Karlsson2019

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Karlsson2019
BibType ARTICLE
Key Karlsson2019
Author(s) Tom Karlsson
Title Public administration in transition: Studying understandings and legitimations amongst middle managers within a government agency
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, sense making, Membership Categorization Analysis, mythopoesis, marketization, legitimation, Public administration
Publisher
Year 2019
Language English
City
Month
Journal Journal of Language and Politics
Volume 18
Number 1
Pages 107–130
URL Link
DOI 10.1075/jlp.17070.kar
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

This article focuses on how common-sense knowledge is enacted by middle managers in order to make sense of contemporary public administration. Specifically, the article demonstrates how managerialization and market logics is embedded in actors’ perceptions of public administration and becomes manifested through understandings and legitimations. The article presents an analysis of conversational data from middle management positions within a Swedish government agency. The analysis demonstrates how actors categorize a traditional hierarchy together with contemporary ideas of consumerism. It is also demonstrated how actors draw on legitimations of authority and mythopoesis in order to make sense of and to understand their managerial role within the agency. As such, the article contributes to contemporary public administration literature and its discussion regarding the effects of embedding marketization logics on actor and organizational levels as well as to ethnomethodologically informed literature within the social science and humanities.

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