PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT IN SECRET SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS

Barbara Czarniawska, Sabina Siebert and John McKay

Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, May 2023.

The secret service organizations – also termed intelligence or espionage agencies – play the crucial and yet little-known role in societies. These organizations gather and scrutinize information to guard their countries against the political and economic consequences of security violations. Yet while they did provide much inspiration for fiction and movies, secret service organizations have rarely been studied by social scientists.

In this project, we explored conventional aspects of personnel management in these non-conventional organizations, comparing them with knowledge accumulated in studies of personnel management in ordinary organizations. We analyzed biographies and autobiographies of employees of secret service organizations, using investigative devices borrowed from narratology. In the analysis, we focused on key events from a spy's career: How do they enter their profession, and how do they perform espionage work; how are they trained and managed; what are the circumstances of promotion and demotion, up to the point of exit from the profession (through retirement, capture, or death).

We believe that the work of secret service agents may prove more relevant to an understanding of managing people in ordinary organizations than is usually assumed.

Public Administration Theory

Studying the government and organisation of society

Departing from key concepts such as power, democracy, government and ethics, the members of this research group studies a range of different political processes, mainly in a Swedish context but also with an international outlook.

This group brings together researchers in political science and law, based in Lund, Malmö, Göteborg and Växjö. Past and present research projects deal with overarching themes such as marketisation, depoliticisation, juridification, projectification, Europeanisation and bureaucratisation - focusing on, amongst other things, New Public Management, health care reform, expert rule, climate politics, social investment funds, the European social fund, self-driving cars and artificial intelligence.

Public administration takes place at all political levels - international, national, regional and local, in democracies as well as authoritarian regimes. Also, issues of government and organisation cannot be limited to the public sector but are also relevant in private companies and civil society. Therefore, we are open to new members from a wide range of research fields and disciplines to take part in our activities.

To the Public Administration Theory Research Group's webpages