1.
Lundberg, Anders P
(author)
Om gemenskap : En sociologisk betraktelse
2005
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
Various reports have stated that the traditional Swedish popular movements (e.g. the Workers movement and the Free church movement) are loosing ground. Instead of joining a political party or a church, politically or religiously active individuals are said to seek out new and individualized ways of being involved. This thesis studies a number of men and women that persist in being communally involved within the traditional movements (as above). It asks questions such as "What does their involvement look like?" "How important is a sense of belonging for being involved?" "To what extent is it possible to be an autonomous individual while being communally active?" "What difficulties do they encounter, as related to the problem of individualism and community?" "How do they solve these problems?" To aid in an understanding of the conditions for communal involvement in a post- or late modern era, the thesis employs two different (partially opposed) theoretical schools: post modernism and communitarianism. Drawing from these schools, while at the same time presuming an intimate knowledge of the traditional Swedish popular movements (folkrörelserna), the writer constructs two ideal typical concepts: stable community (resembling the communitarian vision) and casual community (resembling the post modernist vision). These ideal types are employed to create an understanding of the conditions for community and communal involvement today. Empirically, a number of strategies are found among the interviewees in order to keep up their involvement. These include: a privatization of ideology; an effort to make a professional career within the movement; the phenomenon of nonprofit professionals; an effort to view involvement as a gain for the personal life project; to view life as a series of stages where it is possible to step in and out of involvement at different times during a life course; to keep organizational structures at the back, letting them promote affinity and affection among individuals rather than being in focus themselves. Also empirically, this thesis shows how involvement among the interviewees resembles what the author labels stable community. It shows the perceived importance of relations of trust, emanating from stable community. It also shows though, a tendency (primarily among those active within the Free church) to expect too much of the relations within a community: rather, it would be necessary to realize the importance of other types of relations (i.e. elective affinity, a relation typically emanating from casual community; but also what the author labels friendship) for keeping the fire burning. Also, there is a tendency (primarily within the Workers movement) to invite too many new individuals too fast into the group of active individuals. Trust (stable community) takes time to create: when rushed, a sense of belonging may be missing, possibly leaving members embittered and disillusioned.
2.
Wolmesjö, Maria
(author)
Ledningsfunktion i omvandling : Om förändringar av yrkesrollen för första linjens chefer inom den kommunala äldre- och handikappomsorgen
2005
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) 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.
Sjöstrand, Glenn, 1966-
(author)
Gåvan i Gnosjö – Företagares relationer i ett industriellt distrikt
2008
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
In the growing body of research on industrial districts, focus is usually on trying to explain the economic outcomes of the configuration of formal and informal economic and social organisations specific to these districts. A general way to explain the outcomes is by referring to the “culture” in which economic and social exchanges take place without specifying what culture means and what it is in culture that affects the economic outcomes. This dissertation analyzes a gift-economy where goods and services are offered, accepted and returned among business entrepreneurs in the industrial district of Gnosjö, Sweden. Especially the institutional and social embeddedness of exchanges between small business owners and the norms in the culture that regulates the relationships are focused. The three aims of the study are to explain the local preconditions for a gift-economy to be established, explain how the gift-economy is affecting the outcomes of the formal economy and to explain how the social changes with globalization and integration of markets change the conditions for the gift-economy to reproduce. The empirical data is drawn mainly from 94 interviews with business owners or CEO:s in the district. The dissertation shows that the gift-economy is affecting the economic outcomes, such as high flexibility, low transactional costs, high profits, coordination of production, prices and knowledge dispersion of the industrial district, but also that it creates (social) costs of social control and other social drawbacks such as exclusion from networks and conformity.
4.
5.
Ulmestig, Rickard
(author)
På gränsen till fattigvård? : En studie om arbetsmarknadspolitik och socialbidrag
2007
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This dissertation focuses on changes in labour market policies that were provided for unemployed recipients of social assistance between 1989 and 2002 in Sweden. This change is described as a process where the municipalities gradually take greater responsibility for the labour market policies. This group of unemployed is categorized as a particularly problematic group and has been referred to the municipalities. This takes place without any noticeable legislative change or policy decisions and is contrary to the appropriation directions that the government has given to the Labour Market Board. In this process responsibility has ?trickled? through to the municipalities. The process that is described and analyzed in this dissertation is a process that shows how unemployed recipients of social assistance gradually become a municipal responsibility. This entails amongst other things that the unemployed will continue to live off social assistance. The boundary between the government and the municipalities has changed between 1989 and 2002. Categories of unemployed who are adjudged to have great problems in establishing themselves in the labour market are referred to the municipalities. For those unemployed who are established within the unemployment insurance system and who do not need social assistance, there are no major institutional changes. This is ultimately a question of power. While the labour movement safeguards the interests of the unemployed within the unemployment insurance system the recipients of social assistance have few or none who safeguard their interests. Unemployed recipients of social assistance are referred to the municipal system that still has distinctive features from the poor relief period. They are provided with a labour market policy that differs in several essential aspects from the labour market policies that are part of the Swedish welfare state. They are provided with a labour market policy that is bordering on poor relief.
