Tom Karlsson (2019).

Publicerad iJournal of Language and Politics, 18 (1), 107-130SammanfattningThis article focuses on how common-sense knowledge is enacted by middle managers in order to make sense of contemporary public administration. Specifically, the article demonstrates how managerialization and market logics is embedded in actors’ perceptions of public administration and becomes manifested through understandings and legitimations. The article presents an analysis of conversational data from middle management positions within a Swedish government agency. The analysis demonstrates how actors categorize a traditional hierarchy together with contemporary ideas of consumerism. It is also demonstrated how actors draw on legitimations of authority and mythopoesis in order to make sense of and to understand their managerial role within the agency. As such, the article contributes to contemporary public administration literature and its discussion regarding the effects of embedding marketization logics on actor and organizational levels as well as to ethnomethodologically informed literature within the social science and humanities.Länkar

• https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.17070.kar

Abstract [en]

This study traces the development of the management accountant (MA) role at the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (SIA). In 2012, the agency began a reformation by implementing the Lean management system in hopes of increasing customer trust. The results of this study show that the authority of the MA rests on decentralization and the proximity of MAs to managers, as previous research has shown, and more specifically on a definitional and a moral prerogative that may or may not be awarded to MAs enabling them to act as de facto managers. The study shows how the role of the SIA’s operative level MAs changed into a helpdesk function with the role of assisting other groups to help themselves, in this case operative-level teams that had begun performing management accounting tasks. Thus, this study bears witness not to the expansion and hybridization of existing MA roles, but to the reduction in authority and de-hybridization of the MA role, from business partner to a pedagogical role on a consultative basis.

Ort, förlag, år, upplaga, sidor

2018. Vol. 34, nr 3, s. 240-251

Nyckelord [en]

Bean counter, business partner, Lean, Management accountant, NPM

Nationell ämneskategori

Företagsekonomi

Abstract [en]

Studies on street-level bureaucracy examine actions of frontline workers within the public sector. In this literature, there is a lack of evidence on how job tenure affects how frontline workers respond to formal steering. We contribute to prior research by studying the nationwide introduction of an assessment support tool to be used by caseworkers to assess clients’ needs under the Swedish active labour market policy. We examine the potential effects of tenure on how caseworkers use this tool. The empirical analysis is based on quantitative and qualitative data. We show that as tenure increases, street-level bureaucrats, especially male caseworkers, tend to act in accordance with policy signals to a lesser extent. The qualitative analysis shows that this pattern can partly be explained by the fact that increasing experience with meeting clients face to face increases caseworkers’ perceived confidence and skills.

Ort, förlag, år, upplaga, sidor

WILEY , 2018. Vol. 96, nr 1, s. 154-170

Nationell ämneskategori

Företagsekonomi

Abstract [en]

Strategic management (SM) has become prominent on the agenda in several public organizations due to new public management (NPM) reforms. Nevertheless, there are few studies investigating how public organizations apply SM in practice and what tools are used. As a result, calls have been made for such studies. This article can be seen as an attempt to meet this call by presenting a qualitative case study of how SM has been applied in the Swedish Transport Administration (STA), a central government agency in Sweden, and what tools it used in strategy making. By analyzing the micro processes of strategizing at STA, our results indicate that public organizations need to be aware of at least three specific tensions that can enable or constrain strategy making. These tensions are: short v. long-term, parts v. whole, and reactivity v. proactivity.

Ort, förlag, år, upplaga, sidor

Taylor & Francis, 2018. Vol. 21, nr 5, s. 822-849

Nationell ämneskategori

Företagsekonomi

Forskningsämne

Erik BrattströmTomas Hellström Företagsekonomiska institutionen Lunds universitet

Abstract

Research on priority-setting for research, development, and innovation (RDI) often does not take into account the many challenges associated with translating priorities into RDI programs and projects. Such implementation challenges are typically handled by RDI program officers at funding agencies i.e. those officers that manage RDI programs and projects. To address this challenge, this paper utilizes a ‘street-level bureaucracy’ approach to understanding how RDI priority-setting is enacted by program officers in the course of translating general RDI priorities into actual funding. This is done through a study of how program officers at the Swedish Energy Agency exercise discretion in the course of implementing RDI priorities. The results suggest four general dimensions of program officer discretion in priority implementation, viz. (i) regulating inflow of new knowledge and ideas, (ii) interpreting the relationship between strategy and program design, (iii) tweaking and applying selection criteria, and (iv) determining the portfolio’s balance between basic research and application/innovation. The results suggest that discretion can act as an important mechanism mediating between the formulation of RDI priorities and de facto RDI investments by funding agencies. By explicating some variations of this mechanism, the study contributes new insights into the governance of RDI funding processes.Stäng

