Inaugural lecture by professor Dan Kärreman

Traditional understandings of organisational control – that is, understandings of “the processes and methods by which an organisation’s members determine what things get done and how they are done”– are based on the assumption of a vertical division of labour through a separation between the conception and execution of work. It is assumed that formally appointed managers are the conceivers and employees the executors of work, and that control flows from top to bottom. In this sense, organisation control is typically understood as a practice that is integrated into management.

However, this is not how most people experience control in contemporary organisations. In actual reality, control takes on many forms and shapes. There are formal control systems, there is supervision, there is cultural control and management of meaning, there is review, there is output control, there is social control; all co-existing at the same time, and with the same individual being on the different sides of controlling and being controlled at the same time. Our lack of appropriate concepts and vocabularies to address this makes it difficult to pay attention to the polymorphous ways in which control is exercised in complex organisations. We need to develop vocabularies and perspectives on control that accommodate empirical realities were control forms are blunt, but plentiful, and were work to some degree consists of control work, i.e. attempts to align and make sense of the various control forms at play. Thus, we need to develop vocabularies and perspectives that understand organisation control as a dispersed practice. In my talk, I suggest some ways how this can be addressed.

Program:
15.00-15.15: Welcome by Head of Department Dorte Salskov-Iversen and Dean of Research Alan Irwin
15-15-16.00: Inaugural lecture by Dan Kärreman
16.00-17.00: Reception