Abstract [en]

In 1991, Christopher Hood made a substantial contribution to public administration research when he formulated the concept of New Public Management (NPM). His article can in many ways be understood as an enabler of research focused on public sector reforms. To this day, numerous articles and books have been published, discussing the concept itself and the empirical phenomenon. In celebration of the 25-year period since the concept of NPM was introduced, this article revisits the current knowledge through a systematic literature review of 299 articles published between 1991 and 2016. This approach enables a meta-analysis of research published in five top-ranked international public administration journals. We identify four important themes as emerging from our review: (i) a reform with a vague intention, (ii) the limping concept, (iii) the one-sided perspective and (iv) NPM as the new norm. An important effect of this is that Hood’s framework may have been curtailed, leading to a distorted knowledge base when it comes to future studies.

Ort, förlag, år, upplaga, sidor

Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2020. Vol. 36, nr 1

Abstract [en]

This paper focuses on corruption in public procurement. It describes the contemporary face of corruption by investigating the role of public accountability in the fight against corruption. The paper describes a specific episode of corruption relative to the awarding of government contracts for big events, such as the celebration of the 150th anniversary of Italian unification. Relying on the philosophical insights of Rousseau, Popper, Kant and others, the study suggests the need for enabling a democratic control and constructing a public ethics for the common good.

Ort, förlag, år, upplaga, sidor

2018. Vol. 42, nr 1, s. 86-101

Nyckelord [en]

Corruption, Public procurement, Accountability, New public governance, New public management, Social contract

Nationell ämneskategori

Företagsekonomi

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]

The aim of this study is to explain why human geography in Sweden became a planning science during the postwar period. Human geography had developed a sophisticated use of abstract models. The proliferation of models within in the social sciences was an international phenomenon during the postwar period. Actors within human geography in Sweden embraced this trend and strived towards making the constructions of models the methodological core of the discipline. Human geography, as an independent discipline, was being defined during this period. Simultaneously, human geography’s position within Swedish society was also being defined. This led a group of geographers, who were very much in favor of human geography as a science of models, to align themselves with the needs of the expanding welfare state.

The group of actors, who reformed their discipline by making a specific form of geographical expertise essential to the welfare state, are referred to as geographers of planning. The most important actors within this group was, the not yet world famous, Torsten Hägerstrand and his colleague Sven Godlund. During the crucial years of the mid-1950s to the early-1960s, Hägerstrand held a position at Lund University while Godlund was engaged in a number of public investigations. Godlund regularly hired Hägerstran’s students and those same students used their experiences working for the public investigations to write their term papers. Through Godlund’s and Hägerstrand’s relationship a generations of human geographers was trained in planning practices and human geography was defined, within the public administration, by the works of Godlund and Hägerstrand.

The most widely disseminated models were constructed from the German geographer Walter Christaller’s central place theory. By translating the general arguments of the theory into codified models, the theory was turned into a tool for planners. Thus the theoretical skills of human geographers where embedded in the practices of practical planning. This process turned the difference between research and planning into a difference of degree, rather than a difference of practice. During the municipal reforms of the 1960s the Swedish municipalities were remade to closer resemble the ideal of the central place theory. Through that reform the relationship between human geography and social planning was consolidated, making human geographers experts of planning. A labor market was created for geographers but it also placed an onus on the geographical institutions to supply the labor force for that market.

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

Abstract [sv]

Granskningar har blivit både vanligare och alltmer omdiskuterade. Många har börjat tala om förekomsten av ett granskningssamhälle. Granskningar – vare sig de kallas revision, tillsyn, kontroll, kvalitetssäkring, inspektion, utvärdering eller certifiering – har idag många förespråkare, men börjar också få sina kritiker.

Den 15 februari 2013 hölls ett vittnesseminarium med rubriken ”Staten och granskningssamhället” vid Södertörns högskola. Där fördes en livlig diskussion såväl om granskandets välsignelser som om dess avigsidor. Tre frågor stod i fokus: varför granskas det så mycket? Vad händer när man granskar? Vilka konsekvenser får det myckna granskandet?

I denna skrift publiceras utskriften av vittnesseminariet tillsammans med en inledande artikel av Bengt Jacobsson och Anders Ivarsson Westerberg som ställer frågan om det finns någon väg ut ur granskningssamhället?

Ort, förlag, år, upplaga, sidor

Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2013, 1. , s. 86

Serie

Samtidshistoriska frågor, ISSN 1650-450X ; 26

Nationell ämneskategori

Statsvetenskap Ekonomi och näringsliv

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

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