Tag: Paul Zimmermann

New Article in Critical Policy Studies: »Questioning the ‘transparency-fix’ in the fight against corruption: The example of Transparency International«

Figure 1 of the article Weiskopf & Zimmermann (2026)

Overshadowed by the tragic passing of my co-author, Paul Zimmermann, I want to share the news that our joint article on “Questioning the ‘transparency-fix’ in the fight against corruption: The example of Transparency International” has been published in Critical Policy Studies. Please check out the abstract below:

Increasingly, transparency is seen as a panacea in the fight against the ‘cancer of corruption’ and as a solution that fixes problems associated with all sorts of organizational misbehavior. In this paper, we turn the given into a question and study transparency not as a solution to the problem of corruption, but rather as a historically contingent form of problematization that links specific problem constructions with specific technologies for governing behavior. Drawing on the Foucauldian concepts of ‘problematization’ and ‘moral technologies,’ we analyze the NGO Transparency International as a critical case with strategic importance for the more general problem of disentangling the ‘transparency-power nexus’ and of understanding the politics of regulation in the name of transparency.

The article is available open access at the journal’s website.

In Memoriam: Paul Zimmermann

It is with great sadness that we share the news that Paul Zimmermann, a valued member of the Organization Studies Innsbruck community, lost his life in an avalanche.

After finishing the Organization Studies Master’s program, Paul successfully completed his PhD (Management) in December 2025. In his dissertation, he critically studied the phenomenon of whistleblowing and how it is regulated and enacted in organizations.

Parte Paul Zimmermann

New Article: “Governing by protection: Studying the problematization of whistleblower protection in the EU”

Check out this new article published by doctoral fellow Paul Zimmermann on “Governing by protection: Studying the problematization of whistleblower protection in the EU”, which has recently been published in Administrative Theory and Practice:

Despite the proliferation of whistleblower protection legislation across the world, increasingly scholars report that these laws fail to fully protect the whistleblower. In this paper, I direct attention to the politics of whistleblower protection and suggest that the Foucauldian concept of problematization can help to clarify how legal regulation is involved in the exercise of political power. I situate my study in the EU context and the Whistleblower Protection Directive drawing on Carol Bacchi’s WPR approach. The study finds, that by mobilizing the engagement of workers in law enforcement, whistleblower protection works as a technology of power to rectify the problematics of EU government. I conclude by reflecting on the ethico-political implications of governmentalizing whistleblower protection in advanced liberal democracies.