Department of Organization

My research attends to the organizational, practical, and ethical implications of recent transformations of the public sector. In particular, I investigate the assumptions and constitutive effects of quality and safety reforms in the healthcare sector with a view to changes in concrete work practices, core tasks, and discretionary abilities of healthcare professionals. In my book Organizing Patient Safety: Failsafe Fantasies and Pragmatic Practices (2018, Palgrave), I inquire into the international preoccupation with patient safety and the faith in the possibility of creating failsafe organizations through system-improvements.

Recent research projects include an investigation of safety and emergency organization in healthcare during Covid-19; an examination of medical professionalism from an ‘ethics of office’ perspective (supported by the Velux Foundation); and an ethnographic investigation into the introduction of clinical pathways in cancer treatment with specific attention to reconfigurations of clinical practice and medical reasoning (supported by the Danish Cancer Society). Conceptually, I combine an engagement with American pragmatism, primarily John Dewey, with a wider interest in practical philosophy, classic organization theory, and medical sociology.