Archive for calls, April 2008

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[ecrea] CFP New public management, Foucault and Power

Sun Apr 13 21:30:02 GMT 2008


>X-Sieve: CMU Sieve 2.2
>From: Frank Boddin <(fboddin /at/ vub.ac.be)>
>To: Nico Carpentier <(nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)>
>X-sender-IP: 80.201.11.85
>Subject: CFP New public management, Foucault and Power
>X-Mailer: Webmail ULB v3.0
>Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 20:34:57 +0200 (CEST)
>X-Spam-Checker-Version: maxi.ulb.ac.be SA 2.63 (2004-01-11)
>
>CALL FOR PAPERS: New Public Management, Foucault and Power
>
>This is a call for individual papers for the 
>session on New public management, Foucault and 
>Power of the international "Power: Forms, 
>Dynamics and Consequences" conference, that is 
>being held in Tampere, Finland (September 22-24, 
>2008) (http://www.uta.fi/Power2008/). We are 
>looking for individual papers that fit into the 
>theme described in the panel abstract below. 
>Please send your 400-word paper abstract to 
>(frank.boddin /at/ vub.ac.be) before May 31st 2008.
>
>Kind regards,
>
>Frank Boddin
>Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels
>
>+++
>
>NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT, FOUCAULT AND POWER
>
>
>In the context of the deregulated, neo-liberal 
>environment of the 1980s, new public management 
>reforms characterized public sectors in such 
>countries as Australia, New Zealand, UK, Canada, 
>the United States, but also Germany and Japan. 
>New public management (NPM) borrows a range of 
>managerial notions from the private sector, such 
>as an emphasis on organizational performance or 
>responsiveness to consumers. NPM is not a 
>unified set of practices, but a kind of logic 
>which has various implementation forms and 
>variations within diverse public sectors, such 
>as health, social service, universities and 
>higher education, broadcasting, transport, 
>telecommunications and police departments (Hood 1995, Dent et al. 2004).
>This session aims to bring together scholars 
>that have mobilized poststructuralist ideas and 
>Foucaultian theory as conceptual tools to 
>understand the dynamics of power underlying new 
>public management reforms. The session 
>concentrates on how the logic of new public 
>management (re)configures power relations within 
>public organizations and this at diverse levels.
>
>Scholars have scrutinized NPM from a variety of 
>angles (see, e.g., Dent et al. 2004, Chandler & 
>Barry 2004). From an organizational point of 
>view, it has been shown that discipline is an 
>important dimension underlying NPM. NPM 
>introduces standardized, depersonalized 
>practices, such as pre-set, evidence-based 
>output measures, assessment programs, standard 
>budgeting and reporting, which themselves find 
>their origins in a longer tradition of 
>scientific management. These regulatory, 
>supervisory and controlling mechanisms aim at 
>the normalisation of the conduct of the public 
>service employee on the one hand, and the 
>organizational process as a whole on the other 
>(Pollitt 1990, Ranada 1997, Batley & Larbi 
>2004). However, it has also been argued that 
>discipline is not the main mechanism underlying 
>NPM. The NPM-logic introduces and operates 
>through mechanisms of self-entrepreneurship and 
>decentralized responsibility. NPM promotes 
>hands-on management, internal competition 
>between fellow employees and the unbundling of 
>public service departments into units with 
>managerial autonomy (Jones 2004, Horton 2006).
>
>
>Apart from Foucaults writing on discipline, 
>knowledge and power (1975/1977/1979), 
>organizational scholars have used the notion of 
>governmentality (Foucault 1978, 1991) in order 
>to approach power within organizations (see, 
>e.g., Deetz 1998, Starkey & McKinlay 1998, Ursell 2000).
>
>This session aims to elaborate on these 
>perspectives, exploring how Foucaultian theory 
>can be used to examine the dynamics of power 
>underlying NPM and the power struggles involved 
>in NPM-reforms. How do NPM-discourses gain or 
>lose organizational ascendancy and how do these 
>discourses constitute organizational subjects? 
>How are NPM-discourses articulated, both 
>practically and discursively, within public 
>service organizations? How to approach NPMs 
>dimension of self-entrepreneurship from a 
>poststructuralist, conceptual backbone? How can 
>we understand the relation between NPMs 
>disciplinary mechanisms on the one hand and its 
>dimension of self-entrepreneurship on the other? 
>We also welcome papers dealing with the 
>difficulties that might arise when using 
>Foucaultian understandings of power and 
>governmentality to study new public management. 
>What other discourse-analytical theories can be 
>used in order to complement Foucaults ideas on 
>power and governmentality to deal with such 
>issues as organizational subjectivity or 
>organisational change? The panel hopes to make 
>headway in terms of revisiting the conceptual 
>tools offered by Foucault in order to understand 
>power struggles in the context of NPM.
>We call for paper proposals that address these 
>questions and related questions and encourage 
>both papers concentrating on conceptual issues 
>and papers dealing with empirical, methodological reflections.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Nico Carpentier (Phd)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University of Brussels
Centre for Studies on Media and Culture (CeMeSO)
Pleinlaan 2 - B-1050 Brussels - Belgium
T: ++ 32 (0)2-629.18.56
F: ++ 32 (0)2-629.36.84
Office: 5B.401a
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Katholieke Universiteit Brussel - Catholic University of Brussels
Vrijheidslaan 17 - B-1081 Brussel - Belgium
&
Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis
Boulevard du Jardin Botanique 43  - B-1000 Brussel - Belgium
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----------------------------
European Communication Research and Education Association
Web: http://www.ecrea.eu
----------------------------
ECREA's Second European Communication Conference
Barcelona, 25-28 November 2008
http://www.ecrea2008barcelona.org/
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E-mail: (Nico.Carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
Web: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
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