Patricia Bromley – författare

Hyper-Organization offers an institutional explanation for the expansion of formal organization in the contemporary era-in numbers, internal complexity, social domains, and national contexts. Much expansion is hard to justify in terms of technical production or political power, it lies in areas such as protecting the environment, promoting marginalized groups, or behaving with transparency. The authors argue that expansion is supported by widespread cultural rationalization characterized by scientism, rights and empowerment discourses, and an explosion of education. These cultural changes are transmitted through legal, accounting, and professionalization principles, driving the creation of new organizations and the elaboration of existing ones. The resulting organizations are constructed to be proper social actors, as much as functionally effective entities. They are painted as autonomous and integrated but depend heavily on external definitions to sustain this depiction. So expansion creates organizations that are, whatever their actual effectiveness, structurally arational. This book advances theories of social organization in three main ways. First, by giving an account of the expansive rise of 'organization' rooted in rapid worldwide cultural rationalization. Second, explaining the construction of contemporary organizations as purposive actors, rather than passive bureaucracies or loose associations. Third, showing how the expanded actorhood of the contemporary organization, and the associated interpenetration with the environment, dialectically generate structures far removed from instrumental rationality.

Hyper-Organization offers an institutional explanation for the expansion of formal organization in the contemporary era-in numbers, internal complexity, social domains, and national contexts. Much expansion is hard to justify in terms of technical production or political power, it lies in areas such as protecting the environment, promoting marginalized groups, or behaving with transparency. The authors argue that expansion is supported by widespread cultural rationalization characterized by scientism, rights and empowerment discourses, and an explosion of education. These cultural changes are transmitted through legal, accounting, and professionalization principles, driving the creation of new organizations and the elaboration of existing ones. The resulting organizations are constructed to be proper social actors, as much as functionally effective entities. They are painted as autonomous and integrated but depend heavily on external definitions to sustain this depiction. So expansion creates organizations that are, whatever their actual effectiveness, structurally arational. This book advances theories of social organization in three main ways. First, by giving an account of the expansive rise of 'organization' rooted in rapid worldwide cultural rationalization. Second, explaining the construction of contemporary organizations as purposive actors, rather than passive bureaucracies or loose associations. Third, showing how the expanded actorhood of the contemporary organization, and the associated interpenetration with the environment, dialectically generate structures far removed from instrumental rationality.

This timely book investigates the emergence of data-for-accountability as a governing tool in education. Five leading scholars explore its evolution over time and across regions, highlighting how datafication in education benefits some and disadvantages others.The authors trace the origins of using data for accountability in education back to the 1990s, demonstrating how various actors have adapted and tailored this trend, thus diversifying its use as a governance tool. They examine the rise of student testing, performance-based evaluation and governance by numbers to reveal the political, economic and pedagogical uses and abuses of data. Drawing on a variety of methods, theories and disciplines, including a combination of macro-, meso-, and microlevel analyses, the authors illustrate how these instruments have taken root globally, why they persist and how their meanings and effects vary across policy contexts.Data for Accountability in Education is a crucial resource for scholars, students and practitioners in comparative education and international education policy, as well as those engaged with the sociology of education. Policymakers working with educational data will also find the book a valuable reference point for understanding accountability in education.