2023

Full title: Managing the Work Situation: A Situation-centric Approach to the Study of Management and Organization

Speaker: Lars Klemsdal, Professor, Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo.

The purpose of the book project is to advance a situation-centric perspective on studies of management and organization of work. The main argument is when people act and interact at work, they purposefully and meaningfully navigate complex socio-material landscapes of sources of frames suggesting what to do and how to do their work, selecting and prioritizing some sources over others and thereby enacting their specific work situation at hand. From this perspective, the organization, both in terms of formal rules and procedures as well as assemblages of associated actors and practices, will be part of the context together with a range of other sources of frames that is variably invoked by the actors involved as they try to figure out what the situation at hand is about.