies, and three the implementation of standards and policies. To achieve substantive social sustainability procedures must be set in motion with abilities to take hold of people's concerns, frames, resources, as well as existing relevant institutions and infrastructures.
The difficulties nation states face when attempting to use traditional legal means to cope with transnational phenom-ena such as environmental degradation, international labor conditions, and global trade have created an opportunity for the emergence of new types of regulations. These rules are often issued by organizations that produce voluntary measures such as standards and action plans to influence the behavior of individuals and institutions. These are in many cases meta-organizations that have other organizations rather than individuals as members. They are important links in the process of creating and diffusing dominant definitions in the “ideoscape” of influential policy concepts such as sustainable development. This article explores how two meta-organizations, Fairtrade International (FLO) and Organic Forum, shape the concepts of fair trade and organic food by providing ideas and content to the ideoscape of sustainable development. We argue that this process takes place by governance through bureaucratization in which fair trade and organic food become formalized, precisely defined, and made visible. This in turn determines how—or even if—the social dimension of sustainability can be made into policy. Furthermore, we find explanations in these processes as to why the social dimension of sustainability tends to be the most underdeveloped. We conclude that bureaucratization is also a form of politics, although not one that is as easily recognizable as an open power struggle.
In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, people who had never before had cause to worry about losing their jobs entered the ranks of the unemployed for the first time. In Sweden, the welfare state has been radically challenged and mass unemployment has become a reality in what used to be viewed as a model case for a full employment society. With an emphasis on Sweden in the context of transnational regulatory change, Makeshift Workin a Changing Labour Market discusses how the market mediates employment and moves on to explore the ways in which employees adjust to a new labour market. Focusing on the legibility,measurability and responsibility of jobseekers, the expert contributors of this book bring together an analysis of activation policy andnew ways of organizing the mediation of work, with implications for the individual jobseeker. Students and researchers of labour market policy, the organization of markets and work and society both in Sweden and abroad will find this book to be of interest. Policy-makers will find the empirical examples of policy processes among employees an extremely useful and insightful tool.
The paper accounts for the early implementation of Lean in two Swedish public sector organisations justifying Lean as a remedy for the negative consequences of New Public Management (NPM). But is Lean radically different, or rather yet another NPM reform? We use a social constructivist approach and focus on the role of language in influencing employees’ minds and subjective perceptions, and thereby mobilising new patterns of governance. The concept of ‘language work’, comprising three organisational levels, is suggested for analysing the meaning and consequences of the Lean efforts studied. The analysis reveals that the first level of Lean language work largely mirrors typical NPM ideals, including entrepreneurship, empowerment and customer orientation. In contrast, there are more salient differences at the second level about labels used for organisational classifications having both empowering and disempowering effects on categorised people. At the third level of analysis targeting the day-to-day practice, we see a return of NPM performance measurement–oriented practices and their (often-unintended) consequences discussed in research on NPM reforms, although they surface in somewhat new ways, including communicative symbols and other linguistic expressions. The main contribution lies in the conceptualisation of language work widening the scope of the constitutive role of language to include the levels of political programmes and technologies of government as well as organisational classifications.
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to argue that we need to take seriously what affective atmosphere means in public reform. Particular emphasis is put on understanding the mechanisms of hope (Brunsson, 2006) through affective atmosphere (Anderson, 2009) in regards to a management model training course.
Design/methodology/approach - Ethnographically, the paper is placed in a Lean coach training course, led by two consultants, in the public care services in a municipality in Sweden. The participants were set to learn the language and techniques of the Lean management model during the course of three training days.
Findings - Using affective atmosphere as a theoretical window for how to understand how participants become enthusiastic about public reform, the author puts forward that the enthusiastic, affective atmosphere created in the training room demanded the ingredients of consultants and the mechanism of hope at play. The consultants' fashioning of the course contributed to the affective atmosphere. But what also triggered the affective atmosphere in the room was the participants' way of responding, which was much more accidental and founded in the Lean model itself, promising smooth flows and rational organization, and the participants' ability to keep mechanisms of hope active.
