‘Blowing up the pylon’: the limitations to Lacanism in organization studies,seen from the perspective of Deleuze and Guattari

We critically engage with the Lacanian notions of fantasy and lack through an understanding of desire as ontologically productive. The introduction of the Lacanian psychoanalytic notions of fantasy and lack into organizational studies has helped to widen the understanding of the mechanism that makes employees desire the idealized images of identity provided by the organizations for which they work. Our claim is that Deleuze’s and Guattari’s conception of desire as productive contributes to the understanding of the role that desire plays in producing and organizing the social setting in which such fantasies and a sense of lack emerge in the first place. Furthermore, we argue that Deleuze and Guattari can help point to the inherent danger of Lacanism’s blunting its own analytical and critical potential when trying to understand such social settings.     

Targeted estimation of state occupation probabilities for the non-Markov illness-death model

We use semi-parametric efficiency theory to derive a class of estimators for the state occupation probabilities of the continuous-time irreversible illness-death model. We consider both the setting with and without additional baseline information available, where we impose no specific functional form on the intensity functions of the model. We show that any estimator in the class is asymptotically linear under suitable assumptions about the estimators of the intensity functions. In particular, the assumptions are weak enough to allow the use of data-adaptive methods, which is important for making the identifying assumption of coarsening at random plausible in realistic settings. We suggest a flexible method for estimating the transition intensity functions of the illness-death model based on penalized Poisson regression. We apply this method to estimate the nuisance parameters of an illness-death model in a simulation study and a real-world application.     

Towards a Multi‐level Approach on Frontline Interactions in the Public Sector: Institutional Transformations and the Dynamics of Real‐time Interactions

This study develops a multi‐level approach on frontline interactions in the public sector. Previous research suggests that detailed analyses of frontline interactions are essential to our understanding of how welfare services take shape when policies and rules are applied and negotiated in individual cases. The dynamics and performances of real‐time interactions have, however, rarely been analyzed as such. This study shows how the methods developed in the field of Conversation Analysis can contribute to this research. Our multi‐level approach integrates analyses of the policy‐ and institutional transformations that shape conditions for frontline interactions; and analyses of how policies and rules are evoked, negotiated and reshaped in the turn‐by‐turn organization and performances of interaction. The approach is applied on an analysis of how rules regarding financial aid are applied in an authority highly affected by changes in welfare policy towards standardization and detailed regulations. The empirical case is the Swedish Board for Study Support. The empirical study includes analyses of documents, interviews and analyses of taped telephone conversations. The study shows how institutional arrangements of standardization, detailed regulations, monitoring and depersonalization, structure the frontline work and shape narrow frames for officials' discretion in interactions with clients. The study also shows how rules are invoked and negotiated in recurrent practices in the interaction: in the careful design of decisions; in the investigations of alternatives and exceptions from the rules in order to find solutions to the client's problems. The analyses of concrete interactional practices clearly indicate that also a rule‐governed work dominated by task discretion involves recurrent negotiations, flexibility and local policy‐making.     

Effects of psychosocial interventions on behavioural problems in youth: A close look at Cochrane and Campbell reviews

Research indicates that a number of psychosocial interventions are effective for reducing behavioural problems in youth. These interventions are now often included on best practice lists aiming to facilitate informed treatment choices among practitioners. However, analyses in neighbouring research areas have highlighted serious shortcomings in how primary studies are analysed and how studies are synthesised in research reviews. This study took a closer look at the evidence of efficacy for psychosocial interventions that aim to reduce behavioural problems in youth, as shown in systematic research reviews by the Cochrane and the Campbell Collaborations (n = 8). The findings suggest a bias towards overemphasising the efficacy of the interventions in several reviews, an over‐confidence in the validity of the findings in some reviews and, overall, a somewhat uncertain evidence base for the efficacy of the interventions. Systematic reviews are crucial for summarising research but more attention to methodological issues may be needed in this area.     

