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Syftet med den här uppsatsen är att undersöka lärares medvetenhet om den förändrade skollagen vad avser disciplinära och andra åtgärder och i vilken omfattning de upplever att den påverkar skolmiljön. För att kunna uppnå syftet med studien har tre frågor formulerats: för det första i vilken grad är lärare medvetna om vilka åtgärder som enligt lagen finns att tillgå och för det andra, i vilken omfattning tillämpar lärare de befogenheter de fått genom den nya skollagen? Avslutningsvis ställs frågan om lärare upplever att den nya lagen bidragit till några förändringar i deras handlingsutrymme?  Undersökningen som ligger till grund för uppsatsens resultat baserades på enkäter som besvarades av trettiosex lärare vilka undervisar i grundskolans senare år (7-9). Resultatet av undersökningen visar att lärare har begränsade kunskaper om skollagen vad avser lärarens mandat att vidta disciplinära åtgärder mot elever. Det framkommer också att lärare använder sig av disciplinära åtgärder för att stävja störningar i klassrumsmiljön och att en majoritet inte upplever att förändringen av skollagen har ökat lärarnas handlingsutrymme i klassrummet samtidigt som andra lärare anser att studiemiljön påverkats positivt till följd av lagens införande. Avslutningsvis kan det konstateras att studiens resultat kan förklaras med stöd av Michael Lipsky och hans ”gräsrotsteori”, vad avser skillnader mellan skollagens formuleringar och den praktiska tillämpningen i klassrummet. / The aim of this essay is to examine teachers' awareness in the changing school law with regards to disciplinary and other measures and to what extent they feel that this affects the school environment.  In order to achieve this objective, three main questions are posed: Firstly, to what degree are teachers aware of the measures available under the Act? Secondly, to what extent are teachers applying the powers gained through the new Education Act? Finally, do teachers feel the new law has contributed to any changes in their decision making process? The essay's conclusions are based on research resulting from questionnaires answered by thirty-six teachers who teach in compulsory schools higher grades (7-9). The research shows that, firstly, teachers have a limited knowledge of the Education Act regarding a teacher's authority to take disciplinary action against students. Secondly, it appears teachers are using the disciplinary measures to curb disruptions in the classroom.  Finally, a majority do not feel the changes in the Education Act has led to any increase in flexibility within the decision making process in the classroom, whilst others believe the learning environment has been positively affected as a result of the law's introduction. In conclusion the study's results are supported by Michael Lipsky's ”Street-level Bureaucracy," with regards to the differences between the Education Act's wording and practical application in the classroom.

The overall aim of this study is to investigate how social workers who are dealing with financial assistance are experiencing discretion in their daily work. The aim of the study is also to examine how social workers who are dealing with financial assistance relates to the controlling and the supporting functions of their daily work and how this in turn affects the attitude to the client. In order to examine the aim of the study, qualitative method was used. Eight social workers have been interviewed and presented with two fictitious cases that they have been able to discuss. Theories regarding the street-level bureaucrat and its discretion have been used to interpret and understand the collected material. Kerstin Svenssons’ (2001) theory regarding the social worker’s position has also been used to analyse the study’s gathered material. The study shows that social workers consider themselves to have a relatively large discretion in their daily work. However, the majority of the social workers agree that despite the great discretion they can at times feel limited in their work. Findings of the study also show that social workers are either more controlling or more supportive in meeting with the client.

Western governments face increasing demands to achieve both cost efficiency and responsiveness in their public services leading to radical and challenging transformations. Following the imposition of New Public Management (NPM) approaches within England, it is argued that similar elements of NPM can be also seen within Scottish healthcare, despite policy divergences following devolution. This thesis considers the influence of NPM on Scottish hospital frontline nursing staff in their work. It explores the ways in which managerial practices (specifically professional management; discipline & parsimony; standard setting & performance measurement; and consumerism) have shaped the working relationships, interactions, and knowledge-exchange between managers, staff and patients and the ability of staff to carry out nursing duties within an acute hospital setting. The study is a qualitative interpretivist study grounded in the methodology of adaptive theory and draws upon the works of Lipsky (1980) in order to explore how the front-line nurses cope with and resist the demands of the workplace. Based on thirty-one qualitative interviews with front-line nursing staff in an inner city hospital in Scotland, this thesis presents the findings resulting from nurses’ views of management, finances, policies, targets, audits and consumerism. The findings show that these nurses believe there has been a proliferation of targets, audits and policies, an increasing emphasis on cost efficiency and effectiveness, a drive for professional management and a greater focus on consumerism in NHS Scotland. These are all closely linked to the ethos of NPM. From the findings it can be seen that many elements influence the working relationships of the frontline hospital nursing staff. The study suggests that the main reason for conflict between managers and nursing staff is due to their differing foci. Managers are seen to concentrate on issues of targets, audits and budgets with little thought given to the impact these decisions will have on patient care or nurses’ working conditions. Furthermore the findings highlight high levels of micro-management, self-surveillance, control and the regulation of the frontline nursing staff which has led to tensions both between nursing staff and managers, but also with patients and the public. Finally, although there has supposedly been policy divergence between Scotland and England, this thesis has identified many similarities between Scottish and English polices and NPM approaches continues to influence the working relationships of front-line nursing staff within this study despite the rhetoric that Scotland has moved away from such practices.

