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- Aronsson, Pia, 1950-
(författare)
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Det professionella projektets framväxt inom ramen för en forskningscirkel : en manipulativ eller frigörande praktik?
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The thesis looks back on an important transitional period for the municipal social services, a transition between different social models and ideals. During this transi-tional period, in the mid-90s, there was a process of change from the community ideal to market liberalism, the latter being characterized by the client-provider model as a form of governance for the municipal organization. Users of social services were becoming customers and professionals were moving towards increased specialization and centralization of social work. The process of change within the municipal organization is a recurrent theme giving this thesis present timeliness although the process of change presented in the thesis took place almost three decades ago.The overall aim of the thesis was to contribute with in-depth knowledge of the professionals' possibilities to exert influence over a process of change in a politically controlled organization using an empirical example as a starting point. The research approach was based on the action research tradition and primarily towards critical action research.The empirical example, the research circle, where professionals met with the prac-tice of social work and the practice of research for a mutual knowledge formation became a temporary action arena where the “professional project” was developed during the years 1994 to 1996.In the thesis politically adopted policy documents are analyzed, the content of which outlined the direction for the future organization and the content of social work, the "Political Project". The analysis reveals the power relations where the political and administrative domain worked to separate and centralize social work while the professionals worked to maintain a decentralized and integrated individual and family care using new working methods and approaches such as open social counseling, group-oriented social work and city district networks as a basis for social service.The thesis shows that the professionals' influence in the process of change was limited by politically adopted decisions in accordance with the conditions of representative democracy, and that only parts of the professional project, which did not challenge overall organizational structures, could be implemented.Before future reorganizations, it is recommended that those affected by the reorganization should be involved in the process early on in order to expand the decision makers knowledge base by including the professionals' opinions, knowledge and will.The development towards a market-liberal form of organization was a lengthy process but has today become the dominant form of organization within municipal administration.
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| 2. |
- Brauer, John, 1988-
(författare)
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Labour Market Policies : Structure and Content, Space and Time
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Labour market policies has two aims: cushioning the economic hardship caused by unemployment and increasing employment rates. In many welfare states, responsibilities for such policies are divided between different political-administrative levels. This dissertation aims to enhance the understanding of labour market policies and especially the involvement of sub-national governmental actors, by analysing the role of municipalities in the Swedish context. The dissertation also investigates the involvement of social work and social workers within labour market policies. A theoretical framework consisting of four pillars, structure, content, space, and time, is used to analyse labour market policies. The analysis combines a historical review with empirical data. The findings show that the involvement of municipalities, in active labour market policies, has taken place against the background of three processes: the multi-level governance of financial support, the shifting role of active labour market policies, and the dialectic relationship between financial support and active labour market policies. The divided responsibility for financial support generates incentives for municipal measures that qualify social assistance recipients for nationally funded social insurances. The fear of work disincentives has also been a driving force in the development of municipal activation. The reliance on municipalities to design and deliver active labour market policies opens for greater crossmunicipal differences. An ongoing reform of the Public Employment Service, the national agency that provides active labour market policies, that decreases the number of local offices and increases the reliance on private service providers, is likely to change the role of municipalities within active labour market policies. Many scholars criticise the involvement of social workers, within labour market policies, given the use of conditionality through activation. This criticism calls for further empirical investigation, not least in terms of how practicing social workers position their work.
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| 3. |
- Brauer, John, 1988-, et al.
(författare)
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Social Representations in Street-Level Bureaucracies : Production and Reproduction of Knowledge Within Public Administration
- 2021
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Ingår i: Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration. - Göteborg : School of Public Administration, University of Gothenburg. - 2001-7405 .- 2001-7413. ; 25:2, s. 99-122
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The concept of street-level bureaucracy is central to understanding public administration asit pinpoints the role of individual civil servants in the realisation of policy. Oneissue in need of further illumination is that of knowledge production and reproduction in street-level bureaucracies. This paperseeks to examine these issues by linking street-level bureaucracy with the theory of social representations. Social representations offer a social-psychological understanding of how individuals make sense of their reality in day-to-day interaction. The overarching aim of the paperis to suggest a theoretical synthesis of these two perspectives –a synthesis that connects interaction atstreet-level with common-sense knowledge, as well as knowledge generatedwithin organisationsand among professionals. The synthesis is demonstrated by presenting an analysis of social representations of unemployment among two groups of street-level bureaucrats.
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| 8. |
- Bruhn, Anders, 1953-
(författare)
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Changing Occupational Roles in Audit Society : The Case of Swedish Student Aid Officials
- 2015
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Ingår i: Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies. - : Roskilde Universitet. - 2245-0157. ; 5:1, s. 31-50
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article is about occupational change concerning a non-professional group of Street Level Bureaucrats—student aid officials at the Swedish Board for Study Support (SBSS). The aim is to describe and analyze changes in their occupational role—their discretional space and working conditions under the impact of changed ways to manage public service organizations and new information and communication technology. The SBSS is the sole administrator of student financial aid in Sweden. Its officials investigate and take decisions about students’ applications and repayment of loans. This work includes interacting with clients via telephone and computer. These officials have to have a certain amount of discretion to interpret and apply rules and regulations on specific circumstances in individual cases. How are their working conditions affected by organizational and policy changes in the authority? How is their ability to exercise influence and control over their own work performance affected? The analysis highlights how officials suffer from decreased discretion and an increasing routinization in their work. This is a result of a regulatory framework continuously growing in detail together with increasing management control based on new information and communication technology. What remains of discretion is a kind of ‘task’ discretion, the ability to do minor technical manipulations of rules in individual cases. Even today’s top management seems critical of this development. Besides further automatization and reduction of staff an ongoing process of organizational change is therefore also aiming to develop officials’ competence and working conditions toward what may be seen as organizational professionalism,a development of specific occupational skills and a discretion adjusted and subordinated to managerial means and ends. The analysis rests on data from a research project (2011 to 2014) about Institutional Talk. Data sources are qualitative interviews, audio-taped speech sequences, observational field notes, and official documents.
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| 10. |
- Bruhn, Anders, 1953-, et al.
(författare)
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Dimensions of discretionary practices : Swedish social insurance officials assessing work ability in a highly regulative context
- 2021
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Frontline work is most often performed in direct encounters with clients. Several scholars have developed models and methods for analysing these encounters to explain the distinctive features of discretionary practices. Such an analysis must move between several layers of social reality, and therefore it requires the integration of several different types of data. In this article our main objective is to develop a ‘multi-level’ approach for understanding how discretionary practices grow in the interplay between conditions at institutional, as well as interactional and individual levels. We hope to contribute to an enhanced understanding of frontline work in today’s public sector. Our data comes from a group of officials in the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (SSIA) investigating the needs and rights of applicants to receive sickness compensation (sickness pension). It includes recorded phone conversations, qualitative interviews, and both administrative and regulative documents. In spite of being a strictly regulated business, and even in cases of very similar situational conditions, the analysis reveals important variations between officials in their approaches to clients, and in ways of acting in dilemmatic situations. Such variations are traced back to individual-level differences in moral dispositions and professional beliefs.
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