| 1. |
- Backman, Christel, 1979
(författare)
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Criminal Records in Sweden. Regulation of access to criminal records and the use of criminal background checks by employers.
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis examines the regulation of access to criminal records in Sweden and the actual and potential use of criminal background checks by employers in hiring processes. In recent years, more and more Swedish employers have been required by law to check their job applicants’ criminal records. In a parallel process, also the number of enforced subject access requests has increased considerably in that same period. The aim of this thesis is to analyse and explain these two trends and consider their implications for future use of criminal records in Sweden and elsewhere. The analysis draws upon government documents, newspaper articles, interviews with employers using enforced subject access, and interviews with union and employer organization representatives, with the aim of capturing the vocabularies of motive that were evoked and put to use in attempts to justify and legitimize either access restrictions or the extended use of criminal records data in hiring decisions. In Paper I, I examine how subject access, indirect employer access, and the notion of privacy have been understood and defined throughout the history of the Swedish Criminal Records Registry, and how practices and policies in the area have evolved over time. In Paper II, I investigate how employers who use individuals’ right to subject access as a means for obtaining copies of their criminal record account for their practice, and how unions and employer associations have responded to the adoption of it. In Paper III, I challenge the ‘governmentality’ tradition in criminology and the way the use of criminal record checks is interpreted within it. As an alternative way of formulating and understanding the issue, I propose that it be looked at from a symbolic perspective. In Paper IV, my analysis utilizes the perspective of the sociology of scandals to help develop a better understanding of function creep in the area of data protection. This I do through an examination of the process leading, first, to the introduction of mandatory vetting of childcare workers and teachers in Sweden in 2001, and, then, to the inclusion later on of also other employer categories in the scope of the relevant legislation. Based on these analyses, I argue that the changes in the access to individuals’ criminal records reflect the state’s way of governing the interpretation of the criminal records database. Whether actors are denied or allowed access to information contained in the criminal history record database depends on the prevailing cultural representations regarding notions such as ‘privacy’, ‘data protection’, ‘databases’, ‘sensitive information’, and ‘power’. Moreover, I argue that the function creep in the use of criminal history data in Sweden can be initially explained by the occurrence and publicity of scandals that highlight the vulnerability of a group of dependents, making it defensible to resort to privacy-intrusive methods such as criminal record checks, with the continuing function creep then being made possible by a changing moral landscape that, following the initial amendment, renders the method morally more defensible among the policy makers and the public at large.
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| 2. |
- Bajqinca, Nuhi
(författare)
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Mother Tongue Education - The Interest of a Nation. A policy study in Sweden 1957-2017.
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This doctoral thesis is a policy study about mother tongue education policies as they have developed historically in Sweden.The overall aim of this thesis is to investigate the policies of mother tongue education from 1957 to 2017, focusing on how Swedish nation-state politics and societal change characterized the status and positioning of mother tongue education in the Swedish school system.
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| 3. |
- Bengtsson, Mattias, 1978
(författare)
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Individen stämplar in. Arbetet, facket och lönen i sociologisk belysning : The individual is clocking in: A sociological illumination of work, the trade union and pay
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation comprises a sociological analysis of processes of individualisation in Swedish working life during the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. It also deals with the distribution of individualised conditions and individualistic attitudes among various categories of employees. The point of departure is various theories of individualisation and not least their lack of empirical validation. As society is depicted as individualised, the structural conditionings of peoples’ lives tend to be made invisible. Individualisation is seen as a process whereby traditional collective solutions and identities lose their impact upon people, leaving greater freedom of action and scope for decision-making, in which the situation of the individual is linked to his/her characteristics, capacities and achievements. The primary empirical material is survey data of employees 16-64 years of age. The survey was conducted in 2003 with 3286 respondents and a response rate of 72 percent. Also other types of surveys and statistical material are referred to. The degree of individualisation, as well as individualised conditions and individualistic attitudes, are analysed in relation to three main areas of investigation: work, the trade union and pay. The structural transformation of the labour market during the last decades of the 20th century gave an increased proportion of the employed freedom of action. On the other hand, it is not empirically supported that the content of peoples’ jobs has been individualised. Regarding attitudes towards the trade union, individualisation is opposed by the fact that the Swedish level of union membership is very high in an international perspective and many employees agree that the union is needed in negotiations with their employer. On the other hand, many are positive towards individual nego-tiations, and union membership has fallen since the middle of the 1990s. There is empirical support for an individualisation of wage determination, although wages are still collectively agreed upon on a national level. There is strong support for a structural conditioning of individualised conditions and individualistic attitudes, and the two are in some ways related. They are clearly class-based; the service class being more individualised and individualistically directed than the working class. The degree of self-directedness in work, an indicator of individualised conditions, is important not least for explaining class differences. Finally, age, sex, sector of employment and size of establishment are other factors that clearly have an impact on the distribution of individualised conditions and individualistic attitudes.