The thesis had its starting point in the first paragraph of the eleventh chapter in the Swedish social services act, which discusses the immediate risk assessments that has to be made when the social services receive a report about a child. The thesis highlights an area that has received a lot of attention in media since the spring of 2014, when an eight year old girl was fatally abused by her legal guardians. The social services had at the time received a report about the girl but it was left unread. This tragic case has brought attention to the routines used by the social services for dealing with reports and risk assessments. This thesis was conducted through individual interviews with social workers working with children and families in the social services, with the aim to acquire an enhanced understanding of how social workers perform immediate risk assessments and what these assessments are based on. The results of the study showed that several of the municipalities had a routine for how to handle incoming reports, but lacked specific routines regarding the immediate risk assessments. Without specific routines, the informants stated experience, intuition and cooperation with co-workers and managers as important factors of making risk assessments. / Studien tog avstamp i socialtjänstlagens elfte kapitel, första paragrafen, vilken behandlar den omedelbara skyddsbedömning som ska göras av socialtjänsten vid en inkommen anmälan gällande ett barn. Studien belyser ett medialt uppmärksammat område som sedan våren 2014 blivit vida diskuterat då en åttaårig flicka misshandlades till döds av sina vårdnadshavare. Socialtjänsten hade då fått in en anmälan om flickan men som ingen ännu hade läst. Detta tragiska fall har uppmärksammat socialtjänstens rutiner kring anmälningar och hur de genomför skyddsbedömningar. Studien genomfördes genom individuella intervjuer med socialsekreterare som arbetar inom Barn och familj i socialtjänsten och syftet med studien var att få en ökad förståelse för hur socialsekreterarna utför skyddsbedömningar och vad som ligger till grund för dessa bedömningar. Studiens resultat visade att det i flera av kommunerna fanns en rutin för hur en inkommen anmälan skulle hanteras, men att det saknades specifika riktlinjer för hur de omedelbara skyddsbedömningarna skulle göras. I avsaknad av specifika riktlinjer uppgav informanterna att erfarenhet, intuition och samarbete med kollegor och chefer utgjorde viktiga delar av att göra skyddsbedömningar.

Sweden has one of the best elderly cares in Europe and the Swedish care work is also one of the best in terms of quality, compared to other European countries. In recent years, higher demands have been set on the care work and the number of privatizations of public services has increased. In 2009 a new law came into force, the Act on System of Choice (LOV) which increased individual’s right to a greater participation and a free choice in the selection of health and social care providers. This paper aims to highlight the impact of the law, system of choice. By using the method of qualitative surveys and interviews with care managers, and an exploration of relevant studies and reports, I was able to complete this study. With institutional theory and other sociological concepts such as isomorphism and street-level bureaucracy, I made an analysis of both the care managers and also at an organizational level. In the conclusions I argue that the system of choice has had a greater impact at an organizational level rather than on the care managers. The paper also highlights the fact that the knowledge of processes of implementation and political governance has had a significant role. The three main issues are how the law has influenced care managers work, how organizations have changed, how and if the active choices work in practice.

