1.
Backlund Rambaree, Brita, 1977-
(author)
Contextualising Constructions of Corporate Social Responsibility : Social Embeddedness in Discourse and Institutional Contexts
2016
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
‘Corporate social responsibility’ (CSR) and ‘socially responsible investment’ (SRI) have become predominant frameworks connecting business to society that have spread across the globe. They comprise a shared set of ideas and practices, such as those promoted in global reporting standards and by international organisations such as the UN Global Compact. Nonetheless, both are constructed and reproduced by companies in relation to context-specific social institutions, including norms and conventions shaping company engagement in social issues. Using a neo-institutionalist theoretical framework, the thesis examines constructions of social responsibility in discourse and within institutional contexts, across regions that are not often compared in the research terrain: two West European welfare states (Sweden and the UK) and two emerging African economies (South Africa and Mauritius). The purpose of the thesis is to add to the literature on CSR and SRI with a sociologically informed perspective that is comparative and connects institutional theory with social constructionism and a Foucauldian perspective on power. The thesis analyses how perceptions of CSR and SRI are constructed in relation to the social institutions that encase companies’ engagement with social issues, such as national level welfare configurations and the institution of financial investments. The main argument in this thesis is that CSR and SRI need to be seen as contextually constructed, in discourse and practice, in ways that draw the boundaries and set the conditions for company engagement with social issues.The thesis comprises three articles. Article 1 is a content analysis of company self-reporting on CSR and the article examines how the content given to CSR relates to broader welfare configurations and as such differs in four national settings across the divide between emerging African economies and Western welfare states. Article 2 is a discourse analysis that examines interpretative repertoires occurring in company self-reporting across the same set of four countries. The interpretative repertoires are analysed as discursive practices where power intersects with the production of knowledge on CSR. Article 3 focuses on SRI and examines responsible investing as a form of institutional work that institutional investors engage in. Based on an interview study with institutional investors in Sweden, the article analyses institutional work as a process that has the effect of both institutional creation and maintenance and it connects these institutional processes to the construction of meaning on SRI. In its entirety the thesis contributes a sociological perspective on how prevailing understandings of corporate social responsibility come into being and are reproduced.
2.
3.
Rostami, Amir, 1981-
(author)
Criminal Organizing : Studies in the sociology of organized crime
2016
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
What organized crime is and how it can be prevented are two of the key questions in both organized crime research and criminal policy. However, despite many attempts, organized crime research, the criminal justice system and criminal policy have failed to provide a shared and recognized conceptual definition of organized crime, which has opened the door to political interpretations. Organized crime is presented as an objective reality—mostly based on anecdotal empirical evidence and generic descriptions—and has been understood, as being intrinsically different from social organization, and this has been a justification for treating organized crime conceptually separately.In this dissertation, the concept of organized crime is deconstructed and analyzed. Based on five studies and an introductory chapter, I argue that organized crime is an overarching concept based on an abstraction of different underlying concepts, such as gang, mafia, and network, which are in turn semi-overarching and overlapping abstractions of different crime phenomena, such as syndicates, street-gangs, and drug networks. This combination of a generic concept based on underlying concepts, which are themselves subject to similar conceptual difficulties, has given rise to a conceptual confusion surrounding the term and the concept of organized crime. The consequences of this conceptual confusion are not only an issue of semantics, but have implications for our understanding of the nature of criminal collaboration as well as both legal and policy consequences. By combining different observers, methods and empirical materials relating to dimensions of criminal collaboration, I illustrate the strong analogies that exist between forms of criminal collaboration and the theory of social organization.I argue in this dissertation that criminal organizing is not intrinsically different from social organizing. In fact, the dissertation illustrates the existence of strong analogies between patterns of criminal organizing and the elements of social organizations. But depending on time and context, some actions and forms of organizing are defined as criminal, and are then, intentionally or unintentionally, presumed to be intrinsically different from social organizing. Since the basis of my argument is that criminal organizing is not intrinsically different from social organizing, I advocate that the study of organized crime needs to return to the basic principles of social organization in order to understand the emergence of, and the underlying mechanism that gives rise to, the forms of criminal collaboration that we seek to explain. To this end, a new general analytical framework, “criminal organizing”, that brings the different forms of criminal organizations and their dimensions together under a single analytical tool, is proposed as an example of how organizational sociology can advance organized crime research and clarify the chaotic concept of organized crime.
4.
Grell, Pär, 1966-
(author)
Komplexa behov eller komplexa organisationer? : konsekvenser av specialiserad individ- och familjeomsorg ur ett klientperspektiv
2016
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
Even though recent decades have seen a clear trend towards organizational specialization within Swedish personal social services (PSS), there is a lack of knowledge about the consequences of this, particularly from a client perspective. The aim of this compilation thesis is to describe and analyse the consequences of organizational specialization for clients with complex needs. The empirical material consists of a survey and an interview study, both addressing clients whose needs can be considered complex since they entail several parallel contacts with different specialized PSS units. Article one is a research review aimed at summarizing and discussing the research on organizational structures in the social services, and these structures' impact on work with clients. The review suggests that, to function adequately, social service organizations need to combine and balance aspects of both specialization and integration. Article two aims to describe and analyse how clients with complex needs perceive and value the service conditions of the organizationally specialized PSS. The main findings are that clients primarily perceive and value their encounters with the specialized PSS negatively, and that they experience several elements of service fragmentation. The aim of article three is to describe and analyse how clients with complex needs account for their handling of service conditions within specialized PSS. A key finding is that clients combine different approaches (categorized as consensus, resignation, fight, and escape) in a balancing act intended to promote their own best interests. Article four aims to describe and analyse how clients with complex needs perceive the conditions for helping relations in a PSS setting marked by organizational specialization. A lack of system trust, the people-processing dimensions of work, and an organizational and professional emphasis on formal organizational structures and boundaries were found to constitute unfavourable conditions. Conversely, the occurrence of individual trust, the people-sustaining and people-changing dimensions of client work, and the boundary-spanning efforts of both informal organizations and individual social workers constituted favourable conditions. The thesis concludes that there seems to be a substantial lack of fit between the logics and features of organizational specialization on one hand, and the complex and interwoven nature of clients’ actual needs and everyday lives on the other. It is also argued that organizational specialization means that the complexity involved in encounters between clients and the PSS is overlooked or obscured. Further research on the structural arrangements and service conditions that surround encounters between clients and the social services is suggested, especially research that adopts a client perspective.
