The Absurdity of Bureaucracy: How Implementation Works by Nina Holm Vohnsen

Author:Nina Holm Vohnsen [Vohnsen, Nina Holm]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Public Policy, Industries, Social Services & Welfare, Social Policy, Social Science, Political Science, Anthropology, Business & Economics, Cultural & Social, General
ISBN: 9781526101365
Google: NW25DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2017-05-31T06:11:32+00:00

4

The quest for meaning

Portrait 7 follows Active—Back Sooner to one of the private employment agencies. I have given this private employment agency the meaningless acronym ENGA to distinguish it from other private employment agencies. It was here at ENGA that the core delivery of the local version of the trial, the “activities” and the “close follow-up,” were meant to take place. We follow here the privately employed social workers as they do their utmost to make something sensible take place in the face of what they find to be utterly pointless referrals from the municipal caseworkers. The final portrait, portrait 8, takes us back to the job center again and describes the time after the revised sickness benefit legislation is adopted and the central elements in the trial became obligatory in all cases. It portrays what happens when the caseworkers and employees are pushed to the limits of their personal capacities to make sense of what is going on and ultimately stop trying. The chapter concludes that the fundamental urge to make sensible decisions, driving the employees to rebel against local directive and agreements, is the very thing that creates the grounds for institutional absurdity while being in itself the only stable source of meaning.

Portrait 7: “bending” the rules and agreements

During one of the meetings between the municipal caseworkers and the private employment agency called ENGA, I had asked Marianne, the team leader of the “sickness benefit team,” if I could follow the employees at ENGA who worked with the project. Permission was granted after a formal meeting with Marianne and her director and after the employees attached to the project had given their consent to my presence in their team. On a Monday morning, 31 August, I therefore met Marianne by the back entrance of ENGA where she was waiting for me while smoking and talking to her colleagues as they arrived. ENGA was based in a three storey building not far from the municipal job center, along a road with heavy traffic. The ground floor consisted mainly of practical “workshops” used by other teams who worked with recipients of different social benefits. These people had various problems which were seen by their caseworkers as preventing them from getting a job, and the employees at ENGA were to help overcome these “obstacles” (barrierer); some were homeless, some suffered from psychiatric conditions, and some were immigrants who did not speak Danish or had never worked outside their home before. One of these workshops—the central canteen where people received training in order to prepare them for (re)entry into the labor market—was situated on the second floor of the building. This was where Marianne took me when I arrived and where she introduced me to Sofie whose work I would follow the first day. Bypassing the elevator, Sofie then led me up two flights of stairs to the hallway where her office was situated, next to the seminar room where the “sickness benefit group” had most of their “classes.” It was here

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.