Papers by Betina Wolfgang Rennison
‘How on earth can it be so difficult to manage a pay cheque?’ said the manager of an administrati... more ‘How on earth can it be so difficult to manage a pay cheque?’ said the manager of an administrative office when I interviewed him. ‘In this New Pay system there are so many and often conflicting considerations to be aware of.’ While this web of considerations makes managing a pay cheque a complicated affair, however, it also establishes the very conditions that make management possible. As this chapter will show,ˡ complexity offers managers not just ‘a difficult tight-rope to walk on’, as the administrator described it, but also an opportunity to approach pay as a management issue in the first place; moreover, it functions as a mean to construct management as such. This can be seen very clearly in regard to a new pay technology that has been implemented in the Danish public sector over the last ten years. Here pay is discussed in different ways, which makes the decisions more complicated than ever before, and also more complicated than the designers of the new scale ever imagined.
The article investigates whether contracting process affects goal attainment in internal contract... more The article investigates whether contracting process affects goal attainment in internal contracts. Based on literature on contracting and performance management, we deduce four hypotheses concerning contracting processes and goal attainment. The hypotheses are tested by studying contracts from all Danish agencies together with a survey and interviews with the heads of agencies. We find that dialogue and some autonomy in the contracting process increase goal attainment if balanced with hierarchical control. We also find that agreement between agencies and departments on performance demands and assessment criteria positively affect goal attainment.
Tidsskrift for Professionsstudier, 2018
Communication makes a difference. The manner in which we communicate creates the phenomena we com... more Communication makes a difference. The manner in which we communicate creates the phenomena we communicate about. It can seem obvious, but we are nevertheless seldom aware of the complexity this constructivist assumption implies. Through an analysis of a new salary system in the public sector of Denmark (called New Wage), this paper theorizes this complexity in terms of Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory. It identifies four wholly different ‘codes’ of communication: legal, economic, pedagogical and intimate. Each of them shapes the phenomena of ‘pay’, the construal of the employee and the form of management differently. In this chaos of codes the managerial challenge is to take a second order position in order to strategically manage the communication that manages management itself.
Organization, 2007
Organization recently devoted a special issue to Niklas Luhmann's systems theory. Since Luhma... more Organization recently devoted a special issue to Niklas Luhmann's systems theory. Since Luhmann's work remains relatively unknown in the English-speaking world, the issue was an important opportunity to introduce Niklas Luhmann's contribution to organization theory to this audience. Unfortunately, the primarily theoretical approach to systems theory presented in the issue may leave the reader wondering what, if anything, Luhmann's work might contribute to empirical research into organizations. This note is an attempt to draw attention to the potential of Luhmann's approach in this regard.
Outdoor Leadership, 2017
The theoretical field of leadership is enormous – there is a need for an overview. This article m... more The theoretical field of leadership is enormous – there is a need for an overview. This article maps out a selection of the more fundamental perspectives on leadership found in the management literature. It presents six perspectives: personal, functional, institutional, situational, relational and positional perspectives. By mapping out these perspectives and thus creating a theoretical cartography, the article sheds light on the complex contours of the leadership terrain. That is essential, not least because one of the most important leadership skills today is not merely to master a particular management theory or method but to be able to step in and out of various perspectives and competently juggle the many possible interpretations through which leadership is formed and transformed. Keywords: leadership, management, review, roles, relations, institutions, contingency, power
The reduction of fuel consumption in gas turbines, along with the achievement of high levels of p... more The reduction of fuel consumption in gas turbines, along with the achievement of high levels of performance, remains one of the main goals of the engine's designer. Addition of a heat exchanger (regenerator) is a common method adopted primarily in ground power units where engine's weight and size is not an issue. Moreover, wave rotor technology has shown very promising results in terms of performance enhancement when applied to gas turbines. In this article, detailed calculations are performed for one and two-shaft regenerated gas turbine engines topped with wave rotors built for industrial applications. Having identified the proper placement of the wave rotor in such engines, thermodynamic cycle analysis is implemented, illustrating performance benefits in terms of specific work and specific fuel consumption,
Management & Organizational History, 2007
Abstract The management phenomenon does not simply arise out of nothing. It has emerged against t... more Abstract The management phenomenon does not simply arise out of nothing. It has emerged against the background of a protracted process that has gradually created the conditions for that which we now refer to as ‘management’.This article investigates the construction of the concept of management in the Danish public sector in the 20th century, revealing a transformation of the concept characterized by four different discourses that have rendered management a question of bureaucratic control, efficient rationalization, sectoral planning and, finally, professional management. The article accounts for the particular time-dependent conceptions that inform our knowledge of the past and contribute to our understanding of contemporary semantic possibilities for management. By this means, the article sheds new light on the emergence of public management from the past and the challenges it faces in the present.
Managers do not only take action. They are continually required to reflect upon that action. It s... more Managers do not only take action. They are continually required to reflect upon that action. It seems obvious, but what does it mean to reflect? Can we develop a theoretical model for how it can be done or at least how we can come to terms with the concept of reflection in relation to management? This article makes an attempt. Inspired by the system theory of Niklas Luhmann, the article elaborates and develops four different modes or steps of reflection; Construction (pre-reflection), Reconstruction (reflection of first order), Deconstruction (reflection of second order) and Transformation (reflection of third order). The ambition is to create an analytical framework from which we can study and practice the reflection processes of management. At the same time paying attention to the critical aspects of the reflexive regime and thereby, the article ends up with a call to continually keep on reflecting upon reflection.
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Papers by Betina Wolfgang Rennison