Anders la Cour

Euphemisms and Hypocrisy in Corporate Philanthropy

Over the past two decades, a growing number of large multinational corporations have come to view philanthropy as an important part of their business operations. This has stimulated research on the many different strategies that are pursued by these corporations in their attempts to become more philanthropic while remaining economically responsible. In this situation, some researchers have argued, corporations run the risk of being caught out as hypocrites. Through an analysis of the corporate social responsibility reports of the biggest multinational corporations, this article shows how the risk of hypocrisy is managed communicatively through the use of euphemisms. The article argues that the use of euphemisms makes it possible to communicate both economically and philanthropically without manifest contradictions. Euphemisms, however, are also risky in their own right.

Voluntary Social Work as a Paradox

This article is written as an invitation to sociologists to rethink the concept of voluntary social work. Rather than comprehensive theory, it is an essay seeking to explore new ways of perceiving voluntary social effort. Voluntary work has traditionally been defined according to whether or not the subject of the study is organized and unpaid. However, these formal measures overlook the fact that much voluntary work is provided by people who do not fit the categories, and they fail to recognize the special nature of voluntary social work. In this article, we employ the works of the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann to examine what happens when voluntary social work is constructed as a particular form of care work. In this perspective, all care work is formed in the context of opposing expectation structures, and voluntary work is no exception. On the one hand, we have the expectation structures of the persons involved in care; on the other, the expectations of the administrative system and the political, juridical and economic layers of organization. Our assertion is that voluntary social work is fundamentally paradoxical in nature, and is formed as an impossible compromise between interactional and organizational logic. The question is not how to resolve or dissolve this paradox, but how to render it productive as a certain tension in the opportunity for voluntary work. Before we elaborate this thesis further, however, we briefly outline the background of social work and the reason why, today, it is followed especially closely by the state. This means looking at the way in which the couplings between welfare practice and voluntary work have traditionally been defined. While the article refers only to Danish social policy, very similar tendencies can be observed in many other Western welfare societies (see, for example, Wolch, 1990; Smith and Lipsky, 1993; Eikaas, 2001; Lynn, 2002; Reisch and Sommerfeld, 2003).

Dynamic boundaries of user communities: exploiting synergies rather than managing dilemmas

A large body of literature indicates that innovation not only stems from a firm’s internal investments but also relies on input from external sources. This is also reflected in an increasing interest in user innovation. In particular, users, who increasingly gather in communities, can offer valuable contributions. To create and capture value, firms must engage in some kind of collaboration with these user communities. However, at the interfaces between communities and firms, tensions arise because of undefined boundaries and a lack of clear roles. Current research within the user innovation literature characterises such tensions as dilemmas between competing demands that firms must balance to encourage and benefit from user contributions. This paper brings in a systems theory perspective to show that what is currently described as trade-offs that must be managed are in fact synergies that are mutually enabling and must be embraced to foster innovation. We develop a new boundary construct that explains how firms can attend to competing logics of power, identity, and competence simultaneously, thereby leveraging the innovation potential.

Opening Systems Theory: A Note on the Recent Special Issue of Organization

Organization recently devoted a special issue to Niklas Luhmanns systems theory. Since Luhmanns work remains relatively unknown in the English-speaking world, the issue was an important opportunity to introduce Niklas Luhmanns contribution to organization theory to this audience. Unfortunately, the primarily theoretical approach to systems theory presented in the issue may leave the reader wondering what, if anything, Luhmanns work might contribute to empirical research into organizations. This note is an attempt to draw attention to the potential of Luhmanns approach in this regard.

The Love Affair Between the Policy and the Voluntary Organizations

Across Europe, there has been growing enthusiasm for the inclusion of voluntary organizations in welfare work, something that became very clear when the EU declared 2011 to be the year of voluntary work. Voluntary social work, it is argued, ‘is an expression of European values such as solidarity and tolerance’ (EU Commission 2009: 2). This emerging policy is stimulated by various governments’ increasing interest in local and human concerns, which they see the voluntary organizations ideally suited to serve.

Metagovernance as Strategic Supervision

ABSTRACT This article proposes a new theoretical concept of second-order contracts for a better understanding of how the state fulfills its role as metagovernor. While the literature does an adequate job of developing the concept of metagovernance, it has been less effective in showing how metagovernance establishes a new type of relationship between government and governance. With the introduction of the concept of second-order contracts, the article shows how the state governs interactive governance from a distance in order to position the various stakeholders into a specific governable terrain. This concept is then applied to a recent reform of the steering relations between municipalities and housing associations in Denmark. In doing so, the article provides an example of a second-order contract in a specific case of metagovernance, and the way that it defines the interactive arena of the various stakeholders.

