| 1. |
- Forsberg Kankkunen, Tina, 1969-
(författare)
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Två kommunala rum : Ledningsarbete i genusmärkta tekniska respektive omsorgs- och utbildningsverksamheter
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this study is to describe and partially explain how management is shaped in female-dominated social care and education services and male-dominated technical services, and how this contributes to creating and reproducing a gender system in municipal organizations. This was achieved by interviewing male and female operative managers in social care and education services and technical services. The managerial work of operative managers was also problematized in relation to activities at other organizational levels – the operational versus the strategic. The theoretical fields used in the study are primarily those having to do with organization and gender. I describe how power structures like sex and gender influence the construction of management; for example, genderized environments generate managerial action patterns, resources, and organizational prerequisites. The analytical results show that managerial work in social care and education services differs in practice from managerial work in technical services. Social care and education services have poorer organizational prerequisites for social interaction among organization levels than do technical services. The discrete prerequisites for managerial work make it more difficult for operative managers in social care and education services to support and interact with staff at the operative level than it is for operative managers in technical services. Operative managers in social care and education services also find it more difficult to actively influence the decision processes than do operative managers in technical services. When operative managers in social care and education services are cut off from strategic decisions and prevented from showing and explaining their needs and activities, the gender system in municipal organizations can be reproduced in the shadows.
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| 2. |
- Haglunds, Magnus, 1969-
(författare)
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Enemies of the People : Whistle-Blowing and the Sociology of Tragedy
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Enemies of the People is a book that examines whistle-blowing—i.e., the unauthorized conveyance of sensitive information to mass media and authorities—and the social responses this performance provokes. The book develops a fresh view of this phenomenon by framing the trend of events according to a couple of fundamental elements found in tragedy.The book also includes a critical appraisal of the perspectives that set the tone in the existent whistle-blowing research. The prevalent one-sidedness found in this field of research is reviewed and contrasted with the contributions delivered in the present study.The analysis is based on three famous whistle-blowing cases that received a lot of attention in mass media: Ingvar Bratt and the Bofors affair; Odd F. Lindberg and the Norwegian seal hunting affair; and finally, Paul van Buitenen and the Leonardo-affair in the European Commission.The author claims that by studying the sociology of tragedy, it is possible to develop a new way of examining social processes where the final outcome is the excommunication of the appointed culprits through, for example, expulsion or avoidance. This purgatorial process is treated as a social status degradation, where the offender experiences a thorough social identity transformation that turns his or her social position to a lower social rank than initially held.The title of this book alludes to a stage play written by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. His dramatic piece An Enemy of the People, written in 1882, plays a prominent part in this study.
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| 3. |
- Yazdanpanah, Soheyla, 1963-
(författare)
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Att upprätthålla livet : Om lågavlönade ensamstående mödrars försörjning i Sverige
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation is about the experiences of low-paid single mothers in sustaining their families in Sweden in the early 2000. The investigation builds upon interviews with twenty low-paid single mothers living and working in Stockholm. Ten of the women are Swedish-born and the other ten are Iranian-born but have been residing in Sweden for several years. A majority of the Swedish-born women belong to the working class, while most of the Iranian-born mothers are from a middle class background. This study is based on an extended definition of sustenance that encompasses support for livelihood and meeting the family needs that conform to socially accepted norms. Sustenance requires incomes to cover expenses and care work. The informants sustain their families mostly from wage work. However, they also seek allowances from the social security system to buy goods and services that they combine with care work to sustain the family. The care work for younger children demands much time and physical work, while caring for older children requires more mental and emotional work. Sustenance for these mothers implies fulfilling all these demands and also to ensure that the children’s’ needs are met. Several factors influence the mothers’ sustenance. Low wages and the single responsibility for children means less money and more time devoted to care work. Few fathers take significant responsibility for their children’s sustenance. The mothers get support from their social networks, often from other women and from the welfare system. Ethnic background negatively affects sustenance for the Iranian-born mothers mostly in the form of reduced cultural and social capital. Children are the highest priority among all the families. However, the priorities may differ among the families and are connected to the mothers’ class, ethnic background and their access to cultural capital.
