1. |
- Berg, Monika, 1979-, et al.
(author)
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Mechanisms of trust for different modes of welfare service provision
- 2019
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In: Public Management Review. - : Routledge. - 1471-9037 .- 1471-9045.
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Welfare services are an important channel for building institutional trust. But does it matter if the service is publicly or privately provided? Using SEM on individual data from public and private schools in Sweden, the authors test how the provision mode moderates the effects of positive and negative school experiences on trust in government. The results show that students' perceptions of teacher fairness are dependent on provision mode. Negative experiences are associated with decreased trust in government only in private schools. Positive experiences didn't affect trust. Thus, the use of private providers may provide greater challenges for maintaining institutional trust
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2. |
- Boström, Magnus, 1972-, et al.
(author)
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Conditions for Transformative Learning for Sustainable Development : A Theoretical Review and Approach
- 2018
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In: Sustainability. - : MDPI. - 2071-1050. ; 10:12
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Continued unsustainability and surpassed planetary boundaries require not only scientific and technological advances, but deep and enduring social and cultural changes. The purpose of this article is to contribute a theoretical approach to understand conditions and constraints for societal change towards sustainable development. In order to break with unsustainable norms, habits, practices, and structures, there is a need for learning for transformation, not only adaption. Based on a critical literature review within the field of learning for sustainable development, our approach is a development of the concept of transformative learning, by integrating three additional dimensions—Institutional Structures, Social Practices, and Conflict Perspectives. This approach acknowledges conflicts on macro, meso, and micro levels, as well as structural and cultural constraints. It contends that transformative learning is processual, interactional, long-term, and cumbersome. It takes place within existing institutions and social practices, while also transcending them. The article adopts an interdisciplinary social science perspective that acknowledges the importance of transformative learning in order for communities, organizations, and individuals to be able to deal with global sustainability problems, acknowledging the societal and personal conflicts involved in such transformation.
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3. |
- Alvinzi, André, 1984-
(author)
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Working for a Wage - What´s the Point? Lived Experiences of Meaningfulness and Meaninglessness in Professional and Manual Occupations
- 2022
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis explores experiences of meaningfulness and meaninglessness in wage labor, and how these work experiences relate to social and organizational factors in work situations (situational meaning). It also explores the centrality and value of wage labor in life in a broader sense (existential meaning). In the research field ‘meaning of work’, previous research is primarily leadership-oriented, psychological and quantitative. Sociological studies have remained scarce, and the concept of meaning tends to be used in confused ways. An explicit philosophically informed sociological perspective of lived experience, action and meaning is lacking. The thesis argues that this can be initiated through theorizing and interviews with a social phenomenological focus. Theoretically and empirically, the thesis contributes with a sociological perspective that integrates social phenomenological and structure-oriented perspectives. Based on 20 interviews with presently employed and recently retired individuals from professional and more manually oriented occupations, the findings suggest that (a) the wage is fundamental for employees’ initial conceptions and experiences of the purposive meanings of working. (b) People are not really themselves at work. Such inauthenticity has consequences for work experiences of meaning. (c) Employees perceive that managers do not understand their work situations and what is realistic to achieve in them. This can become a source of meaninglessness at work. (d) Some experience working life as a whole meaningful for its broader life structuring temporal and practical functions in terms of socializing, routines and habits in everyday life. (e) Working life biographies matter. Previous work experiences from past and current occupations are central for understanding employees’ expectations of- and ways of framing their experiences of meaning in the current job. (f) At work, non-work activities may be experienced as more meaningful than work tasks. (g) Habits and routines from work may generate an embodied form of work centrality. They may become internalized and embodied and spill over to life outside of work; (h) Employees across occupations value disconnecting from work, either at or in life outside work. This may be difficult to achieve because of (g).
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4. |
- Berg, Monika, 1979-, et al.
(author)
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Building Institutional Trust Through Service Experiences : Private Versus Public Provision Matter
- 2020
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In: Journal of public administration research and theory. - : Oxford University Press. - 1053-1858 .- 1477-9803. ; 30:2, s. 290-306
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Welfare service experiences are known to shape citizens' trust in public institutions and their sup-port of the welfare state. But, there is poor understanding of how this relationship is shaped in systems of mixed provision, that is, welfare states that use public in-house as well as contracted private providers for publically funded services. Drawing on the notion of system trust this article provides a theoretical account of how mixed-provision welfare systems condition the relationship between service experience and trust, affecting the legitimacy of the state. Utilizing a random-ized vignette experiment with participants in a general citizen survey in Sweden, we investigate whether it matters for the formation of institutional trust if the welfare service is provided by a public or third-party private provider. The main result show that the spillover of trust from positive service experiences with the provider to trust in public institutions is higher in cases of public ser-vice provision. Thus, the possibility of using welfare services to build trust in the welfare system seems to be greater when public provision is used.
