Books by Hanne Nørreklit

An Actor's Approach to Management is a contribution to the development of methods and practices for handling the complexity and non-linearity of organisational processes. The basic premises are that the individual person possesses creativity and problem solving skills that can be used in a constructive way in his/her daily work-life and that organisations can become more competitive if the management is capable of acknowledging these abilities. The challenge for management is to encourage employees to be innovative and to take on responsibility for organisational concerns in their work. The book provides a conceptual framework for understanding the complexity and challenges for management. A number of cases are presented in order to illustrate how managers can practice the actor based method. The actor based approach presented in the book contrasts more mainstream management approaches that tend to focus on rather mechanical management techniques constructing the employees as reactive. The authors ambition is to encourage students to be present and reflective in their tackling of organisational situations.

For the last two decades the Danish Universities have felt the impact of the international trend towards implementation of New Public Management. The results are seen in the implementation of new hierarchical governance structures and contractual governance system including market based quantitative measurement systems for resource allocation and performance evaluation. Compared to other countries the changes in performance measurements and governance of the Danish universities are radical and the Minister of Science heralded them as "the greatest change in university management since the founding of Copenhagen University in 1479". The changes took place with surprisingly little resistance from university scholars. The articles in this anthology investigate the origins and rationales for the silent managerial revolution at Danish Universities and the radical implications for the identity of researchers, university management, and the universities themselves.