Abstract
This thesis is a philosophical examination of how organizational performance measurements and gradings affect the conditions for the good working life. For the last 30 years New Public Management has been used as a standardized economic system to regulate organizational practice in the Danish public sector. The New Public Management doctrines of generating explicit standards, emphasis on output control and performance measurements has been criticized negatively in a great scale which emphasizes the actuality of this subject. In conjunction with these doctrines, logical thinking reveals possible problems with an attempted application of standardized doctrines to a wide arrange of totally different organizations and hereby practices of humans. This is shown in a case study of this thesis, where the practice of nurses and doctors on Danish hospitals have undergone a transformation with the purpose of improving the results of performance measurements to create more effective hospitals. Along with the case study, a preparation scheme for organizational employee development conversations is included to constitute a further basis for analysis as the schemes also show clear tendencies of regulation to the New Public Management doctrines.

Through thorough philosophical analysis of the case and preparation schemes, the thesis finds several relations between organizational performance measurements, gradings and the conditions for the good working life. The thesis applicates Karl Marx’ theory of alienation to the case study and finds that organizational performance measurements contribute to a higher degree of alienation of the Danish hospital workers, which includes alienation types of interrelational alienation and alienation from both the production process and the product. However, the thesis finds that Marx’ traditional alienation form is not the case to its full extent as nurses in a contemporary context can develop versatility outside of worktime. An application of Jürgen Habermas’ theory of communicative action on the case finds that performance measurements can result in the neglection of lifeworld because of system dominance, which affects conditions for attaining the good working life negatively as their norms, values and possibilities for understanding oriented communication almost disappears. Furthermore, the thesis finds that communicative action as Habermas defines the notion is a necessary condition for conducting traditional nursing as defined by V.A. Henderson but it’s exclusion from the practice results in loss of professional competence, which is not ideal with reference to a good working life for employees. The study also finds a relation between Habermas’ notion of communicative competence and the degree of alienation in the worklife. Communicative competence for nurses is made difficult as a result of organizational performance measurements. According to Habermas, a continuing neglection of communicative competence can lead to different kinds of pathology and the thesis demonstrates this theory with a case example.

This thesis furthermore finds that the concept of “MU-samtale” is too strategic and asymmetrical to abide by the communicative ideals of Habermas and Hans-Georg Gadamer and the gradings are a severe part of the reason for this. Employee development as the aim of this conversation form and as an integral part of the good working life is prevented by the gradings and pre-determined preparation schemes according to the development notion of Gadamer. Therefore, this thesis presents an alternative, which consists in a transformation of the concept from “MU-samtale” to “The organizational learning conversation”, which is based on an attempt to approach the ideals of Gadamer and Habermas even though they are not fully attainable in practice. The general idea is a conversation revolving around notions relevant to the organization and working life of the employee that also includes the norms and values of the participants.

With the application of competition theory from Friedrich Hayek the thesis finds that organizational gradings of employees does not provide the traditional benefits of competition as a discovery procedure, which is why Hayek contrary to expectations is not a counterpart to the other theorists on this matter. However, the organizational performance measurements are very beneficial as discovery procedures, which can be used for organizational development and hereby better conditions for the good working life. Also, the measurements can be beneficial from a development perspective. When nurses are forced to adapt their practice in order to get better measurement results, knowledge will be used in new ways, which can generate new knowledge from an evolutionary perspective.