Discourses of Planning

This book addresses the widespread and long established phenomenon of progressive ‘managerialization’ in the public services sector. But it does so with a particular focus, a particular angle and a particular lens: the focus is the intensification of planning (along with control) practices in the changing public sector; the angle is professional work, i.e. how this is lived among professionals in their daily work routine; the lens is discourse analysis, as a way to capture and make sense of the multiple rationalities that may be interacting when a change in practices is in place. Empirically, the book draws on an ethnographic piece of research conducted in a public hospital that has been setting particular emphasis on the introduction of a planning system and on the engagement of clinical professionals in it.