The Absurdity of Bureaucracy: How implementation works

TY - BOOK

T1 - The Absurdity of Bureaucracy

T2 - How implementation works

AU - Vohnsen, Nina Holm

PY - 2017/5/31

Y1 - 2017/5/31

N2 - The absurdity of bureaucracy offers a humorous ethnographic account of policy implementation set in contemporary Danish bureaucracy. Taking the reader deep into the hallways of governmental administration and municipal caseworkers' offices, the book sets out to explore what characterizes policy implementation as a mode of human agency. Using the notions of absurdity and sense-making as lenses through which to explore the dynamic relationship between a policy and its effects, the book reclaims 'implementation studies' for the qualitative sciences and emphasizes the existential dilemma that any policymaker and implementer must confront. Following step-by-step the planning and implementation of the randomized controlled trial, Active - Back Sooner, the book sets out to show that 'going wrong' is not a question of implementation failure but is in fact the only way in which implementation may happen.

AB - The absurdity of bureaucracy offers a humorous ethnographic account of policy implementation set in contemporary Danish bureaucracy. Taking the reader deep into the hallways of governmental administration and municipal caseworkers' offices, the book sets out to explore what characterizes policy implementation as a mode of human agency. Using the notions of absurdity and sense-making as lenses through which to explore the dynamic relationship between a policy and its effects, the book reclaims 'implementation studies' for the qualitative sciences and emphasizes the existential dilemma that any policymaker and implementer must confront. Following step-by-step the planning and implementation of the randomized controlled trial, Active - Back Sooner, the book sets out to show that 'going wrong' is not a question of implementation failure but is in fact the only way in which implementation may happen.

KW - implementation

KW - bureaucracy

KW - absurdity

KW - complexity

KW - non-linearity

KW - public sector

KW - labour market policy

KW - organizational ethnography

UR - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Absurdity-Bureaucracy-Implementation-Administrative-Ethnography/dp/1526101343/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1496822848&sr=8-1

M3 - Book

SN - 1526101343

SN - 9781526101341

T3 - Political and administrative ethnography

BT - The Absurdity of Bureaucracy

PB - Manchester University Press

CY - Manchester

ER -