What type of state has emerged in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, and what kind of theoretical framework must we develop to understand its behavior and performance? This study argues that the logic of political and bureaucratic organization follows that of an investment market in which public offices are purchased with the expectation of yielding a favorable return. This theory represents a novel perspective on the post-communist state which has hitherto either been premised on modernization theory or emphasized a robustly personalistic logic of political organization. There is a serial of linkages to this argument. First, the decisive factor for public employment is unofficial financial payments rather than merits or personal ties. The sums involved in the exchange are far greater than conventional “bribery.” The market for public offices, intimately connected from top to bottom in the state hierarchy, pertains to a much more unified system than the one found in the literature which treats political and administrative, high and low level corruption as distinct and unrelated forms. Second, individuals invest in public offices in order to convert the rights, assets and powers connected to officialdom into private capital. In this political economy, alternative markets for enrichment are subordinated to the state and poorly functioning. Third, the abundance of pecuniary corruption in Kyrgyzstan is standardized, entrenched and predictable norms of behavior in this type of state. The key to success on this market is the ability to control the supply of “public” goods and services in exchange for unofficial payments. Finally, the risk for systemic instability increases when more reasonably inclusive personal connections and money is no longer sufficient and access to the state for earning and investing is manipulated by narrow personalistic ties. This creates pressure for returning to a more competitive market as opposed to a monopolistic order.

This thesis is about the conflict between participation and bureaucracy. This conflict is illustrated by a case study within the Swedish Armed Forces under the activity that preceded the 1996 Resolution on Defence. More closely it focuses on the decision-making process that led to the Swedish Armed Forces report that were handed over to the Government in March 1996. In this decision-making process the Supreme Commander tried different ways to create participation among all the high- ranking officers, from local up to Headquarters level, to make them participate in the process. The thesis answers the question if it is possible to create participation in a bureau­cratic organisation such as the Swedish Armed Forces, and the conclusion that I draw is that participation is hard to establish. First there is a conflict within the bureaucratic form itself, since a bureaucracy implies a diversification of assignments and responsibilities in different functions and at different levels in a hierarchy. Every level has its own task to fulfil and this states how reality is to be understood. In the Swedish Armed Forces the bureaucratic structure is reinforced by the fact that the officer is promoted to a higher rank after his or her military training. Both the bureaucratic structure and the military training will lead to a differentiation between individuals, and they will be placed in different skills and status levels within the organisation. Besides this, individuals will gather information mostly from their own level, which will further fortify the difference between the levels. Furthermore there are also individual factors connected to the bureaucratic structure that have shown to complicate participation. For example individuals choose not to participate since they experience that they lack necessary competens for the task, that they do not have time, that they have not been consulted or that they consider the task to be solved at a higher level. So even if the military decision-making model encourages and advocates partici­pation, there is a big difficulty to break the bureaucratic design. Leaders often show inability to go from a bureaucratic leadership style to a democratic one. At the same time the subordinate support their leaders when they act as a traditional leader. / digitalisering@umu

The overall aim of this thesis is to explore the theoretical and empirical relationship between entrepreneurship and bureaucracy, and to examine the cause and effect of entrepreneurship. From this overall aim, four specific questions are investigated. The first question deals with the issue of combining agency and structural explanations of entrepreneurship. Traditional one-sided explanations are discussed, and a two-sided explanatory model of the entrepreneurial choice is presented and tested empirically. In relation to this, the issue of causal heterogeneity is discussed and tested. The empirical results indicate that several country-level variables, including bureaucracy, influence the entrepreneurial choice at the individual level, and that the effect of some individual variables on the entrepreneurial choice varies according to structural context. The following two questions deal with the relationship between the entrepreneur and bureaucracy. The first one describes how the entrepreneurial process is regulated by bureaucracy, and how entrepreneurs solve regulatory problems. From this study it is clear that the smaller entrepreneurs comply with 'good' law in order to enjoy the benefits of formality, and avoid 'bad' law to reduce the costs of formality. The larger entrepreneurs comply with all regulations and are very frustrated over delays and inefficiency. The smaller entrepreneurs have a more understanding attitude towards bureaucratic inefficiency and have less trouble solving regulative problems. Both groups have strategies for solving regulative problems; most frequently this involves social ties with public officials and bribes. The second of the relationship questions investigates the extent to which entrepreneurs are obstructed by or dissatisfied with the regulatory authorities, and whether this varies over different types of entrepreneurs. Based on Schumpeter’s distinction between entrepreneurs and other, less creative, business owners, the overall results indicate that creative companies have larger problems with regulatory authorities. The conclusion is that bureaucracy tends to be a problem with regard to new ideas, but not for new companies. The fourth question raised deals with the economic effects of entrepreneurship and bureaucracy. Can entrepreneurship and bureaucracy explain variation in economic development across countries? The results indicate that entrepreneurship combined with bureaucracy offer high explanatory values and that a large part of the variance in economic development, left unexplained by agency behaviour, is explained by the regulation of that behaviour. In terms of policy implications the results indicate that the removal of bureaucratic barriers to entrepreneurs could have large potential payoffs in terms of economic growth.

