article
The absurd workplace: How absurdity is hypernormalized in contemporary society and organizations
Introduction
A psychiatrist who has a 30-minute appointment with a patient, needs another 20-25 minutes to process all paperwork attached to the meeting (Spaans, 2017). There is now so much bureaucracy involved in health care provision, that the time that health care providers spend on their actual jobs is substantially reduced, seriously impeding the quality of care because of the very procedures meant to ensure quality of care.
The politics of exhaustion: Enduring at the end of the world
Prologue: Collapse
Advantageous is a 2015 film directed by Jennifer Phang. Set in the near future, the film follows the protagonist, Gwen. Gwen carries out research for a global cosmetics company, the Center for Advanced Health and Living, but also acts as its face, promoting their products. Despite her many contributions, the company decides that Gwen can no longer connect with their younger customer base.
Theorizing the cynical professional: the public interest, urban planning, and the limits of ideology critique
Introduction
Conventional readings of the relationship between professionalism and service in the public interest have tended to revolve around two sharply contrasting claims. The first is that professions by their nature, structure, and social function serve the public interest (Goode, 1957; Wilensky, 1964).
Play hard, work harder: Workification of gaming in a Swedish World of Warcraft Classic guild
Introduction
It is commonly assumed that work and play are inherently dichotomous concepts (Yee, 2006). Indeed, at first glance, playing and working appear to share few characteristics.
‘No hate. No bigotry. Fight white supremacy!’: A case study of Nørrebro Pride and collective organising in the face of ongoing apocalypse
Introduction, or, apocalypse now
The apocalypse is often presented as an event about to happen, something to guard oneself from, and a doomsday for which to prepare (Campbell et al., 2019; Husted et al., 2023). The recent COVID-19 outbreak (Smith and Thomas, 2021), the onset of war in Europe and an escalating ecological catastrophe only exacerbates the sense of impending doom.
The organization of ignorance: An ethnographic study of the production of subjects and objects in an artificial intelligence project
Introduction
This article explores organization of ignorance in a public administration artificial intelligence (AI) project by examining the initial stage of the project in the employment administration of a Danish municipality (Government of Denmark, 2019). The use of AI in public administration – especially for decision support – is a new phenomenon.
A shared zone of ignorance: Considering practices of seeing and unseeing in and around nursing stations in two psychiatric wards
Introduction
Yes, well, here we have this Dovecote [the nursing station] where there are glass partitions all the way around, which lets us see the patients. We can’t always hear them when the door is closed, but we can see what’s going on just outside. They can also see us. I don’t think that this is always an advantage.
Unintended ignorance: The narrative of ‘the missing patient voice’
Introduction
Conceptualisations of ignorance usually distinguish between ignorance as a product of intentional, deliberate inattention and as something unintentional, a state of ‘being ignorant’ in terms of lacking knowledge about certain conditions (Roberts, 2012; Gross, 2010, Smithson, 1989).
Constructing unknowers, destroying whistleblowers
Organized ignorance: Positions of power and threats to positions of power
Digitalize and deny: Pluralistic collective ignorance in an algorithmic profiling project
Introduction
In contemporary management discourse, we hear a resounding catch phrase: ‘Digitalize or die’. A quick Google search will convince you. This command implies that if an organization ignores the possibilities offered by digital technologies, it will be outperformed by more vigilant competitors or find itself unable to achieve its goals. In this paper, we demonstrate the relevance of a twist of this expression.
