| 1. |
- Aronsson, Pia, 1950-
(författare)
-
Det professionella projektets framväxt inom ramen för en forskningscirkel : en manipulativ eller frigörande praktik?
- 2022
-
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.
|
|
| 2. |
- Brauer, John, 1988-
(författare)
-
Labour Market Policies : Structure and Content, Space and Time
- 2022
-
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.
|
|
| 3. |
- Brauer, John, 1988-, et al.
(författare)
-
Social Representations in Street-Level Bureaucracies : Production and Reproduction of Knowledge Within Public Administration
- 2021
-
Ingår i: Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration. - Göteborg : School of Public Administration, University of Gothenburg. - 2001-7405 .- 2001-7413. ; 25:2, s. 99-122
-
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.
|
|
| 4. |
|
|
| 5. |
- Bruhn, Anders, 1953-, et al.
(författare)
-
Dimensions of discretionary practices : Swedish social insurance officials assessing work ability in a highly regulative context
- 2021
-
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.
|
|
| 6. |
- Bruhn, Anders, 1953-, et al.
(författare)
-
Farewell to Exceptionalism : An Analysis of Swedish Prisons Officers' Attitudes Towards Prison Policy, Organisation, and Their Occupational Rolen in 2009 and 2019
- 2024
-
Ingår i: Prison Officers. - Cambridge : Palgrave Macmillan. - 9783031410604 - 9783031410611 - 9783031410635 ; , s. 325-348
-
Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this chapter, we discuss changes in how Swedish prison officers experience their working conditions based on the results of a nationwide survey that was carried out on two occasions. 2009 and 2019. During the time that has elapsed between the first and second survey, a lot has happened in Sweden that has impacted on Swedish policy relatiing to crime and punishment, and also the working conditions experienced by prison officers. Growing violence and criminality in society has led to a continious ongoing competition between different political parties and camps towards tougher measures against crime. In prolongations of this "punitive turn", prison officers work tasks has increasingly changed in the direction of monitoring and security work at the expense of rehabilitative and motivational efforts. The result of our comparison between two populations of prison officers points to a substantially changed prison climate. At the same time, the organisational culture has become more homogeneous, but this has happened at the expense of a degradation of the occupational role of prison officers towards pure guardin and security work. Prisoin officer turnover is currently high in Sweden. People with aspirations to work with motivational and rehabilitative measures no longer seem to seek careers within the prison system, and those with long work experience do not expect development towards such work tasks at this point either.
|
|
| 7. |
- Höglund, Frida, et al.
(författare)
-
Sport-based interventions' - A tool for suburban social integration?
- 2024
-
Ingår i: Nordic Social Work Research. - : Routledge. - 2156-857X .- 2156-8588. ; 14:1, s. 32-44
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article is about sport-based interventions as tools for social integration in segregated suburban areas. On the basis of a former research study of Midnight Football in a Swedish mid-size city, we discuss the potential of such activities to contribute to social integration in a broad sense. With established sociological concepts such as social capital, networks, and bonds as points of departure, we discuss the capacity of Midnight Football to contribute to social integration by being a link and a unifying force in the local community as well as a bridge-builder in relation to the surrounding society. Our main argument is that sport-based activities definitely have an important potential here. Locally, it can create fruitful relations and bonds between people belonging to sub-groups of different ethnic origin, religion, and culture, enhancing social density among citizens in a suburb. However, such a density can only be created by the help of other local actors. Further, if it is not combined with active efforts to build relations with the surrounding society at the same time it may be at risk of having effects of isolation, in terms of ‘us vs. them’ feelings towards the outer society. Therefore, a developed engagement from actors outside the suburb is pivotal. Such engagement cannot be developed by the sports movement and other voluntary organizations alone. It demands a return and re-establishment of public representatives and activities in the local community, activities aimed at working long term with building social capital among residents of the local community.
|
|
| 8. |
- Nylander, Per Åke, Docent, 1954-, et al.
(författare)
-
Emotionellt arbete och belastning i fängelsearbete : utvecklingen över tid
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Arbetsmarknad & Arbetsliv. - Karlstad : Arbetsvetenskap vid Karlstads universitet. - 1400-9692 .- 2002-343X. ; 29:3-4, s. 27-41
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Kriminalvårdare är ett komplext yrke som dagligen hanterar intagna i fängelser, vilket innefattar att bemöta olika känslouttryck. Denna artikel handlar om hur detta emotionella arbete förändrats över tid. Den baseras på en jämförelse av data från två forskningsprojekt (2009 och 2019). Resultatet visar att kriminalvårdare upplever att det emotionella arbetet blivit mer påtagligt, och att den belastning och trötthet som följer av detta blivit större. Samtidigt upplever många små möjligheter till återhämtning från detta under arbetstiden.Utvecklingen kan ses i ljuset av den ökade beläggningen men kan också kopplas till ideologiska och organisatoriska förändringar inom den svenska kriminalvården.
|
|
| 9. |
- Nylander, Per Åke, Docent, 1954-, et al.
(författare)
-
The Emotional Labour of Prison Work
- 2020
-
Ingår i: Emotional Labour in Criminal Justice and Criminology. - London : Routledge. - 9780367152017 ; , s. 69-84
-
Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The emotional life in prisons has been described in popular literature in terms of horror and suffering, but the research literature on this topic is sparse and mostly produced in later decades. During this short time, emotion research concerning prisons has focussed on a prison reality under constant change and development. The development of prisons, which is influenced by increased security, technical monitoring, and risk governance but also by centralization, specialization, and efficiency demands, has deeply affected prison work. Not the least of these concerns is the emotional labour performed by the largest group of staff, the prison officers. How this labour is performed in each prison wing or unit is closely connected to the institutional framework, the subculture, and the relationships between officers and prisoners. The aim of this chapter is to describe and discuss the emotional labour of prison staff under today’s prevailing conditions of prison life and ongoing changes to prison systems. This is done with reference to research findings from several countries as well as data from our own Swedish research projects. Research and data on prison officer work will be analysed in the light of prison policy changes and organisational theory on the development of public organisations and by using the work of Hochschild and other social theorists.
|
|
| 10. |
- Thunman, Elin, 1970-, et al.
(författare)
-
Dealing With Questions of Responsiveness in a Low-Discretion Context : Offers of Assistance in Standardized Public Service Encounters
- 2020
-
Ingår i: Administration & Society. - : SAGE Publications. - 0095-3997 .- 1552-3039. ; 52:9, s. 1333-1361
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A key theme in the research on bureaucratic encounters pertains to street-level bureaucrats' opportunities for responsiveness when discretion is constrained by the introduction of standardized service delivery regulations, such as information communication technology (ICT). This article contributes to existing scholarship by exploring how low-discretion officials at the Swedish Social Insurance Agency Customer Center manage competing demands of making decisions that are built on regulations and simultaneously responding to the situation at hand and individuals' needs. Analyzing real-time interactions using the conversation analytical concept of "offers of assistance" enables us to discover new aspects of interactional practices of responsiveness in standardized service encounters.
|
|