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| 4. |
- Berglund, Tomas, 1967
(författare)
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Attityder till arbete i Västeuropa och USA. Teoretiska perspektiv och analyser av data från sex länder : Attitudes toward Work in Western Europe and the United States - theoretical perspectives and empirical analyses of data from six countries
- 2001
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis studies attitudes toward work, the structural and culturai factors which are important for how individuals regard work, and the psychological processes that can generate different attitudes toward work. The empirical material analysed consists of two questionnaire surveys (Work orientatio n 1997 and 1989) under the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP). The countries studied are Sweden, Norway, Germany, France, Great Britain and the USA. By factor analysis, four attitude patterns are identified. The first, called an altruistic attitude, emphasizes the social value of work. The second is called a materialistic attitude and values career opportunities and high salary. In the third, an instrumental attitude, work is seen primarilyas ameans of sustenance. The fourth attitude pattern is called an individualistic attitude and values independence in work. These attitude patterns are established with varying strength in different countries. An explanatory model is tested that combines two social dimensions: hierarchy and social integration. The model forms four situations in which the different attitudes are assumed to be common. The model is tested empirically and has greatest relevance in Sweden, Germany and Norway. The altruistic attitude is most common in a situation of subordination and high loyalty toward the organization. The instrumental attitude is commonest in a subordinate position where the employee feels low loyalty toward the organization. The individualistic attitude is most widespread among professionals with low loyalty toward the organization. The materialistic attitude is commonest among managers with high loyalty toward the organization. In the other three countries, the expected patterns occur only for the instrumental attitude toward work. The thesis investigates whether three psychological processes are active in the mode!. The first process emphasizes learning: an individual draws lessons from his/her working situation and expresses perceptions that are realistic in it. The general empirical result is that the attitudes are expressed in working situations which have the characteristics that are valued by those attitudes. The instrumental attitude deviates in exhibiting a negative connection with favourable working conditions. The second process concerns the importance of identifYing with the organization's values and norms for the attitudes expressed by the individual. This is studied empirically by analysing the connections between loyalty and the different attitudes. Public employees in several countries show a strong link between loyalty to the organization and an altruistic attitude toward work. For the instrumental attitude, there is a dear negative connection with loyalty. The third process involves the significance of contradictory working situations for the individual's attitudes. These situations are defined by conflict between the individual's lhner values and his/her knowledge of externai conditions. In Sweden and Germany, the altruistic attitude is of ten expressed by private employees who are anxious about losing their jobs and, at the same time, feel highly loyal toward the organization. The individualistic attitude is expressed by individuals who have career ambitions and simultaneously feel dissatisfied about their present work. The results indicate that the altruistic and individualistic attitudes may be expressed in order to cope with contradictory working situations.
