2017–2024

Organizations are characterized not only by the division of labor but also by maintaining boundaries that define what does or does not belong to the organization. In my research on outpatient as well as inpatient care, I recurrently encountered professionals interacting with patients' family members and relatives, who are not members of the organization. When speaking with medical professionals, family members frequently appear as a source of support, yet often simultaneously as potential troublemakers who can severely disrupt the provision of care.

I was interested in finding an explanation for this constant issue, which often seems almost insoluble – and at times is, in fact, insoluble. Even though family members are not part of the organization, it appears that the organization expects the family to function in the same way as an organization. While families can also operate like organizations – for instance, the division of labor is not alien to most families – issues start to arise when they do not. Medical professionals then attempt to make the family work like an organization, a strategy which sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails. The aim of professional care is to bridge this gap between family and organization by making the organization more family-like (e.g., through 'flat' hierarchies, 'team spirit', and a common 'attitude') and the family more like an organization.

The contemporary sociological discourse is dominated by a critique of palliative care through a Foucauldian lens, using concepts such as governmentality and biopolitics. This approach allows sociologists to depict palliative care as a neoliberal intervention in a so called late-capitalist society. Another segment of the German discourse portrays death and the practices surrounding it as a form of entertainment in a consumerist society. I aim to find a path that is neither one nor the other by depicting palliative care in general and palliative home care in particular as a social and organizational innovation.