6.
Dannefjord, Per, 1964-
(author)
Organisationspraktiker och målförändring : Exemplet svensk socialdemokrati
2009
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
The thesis emanates from a comparison between three points of time in the history of the Swedish social democratic party (SAP); 1889, 1905 and 1933. The comparison is partly about the political and organizational situation of the party, and partly about the goals the party expressed. The problem that I study, based on this comparison, is the identified changes of the party’s hierarchy of goals.I argue that goal change should be viewed as a process, not as a decision. There is no simple rationality in goal formulations or in the relation between goals and practices where the practices are shaped by the goals.My case shows the importance of the opposite causal direction where the practices reshape the goals. The organization formulates goals and intermediate goals. These are connected to practices directed towards the intermediate goals. The more resources the organization attach to these practices, the more difficult it is to change them and the higher status in the organizational activity they will get. The primary goals can still be important as justification, but their role will be reduced to a ritual rhetoric without practical significance. They will have to be reinterpreted and reformulated in correspondence to the practices in order to regain a practical significance in the activity of the organization. Thereby we have a practical goal change, which shouldn’t be confused with at rhetoric goal change. The rhetoric of the organization can remain unchanged even though no practices are directed towards the rhetorically important goals.One implication of this is that goals cannot be understood by their formulations only. The importance and meaning of the formulations will change over time and should therefore be related to the context and the organization’s position in the organizational field. When we study an organization over time it will be hard to understand it adequately if we don’t relate the organizational changes to the context.
7.
Frank, Denis
(author)
Staten, företagen och arbetskraftsinvandringen : - en studie av invandringspolitiken i Sverige och rektryteringen av utländska arbetare 1960-1972
2005
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This dissertation investigates the labour migration from Southern Europe to Sweden, and the changes in Swedish immigration policy between 1960 and 1972. The first part of the dissertation examines the role of the state in shaping the migration streams from Southern Europe to Sweden. From the beginning of the 1950s to 1966, Sweden’s borders were relatively open, and this facilitated a significant amount of immigration. A system of unregulated individual labour migration developed, where foreign citizens could enter Sweden as tourists and thereafter look for work and obtain a work permit. For a significant period of time there doesn’t seem to have been any strong opposition to this laissez-faire system. This all changed during the 1960s, however, when the liberal immigration regulations were called into question. An important factor was that immigration increased dramatically in the mid-1960s. In addition, the national composition of the migration streams to Sweden changed during these years. Immigration from Yugoslavia, Greece and also from Turkey increased, while the number of immigrants from the Nordic countries diminished. In connection with the changing immigration pattern, certain actors, such as the trade unions and Sweden’s central employment authority, AMS, called for more restrictive immigration regulations. Demands from the trade unions and AMS led to a more stringent immigration control in 1966, and again in 1967, when a new Swedish immigration policy was introduced.Swedish research into changes in immigration policy during the 1960s often emphasizes the considerable influence of the trade unions on the policy shift. An argument put forward in this dissertation is that the intensification of immigration control not only reflected the demands of the trade unions, but that significant demands also came from within the state apparatus, and particularly from AMS. AMS was a relatively autonomous actor when the immigration regulations changed in 1966-1967, and its demands and knowledge regarding the influx of migrant labour made a significant contribution to the formation of the new immigration policy.The second part of the dissertation investigates how industrial companies have shaped the migration streams from Southern Europe to Sweden. Immigrants from Yugoslavia and Greece were often recruited in order to perform the heavy and subordinate work in the manufacturing industries that native workers had either avoided or left at that particular time. The dissertation attempts to explain this concentration of Southern Europeans in subordinate positions in the manufacturing industries.During the 1960s, Yugoslavs became the largest non-Nordic group in the migration streams to Sweden. How did Sweden become connected with this emigration country situated in the Mediterranean? A conclusion is that, to a great extent, the requirements and actions of industrial companies shaped the national composition of the migration streams to Sweden.
8.