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| 4. |
- Aytar, Osman, 1960-
(författare)
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Mångfaldens organisering : Om integration, organisationer och interetniska relationer i Sverige
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this dissertation is to examine inter-ethnic relations between organizationally active people with different ethnic backgrounds. I focus on relations that are based on a mutual interdependence between parties, mutual respect, common procedural rules, real opportunities that expressly approve or reject a proposal in a decision or deliberation situation free from compulsion, where people, who have different ethnic backgrounds, strive after insight and understanding in their relations.In this dissertation I present three empirical cases about cooperation, consultation and participation as forms of inter-ethnic relations from the organizational fields in the society. These cases are examples of what I characterize as “organizing inter-ethnicity”, or organizing people with different ethnic backgrounds around common concerns. Organizing inter-ethnicity is in turn a part of organizing and integrating diversity in society. Drawing on the results of three case studies, I distinguish between opportunities and barriers.My case studies clearly illustrate that the tensions that influence the patterns of and variation in opportunities and barriers have sources that reach well beyond ethnicity. Tensions between old and new organizations, between working immigrant organizations and refugee organizations, between organizations from same group or between organizations that have conflicts from their members’ countries of origin provide some examples of the difficulties that generate barriers to broad interest constellations between organizations.
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| 5. |
- Castillo, Daniel, 1977-
(författare)
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Statens förändrade gränser : En studie om sponsring, korruption och relationen till marknaden.
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis brings fresh light on the types of problems that contemporary democracies might face when interacting with private interests. More specifically, the study examines the separation between the state and private interests, based on the assumption that this separation is a precondition for maintaining democracy and legitimate governance. It is thereby a contribution towards understanding the social forces that allow private interests to penetrate the public realm, as well as the forces that protect the state from such penetration. Under which circumstances do private interests access state apparatus in ways that contradicts its universalistic principles? How does the state consider challenges against its legitimacy and how are such threats dealt with? These questions are answered by means of two case studies. The first concerns the interaction between a number of state authorities that receive sponsoring from business enterprises. The second concerns interaction - partially afflicted by corruption - between the state monopoly for selling alcoholic beverages (‘Systembolaget’) in Sweden and its private suppliers.Applying theories on organizational boundaries, exchange, trust, networks as well as legitimacy to these cases, the study demonstrates how state reforms, inspired by the logic of markets, has introduced new ways for private interest to access state affairs. In the case of ‘Systembolaget’, this is particularly evident. The possibility of access, the study argues, is a consequence of reshaping the internal boundaries of the state, broadening informal relations as well as extended scope of action for state employees. This replaced social differentiation as a mechanism of separation by the personal integrity of state employees. Interestingly, this finding should be considered in relation to how the state has attempted to sharpen its organizational boundaries through a strengthening of regulation and the businesslike relations of exchange.
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| 6. |
- Klingvall, Mikael, 1971-
(författare)
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Adaptability or Efficiency : Towards a theory of institutional development in organizations
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Organizations, once established, tend not to change, typically going obsolete as society continues to evolve. This makes adaptability an important issue. Organizational members must make sense to each other, or coordination suffers. They must also make sense to environmental actors, or the organization will not achieve the support it needs to survive. This sense-making is a process of institutionalization, of constructing a shared understanding of the organization's enterprise, business and environment. When environmental actors adopt new priorities, ideas and modes of thinking, organizations must develop a new understanding of reality or go obsolete. To stay adaptable, organizations needs to contain competing perspectives. But the pressures to conform and to coordinate make it difficult for established organizations to adapt, trapped by the very benefits of increased efficiency. Using an agent-based model of organizational institutionalization, I show that an organization's adaptability is highly dependent on structural elements that affect the member interaction frequencies, and that organizations that leverage the strength of weak ties between member groups can maintain adaptability. The effects of changes to any of these elements are decidedly non-linear, however, which helps explain why it is difficult to design effective organizations. Organizational structure is one part of a tri-partite framework of institutional development in organizations and of organizational adaptability, where the other two parts are the individual characteristics of the members and the content of the organizational culture.
