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Intersectoral partnerships constitute a central approach in health promotion. By combining different perspectives, knowledge and resources from different sectors, partnerships are important for addressing complex health problems. When successful, intersectoral partnerships create synergy, which is suggested to be a proximal outcome that links partnership functioning to health effects. Nonetheless, partnerships are also difficult and time-consuming and may result in conflicts, hostility and power struggles. Such antagonist outputs are expected to produce negative results. However, conflicts may also be a source of valuable learning. This article explores the relationship between conflict and synergy in health promotion partnerships. The empirical material is derived from an evaluation of a 4-year Danish government partnership program. Data consist of survey data collected from 35 partnerships and in-depth qualitative case studies of 10 partnerships. The analysis was inspired by realist evaluation. The qualitative data were coded, and cases written up. Cross-case analysis was conducted and triangulated with survey data. Surprisingly, disagreements and conflicts of interests between partners were common and associated with synergy creation. Moreover, the partnerships' experiences of synergy were often linked to their attribution of differences rather than to common goals or value congruences. The study identifies that a potential for synergy lays in the productive confrontation between partners different perspectives. Moreover, a key mechanism enabling productive conflicts was inclusive dialog, in which the partners' differences were valued, and all voices were included. The study thus builds on the existing synergy literature and adds nuance to the understanding of conflicts in health promotion partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of ignorance has become a central topic in social, political, and organizational research, with scholars thus beginning to explore the distribution and strategic uses of not-knowing (Gross and McGoey, 2015). Claiming that ignorance involves making decisions on what should be seen or unseen (Otto et al., 2019), they are calling for insights into the intermediary states produced between knowledge and non-knowledge in practice. Answering this call, the present article empirically details how practices of seeing and unseeing take place within and across the transparent architecture of a newly built psychiatric hospital in Denmark. Drawing on participant observations and interviews with nursing staff, we examine the role that spatial and material circumstances play in the situated production of ignorance. As such, we consider how the mutual visibility afforded by the transparent design of a nursing station in an inpatient setting produces what we suggest is 'a shared zone of ignorance'. Inspired by the work of German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, this article extends current understandings of how ignorance is 'tethered to the spatial' (Frickel and Kinchy, 2015: 175). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses how desire and fantasy function in a project-based welfare setting by examining a case from the context of Danish educational policy. Drawing on Žižek and others' development of psychoanalytical concepts derived from Lacan, the paper shows through an interview-based empirical study how project managers believe in the project they manage through their fantasies about highly passionate 'fiery souls'. However, as the paper argues such managerial fiery soul fantasies add a fantasmatic superstructure to the professional ideals in the reformed Danish public school in a way that challenges the profession category itself by eroding the difference between professionalism and volunteerism. The conclusion is that the secret of the fiery soul rather is its ability to make project-based welfare policy appear coherent than it is the almost supernatural abilities of particular individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the use of technologies in care. The context is nursing homes, and how the residents face the most sophisticated machinery relieving them from needs and also relieving the professionals from burdens related to care. This article will show how various forms of new technologies that are being implemented in modern nursing homes in Denmark, gives different voices to the people suffering from dementia. Thereby the technology plays a significant role in the attempts to make it possible for the dement to regain a kind of personhood. Observed in this way personhood is not something you either have or don't have, it is something you achieve, and is, developed and maintained. In this case through the interaction between technologies and human element. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will show how Luhmann's concept of functional differentiation makes it possible to analyse how the government draws various stakeholders into governable terrain through the use of different functional systems. The article takes its outset in a recent reform aimed at a renewal of the authority relations between the municipalities and the non-governmental housing associations in Denmark. In doing so, the article provides an example of how the government uses meta-governance to define several interactive arenas for the various stakeholders. The article concludes that meta-governance means neither that the government retains its old power at the centre of society nor that it is hollowed out. Instead, we have to realize that the government's capacity as an organizer relies on many other forms of media beyond power. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organization recently devoted a special issue to Nikias Luhmann's systems theory. Since Luhmann's work remains relatively unknown in the English-speaking world, the issue was an important opportunity to introduce Niklas Luhmann's contribution to organization theory to this audience. Unfortunately, the primarily theoretical approach to systems theory presented in the issue may leave the reader wondering what, if anything, Luhmann's work might contribute to empirical research into organizations. This note is an attempt to draw attention to the potential of Luhmann's approach in this regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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