Paper short abstract:

The paper examines role of meetings in the organisation of work practices through the management model Lean in the Swedish public care sector. The paper reveals the significance of meetings when operating the Lean model, but also what it means to be an ethnographer in Lean meetings.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, focus is placed on the role of meetings in ethnographic fieldwork within organisations, in particular the organisation of work practices in the Swedish public care sector. Meeting ethnography (Sandler and Thedvall, forthcoming) is central for the investigation of policy and management of organisations and bureaucratic processes. Meetings are not only containers through which things move but they are also practices of circulation and makers (ibid) where ideas, documents, power, resistance/acceptance and decision-making circulate, perform and transform action. Ethnographically, the paper is placed in a Swedish municipality implementing and operating the management model Lean within the public care sector. Lean traces its origins from the car industry, but has lately spread like wildfire in the public sector in Sweden and abroad. The paper examines what sort of knowledge, identities, and power relationships are produced, circulated and performed through Lean meetings? What may be communicated in Lean "board [whiteboard] meetings"? What kind of knowledge is produced in Lean "improvement group" meetings? How do staff fit their knowledge and work practices into the labels and aesthetics of the Lean management model in Lean meetings? The paper reveals the significance of meetings when operating management models such as Lean, but also what it means to be an ethnographer in Lean meetings.