1.
Wolmesjö, Maria
(författare)
Ledningsfunktion i omvandling : Om förändringar av yrkesrollen för första linjens chefer inom den kommunala äldre- och handikappomsorgen
2005
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
During the 1990s many of the local authorities have been forced to reduce expenditure on the care of the elderly and people with disabilities, and many organisational changes have been carried out. New problems and their solutions are often related to leadership and management. This dissertation deals with three trends in the development of the organisation: The first trend is a market orientation, one example of which is the attempt to increase effectiveness and efficiency by utilising a purchaser/provider model in the organisation. Here the needs assessment model is studied. The second trend is the response to the pressed situation due to heavy workloads that staff members and their managers express, exemplified by self-managing work teams and a year-based working hour system. Here called flexible work organisations. The third trend focused in this dissertation is the decentralisation of social services. It is connected to increased demands on involvement in, and participation from those who use the services, i.e. the elderly and people with disabilities. The aim of this dissertation is to shed light on how politicians and managers view, experience and describe management and leadership in three types of local authority organisations. The focus is on the demands on managers and how the working conditions for managers are described in the different organisations. The material includes three different empirical methods. The first is a questionnaire to politicians and local authority officials, mainly managers at different levels in the care of the elderly and persons with disabilities. The second method consists of qualitative interviews with politicians and managers. The third method involved a document study of local authority documents, e.g. official guidelines, plans and evaluations. The method of analysis, a ?qualified content analysis? is inspired by discourse analysis and focuses on a comparison between the different local authorities, between politicians and managers and between women and men. This dissertation shows that the organisational changes brought about unexpected consequenses for management and that the demands differ between politicians and managers and between different organisations. Politicians and higher-level management expect the managers to manage the organisation, and employees expect them to lead. The solution seems to be a high level of competence, but which competence is needed? There are two different ideals for leadership. One is associated with focus on effectiveness and efficiency and the other associated with focus on communication. The dissertation highlights the conditions of a management, which is currently being pushed further down in the organisation. The dilemma of leadership ? being a manager or a leader will not disappear. Somewhere in the organisation the perspective of effectiveness and efficiency and the perspective of communication have to meet. It might be seen as a dilemma that will not go away ? only be placed in different levels in the organisation.
3.
Hansson, Niklas, 1977
(författare)
Nätverkspolitik - Organisering, öppenhet och kontroll i Göteborgs Sociala Forumprocess 2003 - 2005
2008
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Abstract Ph.D Dissertation at Göteborg University, Sweden, 2008 Title: Nätverkspolitik. Organisering, öppenhet och kontroll i Göteborgs Sociala Forumprocess 2003 – 2005. Title: Network Politics. Organizing, openness and control in Gothenburg Social Forumprocess 2003 – 2005. Author: Niklas Hansson Language: Swedish, with an English Summary Department: Department of Ethnology, Göteborg University, Box 200, SE-405 30 Göteborg The purpose of the thesis is to analyze the production of network politics, using the Gothenburg Social Forumprocess as an example. Concepts collected from theories of social movements; the resource mobilization theory and the new social movements-theory, are brought together within the conceptual framework of assemblage theory. Assemblage theory is a theory of society reconstructed by distinguished philosopher Manuel DeLanda’s from out of late French philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s concept of assemblage, a concept describing social entities as the non-stable result of historical processes. The analysis highlights the internal dynamics of network politics, with a focus on process before stable product, putting an extra effort into explaining everyday political organizing as something highly un-predictable, as organized outcomes (network organization) cannot start with a notion of networks as a collective or community acting in unison. The study rests on solid ethnological and ethnographic ground, and is based on a long-term participant observation within the local Gothenburg Social Forumprocess, e-mailing list material, interviews with social forum-organizers, websites, and alternative media press. The empirical focus of the study is mainly on the period 2003 – 2005. Throughout the empirical chapters the local social forumprocess is analyzed via its links to other levels within the World Social Forumprocess. The World Social Forumprocess is described as a self-organizing system with constantly interacting local, regional, national, and global levels, and as an emerging network of social forum-organizations interacting via feedback processes resonating through the system. The empirical chapters highlights different parts of the production of network politics and the local social forumprocess: diffusion of the forum-model as a successful organizing format within the global justice movement, decision-making and consensus building, ground rules for interaction between political organizations, forum-organizers, individual activists and groups, the role of the Internet within network politics, selection of social categories as temporary points of convergence between different political actors (organizations), the method called merger process which reflects the forum-organization as a broker-device between organizations, power-relations within network politics, and finally, a résumé-like chapter presenting glimpses from within a local social forum-event. In the conclusion I state how the social forums could be examined as political meeting-places within a “leaderless social movement”. Keywords: social forum, networks, assemblage, territorialization, coding, social movements
