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Karin Berglund, Monica Lindgren and Johann Packendorff has published an article in Project Management Journal titled The Worthy Human Being as Prosuming Subject: ‘Projectified Selves’ in Emancipatory Project Studies. In the article, the projectified self is suggested as a way to advance emancipatory project studies toward improved understandings of how individuals in contemporary neoliberal societies are urged to become self-controlling, self-improving, self-commercializing, life-compartmentalizing, and deadline driven. We propose (1) a developed theoretical foundation for studies of the projectified self, based on recent writings on enterprising selves, and (2) the notion of prosumption as a concept for how the worthiness of this projectified self is constructed in a simultaneous process of project-based production and consumption. This is discussed in relation to our on-going studies of social media entrepreneurs. The article is part of a special issue on Advancing theory and debate in project studies edited by Joana Geraldi, Jonas Söderlund and Alfons van Marrewijk.

Johann Packendorff har av rektor för Ersta Sköndal Bräcke Högskola (ESH) utsetts till extern ledamot av högskolans Akademiskt Kollegium. Akademiskt Kollegium är ESH:s högsta kollegiala organ (motsvarande fakultetsråd), och ansvarar för högskolans forskning och forskarutbildning.

Johann Packendorff är med i styrgruppen för Akademins Tillitsnätverk som bildades under hösten 2019 under ledning av Louise Bringselius, Lunds Universitet. Det är ett nätverk för forskare från hela Sverige som verkar för ökad tillit i styrning och ledning i allmänhet och till de medborgarnära professionerna i synnerhet. Nätverket främjar forskning om tillitsskapande arbete och bygga broar mellan praktiker, politiker och forskare, för att på så vis bidra till den utveckling som redan är påbörjad på många håll i offentlig sektor i Sverige. Delar av styrgruppen presenterade nätverket i en debattartikel på DN Debatt den 29 december 2019.

In a new article in Journal of Management & Organization, co-authors Erika Lokatt, Charlotte Holgersson, Monica Lindgren, Johann Packendorff and Louise Hagander develop a theoretical perspective of how professional identities in multi-professional organisational settings are co-constructed in daily interactions. The research reported is located in a healthcare context where overlapping knowledge bases, unclear divisions of responsibilities, and an increased managerialist emphasis on teamwork make interprofessional boundaries in healthcare operations more complex and blurred than ever. We thereby build on a research tradition that recognises the healthcare sector as a negotiated order, specifically studying how professional identities are invoked, constructed, and re-constructed in everyday work interactions. The perspective is employed in an analysis of qualitative data from interviews and participant observation at a large Swedish hospital, in which we find three main processes in the construction of space of action: hierarchical, inclusive, and pseudo-inclusive. In most of the interactions, existing inter-professional divides and power relations are sustained, preventing developments towards integrated interprofessional teamwork.

At the 18th International Studying Leadership Conference at Bristol Business School, Monica Lindgren and Johann Packendorff presented a study of department-level collective leadership work processes in Swedish universities. Drawing upon a notion of leadership work as co-constructed by many organisational actors in interaction, we show how leadership work among senior faculty increasingly becomes concerned with administrative/regulative issues. Our respondents describe how meetings, tasks distributed to ad hoc teams, committee work etc., become increasingly time-consuming and mandatory to partake in. This leadership work also becomes increasingly focussed on receiving and handling administrative issues referred to them by central university bodies, or on the formulation and implementation of internal regulations.

The consequence of the above leadership work processes is that leadership work becomes increasingly irrelevant to daily teaching and research activities and at the same time increasingly time-consuming and central for involved senior faculty. The growing centrality of this particular form of leadership work in the daily life of faculty is self-reinforcing, both due to the content of work (which constantly calls for further decisions, adjustments and remedies) and to growing expectations on senior faculty to perform precisely this sort ’organizational responsibility’ and ’collegiality’ instead of withdrawing into their own teaching and research. Not only are formal managers in the ’chain of command’ pursuing this kind of leadership work, it is also colonising and redefining notions of collegiality and citizenship amongst senior faculty in general.

Johann Packendorff has been appointed program director of PiL (Partners-in-Learning), the KTH-wide career development program for assistant professors employed in the tenure track system.

Monica Lindgren will serve at the Appointments Board at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. The Appointments Board is a central preparatory body to the university president in matters relating to the employment and promotion of teachers. The appointments board also prepares questions about docentship.

The appointments board is chaired by the Dean of faculty and includes a vice chair and seven members who are permanently employed as professor or associate professor. The students are entitled to representation by three members.

Föreläser idag för rektorer och skolledare från hela Sverige om nulägesanalysens tillvägagångssätt och fallgropar i verksamhetsutveckling. Inte bara SWOT-analys utan även om krismöten på SVT, bejakande (och inte bara problemlösande) förhållningssätt, lösningsdrivna analyser – och om att kunna vara historieberoende och historieoberoende på en och samma gång. Utmärkt arrangerat av Skolporten!

Idag presenterade vi vår forskning inom PERFA-projektet (PERFormance-based governance in Academia) på Utbildningsdepartementet. Vi pekade på två parallella riktningar i den prestationsbaserade styrningen på institutionsnivå; en instrumentaliserande och en som stödjer utvecklandet av det vi kallar ’akademiskt medborgarskap’. Stora delar av de aktuella styrmodellerna har en instrumentaliserande verkan; de förstärker tendensen till individualism, karriärism och kortsiktig nyckeltalsstyrning och gör att aktörer på alla nivåer alltmer agerar utifrån egennytta. Det är inte alltigenom negativt, men det kan lätt slå över och få både oförutsedda och oavsedda konsekvenser.

The organizing committee of the 9th Making Projects Critical Workshop. From left: Damian Hodgson, Lucia Crevani, Monica Lindgren, Svetlana Cicmil, Anette Hallin and Johann Packendorff. Photo: Karin Berglund.

Mälardalen University in Västerås, Sweden, hosted the 9th Making Projects Critical workshop 17-18 January 2019. 24 scholars from 16 universities in five countries spend two intense days presenting and discussing topics such as projectification of the public sector, projectified selves in social media and freelancing, professions and artificial intelligence, sustainability contradictions, performativity of project management, agile project management, sociomateriality, and much more. The full program can be obtained here. #mpc9workshop