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| 7. |
- Ljungar, Erik, 1964-
(författare)
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Levebröd eller entreprenörskap? : Om utlandsfödda personers företagande i Sverige
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Why are so many persons with an immigrant background self-employed in Sweden? To just say that it is discrimination in the labor market or that some immigrant groups have a “cultural inclination” that makes them fit to run a business does not provide for a full explanation.I first give an overview of the research of immigrant- and minority business in sociology. I present those factors which place an emphasis on the characteristics and resources among ethnic groups. Thereafter I focus on the structural factors, which can encourage persons from a minority background to become self-employed. My own perspective places an emphasis on social relations when trying to understand the mechanisms which influences a person with an immigrant background to become self-employed. In relation to this, ethnicity defined in a relational context is particularly emphasized. I also examine if self-employment is a solution to the problems of segregation among the foreign born in Sweden.I have chosen to study persons with an Iranian, Kurdish and Chilean background who start and run their own businesses. One important result in this investigation is that many of the persons from all three groups have a common experience of discrimination and exclusion in the Swedish labor market and in society at large. There are some individuals who became self-employed to bring a business concept into reality, i.e. in this sense they are entrepreneurs. But even in these cases there were elements of features of discrimination that motivated them to become self-employed. Another finding is that especially persons with a Kurdish background often make use of their ethnic or social network when they start and run their own businesses. Many of the self-employed in this study are well educated, but often participate in business activities that do not require so many qualifications. They are in some respects economically integrated, but the question remains whether or not the ethnic segregation still exists.
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| 8. |
- Lund, Anna, 1969-
(författare)
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Mellan scen och salong : En kultursociologisk analys av ungdomsteater
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)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.
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| 9. |
- Sofi, Dana, 1971-
(författare)
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Interetnisk konflikt eller samförstånd : En studie om etnopolitik i Kurdistan/Irak
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis concerns the differences in how ethinic groups co-exist in two different environments in the same country, with a focus on the ethno-political. My research questions are: Why are ethnic or interpersonal relations characterized differently in different regions? How and why do conflicts or agreements arise in specific environments? The aim is to understand the connection between inter-ethnic relations and environmentally specific factors. I am concerned with those mechanisms and processes which determine the type of ethnic relation – as conflict or mutual understanding - in specific environments. The thesis uses case studies of two contrasting multiethnic cities with different interethnic relations – Erbil and Kirkuk in Kurdistan/Iraq. My explanatory model consists of four main factors: I) historical factors in terms of critical events; II) institutional factors such as institutional efficiency and security; III) structural factors such as group size, territorial base and different tolerance systems; and IV) social relational factors such as the significance of inter-ethnic contacts and social capital.The empirical work demonstrates that the relations between the above mentioned factors in the respective environments determine the outcome of the inter-ethnic relations. The results show that one factor can be more important than another factor, but how the factors impact upon one another and under what circumstances is of significance. The presentation of environmentally specific differences shows that ethnic groups do not have static boundaries and are not necessarily hostile to one another. Conflict is not the given form of relationship between ethnic groups. That is, the result can be read as a critique of those who necessarily see potential conflicts between groups with cultural differences and those who essentialize cultural groups. In this context one can see a chain of interrelated factors; the relevance of which is dependent on the specific situation. Some of the negative factors that can increase the possibility of conflict and decrease the possibility for peaceful co-existence include: Instability in the political climate; insecurity; institutional ineffectiveness; segregation; undefined relations of power; and an ethnic composition maintaining the balance of power. If these factors combined result in a high level of complexity, which makes ethnicity stand out in terms of ethnic competition, the likelihood of ethnic conflict is significant.
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