Exploring social and moral dynamics around efficiency in government outsourcing

Efficiency is an idea that comes in many guises. This thesis is a qualitative investigation that considers the various meanings this word inhabits in different contexts: in a strategy document, during a disruption, in a public inquiry, by an occupational group, in the moral dimension and as a dark practice. Each theoretical lens that is cast onto the uses and understandings of efficiency makes unique contributions to a variety of literatures in business and management studies. My first article contributes to both commensuration and sense-making literatures by detailing how assumptions around what is commensurable with efficiency can break down and be repackaged through disruption. My second article contributes to literatures on embodiment, bio- power and governmentality. In this paper I identify how efficiency plays on a worker’s body and mind, detailing how perceived individualized energy trade-offs of train drivers are mediated by technology and organizational design. This article inextricably links understandings of efficiency with wider society - initiating a discussion about normative dimensions of efficiency. This is explored in article three by theoretically considering what a moral efficiency would look like in government outsourcing in the UK. Finally, article four contributes to wrongdoing literatures by detailing how efficiency-cost cutting as a practice sits alongside a broader range of practices used to raid the state and convert public assets into private wealth