Rolf Solli

Housekeeping? Yes, but which house? Meaning and accounting context -- A case study

This paper attempts to show how a large number of meanings connected with the same administrative unit can be attached to accounting figures at different organizational levels. The analysis starts from a conversation during a management group meeting, where accounting rules for charging internal rents were on the agenda. A concrete case is used to test and give meaning to a proposed rule. The exchange in terms of a current recipe for decentralized cost cutting is then interpreted, and finally it is shown how a sale-lease-back deal gives a third meaning to the proposed rule. Each of these levels of interpretation, which largely correspond to levels of organization, requires different data sets to describe the specific context and its related discourse. Which discursive and non-discursive arguments apply will differ between levels. To be competent and trusted means to be able to distinguish between discourses and to perform to expectations in the intended context. Certain asymmetries in communication between levels should be expected.

Help! We have too much money!: How Organizations, Communities and Individuals Manage Overflows

By analyzing a wide range of settings – from corporate firms and public administration to everyday domestic routines – the book offers an in-depth understanding of the complexities of overflow phenomena. It questions when, where and why overflow emerges and for whom this is a problem or a blessing.

We can get something more complete: Participatory Budgeting to enhance sustainability

This is a study of participatory budgeting, where citizens participate in local government decision-making, leading to enhanced sustainability.

Young People, Big Ideas: Participatory Budgeting Fixes a River

Citizen participation in local government budgeting is an important emerging public management reform movement in many countries including Canada, Brazil, France, Germany, Spain, Australia and now Sweden. ‘Participatory budgeting’ programs bring local communities into the decision- making process around formal resource allocation plans, and have the potential to give new levels of voice and choice about service and infrastructure expenditure to disconnected or disadvantaged and marginalised citizens and groups. This case study explores the form and function of the first tranche of participatory budgeting programs in a new major initiative that is sponsored by the central agency for local governments (kommuns) in Sweden. The kommun’s program set aside a substantial sum of money to be used in a new project around safety or the environment, and used groups of final year school students to design the participative processes, produce alternative proposals for a project, and vote on a final decision. The paper interrogates how the participatory budgeting program intersects with the themes of economic, cultural, social and environmental sustainability. The case study details the causes and dynamics behind the unanticipated choice made by the groups to compete rather than cooperate, and considers the way in which the final project decided upon was bolstered in funding, scope and execution by linking its main strands to other policy objectives. In the end, this engagement initiative was as much about strengthening democracy and a sense of community as it was about generating, capturing and implementing good ideas.