Difference between revisions of "Wagenaar2004"

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|Title="Knowing" the Rules: Administrative Work as Practice
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|Title=“Knowing” the rules: administrative work as practice
 
|Tag(s)=EMCA; workplace studies; administrative work
 
|Tag(s)=EMCA; workplace studies; administrative work
 
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Latest revision as of 11:41, 31 October 2019

Wagenaar2004
BibType ARTICLE
Key Wagenaar2004
Author(s) Hendrik Wagenaar
Title “Knowing” the rules: administrative work as practice
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, workplace studies, administrative work
Publisher
Year 2004
Language
City
Month
Journal Public Administration Review
Volume 64
Number 6
Pages 643–656
URL Link
DOI 10.1111/j.1540-6210.2004.00412.x
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

This article presents a theory of administrative work as practice. Building on a rich narrative of a mid-level administrator in the Dutch Immigration Office, four core elements of administrative practice are identified: contextuality, acting, knowing, and interacting. Taking cues from practice theory and ethnomethodology, the author argues that the visible aspects of administrative work (decisions, reports, negotiations, standard operating procedures, and—on a higher level of institutional abstraction—structures, legal rules, lines of authority, and accountability) are effectuations, enactments of the hidden, taken-for-granted routines: the almost unthinking actions, tacit knowledge, fleeting interactions, practical judgments, self-evident understandings and background knowledge, shared meanings, and personal feelings that constitute the core of administrative work. Taken together, contextuality, acting, knowing, and interacting make up a unified account of practical judgment in an administrative environment that is characterized by complexity, indeterminacy, and the necessity to act on the situation at hand.

Notes