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- Svensson, Jenny, 1977-
(författare)
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The Regulation of Rule-Following : Imitation and Soft Regulation in the European Union
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Present times are sometimes referred to as "the golden era of regulation", as more and more areas of social life are regulated. But regulation is not only increasing; it is also changing. New regulators are emerging, and they are issuing new kinds of rules. These new kinds of regulation are frequently not legally binding, and are therefore labelled soft regulation as opposed to hard law. It is not compulsory to follow soft rules but many actors - including sovereign states - still do, and the thesis asks the question why this is so. Why do even states, which are powerful regulators themselves, abide by soft regulation, and wherein lies the regulative power of soft rules? Through an in-depth study of the European Union's pre-accession instrument Twinning an answer to the question of the power of soft regulation has been arrived at. Treating Twinning as a critical case of soft regulation, and using theories of imitation to grasp the meaning and evolution of Twinning projects, makes it possible to define three regulative elements involved in soft regulation. These are the combinative, co-productive and constitutive elements of soft regulation, from which the thesis suggests that it derives its power. First of all, soft regulation combines different kinds of rules, the regulation of identity and the regulation of activity, and a variety of sources of legitimacy. Second, it depends on regulators and regulatees interacting to co-produce regulation. And third, as its main result, it constitutes the rule-followers as formal, rational, and modern organisations. Accordingly, soft regulation has rather impressive regulative capabilities, builds on complex, dynamic, and social interactions, and embodies as well as promotes some of Western society's most strongly institutionalised ideas. The thesis argues that it is through these characteristics that actors, including states, are compelled to follow soft rules.
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| 3. |
- Wiesel, Fredrika, 1977-
(författare)
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Kundorientering och ekonomistyrning i offentlig sektor
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- It is a trend in the public sector to re-cast citizens and beneficiaries as customers or consumers of public services. While earlier research has addressed different aspects of how the implementation of customer orientation affects public sector organisations’ management control systems, this research has tended to have an overly narrow focus on performance measurement. There is also a paucity of empirically based studies in this area. This thesis addresses how the implementation of customer orientation affects public sector organizations’ management control systems from a broader perspective. It also focuses on the leverage of economic, institutional and technical factors and the interplay between these factors for the development of lateral control in public sector organisations. While the implementation of customer orientation in the public sector brings about demands for increased attention to lateral control aspects, management control in the public sector has traditionally been based on a vertical control model. In addition, lateral and vertical control is founded in different and conflicting institutional logics. This thesis illustrates under what circumstances the parallel presence of the two institutionally conflicting control models can cause tensions in an organisation, or lead to embeddedness of lateral control aspects in a public sector organisation’s dominant vertical management control system. It also addresses the impact of such embeddedness for the ability of public sector organisations to prioritize between different customers and customer needs. The thesis is based on a longitudinal research project in two Swedish state agencies and consists of four embedded cases. The cases include operations covered by state grants as well as operations that generate their revenues from fee-paying customers and competitive contracting. The case study data have been collected through semi-structured interviews, observations and document studies.
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