TIDSKRIFTSBIDRAG › ARTIKEL I VETENSKAPLIG TIDSKRIFT

Abstract [en]

This article presents a study of five schools with shared principalship. It contributes knowledge about how shared principalship is experienced by people who work closely (“close subordinates”) with the shared principalship constellations. Data consists of 20 semi-structured interviews. Close subordinates describe that the shared principalship meant a reasonable workload for their principals and welcomed their level of accessibility. Confidence in the leader collaboration was heightened if close subordinates were able to witness that collaboration in action with their own eyes. The findings are discussed in relation to the conditions introduced by current school legislation in Sweden. © 2017 Marianne Döös, Lena Wilhelmson, Jenny Madestam, and Åsa Örnberg.

Ort, förlag, år, upplaga, sidor

2019. Vol. 8, nr 1, s. 154-170

Nationell ämneskategori

Företagsekonomi Utbildningsvetenskap

Public or Private – Does It Matter? How School Leaders in Public and Private Schools Perceive Their Roles Madestam, Jenny Sundström, Göran Stockholms universitet, Samhällsvetenskapliga fakulteten, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen. Bergström, Göran Stockholms universitet, Samhällsvetenskapliga fakulteten, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen. 2018 (Engelska) Ingår i: Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration, ISSN 2001-7405, E-ISSN 2001-7413, Vol. 22, nr 3, s. 129-152

Keeping the discussion among civil servants alive: ’Platform of values’ as an emerging genre within the public sector in Sweden

Nyström Höög, Catharina

Högskolan Dalarna, Akademin Humaniora och medier, Svenska språket. Uppsala universitet.ORCID-id: 0000-0002-4838-3093

Björkvall, Anders

Örebro universitet.2018 (Engelska)Ingår i: Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration, ISSN 2001-7405, E-ISSN 2001-7413, Vol. 22, nr 3, s. 17-38

Abstract [en]

This paper aims to provide institutional explanations for the development of performance-based budgeting (PBB). Particularly, we explore the tensions between converging and diverging pressures. By analysing PBB in two countries with significant experience with it, Finland and Sweden, the research explains why we observe only evolutionary changes in actual budgetary practices. Indeed, the introduction of this practice is part of a global reform process undertaken over decades by public sector organizations. Nevertheless, the countries still struggle with PBB and, despite global converging pressures, diverging pressures shape its development, challenging its implementation and use, and paving the way for evolutionary changes.

Ort, förlag, år, upplaga, sidor

2018. Vol. 20, nr 12, s. 1836-1857

Nyckelord [en]

Performance budgeting, isomorphism, institutional logics, ambiguities, central government

Nationell ämneskategori

Ekonomi och näringsliv

Abstract [en]

Public organizations In the 21^stcentury, are increasingly complex in terms of multiple institutional rules, norms, and practices. This complexity constitutes a difficult challenge for civil servants to find and determine appropriate identities, roles and relationships in their everyday work.  For this special issue we made a call for scholars to contribute new addressing the roles of civil servants within increasingly complex public sector organizations, focusing on a couple of interrelated research questions:

• What is the nature of public administration taking into consideration increasing institutional complexity in terms of persistent bureaucratic traditions, new public management solutions, participatory ideals, activist sentiments among officials and so forth?
• What are the consequences of this institutional complexity for the possibility of preserving a coherent, rule-governed public administration and what does public mean today in public administration?
• What types of roles are civil servants playing in relation to different institutional rules and norms and various categories of actor (politicians, citizens, organizations) and how do they handle frictions and conflicts?
• What type of conceptions of civil servants’ roles are developing, including public service ethics? What alternative and contesting role-conceptions and ethics are prevalent and supported?

This introduction should be understood as being both a summary of the current state of research in relation to civil service – its predicaments and challenges – as well as being a suggestion for future attention among scholars and practitioners. We have thus written this introduction not only with the purpose of summarizing the main components inherent in the six articles that are included in this special issue but with the hope of also spurring discussions concerning what civil service has been, currently seems to be and might become in the future.

Ort, förlag, år, upplaga, sidor

Göteborg: Göteborgs universitet, 2018. Vol. 22, nr 3, s. 3-16

Nyckelord [en]

Public service, Civil servants, Governance, Public administration, Public sector organizations

Nationell ämneskategori

Statsvetenskap