ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the aesthetic appeal of administration, especially regarding graphic design. There are powers and pleasures in making an elegant flowchart to materialize the process of a case in human services organizations, and staff often praise one another’s work: “Wow, you’re a pro!” This chapter not only analyzes the aestheticization of administration as a craft in itself but also presents a close-up study of a particular flowchart concerning the Swedish Coordinated Individual Plan, or SIP. Attempts to standardize working methods such as “collaboration” through aesthetically refined graphics generate a bulging workload with the risk of creating a competition between “doing the document” and doing the actual work. The upgrading of administrative skills is visible in a conspicuous preoccupation with detailed guidelines for having meetings and filling out documents, including the appreciation of beauty in these practices. The produced administrative impressiveness contributes to the Eigendynamik of administration because all attempts to create clarity nonetheless carry some degree of uncertainty, which in turn generates a renewed need for more clarity—and more beauty. Thus, ambiguity needs to be sorted out with new checklists, flowcharts, or manuals, keeping the spiral going.
