MAKING WORK INVISIBLE: NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT AND OPERATIONAL WORK IN CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE SECTORS
| Published date | 01 June 2014 |
| Date | 01 June 2014 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12069 |
doi: 10.1111/padm.12069
MAKING WORK INVISIBLE: NEW PUBLIC
MANAGEMENT AND OPERATIONAL WORK IN
CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE SECTORS
PETTER GRYTTEN ALMKLOV AND STIAN ANTONSEN
Based on a study of reliability consequences of New Public Management (NPM) reforms in
Norwegian critical infrastructure sectors, this article suggests that the discourse of work found in
NPM renders essential aspects of operational work invisible – including practices that are known to
be of importance for reliability. We identify two such organizationally ‘invisible’ characteristics of
operational work: the ongoing situational coordination required for keeping a water supply system
or an electricity grid running, and the aggregating operational history within which this happens. In
the reorganized infrastructure sectors, these crucial aspects of operational work fit poorly in market
oriented organizational models and control mechanisms. More generally, our analysis contributes
to the understanding of how some types of work fit poorly within the discourse of work found in
NPM.
INTRODUCTION
To an increasing extent and in increasing detail, what we do in our workplaces is subject
to standardized procedures, checklists to be ticked, and reporting systems in which
work is represented as standardized items. In the public sector, this development is
often part of New Public Management (NPM) reforms. In this respect, NPM is part of
a more general trend towards increasing reliance on standardization and accountability
(e.g. Power 1997). This is based on a discourse in which work can be broken down into
delimited, standardized, measurable tasks that can be bought and sold in a market. While
this rationalistic understanding of work is a cornerstone of NPM, it ranges far wider than
NPM only, and is common in both public and private sector organizations.
In this article we show that there are certain types of work that are hard to describe,
prescribe, and control and are thus rendered invisible in organizations based on this
model of work. Operational work consists of continuous work processes that have no
clear beginning or end and where the tasks involved are notoriously hard to delimit and
standardize. By inspecting details in operational work the article illustrates how ‘bringing
work back in’ (Barley and Kunda 2001) to studies of structural reforms may contribute to
a renewed understanding of their successes and shortcomings.
The empirical basis of the article is a study of organizations operating critical infras-
tructures: electricity distribution and water supply systems. Critical infrastructures are
systems on which a society is dependent in order to maintain its vital functions. While
all parts of the public sector provide important services to citizens, these are services
on which the functioning of society as a whole relies. Although the consequences of
NPM have been described and debated for decades, surprisingly little research has been
devoted to analysing how NPM affects the operation of critical infrastructures (see de
Bruijne and van Eeten 2007; Antonsen et al. 2010).
The analysis presents the following line of argumentation: the rationalistic model of
work in NPM fails to represent and control certain aspects of organization related to the
Petter Grytten Almklov is at NTNU Social Research, Trondheim, Norway. Stian Antonsen is in the Department of
Safety Research, Sintef Technology and Society, Trondheim, Norway.
Public Administration Vol. 92, No. 2, 2014 (477–492)
©2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
478 PETTER GRYTTEN ALMKLOV AND STIAN ANTONSEN
continuous nature of operational work. These aspects have been found to be beneficial
for reliability in previous safety research (e.g. Rasmussen 1997; Weick and Sutcliffe
2007). Making such aspects invisible may thus influence the functioning of organizations
operating critical infrastructures. The ‘dependent variable’ of our analysis is thus not direct
measures of reliability, but organizational properties that are regarded as ‘intermediate
variables’ for the reliability of a system.
The scientific and public discussion of the consequences of NPM reforms is typically
structurally oriented. Although the literature is voluminous, there is still little empirical
evidence regarding how the structural changes actually affect work on the shop floor
(Pollitt 2009; Andrews and Boyne 2012). This article is a contribution in this respect as
we discuss how structural changes associated with NPM affect work at the sharp end of
the organizations. Importantly, we seek to go beyond merely stressing the uniqueness of
the individual settings to which reforms must be adapted. Based on our case studies, we
develop generalizable descriptions and conceptualizations of this uniqueness that can be
employed to understand implementation issues with structural reforms more generally.
Our discussion is based on interviews, visits, observations, document studies, and
meetings with operative personnel and managers in two Norwegian infrastructure
sectors.
KEY CONCEPTS AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
In this section the foundations on which our analysis rests are described through four
main steps. First, the key concepts for the analysis need to be clarified. These concepts
are partly derived from the empirical analysis but will be introduced briefly pending
elaboration throughout the article. Second, we give a brief account of the organizing logic
of NPM as an example of what we have labelled a rationalistic model of work. Third, we
describe existing research related to the differences between visible and invisible work
with an emphasis on so-called ‘articulation work’ (Strauss 1985). Fourth, we link the
notion of invisible work to literature on safety and reliability. This is included to highlight
that the aspects of work rendered invisible in rationalized models of work may have
important reliability functions related to critical infrastructures.
Operational work, situational coordination, historical continuity, and reliability
We have studied operational work in critical infrastructure sectors. This refers to the con-
tinuous flow of tasks and interventions undertaken to keep a system up and running.
We will argue that situational coordination and historical continuity are two key aspects
of operational work. By situational coordination, we refer to the informal coordinative
work that is done to perform a task in a concrete situation, weather conditions, available
resources, concurrent activities, and other situational contingencies. By historical continu-
ity, we refer to the fact that the infrastructure systems we have studied are continuously
running (and have been running for decades) and that work is situated in this temporal
flow of aggregating operational history.
Our project was designed to investigate possible consequences of structural reforms on
the reliability of critical infrastructures. For the purposes of this article, we have defined
reliability, admittedly somewhat crudely, as the absence of disruptions in the supply of
the products and services produced by means of a critical infrastructure. Reliability is
dependent on several technological and organizational factors. This includes the technical
robustness of the infrastructure (e.g. level of redundancy and quality of maintenance) and
Public Administration Vol. 92, No. 2, 2014 (477–492)
©2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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