Wagenaar2004
| Wagenaar2004 | |
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| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Wagenaar2004 |
| Author(s) | Hendrik Wagenaar |
| Title | “Knowing” the rules: administrative work as practice |
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| Tag(s) | EMCA, workplace studies, administrative work |
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| Year | 2004 |
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| Journal | Public Administration Review |
| Volume | 64 |
| Number | 6 |
| Pages | 643–656 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1540-6210.2004.00412.x |
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Abstract
This article presents a theory of administrative work as practice. Building on a rich narrative of a mid-level administrator in the Dutch Immigration Office, four core elements of administrative practice are identified: contextuality, acting, knowing, and interacting. Taking cues from practice theory and ethnomethodology, the author argues that the visible aspects of administrative work (decisions, reports, negotiations, standard operating procedures, and—on a higher level of institutional abstraction—structures, legal rules, lines of authority, and accountability) are effectuations, enactments of the hidden, taken-for-granted routines: the almost unthinking actions, tacit knowledge, fleeting interactions, practical judgments, self-evident understandings and background knowledge, shared meanings, and personal feelings that constitute the core of administrative work. Taken together, contextuality, acting, knowing, and interacting make up a unified account of practical judgment in an administrative environment that is characterized by complexity, indeterminacy, and the necessity to act on the situation at hand.
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