A critical task of social policy in most Western welfare states during recent decades has consisted of reducing the economic burden on society due to sick leave, by stimulating participation in the labour market. Many jurisdictions have introduced activation policies, based on the premise that work “per se” has a therapeutic effect on sick-listed workers. People are expected to be “active”, rather than “passive”, recipients of financial benefits. However, there is limited knowledge of how activation policies focusing on return to work (RTW) are carried out in local practice. Against this background, the overall aim of this thesis is to study the local practice of activation policies by analysing how they are received, implemented and experienced by welfare state organizations, employers and sick-listed workers. The analysis has been influenced by theories concerning organization fields, individualization, street-level bureaucracy and organizational governance. In this thesis, the overall aim is investigated in four interrelated papers. In Paper I, the aim is to analyse the perspectives of stakeholders (i.e. welfare state actors and employers) on work ability by studying multistakeholder meetings. Paper II sheds light on activation policy, focusing on early RTW in the context of modern working conditions; the aim is to analyse RTW practice in local workplace contexts, in relation to Swedish early-RTW policy. The third paper focuses on employers, with the aim of analysing their role and activities regarding RTW, in local workplace practice. In Paper IV, the aim is to analyse sick-listed workers’ experiences of the sickness insurance system in their contact with the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (SSIA) and their front-line staff. The empirical material comprises two empirical studies: 1) audio-recorded multi-stakeholder meetings from regular practice (n=9) and 2) semi-structured interviews with sick-listed workers and their supervisors in 18 workplaces (n=36). The analyses of the material have been performed in accordance with the principles of qualitative content analysis. Main findings of the papers reflect strong organizational boundaries in the implementation process of activation policies. Welfare state actors and employers appear to be governed by their own organizational logics and interests, so the actors involved fail to take a holistic view of sick-listed workers and do not share a common social responsibility for individuals’ RTW. This thesis illustrates how current activation policies focusing on RTW are based on a rather idealized image of the standard workplace. There is an explicit or implicit assumption that employers and work organizations are able to welcome sick-listed workers back to work in a healthy way. However, the intensity of modern working life leaves limited room for accommodating people with reduced work ability, who are not considered to have a business value to the workplace. In several cases, findings indicate that the SSIA’s focus on activation and early RTW clashes with the financially oriented perspective of employers. Economic considerations regarding their business take precedence over legal and ethical considerations, and employers have difficulty taking social responsibility for RTW. Sick-listed workers are encouraged to adjust to new workplace settings and environments to meet the demands of the workplace, and, if RTW is not possible, to the demands of the labour market. The findings also show that sick-listed workers experience that contacts with the SSIA are ‘standardized’; i.e., they perceive that the officials are loyal  to demands in their organizations rather than being involved actors who support workers’ individual needs. Sick-listed workers clearly experience that measures in Swedish activation policies have a strong focus on demanding aspects (financial work incentives) and less on enabling aspects (investments in skills). Overall, this thesis illustrates an emerging social climate where sick-listed workers are positioned as active agents who must take responsibility for their sick leave and their RTW process. In a Swedish context, RTW is a matter of activating the sick-listed rather than activating the workplace.

abstract: Individual behavior change is a goal of many public policies directed at people of low socioeconomic status. Without evidence of behavioral change, these policies cannot be considered a success: a process of co-production where some level of cooperation between the client and program administrators is required to successfully meet program objectives. The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), is one example of a co-production design. WIC encourages women to engage in healthy behaviors by providing healthy food along with nutrition education to improve the health status of low-income families. However, while WIC is one of the most studied nutrition programs, little attention has been paid to the nutrition education portion or to interactions between staff members and participants. This research draws on the public policy and administration literature about street-level bureaucrats and co-production, which provides a framework for understanding the purposeful, inter-dependent relationships between front-line service providers and clients. However, neither literature explicates the process of interactions that is expected to lead to client behavior change and co-production. The primary contribution of this research is the creation of a grounded theory that identifies and explains the WIC interaction process as one of "negotiating healthy self-government". Based on analysis of three months of observations of WIC encounters in two clinics, this research finds that participants and staff members enter into tacit and explicit negotiations concerning the degree to which participants should govern their family's nutrition-related behavior. Clients actively shape the interactions by demonstrating their discipline and efforts to feed their families, while staff members refine and reinforce self-governing behaviors through assessing action, and providing advice to ensure behaviors meet recommendations. Finally, participants and staff members distinctly link self-governing behavior to identity: "good mothers" feed their children healthy food and govern their behaviors to meet nutritional recommendations. This research has implications for the study of behavior change promotion in public programs by introducing the concept of identity as a mechanism for governance and explicating the interaction process between front-line service providers and clients / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Public Policy 2014

