Economic values shape markets, as does sustainability, safety, decency, public health and democracy. Based on micro-process studies in a dozen markets, this multi-disciplinary book presents a typology of strategic responses to value plurality in markets and helps to explain how such value work influences market reform. Value plurality may be reinforced and turned into open conflicts, but also played down in configurations that neutralize, align, balance, or hierarchize values. By highlighting the role of values in markets, this book clarifies why and how markets are organized.

Organizing and Reorganizing Markets brings organization theory to the study of markets. The difference between markets and organizations is often exaggerated. Organizing exists in addition to other processes and phenomena that form markets: the mutual adaption among sellers and buyers as described in mainstream economics, and the institutions described in institutional economics and economic sociology. Market organization can be analysed with the same type of theories used for analysing organization within formal organizations. Through the use of many empirical examples, the book demonstrates how this can be done. The authors argue that the way a certain market is organized can be understood as the (intermediate) result of previous organizing processes. Questions discussed include: 'What drives market organizing and reorganizing processes? What makes various organizations intervene as market organizers? And, how are the specific contents of market organization determined?' The answers to these questions help to analyse similarities and differences among organizing processes in formal organizations and those in markets. Arguments are illustrated by in-depth studies of many types of markets. The book will open up markets as a field of study for scholars of organization.

Exploring the mechanisms underlying performance comparisons, Performance Comparison and Organizational Service Provision investigates how such assessments shape hospitals’ service provision and medical professionals’ work. With a focus on U.S. health care, this study outlines how medical quality was defined and compared in the hospital sector from the late 19th century to the present. Developing a novel theoretical framework to investigate performance comparisons, several different forms of internal and external performance assessments are contrasted throughout this period. The transformative effects of these comparisons on hospitals’ relationships to patients, insurers, regulators, and staff are analyzed and their ramifications for current hospital care are explored. Drawing on this analysis, the book examines the controversial nature of these measures and the struggles among hospital managers, patients, physicians, and policy makers to determine hospital quality. Affording a deeper understanding of how performance comparisons influence organizational service provision, the book will be of interest to researchers in a broad range of fields including organization studies, accountability and evaluation, health care, and policy research as well as practitioners in hospital care and management.

Describes the organizational aspects of contemporary society, explaining how organization occurs not only inside formal organizations, but also outside and among them.

“In this informative study, Garsten and Sorbom explore both the inner workings and the communication strategies of the WEF.” —Foreign Affairs In Discreet Power, Christina Garsten and Adrienne Sörbom undertake an ethnographic study of the World Economic Forum (WEF). Accessing one of the primary agenda-setting organizations of our day, they draw on interviews and participant observation to examine how the WEF wields its influence. They situate the WEF within an emerging system of “discretionary governance,” in which actors craft ideas and entice formal authorities and top leaders to garner significant sway. Yet despite its image as a powerful, exclusive brain trust, the WEF has no formal mandate to implement its positions. It must convince others to advance chosen causes and enact suggestions, rendering its position quite fragile. Garsten and Sörbom argue that the WEF must be viewed relationally as a brokering organization that lives between the market and political spheres and that extends its reach through associated individuals and groups. They place the WEF in the context of a broader shift, arguing that while this type of governance opens up novel ways of dealing with urgent global problems, it challenges core democratic values. Praise for Discreet Power “Between raw forces of the global economy and disordered world politics lie organizations that are neither political nor economic. The World Economic Forum is central among these structures. Garsten and Sörbom give a most impressive depiction and analysis of its role—responsible but undemocratic—in what is now called global governance.” —John W. Meyer, Stanford University “This is an outstanding exemplar of a very difficult genre in the craft of ethnography: working within the highest reaches of elite organization. The challenge lies less in limited access than in not reinforcing our deep-seated stereotypes of what goes on in such groups. This work is distinguished by its observational quality and derived expression of the stakes and issues at hand.” —George Marcus, University of California, Irvine

Addictions have increased markedly in contemporary societies over the past decades. As well as widely acknowledged issues surrounding illegal substance addictions, there are increasing numbers of problems related to behavioural addictions such as the use of legal substances such as antidepressants and amphetamines. These addictions are concerning for a range of public policy fields, not least, public health and social cohesion. As a result, cohesive governance of addictive substances and behaviours is paramount to future public policy. This book is based on the findings of a five year, multidisciplinary project (Addictions and Lifestyles in Contemporary Europe - Reframing Addictions Project) studying the pace and impact of addictions in Europe, and is the concluding volume in the Governance of Addictive Substances and Behaviours series. Authored by 11 leading figures in the fields of public health, psychology, sociology, psychiatry, addiction studies, epidemiology, and social and public policy, the book takes a truly comprehensive approach to the study of the current state of addiction governance in Europe and proposals for a future governance framework. No one country has yet got governance polices right. The project's outcome is a plan for the redesign of addictions governance, which includes amendments to key metrics used in research, promoting individual-level to society-level scope of understanding in policy approaches, and bringing the impact of dependency on societal well-being to the fore. New Governance of Addictive Substances and Behaviours is an unprecedented study, both in terms of international reach and scope of issues addressed. It will be a key resource for anyone with an interest in research-driven European policy change in public health and the field of addictive substances and behaviours.

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online. Obsessive Measurement Disorder or Pragmatic Bureaucracy?Coping with Uncertainty in Development Aid Relations examines issues in performance measurement and monitoring in the context of the complex field of development aid.

It is often claimed that we live in an expert society, a society where more and more individuals take expert roles in increasingly narrow fields. In contrast to more traditional experts most of these new experts lack generally accepted mechanisms for the certification and legitimation of their expertise. This book focuses on these new as well as established experts and the efforts undertaken to secure and legitimate their expertise. We view these efforts as organizing attempts and study them on four different levels – the society, the market, the organization and the individual. Based on empirical studies on these four levels of analysis, The Organization of the Expert Society makes the argument that current organizing initiatives in the expert society are based in an objectifying view of expertise that risks concealing and downplaying key aspects of expertise. Well-intended organizing initiatives in the expert society thus run the risk of promoting ignorance rather than securing expertise. Focusing on a current, general and global phenomenon, the rise and organization of an expert society. The Organization of the Expert Society will be key reading for scholars, academics and policy makers in the management fields of Organizational Theory, Management Consulting, Organizations & Society, Critical Management Studies as well as the disciplines of Sociology, Political Science and Social Anthropology.

Co-published with the Oxford Philosophy Trust, this first volume in a new series represents the work of the International Conference on Social Values. This volume focuses on education as a separate discipline and addresses the issues such as teacher training, corporate-business school partnerships, and the ethical behavior of academics in their roles as experts in litigation.

This edited collection brings together leading international academics and researchers to provide a comprehensive body of literature that informs the future of prison and wider corrective services training, education, research, policy and practice. This volume addresses a range of 21st century issues faced by modern corrective services including, prison overcrowding, young and ageing offenders, mental health, sexual assault in corrective facilities, trans communities in corrective services and radicalisation of offenders within corrective services. Taking a multi-disciplinary approach and drawing together theoretical and practice debates, the book comprehensively considers current challenges and future trajectories for corrective systems, the people within them and service delivery. This volume will also be a welcomed resource for academics and researchers who have an interest in prisons, corrective services practice and broader criminal justice issues. It will also be of interest to those who want to join corrective services, those who are currently training to become personnel in corrective services and related allied professions, and those who are currently working in the field.