Calculating outsourcing strategies and trials of strength – Time-space dynamics of the program and its projects

Public sector outsourcing is a program within a suite of contemporary reforms mobilizing private enterprises in the belief of a more efficient public sector. Danish Armed Forces outsourcing of its facility services and management emerged as an option in 1991. Two strategic options developed; one promoted immediate outsourcing while the other promoted internal optimization first. We study how the two options emerged and were valued differently by the supra-national outsourcing program and the local Defense projects over 22 years and how that valuation process involved accounting. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory we show how the two strategic options emerged and were pitted against each other in what Callon describes as in vivo and in vitro ‘trials of strength’. The contribution of the paper is in three actions: 1. highlights how accounting inscriptions take part in formulating, evaluating and advancing different outsourcing strategies during a series of trials of strength, 2. develops the concept of ‘trial of strength’ for accounting and organization research by showing how ‘the rules of the game’ for the trials of strength can become challenged and controversial, and finally 3. shows that, in addition to the pervasive role of programs, projects can play a strategic role invoking issues of time and space to challenge the outsourcing program and develop a trial of strength. In conclusion the paper considers the strategic role projects can play in challenging the new spirit of capitalism.