2006 The Organizing Society - Sub Themes

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This sub-theme follows up of the sub-theme: “Organization of Knowledge, Knowledge in Organisation” at the Berlin EGOS colloquium 2005. The headings which structured the latter - integration, power and standardization - remain key-notions underlying this sub-theme. The main perspective adopted consists in a specific angle focusing practices rather than forms of organisations, using two general themes as points of entry to better understand interactions between organisational practices and the society in which they take shape and evolve.  

The first theme is the relationship between macro-social influences  and organisations producing, diffusing or working with knowledge. Macro-social influences are understood as trends in dominant organisational scripts and conceptions of knowledge informing national public policies and market demand for knowledge. The second theme is the relationship between such organisations and their individual members. The focus on how knowledge impacts on the dynamics between society, organisation and staff or organisation members is becoming an increasingly central issue in our societies because of the transformation in content and nature of the goods knowledge organisations produce and their impact on the content and nature of work.  

We propose to focus on the following issues:

•  macro-social trends affecting knowledge organisations and their management, 

• operating mechanisms of labour markets for knowledge staff and more specifically, access to work positions, career developments and employment relationship

• organisation of work and in particular division of work, work allocation and control of work. Such aspects and their on-going transformations should be questioned in two ways.

First, starting with the second theme, these issues raise the question of the relationship between organisation and profession because “knowledge professionals” (lawyers, doctors, researchers, faculty members) tend to be more and more concerned about the “organisational phenomenon”. Law firms tend to challenge the traditional collegial structure of liberal professionals, while the organisations of which medical staff, researchers and faculty members used to be part are becoming more and more influential on their activities, work practices, careers, etc. This reactivates the interest in the divide between professional and organisational modes of regulation. Rather than considering them as two incompatible types of regulations we want to encourage analysis of how they combine, raise conflicts and are articulated. 

Second, changes mentioned above are often understood as outcomes of exogenous forces. The development of institutional management for knowledge workers has sometimes been interpreted as a consequence of the diffusion of managerialism among state actors. Other explanations stress the emergence of knowledge societies whereby knowledge professionals are turned into knowledge workers, thus affecting their management. However the concrete impact of exogenous forces (global scripts) in different national settings must be questioned. Looking at staff management in knowledge organisations dealing with similar types of knowledge in different types of societies will provide stimulating insights into the emergence of a global society versus the maintenance of societal features in interacting, but still different societies.  

Conversely one should also ask how knowledge management workers in organisations transform the role of public authorities and of knowledge. If knowledge no longer is a “rare good”, if knowledge production is becoming work rather than an activity, if knowledge professions are ever more embedded in organisations, what impact will it have on the structure of societies, and on the relationships to knowledge?  

About the Convenors: 

Ivar Bleiklie,  Professor, Department of Administration and Organization Theory, University of Bergen/The Rokkan Centre.  http://www.polis.no/Mangement/Ivar_Bleiklie.html Publications (selected): 2002 "Changing Knowledge Regimes – Universities in a New Research Environment." (Co-authored with Haldor Byrkjeflot.), Higher Education (44) 2-3: 1-14. 2000 Transforming Higher Education. A Comparative Study. London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley. (ed. with M. Kogan, M. Bauer, and M. Henkel and contributed to three chapters). 

Christine Musselin is senior researcher at the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations, a research unit of the Sciences-Po university and the CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research). She leads comparative studies on higher education systems and primarily deals with university governance, public policies on higher education and research, state-universities relationships and academic labour markets. Her last book, La longue marche des universites fransaises was published by the P.U.F in 2001 and recently edited in English (The Long March of French Universities) by Routledge (2004). She is finishing a new book on hiring committees and academic labour markets in French, German and American universities.