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| 5. |
- Bergström Casinowsky, Gunilla, 1965
(författare)
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Etablering via arbete
- 2014
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Denna rapport redovisar resultaten från utvärderingen av projektet ”Etablering via arbete” som syftade till att föra långtidsarbetslösa utrikes födda personer närmare arbetsmarknaden. Sammanlagt 725 personer erbjöds att delta i projektet, och av dessa fullföljde 581 personer insatsen. Av de som fullföljde gick 45 procent vidare till arbete eller studier medan 55 procent återgick till Arbetsförmedlingen med handlingsplan för vidare insatser. Resultatet ligger i linje med de resultat som liknande projekt uppvisat. De inslag i insatsen som bedöms ha bidragit positivt är en kombination av intensifierad arbetsförmedling och en arbetsmetod inspirerad av Supported Employment. En viktig förutsättning som lyfts fram är den tillitsfulla relationen mellan coachen och deltagaren – en relation som kräver tid, att coachen har rätt förhållningssätt och att coachen är en neutral aktör i förhållande till beslut kring deltagarnas rätt till ersättning. Utvärderingen pekar också på att framförallt samarbetet mellan projektledning/projektmedarbetare och socialtjänsten skulle ha kunnat fungera bättre. Bedömningen var att den medverkan från socialtjänsten som insatsen bygger på inte var förankrad och att projektet hade tjänat på om socialtjänsten tydligare hade inkluderats i samarbetet från början. Samtidigt understryker utvärderingen att det finns förutsättningar inbyggda i socialtjänsten regelverk, liksom i aktiveringspolitikens övergripande logik, som sätter ramarna för vad som kan uppnås med en insats som Etablering via arbete. Att deltagandet i projektet är villkorat, där frånvaro eller vägran att delta är förknippat med risk för att ersättningen dras in, kan på goda grunder antas ha en hämmande inverkan på deltagar- nas motivation. Resultaten av utvärderingen bör dock tolkas med viss försiktighet eftersom den är behäftad med en rad metodproblem. Det saknas till exempel en väl underbyggd deltagarstudie. Etablering via arbete finansierades av Europeiska socialfonden och pågick under perioden februari 2012 – juni 2014. Målgruppen var i huvudsak långtidsarbetslösa utrikes födda personer och projektets syfte var att deltagarna skulle komma ”närmare arbetsmarknaden”. Insatsen bedrevs av utbildningsföretaget Eductus i samverkan med Arbetsförmedlingen och socialtjänsten.
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| 6. |
- Berntsson, Paula, 1956
(författare)
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Lärarförbundet, förskollärare och statushöjande strategier - Ett könsperspektiv på professionalisering : The Teachers’ Union, pre-school teachers and status-raising strategies. A gender perspective on professionalisation
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation concerns the strategies of professionalisation that the Teachers’ Union pursues in order to upgrade pre-school teachers’ work and professional knowledge. Both union actions in general and customary strategies of professionalisation have been criticised for presupposing men as the norm. This is considered to have contributed to obscuring and devaluing work and professional knowledge which are more specific to female-dominated professional groups. Therefore the strategies of the Teachers’ Union are studied in the dissertation from a gender perspective. The Union’s perceptions of status-raising strategies are compared with those of the strongly female-dominated pre-school teacher corps, and an analysis is made of whether the Union’s strategies contribute to maintaining or to changing the value-discrimination that female-dominated professional groups’ work and knowledge risk suffering. The dissertation also examines common professionalisation strategies from a gender perspective. The analyses are based upon union documents, interviews with union representatives, a questionnaire investigation among 265 pre-school teachers, the views expressed by such teachers in newspaper letters and articles, research on professions, feminist research, and work-evaluation projects. The results show that a majority of the pre-school teachers in the questionnaire study think that most of the strategies pursued by the Teachers’ Union contribute to upgrading their status. At the same time they believe that other factors not emphasised by the Union in its strategies are also important for the profession’s status. This has to do with their task of giving children more egalitarian conditions of upbringing, their work with development and care, and their emotional and social competences. These work-tasks and competences are more usual in female-dominated professional groups and have often been subjected to value-discrimination. When the Teachers’ Union refrains from emphasising them, it can contribute to maintaining this value-discrimination. Nonetheless, the strategies which the Union chooses to pursue can support the upgrading of pre-school teachers’ work and professional knowledge It may, however, be that the union strategies primarily benefit those pre-school teachers who work in a pre-school class and that they thereby enhance differences in status within the pre-school teacher corps.