Cette thèse a pour objet le traitement administratif des chômeurs en Pologne, étudié à travers des pratiques des agents de l’administration locale de l’emploi. L’objectif est de mettre en évidence comment ces agents traduisent les buts officiels et les règles formelles en actions et surtout d’identifier les éléments qui structurent leurs pratiques à l’égard du public accueilli. L’analyse porte sur le « people-processing » (Prottas, 1979) : c’est-à-dire les opérations consistant à transformer des personnes, dont les expériences biographiques et les conditions de vie sont très hétérogènes en sujets lisibles, classifiables, mesurables et modifiables. L’examen de ces processus a permis de s’interroger sur la transformation de l’État social en ce qui concerne les droits sociaux des chômeurs, l’inégalité face à l’administration de l’emploi et les techniques de contrôle des chômeurs et des agents publics. Les résultats s’appuient sur plusieurs enquêtes réalisées entre 2007 et 2014 dans 5 établissements locaux de l’administration de l’emploi et sur une analyse documentaire qui les a complété. Les recherches de terrain ont consisté en 111 entretiens approfondis menés surtout avec le personnel de ces agences travaillant en première ligne de l’accueil ainsi qu’avec des personnes inscrites en tant que chômeurs. Outre les séries d’entretiens, le matériau qualitatif se compose de documents administratifs et d’outils de travail dont les agents de base se servent au quotidien ainsi que de courts épisodes d'observation. Quant à l’analyse de documents nationaux, elle a compris le cadre légal depuis la création du statut administratif du chômeur en 1989 et les statistiques publiques. / This PhD thesis discusses what is actually done in the name of unemployment policy in Poland. It demonstrates how street-level bureaucrats in Public Employment Services (PES) translate official objectives and formal rules into practices and it identifies elements that structure their actions towards people, who register as unemployed. The study concern ‘people-processing’ – to use a notion of Jeffrey Prottas (1979): i.e. operations which consist in transforming people with heterogeneous biographies and life situations into subjects who are legible, subjected to standardised categorisation and measurable. The analysis gives critical insight into changes of welfare state with respect to social rights of unemployed and their accessibility, mechanisms of reproduction of inequalities through PES and technologies of control of both street-level bureaucrats and the unemployed. The results are based on several researches conducted between 2007 and 2014 in 5 local PES, which were complemented by a vast documentary analysis. Fieldwork consisted of 111 in-depth interviews conducted mainly with street-level bureaucrats and people, who were currently or previously registered as unemployed. The study also covered administrative documents, daily working tools (such as individual action plans, data basis, activation textbook, etc.), spatial organisation of the offices and it was supplemented by short observations. The additional documentary analysis included legal acts since 1989, public statistics and other official documents concerning labour market policy.

La thèse porte sur un champ spécifique des politiques publiques abordé à travers le filtre des interactions quotidiennes entre les agents d’État et le public. Plus spécifiquement, elle est centrée sur la politique migratoire de la Pologne. Elle consiste à interroger un cas particulier (le Département des étrangers de l’office la Voïvodie de Mazovie) comme lieu où se cristallisent et révèlent les logiques divergentes et souvent contradictoires caractérisant l'ensemble d'un champ de politique étatique. Elle est guidée principalement par la question de savoir ce que les pratiques quotidiennes des fonctionnaires du Département peuvent révéler sur la configuration et les logiques internes du champ des politiques migratoires en Pologne. Inscrit dans une perspective interactionniste, ce travail puise également son inspiration dans les travaux sur les « politiques de guichet » ou encore la « street-level bureaucracy ». Il inclut aussi d'importants éléments de la tradition néo-institutionaliste, notamment par l’usage du concept de champ organisationnel. Le point central de la démarche est l'idée qu'il est possible de mettre en lumière la configuration d'un tel champ et les dynamiques qui le parcourent, à partir d'une analyse focalisée sur un de ses acteurs clés. Ainsi, ce travail, réalisé en co-tutelle et situé à l'intersection de la science politique et de la sociologie, allie une réflexion sur le processus politique d'élaboration des politiques publiques à une étude sociologique à l'échelle micro. Dans une approche qualitative, l'enquête inclut une période d'observation participante au sein de l'institution étudiée et une série d'entretiens semi-directifs. / The dissertation focuses of Poland's migration policy as seen through the lens of the daily face-to-face interactions between immigrants and civil servants at the Department of Foreigners of the Masovian Voivodeship Office – an institution responsible for the legalization of foreigners' stay in Poland. This specific case is analyzed as a site where different and often divergent logics characteristic of this field of policy come into play and become apparent. Thus, the central question is what can be learned about the configuration and internal dynamics of a field of public policy through an observation of everyday practices of the agents of the Department. While adopting an interactionist perspective, this work draws as well on a literature focused on what can be called « street-level bureaucracy ». It also includes important elements of the neo-institutionalist tradition, notably through the use of the concept of organizational field. An idea central to the approach taken here is that it is possible to throw light on the configuration and the logics characterizing such a field based on an analysis of one of its key actors. Situated between the disciplines of political science and sociology, this work combines a reflection on the process of policy-making with a micro-scale sociological inquiry. Following a qualitative approach, the research consists of a period of participant observation and a series of semi-structured interviews.