Change is a timely issue across organisations, particularly since the start of the economic crisis, and especially within English local government. Yet, this question remains dominated by macro and micro explanatory models which tend to exclude conflict, mess and power in favour of enumerating universalistic steps or leadership factors for successful change. This thesis problematises this literature, drawing on Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985) political discourse theory and its mobilisation by critical management studies of organisational change. Three avenues are identified to further this literature. First, the organisation is analysed as an ongoing and fragile hegemonic project in which spaces are defined and consent must be constantly renewed. Second, the organisation is recast as a discursively constituted ‘site’ within a flat ontology, where change is not the result of some ‘bigger’ phenomena such as neo-liberalism or austerity, but instead is the product of situated articulations, disparate demands being mobilised as threats or opportunities requiring change. Finally, a third proposition articulates leadership in organisations as a set of multiple and changing practices, pragmatically deployed by organisational players. In exploring those avenues, a five-step ‘logics of critical explanation’ approach is deployed, characterising organisational change practices according to social (rules and norms), political (inclusions and exclusions), and fantasmatic (fears and hopes) logics (Glynos and Howarth, 2007). A nine month case study of an English County Council and its local strategic partnership’s organisational change project, Integrated Commissioning 2012 (IC 2012), is analysed to problematise the emergence, transformation and failure of practices of change in organisations. Rather than a set of factors or top-down causes and effects, this research demonstrates how change, organisations and leadership are best explained as discursive constructions, where a set of conditions drawn from a given site must be problematised. This research contributes to critical explanations of organisational change politics in three ways. First, by developing the concept of hegemony and hegemonic spaces, this thesis evidences how organisations and change are the result of ongoing struggles, consent being notably gathered by the constant refuelling of the fantasmatic appeal of change. Second, framing the organisation as a site generates a more complex, situated and dynamic understanding of the mobilisation of disparate demands within change discourses. Third, by considering leadership as a set of changing discursive practices and developing four situated dimensions of leadership in the case study, this research adds to critical leadership studies and discursive discussions of the role of individuals in organisational politics.

In the last decades, the EU’s policy on education has become increasingly geared towards serving the economy. While some have been quick to label these changes as neoliberal, this is not such an obvious analysis considering that European education systems are still well-known for their welfare governance. This research attempts to clarify the relation between the EU educational policy and neoliberalism. Inspired by post-foundational discourse theory, we conducted a discourse analysis of three key European Union educational policy documents. Extending on a frame of 20 years, our analysis identifies an incremental neoliberalization of the policy as well as a number of conclusive similarities with neoliberal rationality. We contribute in showing how the economic dimension of the EU educational policy has not so much replaced the other objectives than it has incorporated them. We also show how contemporary educational policy continues the dynamic of neoliberalization, hinting a further dismantlement of the welfare states system in Europe. Our study stands to reinforce the conceptual link between European education and neoliberalism and as such contributes to the understudied ideational perspectives on the topic, complementing some shortcomings left by the mainstream theories, like neo-functionalism and liberal intergovernmentalism.

This master’s thesis in ethnology aim to enlighten the driving forces behind why a local football club, in a segregated residential area, outside of Stockholm in Sweden, chooses to develop its association in a more social direction. This is a cultural study of why football, as a cultural phenomenon, is expected to be able to solve social problems, and more generally how is sport considered a tool and a solution to social problems? Why is football expected to be able to solve segregation in a socio-economically vulnerable areas, of those who lead the sports activities? The empirical material of this essay has been collected through oral interviews from leaders of the association and government officials. Material from the association's development documents, state active board members from the association, government documents, and news articles have also been analyzed. By using the Political Discourse Theory by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (2008 [1985]), the situations for how the sports activities have been designed can be seen as made in relation to the general hegemonic discourse on the social benefits of sport. It is also possible to discover how government grants work as guidelines and point out what the sports movement should perform under state supervision. Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Political Theory (2007), by Jason Glynos and David Howarth, are used in the analysis and especially their fantasmatic logic has given this study an insight into the idea or perception that football leaders have of the outside world, in this case the idea of the social benefit of sport. Which in turn can explain why they in turn invest their commitment in and attract their drive from these ideas because the conviction is about being able to change the socio-economic situation in their local area. In the end, however, it turns out that neither sport nor football alone cannot serve as the solution in the fight against child poverty, criminal activity, and segregation. Sport’s simply does not have all the characteristics required to reform, challenge, or question a social order created or even built on inequality and segregation. But this in no way takes sport into account in contexts where it can socially contribute to a community that can play a significant role for its participants in their everyday lives.