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| 7. |
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| 8. |
- Bertilsson, Jonas
(författare)
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The Governance of Global Climate Finance – The Management of Contradictions, Ambiguities and Conflicts in the Green Climate Fund
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Global climate governance struggles with many contentious issues, often made visible in the annual climate meetings arranged by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). When these issues are delegated to climate organizations within the UNFCCC system and operationalized into climate practices they are often translated. Climate organizations often take on a technical role, making the contentiousness of climate issues invisible. The thesis investigates one of the major organizations within the UNFCCC, the Green Climate Fund (GCF). The aim of the thesis is to make the contradictions, ambiguities and conflicts around the operationalization of different issues in the GCF visible with the help of immanent critique, and to analyse how the GCF management of these contradictions, ambiguities and conflicts influence the aspects of global climate finance governance issues that become emphasized or subordinated. The thesis consists of four studies examining the operationalization of different issues in the GCF. Study 1 focuses on what factors influence the design of the GCF stakeholder arrangement and how it affects the possibility of different stakeholders to engage actively in the GCF. The GCF makes a clear commitment to support the active engagement of diverse stakeholders. It is argued that the arrangement actually privileges private sector stakeholders. Study 2 examines conflicts around the interpretation of the GCF governing principle transformational change. Some actors in the GCF try to connect transformational change to a financialization of the GCF, while others oppose such development. It is argued that financialization might contradict country ownership, another important principle in the GCF. Study 3 investigates the GCF understanding of climate vulnerability. The analysis shows how the GCF emphasis on dominant logics such as science and market logics reduce the aspects of climate vulnerability that become visible in the GCF, and how the principle of transformational change is implicated in this. The aspects of vulnerability that become visible in the GCF are those that can be managed through calculative logics, while moral and political dimensions become invisible. Study 4 explores the inclusion of indigenous peoples in GCF through an analysis of the development of the GCF Indigenous Peoples Policy. GCF embraces the ‘traditional knowledge’ of indigenous peoples but indigenous peoples find it difficult to introduce a more holistic view of nature, while western science dominates knowledge production. The analysis also shows that the use of this policy in the GCF is limited, despite protests from indigenous peoples’ representatives. Altogether, the studies show that the dominant logics discussed in previous research such as science and market logics play a big role in the GCF. What these dominant logics bring forward are aspects of climate finance issues that are manageable through calculative logics, while perspectives and interests that are not easily compatible with these logics become subordinated – often the political dimensions of climate finance governance. This goes against the GCF portrayal of itself as an inclusive organization that is responsive to a variety of perspectives and interests.
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| 9. |
- Bjarnason, Tómas, 1962
(författare)
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Social Recognition and Employees' Organizational Support
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The focal point of this study is to explore the support service employees give to their organization. Its main objective is to define the concept of organizational support and to examine its causes, in particular to investigate the effects of social recognition on employees’ organizational support. Three separate questions are examined: the definition of employees’ organizational support; the effects of social recognition on employees’ organizational support; and whether the causes of organizational support are the same in different service settings. In defining organizational support from service employees, a four dimensional view is proposed, comprising organizational commitment, intent to stay, service effort, and service improvements. The choice of these four dimensions is motivated by the importance of employee commitment, retention, and service performances for the competitive edge of service organizations. In examining the origins of employees’ organizational support, main emphasis is placed on “social recognition.” Social recognition is argued to be of fundamental importance for employees, as it contributes to perceptions of self-worth and identity. Social recognition is proposed to comprise “influence,” “skill-utilization,” and “approval.” The process in which social recognition elicits employees’ support is explained through reciprocity mechanisms; that employees reciprocate social recognition with their supportive attitudes and behaviors. Diverse management strategies are applied within the service sector, affecting employees’ opportunities for receiving recognition at work and allegedly their organizational support. It is proposed that levels of social recognition and employees’ organizational support will vary according to the type of services provided. It is also proposed that social recognition is a general reward that elicits employees’ organizational support in similar ways in different service settings. Confirmatory factor analysis using data from two service organizations (N=929 and N=227) confirms a four-factor structure of employees’ organizational support and three-factor structure of social recognition, as proposed. Results from four structural equation models specifying the relations between demographic variables, social recognition, and employees’ organizational support using data from one service organization (N=929) indicate that social recognition is of importance in explaining levels of employees’ support. Skill-utilization and influence have positive effects on organizational commitment, and approval has an indirect positive effect on organizational commitment through skill-utilization and influence. Organizational commitment and skill-utilization have positive effects on intent to stay and service effort. Influence is found to have positive effects on service improvements. Examination of mean differences between three service divisions; a retail division (N=307), a support division (N=146) and a manual-maintenance division (N=383), indicate that retail employees have less influence and utilize their skills to a lesser degree than employees in the other divisions, as expected. Levels of employees’ organizational support are, however, not found to vary in similar ways between the three divisions, contrary to what was expected. Using structural equation models, the applicability of the four models across the three service divisions was supported, indicating the importance of social recognition for eliciting organizational support from employees in different service settings. The main contribution of this thesis is to show that social recognition elicits organizational support from service employees in different service settings.
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| 10. |
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