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5. |
- Berg, Monika, 1979-, et al.
(author)
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Deliberative democracy meets democratised science : a deliberative systems approach to global environmental governance
- 2018
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In: Environmental Politics. - : Routledge. - 0964-4016 .- 1743-8934. ; 27:1, s. 1-20
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The main achievements of the debates on deliberative democracy and democratised science are investigated in order to analyse the reasons, meanings and prospects for a democratisation of global environmental policy. A deliberative systems approach, which emphasises the need to explore how processes in societal spheres interact to shape the deliberative qualities of the system as a whole, is adopted. Although science plays a key role in this, its potential to enhance deliberative capacity has hardly been addressed in deliberative theories. The democratisation of science has potential to contribute to the democratisation of global environmental policy, in that it also shapes the potential of deliberative arrangements in the policy sphere. Deliberative arrangements within the policy sphere may stimulate the democratisation of science to different degrees.
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6. |
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7. |
- Berg, Monika, 1979-, et al.
(author)
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Global environmental assessments and transformative change : the role of epistemic infrastructures and the inclusion of social sciences
- 2024
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In: Innovation. The European Journal of Social Science Research. - : Routledge. - 1351-1610 .- 1469-8412. ; , s. 1-18
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The gap between what is known about climate change and the action taken to prevent it has instigated debates around how to reconfigure global environmental assessment organizations to better inform and foster transformative change. One recurring request involves the need for a broader and better inclusion of social scientific knowledge. However, despite such intentions, the inclusion of social scientific research remains limited. How can this be explained? Through a detailed analysis of the IPCC special report on limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees, this article reveals how the institutional conditions of global environmental assessments condition and shape what knowledge is included in these assessments, as well as how this knowledge is represented. It discusses how and why the understanding of social processes and structures remains underdeveloped, despite such knowledge being critical for transformative change. To integrate such knowledge into environmental assessments would require substantial changes to the current epistemic infrastructure used by global environmental assessments. It is therefore time to think beyond global environmental assessments and consider complementary institutional science–policy relations through which social scientific research can assist policy actions to promote deep transformative change.
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8. |
- Berg, Monika, 1979-, et al.
(author)
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Managing public value conflicts – Institutional strategies and the greening of public pension funds
- 2023
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In: Scandinavian Journal of Management. - : Elsevier. - 0956-5221 .- 1873-3387. ; 39:4
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Greening public organizations demands the acknowledgment and reconciliation of tensions and conflicts between core values. This is a challenge that public pension funds have come to face as the call for sustainability has reached the finance sector. Building on the value pluralism debate and institutional theory this article provides a theoretical elaboration of strategies for managing value conflict in public organizations, discussing how value conflict management may promote or inhibit institutional change. The empirical analysis explores how sustainability-related value conflicts are managed within Swedish public pension funds. Political goals and ideals of sustainable finance are pushing funds to promote sustainability through their investments, thus, to consider and promote further values than financial return. Previous research has mainly focused on the financial profitability of sustainability concerns. This study shows that economic value calculation remains the dominant approach within funds, downplaying any conflict between environmental and financial goals. However, to maintain institutional legitimacy under increasing external pressure, the funds have implemented complementary strategies, such as organizational separation of value-related tasks, and different principles for prioritizing value-based actions. The funds thereby avoid ethical reasoning which they fear would lead to subjectivity. In conclusion, the implications for organizational change are discussed.
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10. |
- Berg, Monika, 1979-, et al.
(author)
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Pathways to deliberative capacity : the role of the IPCC
- 2018
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In: Climatic Change. - : Springer. - 0165-0009 .- 1573-1480. ; 148:1-2, s. 11-24
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This article explores the arguments for expanding deliberation in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and scrutinizes their implications for the deliberative capacity of global environmental governance (GEG). An analysis of the IPCC is presented that builds on a systematic literature review and thus a broad set of scientific debates concerning the IPCC. Based on this analysis, two different paths are outlined, one moderate and one radical; these paths ascribe different democratizing functions to the IPCC and rely on different epistemologies. The moderate path emphasizes decision capacity, whereas the radical path strives to create deliberative space and to identify the value inherent in different claims. It is argued that the IPCC cannot accommodate the aspirations of these different pathways in a single assessment. Parallel assessments must be developed in complementary subject areas with different science-policy relations.
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