Hi Johan! You are about to defend your thesis “Performing Numbers”. In short, what is your thesis about?
”It’s about the role of numbers in everyday social interaction. Basically, the thesis starts from the observation that numbers permeate our everyday lives, our work, and our organisations. This, together with the claim made by several influential studies that such numbers also affect us in authoritative ways – which can be problematic at times – makes up the study’s background.”
”In the thesis, I ask if and how things could be different by examining the conditions needed for numbers to become authoritative, for them to be rendered powerless, counter-productive, or fall anywhere in-between. To address these questions, the thesis presents an ethnographic study on the role of numbers in everyday organisational life at a Scandinavian hospital. In other words, I explore what a few salient numbers do and what people of flesh and blood do with them in their day-to-day dealings at work.”
”For example, at hospitals, numbers are frequently relied upon by doctors, nurses, patients, administrators, and managers to organise, administer, evaluate, and manage the daily work. Yet, such numbers are also frequently critiqued, debated, and contested by people in front of an audience or behind the scenes. The thesis offers thick descriptions and rich theoretical insights into what makes numbers powerful or renders them weak within social interactions.”
In three words, how would you describe your years as a PhD student at LUSEM?
”Fun, interesting, and fulfilling.”
What are you up to now?
”Right now, I am noticing interesting things all around me and playing around with ways of turning these things into ideas, those ideas into questions, and those questions into researchable projects. I am also reading a short book by the famous movie director David Lynch called “Catching the Big Fish” along with Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. These are fascinating books! For me, reading is both a way to look backwards and inward by serving as a way for me to relax and reflect, as well as a way to look forward and outwards by prompting creativity, inspiration, and ideas for my thinking and writing.”
Thank you, Johan! Wishing you all the best!
More information
Johan Jönsson is a doctoral student (PhD student) in Organisation at the Department of Business Administration.