Originality/value - Fotaki et al. (2017) point out that affect has only recently started to be integrated and explored in critical organization studies. Michels and Steyaert (2017) emphasise that affective atmosphere has rarely been used by organization theorists. This is an attempt to contribute to this literature by arguing for the fruitfulness of understanding the mechanisms of hope through affective atmosphere in regards to public management reform. The author also calls attention to the need for ethnographic fieldwork when examining affective atmospheres.
The policy word collaboration is a political buzzword omnipresent within human service organisations in Sweden and other countries. Collaboration stands for services working together toward a common goal. It is understood as the solution for a multitude of problems, putting the client at the centre and involving the services needed for making them financially self-sufficient. Public service collaboration assumes gaps between entities, whether they are organisations or professionals holding a particular kind of knowledge or available resources. Gaps are seen as omissions and pitfalls in activities which should be removed. My thesis is that putting the gap at the centre reveals not only the disjuncture of the gaps but also the productiveness of the gap in collaborative projects between organisations. The article demonstrates how documents and meetings work both as makers and blenders of gaps between social services and jobcentres. If gaps are productive spaces, what does it denote for collaboration between organisations? The article is placed ethnographically in documents and meetings set to enable collaboration between social workers and job coaches. I will focus on the gap, the space between documents and organisations, as productive spaces in collaborative projects.
Within various forms of decision-making and rule-setting, such astransnational standard setting,the notion of stakeholder involvement has a stronghold (see, for example, Boström & Tamm Hallström 2009). The idea of stakeholder involvement is widespreadbut its effects will vary across different usages and contexts. This paper draws on the result of a study on the Fairtrade International (FLO) and their work developing criteria, standards and principles forthe Fairtrade label.In this case, thestakeholder category involves those who are affected or can be affected by FLO’s action; theyhave a stakein the issues discussed and decided by FLO. Thus,stakeholderscould potentially referto a very large group ofpeople. Still, what is a stakeholder in practice? In this paper Idiscuss the notion of a stakeholder in relation to membership in the FLO. Within the FLO organisation stakeholdershave eventually been involved as members of FLO.I discussthe implications of this shift in meaning by looking atthe inclusion of the producer networks in Africa, Asia and Latin America as members in 2008. This meant that theseproducer networksmoved from the category of stakeholder to the category of member/stakeholder. Furthermore, I show how the stakeholder consultations on the New Standards Framework of FLO during the summerof 2010,in practice,meant consultation between the members. Sincestakeholders may involve actors both within andoutside an organisation, this paper discusseswhat it means when theonlystakeholdersthat are authorizedby FLO,in practice,are the same as the members. Furthermore, it discusses the relation between stakeholder and member and how the conditions for stakeholder involvementchange when stakeholdersbecome members. The issues explored in this paper relate to:the requirements for becoming a memberand what membership means in terms of loyalty or critical capacity towards FLO; as well as issues related to the double membershipof stakeholder members, being members of FLO and the company/organization they work forat the same time.
Fast Childcare in Public Preschools presents an ethnographic examination of the implementation of fast-policy management models and the efforts of teachers to use these to improve their work organization, and the frictions this brings. Using examples from Swedish public preschools, the book focuses on essential areas of the Lean management model in particular, bringing to life concepts relating to the care and education of children. The book draws on international childcare policy and public reforms, exploring the assignments that preschools are set and argues that separating the pedagogical and the organizational as suggested by proponents of management models is not possible.
This book considers Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore’s work on ‘fast policy’ and ‘model power’ and analyzes the tensions between the easy-to-use and difficult-to-use in management models. The model form of Lean’s management model rendered it difficult to align with existing childcare policy, pedagogical models, and the organization of a preschool. The book explores the utopian dimension of a modern project in pursuit of efficiency and speed in relation to the Lean model and the preschool teachers’ work, by asking, ‘what are the wider societal implications of the Lean project in preschools?’
