Time tactics
Project managing policy implementation in a network
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4356185 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Pam Carter (0000-0001-7281-1468, University of Leicester, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 721-742 |
| Publication date | 2019-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Time & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0961-463X • E-ISSN: 1461-7463 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0961463x16682517 |
| OpenAlex | W2565103509 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 38 |
Projects are ubiquitous throughout the management of public services and the implementation of public policy but implementation processes often remain a 'black box'. This article argues that technical approaches to project management neglect the role of power. Combining Foucault's concept of the productive power of governmentality with the notion of timescapes into an analytical lens, the ethnography opens up the black box to reveal how project management functions as a powerful disciplinary technique. I show what escapes the imposed boundaries of the project as, in contrast to rational representations of the linearity of the project life cycle, decisions are retrospectively framed and the past rewritten. Simultaneously, project managers attempt to bring an uncertain future under control, discursively enrolling actors into their visions. Discursive and symbolic meanings of projects link to materiality as resources are represented as plentiful or meagre. Financial year-end exerts a disciplinary force so that time gets compressed and decision making becomes expedient. As resources move between budgets, governmentality is enacted, while budget headings of 'other' account for inevitable remaindering. Creative 'time tactics' are an adaptive response to achieving externally imposed targets while performing local project success. It turns out that time is at once metaphysical and mundane
Actor–network theory · Discipline · Economics · Governmentality · Management · Materiality (auditing · Political science · Politics · Project management · Public relations · Social science · Sociology · Construction Project Management and Performance · Law · Management and Organizational Studies · Public Policy and Administration Research
Crisis lifecycle, policy response, and policy effectiveness
Social dramas and planning judgement
The politics of temporal sovereignty and the subaltern MA
What matters the most in curbing early Covid‐19 mortality? A cross‐country necessary condition analysis
Planning, ethics and infrastructural time
Business-as-unusual
Sensemaking in organizations
Management Lives
Working Across Boundaries
The New Public Management in Action
Modernising Governance
Theories of the Policy Process
Project management
Systematic review of the application of the plan–do–study–act method to improve quality in healthcare
The New Public Governance? 1
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
Models of Man
Governing welfare reform symbolically
Garbage‐can Policy‐making Meets Neo‐liberal Ideology
Theorizing Hybridity
Publics, Politics and Power
Policy as palimpsest
Strategy as Practical Coping
Governmentality Matters
Political power beyond the State
Is Good Policy Unimplementable? Reflections on the Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice
Governmentality, Temporality and Practice
Social Policy and Time
Seeing Like a State
From How to Why
Retheorizing Empowerment-through-Participation as a Performance in Space
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,86 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2025 (7) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |