Knowing the rules: Administrative work as practice

This article presents a theory of administrative work as practice. Building on a rich narrative of a mid-level administrator in the Dutch Immigration Office, four core elements of administrative practice are identified: contextualily, acting, knowing, and interacting. Taking cues from practice theory and ethnomethodology, the author argues that the visible aspects of administrative work (decisions, reports, negotiations, standard operating procedures, and-or a higher level of institutional obstraction-structures, legal rules, lines of authority and accountability) are effectuations, enactments of the hidden, taken-for-granted routines: the almost unthinking actions, tacit knowledge, fleeting interactions, practical judgments, self-evident understandings and background knowledge, shared meanings, and personal feelings that constitute the core of administrative work. Taken together, contextuality acting, knowing, and interacting make up a unified account of practical judgment in an administrative environment that is characterized by complexity, indeterminancy, and the necessity to act on the situation at hand.