Eric Breit

Remedy Through Paradox? Constructions of Internal Legitimacy in a Publicly Discredited Organization:

This article examines how members of publicly discredited organizations discursively construct senses of internal legitimacy. Drawing on a case study of the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration—an organization that has been subject to lengthy and persistent public criticism—four paradoxical relations between discourses are identified and critically examined: acknowledgment/denial, voice/silence, unity/fragmentation, and image/substance. Based on the findings, three arguments are made: First, talk by members of discredited organizations about their organization, their organizational selves, and the criticism offers crucial resources for the construction of internal legitimacy. Second, constructions of internal legitimacy require members to relate to and navigate between paradoxes. Third, despite the complexity they impose, paradoxes provide members of discredited organizations with significant room for managing their internal legitimacy.

The making of ‘professional amateurs’ Professionalizing the voluntary work of service user representatives

The aim of this article is, through empirical material from Norway, to grasp a particular form of non-profit professionalization spurred by the incorporation of policies of service user involvement in health care and in social services. By drawing on perspectives from the research on professionalization, our ambition is to increase the understanding of the nature of this form of professionalization, how it differs from other kinds of professionalization in the non-profit sector and why it achieves its distinctive features. We denote the professionalization of service users’ work as representatives, as the making of ‘professional amateurs’ to capture its paradoxical nature – that while the process of professionalization resembles occupational professionalization, the voluntary workers who are becoming professionalized are still amateurs. It is professionalization in the form of increasing the competence of the voluntary workers, not professionalization through transforming voluntary work tasks into occupations and paid employment. It is a form of competence fundamentally resting on personal experience with the issues with which the work is concerned, not a competence to be achieved solely through education and professional training.

Discursive contests of corruption: The case of the Norwegian alcohol monopoly

We still know relatively little of the discursive processes that take place in representations of ‘corruption’ in the media. Based on a critical discursive analysis of the media coverage of a corruption scandal in the Norwegian alcohol monopoly, this study highlights four discursive contests around which sense was made of alleged corruption: (1) definitions of corruption, (2) organizational hierarchy and power abuse, (3) state/market relations, and (4) national moral identity. These contests illustrate not only the meaning‐making processes involved in articulating controversial organizational activities as instances of corruption, but also the catalysing and symbolic functions of such articulations in ongoing public debates. Based on the findings, it is argued that the scandal was not about corruption in particular, but rather unfolded as a materialization of wider social, political, and historical concerns and controversies. While the findings are context‐specific, similar processes are also likely to characterize media discussions of corruption more generally.

Modification of Public Policies by Street-Level Organisations: An Institutional Work Perspective

The literature on policy implementation is divided with regards to the impact of street-level bureaucrats on the implementation of public policies. In this paper, we aim to add to and nuance these debates by focusing on ‘institutional work’ – i.e. the creation, maintenance and disruption of institutions – undertaken by central authorities and street-level bureaucrats during public reform processes. On the basis of a case study of the organisational implementation of a retirement pension reform in the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration, we argue that institutional work is a useful heuristic device for conceptualising the variety of responses available to street-level bureaucrats during public reforms. We also argue that the responses demonstrate the impact of street-level bureaucrats in these reforms in the context of managerial control and regulation. Finally, we argue that the effectiveness of policy change is dependent on the institutional work of street-level bureaucrats and, in particular, on institutional work that supports the institutions created by politicians and public administrations.