Abstract
Based on a study of lean management practices at the Swedish Migration Board, we develop a novel theoretical understanding of the translation of management ideas. We show how translation, rather than being reduced to a network of human intentions are actions governing the transformation of organizational practices, can instead be understood as a historically contingent, situated flow of mundane everyday work practices through which social and material translators simultaneously become translated, conditioned to be and act in certain ways.
We critically examine the conceptual vocabulary inherited from Callon and Latour and its performative consequences, namely the production of actor-centric accounts of translation of management ideas. Contrasting this vocabulary, we work through the non-actor-centric orientation and vocabulary of social anthropologist Tim Ingold, which allows us to background the intentional human actor and foreground the flow of mundane, situated practices; capture how the flow of practices conditions within, rather than distinct from, these practices. In essence, our novel view of translation emphasizes how management ideas are radically unstable, and subject to alteration through the flow of practices rather than a result of deliberate implementation efforts.