LGBQ-Specific Elderly Housing as a “Sparkling Sanctuary”: Boundary Work on LGBQ Identity and Community in Relationship to Potential LGBQ-Specific Elderly Housing in Sweden

This study explored how boundaries in relationship to community and identity were created and negotiated among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ) people within the framework of picturing LGBQ-specific elderly housing as a housing alternative in older age, by applying focus group methodology. “An island as a sparkling sanctuary” was identified as a metaphor for how symbolic resources defining the LGBQ community can be manifested in LGBQ-specific qualities of elderly housing. The boundary work underlying this manifestation included elaborations on the dilemma between exclusiveness and normality. The findings illustrate further how symbolic resources and collective identities were developed through dialectic interplay between internal and external definitions. Further, the findings show how boundary work generated shared feelings of similarity and group membership. The associated symbolic and social resources not only served to deal with difficult situations but also to manifest LGBQ identity and sense of community as a “gold medal.”     

“Too Weird for Banknotes”: Legitimacy and Identity in the Production of Danish Banknotes 1947–2007

In this article I argue that questions of banknote design are closely related to ideas of the national collective. Using the Danish banknote design competitions from 1947 to 2007 as an exemplary case I show how the Danish central bank, Nationalbanken, continuously sought to balance banknote iconography between different and evolving perceptions of the national community in an attempt to underpin the legitimacy and authority of Danish banknotes. I suggest that concepts from institutional theory can explain this equipoise relationship and I argue that banknote designers need to somehow reconcile conflicting ideas about the national community. As such, this article contributes to a more detailed understanding of the considerations and challenges facing banknote‐issuing authorities.     

Ecologies of Boundaries: Modes of Boundary Work in Professional Proto‐Jurisdictions

Ecological approaches to professional work, authority, and regulation have seen a resurgence in the sociology of professions, as epitomized in the linked ecologies framework of Andrew Abbott. Alongside this resurgence comes a renewed attention to the way symbolic and material boundaries within and between professions, as well as between professional, university, and political institutions, come to be defined, negotiated, and changed as part of ongoing professional projects. Building on and comparing case studies set in Denmark into three emerging professional “proto‐jurisdictions”—of water‐related climate adaptation, lifestyle disease prevention, and innovation management—this article identifies three key modes of interprofessional boundary work important for such projects. In doing so, it grounds Abbott's meso‐level framework of linked ecologies in more situated accounts of workplace‐level boundary interaction, by reconnecting to a wider tradition of symbolic interactionist studies of professions.     

The will to sanction: How sensitive are caseworkers to recipients’ responsibility when imposing sanctions on non-compliance in a welfare-to-work programme?

The activation trend in social policy entails that caseworkers on the frontlines of the welfare state are expected to decide ‘reasonable’ activation requirements for clients and when and how non-compliance should be sanctioned. This study investigates how caseworkers form judgements about their clients’ personal responsibility when activation requirements are violated and how their judgements about responsibility matter for the sanctions they impose. We find that caseworkers are sensitive to personal responsibility, varying the motivation for not fulfilling the activation requirement from a case where the client has less control (circumstances) to one with more control (choice) more than doubles sanctions.     

Trainee programme reactions and work performance: the moderating role of intrinsic motivation

This study investigated the moderating role of intrinsic motivation on the relationship between trainee programme reactions and work performance among trainees enrolled in formal trainee programmes. The results from a cross-sectional survey among 114 trainees representing three Norwegian service organizations showed that the relationships between perception of the trainee programme and facets of self-reported work performance were positive only for trainees low in intrinsic motivation. Implications for practice and directions for future research are discussed.     

The Effort-Reward Imbalance model of psychosocial stress at the workplace—a comparison of ERI exposure assessment using two estimation methods

It is not unusual for old data to be used in epidemiological studies. Recently developed instruments for measuring work-related stress did not exist when the data collection was carried out. Therefore, approximate questions are sometimes used. An apparent problem is the lack of validation of proxy questions. The aim of this study was to compare the original questions for measuring Effort-Reward Imbalance (ERI) with approximate questions. The study population corresponded with a subgroup in the WOLF-n (WOrk, Lipids, Fibrinogen–north) cohort study of cardiovascular risk in a working population in the north of Sweden: 655 men and 178 women. The agreement in exposure between the original and the approximate ERI single questions was relatively low throughout, whereas the correlation between the ERI subscales and the ERI ratios was reasonable. The latter agreement between the original and the approximate ERI ratio indicates that the approximate measures might have been useful in the past. Yet, whenever possible the implementation of the original questionnaire in study protocols is recommended since a complete measurement of ERI might help to further improve the internal consistency and the predictive validity of this exposure to effort-reward imbalance.