Organizations, Institutions and Semantics: Systems Theory Meets Institutionalism

Why do organization structures appear like they do? Where do organizations import their building blocks from? How do they develop? And why is it that in some areas organizations look so much alike, when in others they differ? These apparently innocent questions evoke complex discussions concerning the interplay between historically developed institutions, cultural semantics and social structures, which have been a well discussed topic in both sociological and organizational theory over the years (Staheli, 1997; Powell and Dimaggio, 1991). Both systems theory and sociological institutionalism have been engaged in questions concerning the relationship between modern society and its organizations and have on the face of it developed very different answers to them (Kneer, 2001; Pedersen et al., 2010). Despite this, or precisely because of this, we find it worthwhile to examine how the two theoretical frameworks can enrich each other. Instead of seeing them as two closed and oppositional universes, we will in the following try to open them up in order to let them be engaged in the same discussions.

Information and Other Bodily Functions: Stool Records in Danish Residential Homes

Paper-based stool records are used in public and private residential homes throughout Denmark. Although they represent a simple technology, they are an important tool in ensuring proper personal hygiene for residents. This article shows how the use of stool records involves both scientific and everyday forms of knowledge. While the activity of keeping stool records derives its legitimation from the scientific study of feces, those who work with the stool records on a daily basis have found some very different applications for the technology. These applications foster a variety of understandings of stool records in residential homes. Is it their aim to help satisfy biological needs? Is it to ensure control? Is it to ensure individual freedom? Is it to ensure efficiency? Is it to display professionalism? Is it to maintain order in the everyday operation of the residential home? To explore the answers to these questions, the article introduces insight from the work of the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann that bear upon how a mundane technology like stool records can function as a mediator between theory and practice, the body and the social, and between different care tasks in residential homes.Paper-based stool records are used in public and private residential homes throughout Denmark. Although they represent a simple technology, they are an important tool in ensuring proper personal hygiene for residents. This article shows how the use of stool records involves both scientific and everyday forms of knowledge. While the activity of keeping stool records derives its legitimation from the scientific study of feces, those who work with the stool records on a daily basis have found some very different applications for the technology. These applications foster a variety of understandings of stool records in residential homes. Is it their aim to help satisfy biological needs? Is it to ensure control? Is it to ensure individual freedom? Is it to ensure efficiency? Is it to display professionalism? Is it to maintain order in the everyday operation of the residential home? To explore the answers to these questions, the article introduces insight from the work of the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann that bear upon how a mundane technology like stool records can function as a mediator between theory and practice, the body and the social, and between different care tasks in residential homes.

Chapter 4 The Emergence of a Third-Order System in the Danish Welfare Sector

Purpose – To analyze the emergence of new organizational forms in the Danish welfare sector. Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on Niklas Luhmann and Gunther Teubner, the research analyzes governmental documents, policy programs, action plans, and strategic documents. Findings – A partnering structure has emerged with a new politics of voluntarism, complex forms of integration and new imaginary distinctions between voluntariness and public care. This can usefully be conceptualized as aspects of the stabilization of a “third-order system.” The research identified a number of different managerial strategies for involvement in the system. Practical and social implications – Social welfare has become a mix of public and civil society values and norms, and extensive resources have been invested from both governmental and nongovernmental sides to build up shared competences for the new forms of partnering-based organization. However, to act according to the new principles of partnering, at the strategic and managerial level, the voluntary organizations have to behave in a schizophrenic manner – as both individual organizations and cooperational partners within the system. Research implications – The concept of “third-order system” is especially useful in analyzing mixed forms of management in the welfare sector. Originality – Different forms of radical organizational analysis are combined to develop a notion of “third-order system” in the welfare sector.

Commentary on Chapter 9

How do you steer an organization that is not able to steer itself? How do you influence an organizations ability for self-organization? How do you empower a nonprofit organization (NPO) in South Africa in order to help them to organize themselves in ways that make it possible for donors in the West to collaborate with them in different international aid projects? And how do NPOs react in response to the Wests attempts to empower them? These are the questions that Frederik Claeye addresses in his chapter about how Western donors shape the governance structures and management practices of South African NPOs. To begin, Claeye shows how the Western ideological discourse of managerialism that emphasizes accountability, organizational definition, and capacity building is enacted as a means to achieve the political aims of effective funding. He then shows how a sample of South African NPOs reacted to these external attempts to organize their own self-organization. Here, Claeye isolates three ideal types of reactions: conformism, resistance, and hybridity. In conclusion, Claeye critiques the global ideology of management discourse for being weighted in favor of Western techniques of management at the expense of the South African culture of Ubuntu, here understood as reciprocity and solidarity. The ideology of Western management practices has a limited understanding of, and limited room for, Ubuntu. The effect of this ideology, functioning as a “regime of truth” in the Foucauldian sense of the term, is hybridization, which Claeye identifies as the individual translation by South African NPOs of the Western requirement for structure.