Purpose/aim The aim is to examine the distribution of hotel ownerships and star-rated levels in different regions. This thesis depends on the analysis of the examination to find out if the change of investment behaviors can decrease or avoid the adverse effects of bureaucracy in the Chinese hotel industry. Design/methodology/approach Data has been collected through the third-party electronic distribution channel. The analysis includes a description of the samples and statistical tests. Findings The analysis showed that there is a connection between hotel ownerships, star-rated levels, and different regions. The adverse effects of bureaucracy in the second-tier cities and third-tier cities are stronger than that in the first-tier cities and tourist cities. The state-owned hotels also can do the enterprise transformation in the tourist cities to avoid or decrease the adverse effects of the bureaucracy. Originality/value The original idea is using the hotel ownerships distribution in different regions to find out the different levels of adverse effects of the bureaucracy in different regions. This thesis should be a meaningful contribution to knowledge development.

As the environmental awarenesshas increasedin recent decadessohas the society’s demand forenvironmentalresponsible companies(Ammenberg, 2004).One way for companies to take responsibility and work with environmental issues is to implement anenvironmental management system(EMS). EMSserves as a tool for companies to systematically work with environmental issues and develop the company's environmental efforts. ISO 14001 is theEMSaccording to whichthat the majority of companies today choose to get certified(Brorson & Almgren, 2007). The introduction and operation of the ISO 14001 requires significant financial and human resources and it can therefore be questioned whether the environmental managementsystem is adaptable forall companysizes.The purpose of this studyis to examine whether EMScan provide environmental and economic benefits for companies of all sizes and ifthe conditions to get certifiedaccordingto ISO 14001 is the same for large and smallcompanies.A literature study was made to collect information on company'simplementation of ISO 14001. Furthermore, as a complementto the literature study,an empirical investigationincluding e-mail correspondence with four consulting companies thatoffer services for companies that want to get certifiedaccordingto ISO 14001was made. The result of the study showsthat there are different conditions for large and small companies to get certified to ISO 14001, and these differencesis mainly because large companies have morefinancial and human resources.There are disagreementsin the literature whether ISO 14001 is designed for both large and small companies, where critics argue that the EMS primarily are adapted for large companies, and then transferred to small companies.The more positive arguments to ISO 14001 arethat the EMS is flexible and therefore adaptable, in similarity with the arguments put forward by the informants.Despite the factthat all of the informants replied that ISO 14001 is designed for both large and small companies, two of them also claimthat there are some difficulties for small companieswhen implementing and working with the EMS.

The labor market is a key aspect of democracy and the country's economy, it is part of human life that affect us all the time linked to the economic and social aspects such as standard of living, class, identity, welfare etc. Labor market policy results in policies that are used to increase employment and thus reducing unemployment and improving labor market functioning. The purpose of this study was to explore and describe how the implementation of labor market policy measures goes to and how much leeway employment agents on AF (arbetsförmedlingen) in Västerås have. We have chosen both quantitative and qualitative methods in our study. First we did a quantitative survey where we had a questionnaire survey with agents employed at the AF in Västerås. In terms of qualitative approach, we did a half - structured interview with the employment office manager in Västerås, where we used the same questions that we had the quantitative survey. This will also help us to detect if street-level bureaucrats and top officials (bureaucrats) have different perceptions / views regarding how much leeway employment agents on AF in Västerås have.

User involvement is generally regarded as something positive within social work, and is something social authorities in Sweden (as in many other countries) propagates for. This study aims to highlight social workers perceptions and experiences of user involvement within the specific context addiction treatment. A context where users individual status has proved needed to be strengthened. Five social workers, all working within Swedens national government-funded social service agency, are given a voice on the subject. By using semi-structured interviews, the results show how broad and ambiguous the concept of user involve-ment is, when the respondents is asked to define it. This found is supported by earlier studies results, in which researchers also declare the concept unclear. This studys result includes se-veral examples of what the social workers comprehend the involvement consists of in their daily work. The conditions for user involvement to take place in this study’s specifik practice, shows to be closely associated with factors such as the bureaucratic regime, organizational framework agreements and with assessments of the client in question knows its own good (on the basis that drugs affect the human cognitive system in different ways).

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This research is a comparative field study of the influence of societal culture on organization structure and process. Past empirical studies were used to dérive a framework incorporating four fundamental dimensions of cultural values: power, authority distance, group orientation, and cognitive orientation- From thèse dimensions, five configurations were identified which accounted for most of the organizations reviewed in previous field studies: the Autocracy, the Political Entourage, the Traditional Bureaucracy, the Modem Bureaucracy and the Consensus configuration.[...] / Cette recherche est une étude comparative de l’Influence de la culture sociale sur les structures et processus d’organisation. Un cadre Incluant quatre dimensions fondamentales des systèmes de valeurs culturels, soit le pouvoir, la distance d’autorité, l’orientation de groupe et l’orientation cognitive, fut dérivé d’études empiriques passées. Cinq configurations furent Identifiées à partir de ces dimensions et expliquèrent la plupart des organisations étudiées dans des ouvrages antérieurs: l’Autocratie. l’Entourage Politique, la Bureaucratie Traditionnelle, la Bureaucratie Moderne et la configuration du Consensus.[...]

This thesis examines the evolution of archival theory in light of the ascendance of human rights in Western society. Archives are situated as integral instruments in the protection of human rights within a Western context due to the European preference towards written evidence and bureaucratic systems. The thesis uses a negative case study to demonstrate the power of the record in affecting the human rights of citizens, but also situates access to the government archive among human rights.