Fast Childcare in Public Preschools will be of great interest to cultural anthropologists, qualitative sociologists and political scientists, and organizational researchers interested in the anthropology of policy.
The management model Lean, originating from the car industry, has in recent years spread like wildfire in the public sector. One important component in the model is to set targets that are measurable to show results, visualising how taxpayers' money is used. The article examines how Swedish public-sector preschool staff handle evaluative techniques in the form of numbers and colours within the Lean model. The article shows their eagerness to comply with the ethics of evaluation, while at the same time resisting what they understand as hard-core statistics by, for example, introducing monitoring that includes feelings and experiences.
The paper examines role of meetings in the organisation of work practices through the management model Lean in the Swedish public care sector. The paper reveals the significance of meetings when operating the Lean model, but also what it means to be an ethnographer in Lean meetings.
Over the last twenty years, statistics and indicators have come to be closely associated with the notion of transparency. The argument is based on a view that indicators make policy outcomes transparent, as objectively revealed in statistical diagrams and tables. Indicators are, however, politically and culturally loaded. This becomes especially evident in an international organization such as the European Union (EU). The article shows that the production of EU statistics is characterized by a practice of transparency wherein EU bureaucrats must handle two seemingly incompatible logics. There is bureaucratic logic, which refers to the indicators that are seen as representing reality objective and politically neutral. Running parallel is the logic of cultural intimacy, in which the material that is made transparent is based upon what an EU member state wants to keep to itself and not reveal to the entire EU. This practice enables the quest for politically neutral indicators to live on, while at the same time providing room for politically and culturally negotiated indicators.
The focus of this article is Lean management action-plan documents and the type of knowledge and values they project when used in Swedish public preschools. The Lean model, also called the Toyota model, originated in the car industry. Two key features of the model were eliminating waste and ensuring that there was a system for continuous improvements in the work processes to render them as efficient as possible. The article explores the absurdities of transplanting a scientific management model and planning from the car industry to preschool, where rigid planning is not conducive to flexibility or the urgent meeting of human needs.
Based on ethnographic insights of the attempts by a since long-established chocolate factory to develop a product in line with the fairtrade standard Renita Thedvall studies how the world views and ideals in Fairtrade International’s standards are negotiated, navigated and embedded in relation to issues of marketability and political ideals. The factory’s choice to use an ethical label on one of its products brought a whole set of political discussions, as well as new priorities within the factory. The words and the values in the standards documents and compliance criteria were translated and adjusted, turning the fairtrade labelled products into a political affair matching the chocolate factory’s political ideals. Still, the negotiated fairtrade ideals did not carve out a space in the milk chocolate segment. Thus, making a business out of being fairtrade opened a space for politics within the factory but not for economic success. In the end, the fairtrade labelled bar was discarded.
In the organization, the modern, utopian project of development and improvement into perfection is in good shape, not least as demonstrated by the success of management models. Management models are visionary. They are about the future creating hope for a better, more efficient workplace and better functioning work processes. One such model is the Lean management model with its focus on efficiency and waste elimination. The model, originally from the automotive industry, has moved into all sorts of organizations including, as discussed in this paper, public preschools. The model’s power of fast, immutable mobility aligned with the perceived utopian ideal of efficiency and modernity rushed the Lean management model into preschools as a force promising solutions to perceived policy problems. In this way, Lean was initiated in order to create a future – to create an imagined future of a Lean, perfectly ordered organization, working efficiently without waste. Even though the Lean model luckily failed to turn preschools into the well-oiled Lean machines, it did manage to create new environments of power and new patterns of governance in preschools. Management models are promoted as models for all organizations, but Lean’s dispositional difference from the policy words and tools that govern preschools and the lack of similarity between the preschool context and the context of the automobile factory rendered the model inept for preschools. Still, the model made itself felt in the preschools by turning resources and focus from pedagogy and care towards efficiency and waste elimination to save time.