Gustafsson, Pär, 1971-
(author)
Commercial conflict : The case of Russia's contemporary economy
2007
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This study has scrutinized the use of legal and extra-legal mechanisms for resolving commercial conflict. The case examined is the Russian economy after the Soviet collapse. The starting-point is the notion that rational economic actors would increasingly turn to the commercial courts if the courts were effective. These courts slowly became more effective in the 1990s if we are to judge by the growing number of civil cases submitted for review, but the low rate of enforcement of court decisions suggests the opposite. This leads to the primary research puzzle: why would supposedly rational economic actors use ineffective commercial courts, when a supply of legal and extra-legal alternatives for conflict resolution is present? The investigation draws on a wide range of quantitative and qualitative evidence to unpack the puzzle. The qualitative evidence consists of 59 in-depth interviews with economic actors and legal specialists in Russia. The quantitative evidence includes official statistics and two surveys on enterprises in Russia. Secondary analyses have been carried out on court-case records, media reportings, and data published in research literature on the use of courts in Russia. The study suggests that economic actors were, in fact, avoiding the ineffective courts in the 1990s and a considerable proportion of the civil cases submitted to the courts were fabricated bogus conflicts. Economic actors fabricate and submit bogus conflicts in order to strategically manipulate the court, with the goal being to achieve a veil of legality for extra-legal business activities. A central piece of evidence is that economic actors who accept corruption outside the judiciary are more likely to trust the ineffective courts, than those who reject corruption outside the judiciary. The pattern of strategic manipulation of the courts tends to subvert the law and may, over time, erode the state’s legitimacy.
9.
Lund, Anna, 1969-
(author)
Mellan scen och salong : En kultursociologisk analys av ungdomsteater
2008
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This dissertation analyzes youth theatre and how it fares in the interplay between three worlds: the audience of young students and their experiences, interests and values; the theatre as an institution with its ideals and modes of operation; and the school, with its selection and sorting mechanisms. It focuses on what happens when different conditions, relations, tensions and conflicts create meaning and significance. A cultural-sociological approach is used to analyze the social drama that plays out between the ideals of youth theatre and the social contract that regulates the meeting between the stage and the audience. The purpose of the dissertation is to expose this social drama by using an empirical case. The empirical material is drawn from the performance of the play Dear Jelena by the Regional Theatre of Blekinge Kronoberg. The participant observations were carried out in autumn 1997, and approximately 30 performances were studied and followed up with interviews, questionnaires, and analyses of the audiences’ written impressions and reactions to the performances. The dissertation shows that the encounter between youth theatre and its audience takes place in a socio-cultural space of inequality and tends to create further inequality. The young audience experiences, reacts to, and appropriates the performances individually, but in a manner structured by social background, sex, and course of study. Theatre as an institution is based on certain ideals, esthetic as well as others, and assumes a particular social contract in advance of its meeting with its young audience. This takes place in parallel with the school making space available for youth theatre, its ideals and social contract, via selection and disciplining. The ideals of youth theatre and the social contract are not easily upheld in reality, they are often questioned by the socio-culturally heterogeneous audience with its widely varied attitudes and reactions. This means that theatre, as well as the school, is forced, in a tension-filled and conflictual manner, to deal with the disjuncture between ideal and reality. This dissertation focuses on and empirically concretizes this social drama and how the encounter between the stage and audience is dealt with.
10.
Platzer, Ellinor, 1963-
(author)
Från folkhem till karriärhushåll : Den nya husliga arbetsdelningen
2007
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
The growing demand for domestic services in Sweden during the 1980s is a central issue in this study. Some political actors have argued that tax reduced domestic services is a strategy to solve problems dual career families experience when they try to combine career work with domestic work and family life. This idea was met by strong ideological resistance and a formal law was not possible to introduce until July 2007. The questions of balance between work and private life are commonly considered to be “private troubles” since it concerns people’s most personal life. Some private troubles though can, according to C W Mills (1959) in his book The Sociological Imagination, during certain periods of time turn into “public problems” and create a demand for formal decisions. These decisions can cause new private troubles. Three phases in time are discussed: the 1930s, 1960–1970 and 1990–2000. The author concludes that the right for married women in the middle classes to work outside their homes, better conditions for children, professionalisation of women’s traditional work and collective solutions during the first phase were changes originally caused by personal troubles becoming public problems. These questions were eventually institutionalised and have had great influence on future negotiations and decision making – for example during the two following phases. The thesis contains of four articles. The first is about the recent absence of tax reduced domestic services in Sweden and the ideological debate sorrounding this issue. Explanations are that actors, arguments and the construction of proposals occuring in the political process were institutionally “wrong”. In focus of the second article are families with two bread winners during the 1930s and the growing demand for domestic services. A large decrease of domestic workers which started during that time was supposed to be solved by new household technology and a large public sector. The plans were eventually realised but not until the 1970’s. The function of domestic services as maintaining life style and gender division of labour of the middle classes is the main focus in the third article. Cleaning help a few hours a week or having a nanny as a live-in, is considered to be strategies to increase gender equality in families. During mid 1980s an au pair system has established itself in Sweden. That is the theme of the fourth and last article. This form of domestic service is hidden behind formal rules, stating that the purpose of the au pair system is to let young people get to know Sweden and learn the Swedish language. Instead, the au pair’s are being used as cheap labour without labour or civil rights.
