This article discusses: the doctrinal content of the group of ideas known as ‘new public management’(NPM); the intellectual provenance of those ideas; explanations for their apparent persuasiveness in the 1980 s; and criticisms which have been made of the new doctrines. Particular attention is paid to the claim that NPM offers an all-purpose key to better provision of public services. This article argues that NFM has been most commonly criticized in terms of a claimed contradiction between ‘equity’ and ‘efficiency’ values, but that any critique which is to survive NPM's claim to ‘infinite reprogrammability’ must be couched in terms of possible conflicts between administrative values. The conclusion is that the ESRC'S Management in Government’ research initiative has been more valuable in helping to identify rather than to definitively answer, the key conceptual questions raised by NPM.

A public management for all seasons

Sensemaking involves turning circumstances into a situation that is comprehended explicitly in words and that serves as a springboard into action. In this paper we take the position that the concept of sensemaking fills important gaps in organizational theory. The seemingly transient nature of sensemaking belies its central role in the determination of human behavior, whether people are acting in formal organizations or elsewhere. Sensemaking is central because it is the primary site where meanings materialize that inform and constrain identity and action. The purpose of this paper is to take stock of the concept of sensemaking. We do so by pinpointing central features of sensemaking, some of which have been explicated but neglected, some of which have been assumed but not made explicit, some of which have changed in significance over time, and some of which have been missing all along or have gone awry. We sense joint enthusiasm to restate sensemaking in ways that make it more future oriented, more action oriented, more macro, more closely tied to organizing, meshed more boldly with identity, more visible, more behaviorally defined, less sedentary and backward looking, more infused with emotion and with issues of sensegiving and persuasion. These key enhancements provide a foundation upon which to build future studies that can strengthen the sensemaking perspective.

/pdf/organizing-and-the-process-of-sensemaking-4qk2e6f9y9.pdf

Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking

Knowledge is too problematic a concept to make the task of building a dynamic knowledge-based theory of the firm easy. We must also distinguish the theory from the resource-based and evolutionary views. The paper begins with a multitype epistemology which admits both the pre- and subconscious modes of human knowing and, reframing the concept of the cognizing individual, the collective knowledge of social groups. While both Nelson and Winter, and Nonaka and Takeuchi, successfully sketch theories of the dynamic interactions of these types of organizational knowledge, neither indicates how they are to be contained. Callon and Latour suggest knowledge itself is dynamic and contained within actor networks, so moving us from knowledge as a resource toward knowledge as a process. To simplify this approach, we revisit sociotechnical systems theory, adopt three heuristics from the social constructionist literature, and make a distinction between the systemic and component attributes of the actor network. The result is a very different mode of theorizing, less an objective statement about the nature of firms ‘out there’ than a tool to help managers discover their place in the firm as a dynamic knowledge-based activity system.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/smj.4250171106

Making knowledge the basis of a dynamic theory of the firm

This paper develops a new theoretical model with which to examine the interaction between technology and organizations. Early research studies assumed technology to be an objective, external force that would have deterministic impacts on organizational properties such as structure. Later researchers focused on the human aspect of technology, seeing it as the outcome of strategic choice and social action. This paper suggests that either view is incomplete, and proposes a reconceptualization of technology that takes both perspectives into account. A theoretical model—the structurational model of technology—is built on the basis of this new conceptualization, and its workings explored through discussion of a field study of information technology. The paper suggests that the reformulation of the technology concept and the structurational model of technology allow a deeper and more dialectical understanding of the interaction between technology and organizations. This understanding provides insight into the li...

The duality of technology: rethinking the concept of technology in organizations

As both technologies and organizations undergo dramatic changes in form and function, organizational researchers are increasingly turning to concepts of innovation, emergence, and improvisation to help explain the new ways of organizing and using technology evident in practice. With a similar intent, I propose an extension to the structurational perspective on technology that develops a practice lens to examine how people, as they interact with a technology in their ongoing practices, enact structures which shape their emergent and situated use of that technology. Viewing the use of technology as a process of enactment enables a deeper understanding of the constitutive role of social practices in the ongoing use and change of technologies in the workplace. After developing this lens, I offer an example of its use in research, and then suggest some implications for the study of technology in organizations.

Using Technology and Constituting Structures: A Practice Lens for Studying Technology in Organizations

The web of human relations which originates, nurtures, and transforms technologies has long deserved attention Computers, bicycles, natural gas pipelines, and condoms live and have their being in the midst of enormously complicated human networks of production, distribution, and evaluation We need to know about the kinds of social institutions that do this work This book, a report on a conference, goes far in opening this vast area for public inspection

The Social Construction of Technological Systems

When a large system is developed, there are always, in the early stages, a great number of serious problems with it. In some organizations these serious problems are quickly noted and rapidly attacked. In others they are hidden, skirted, or only half-solved. If we call the former organizations effective and the latter ineffective, we are led to an obvious question: what distinguishes the effective from the ineffective ones? The differences in performance are apparent; we need to explore their causes. In this paper I will use engineering examples from the 19th and 20th centuries to develop a more detailed picture of the kinds of differences that exist between those organizations likely to vet their systems successfully and those unlikely to do so.

Cultures with Requisite Imagination

These words were written by a well-read man of science, a member of the Royal Society and later its president. They were written about a phenomenon that was only beginning to become controversial and would stay controversial for 44 more years before it was accepted into the corpus of scientific knowledge (Westrum, 1978). We can read them today with a certain irony, with an extensive knowledge about meteorites that was not available when Pringle so incorrectly assessed their reality in 1759. But there is a lesson to be drawn here, regarding not the occasional mistakes of scientific opinion but rather one of the bases for such mistakes. Pringle thought not only that meteorites did not exist but also that if they did exist, he would know about it. This is a most important point, for the same mistake is likely to be made not only about other anomalous events important for scientific knowledge but also about events relevant to social policy. The &dquo;hidden event,&dquo; as I suggest we call it, has a significance both for science and for society.

Social Intelligence A bout Hidden Events: Its Significance for Scientific Research and Social Policy

In making decisions about the reality of alleged anomalous events, scientists are likely to weigh both the a priori plausibility of what is alleged and the credibility of the reports which reach them. The present paper is an attempt to examine the anomaly reporting processes which led to the scientific recognition of the reality of meteorites in the eighteenth century. It is shown that scientists fail to make realistic assumptions about anomaly reporting, and that this failure affects the accuracy of the decisions made about anomalies. The treatment of reports about alleged anomalous events is further shown to be related to the scientific community's concerns about protecting its internal processes from external Interference. The recognition of meteontes took place only when the savants of the eighteenth century 1) found a way of evaluating the reports, 2) devised a theory to explam them, and 3) received unimpeachable eyewitness testimony of their occurrence.

Ron Westrum

Papers

The Social Construction of Technological Systems

Cultures with Requisite Imagination

Social Intelligence A bout Hidden Events: Its Significance for Scientific Research and Social Policy

Science and Social Intelligence about Anomalies: The Case of Meteorites:

The study of information flow: A personal journey