The Charismatization of Routines: Management of Meaning and Standardization in an Educational Organization

This paper reports a study of a Swedish School company, characterized by charismatic leadership and a radical vision, trying to create and implement standard operating procedures. We illuminate how efforts to bureaucratize are given meanings quite different to conventional ones of experiences of constraints and, at best, reluctant acceptance. The charisma that the members of the organization ascribe to the founder and the linking of standardization with radical corporate vision and identity building are viewed as central. Theoretically, the paper aims to throw some new light on the theme of organizational control through showing how different forms of control may intersect. The need to develop ideas that can bridge various forms of control is emphasized. Hence, we suggest a concept that may prove helpful in such a project: the charismatization of routines.