The Swedish educational reforms in the beginning of the 1990s, introducing a public-funded voucher system, free school choice and the right to run schools as commercial enterprises, had an important impact on upper secondary education. The Stockholm region, the most populous in Sweden, offered favourable conditions for the growth of a previously non-existent educational market. A massive expansion of independent schools took place, managed primarily by larger companies, along with the extensive marketing of profiled study programmes and the import of management models from the private sector. In 2011 alone, schools competed for 75 000 pupils representing an annual economic value of approximately 8.5 billion SEK. Covering the period 1988 to 2011, this thesis analyses the relationship between the educational market and upper secondary education as a social field structured by the educational strategies of social groups. Building on Bourdieu’s relational sociology, the study combines quantitative and qualitative methods, using correspondence analysis as a major analytical tool. While free school choice and the voucher system established a supply-demand relationship between schools and families and pupils, the analysis shows that the market has submitted to the same forces that structure the field of upper secondary education within which it unfolds, primarily the volume and composition of symbolic and other assets that students, families and schools possess. In fact, the social structure of the field of upper secondary education in Stockholm remains remarkably stable over time, opposing on the one hand female and male dominated education and on the other hand education with high social and scholarly recruitment to that with low. Euclidean clustering analysis unveils a complex social structure reflecting how the increasingly differentiated educational supply has adapted to the needs of various social groups. Elite schools, market-oriented schools and market-exposed schools develop different strategies in the battle over pupils. Competing amongst themselves for pupils rich in inherited and acquired capital, the elite schools withdraw from the openly market-oriented approach that characterises the other type of schools and instead opt for more subtle, long-term strategies for building up trust from their audience, involving investments in staff and other institutional assets.

School segregation in Sweden is increasing and research shows that this may be due to the governance reform that has dominated since the 1990s, New Public Management. In recent years, the government has made statements that Sweden should instead move towards a new form of governance. A governance reform that has emerged from the criticism of New Public Management is New-Weberian State. In the essay, I examine which of these two governance reforms that dominates SOU 2007: 79 and SOU 2020: 28. This is done with a qualitative text analysis and the creation of ideal types that are applied in an analysis scheme. The results show that governance has not changed much over time and that it is New Public Management that dominates the most, even though Neo-Weberian State is also represented.

В данной работе исследуется влияние типов предпринимательства на экономический рост. В рамках синергетического эффекта рыночно-ориентированной реформы рассматривается влияние типов предпринимательства на экономический рост и выдвигаются соответствующие предложения по политике государства в рамках поддержки предпринимательства в КНР. Цель работы – исследование роли предпринимательства в развитии экономики КНР и разработка предложений по развитию предпринимательской деятельности в Китае. Новизна исследования заключается в том, что получены и обоснованы экономико-статистические оценки влияния предпринимательства на экономический рост КНР, а также предложен алгоритм поведения для развития предпринимательской деятельности в Китае с учетом особенностей исследованных типов предпринимательства. / This paper examines the impact of types of entrepreneurship on economic growth. As part of the synergistic effect of the market-oriented reform, the influence of types of entrepreneurship on economic growth is considered and relevant proposals are put forward for state policy in the framework of supporting entrepreneurship in the PRC. The purpose of the work is to study the role of entrepreneurship in the development of the PRC economy and develop proposals for the development of entrepreneurial activity in China. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that economic and statistical estimates of the impact of entrepreneurship on the economic growth of China have been obtained and substantiated, and an algorithm of behavior for the development of entrepreneurial activity in China has been proposed, taking into account the characteristics of the studied types of entrepreneurship.

During the last decades, Swedish policy makers have implemented various marketization reforms into the public welfare sector in order to make it more cost-efficient and to improve its quality. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate what implications this marketization trend has had for the organization of Swedish eldercare. In particular, the research question addressed is how marketization reforms such as privatized provision, increased competition, and user choice have transformed the relationship between the service users, the professionals, and the state. To answer the research question, four articles are presented in the dissertation, each corresponding to a separate empirical investigation. Together, the articles demonstrate that the increased reliance on marketization in Swedish eldercare has made it more difficult for the local authorities to directly control the quality of the services, since it reduces their ability to allocate public resources and expects them to govern the provision of eldercare through the entering of contracts. This development has also implied that service users themselves become increasingly responsible for ensuring that the quality of their care is high. Moreover, the articles show that the increased reliance on audit by the national government and its agencies has tended to undermine the professionalization of eldercare staff, thereby limiting their autonomy and ability to ensure service quality. As a whole, the dissertation contributes with a more comprehensive understanding of how marketization has altered the organization of Swedish eldercare and under what conditions it might undermine the goals of social equality and ensuring that all citizens have equal access to good quality care.

La presse de hard news connaît les prémices d’un changement institutionnel qui se traduit en particulier par un processus de managérialisation des modes de gestion des rédactions et des pratiques professionnelles journalistiques. En mobilisant la théorie néo-institutionnelle, nous appréhendons ce phénomène à travers l’analyse de conflits entre logiques institutionnelles définies par des sous-logiques institutionnelles. On peut ainsi constater une érosion de la robustesse de la logique éditoriale dominante (depuis 1944) dans la gestion des rédactions et des activités journalistiques au profit de la logique business ou d’une nouvelle logique hybride managériale (qui combine des éléments des logiques éditoriale et business). A travers principalement des études ethnographiques menées au sein des rédactions de La Croix, de 20 Minutes et du Parisien-Aujourd’hui en France (entre 2007 et 2009), nous proposons une description des profils des journalistes-managers et une analyse de leur pratiques quotidiennes pour montrer le rôle substantiel rempli par ces JM dans ce processus de managérialisation. Par ailleurs, nous identifions les trois situations majeures dans lesquelles se trouvent aujourd’hui les groupes de PQN relativement à ce processus de managérialisation : des rédactions gouvernées par la logique éditoriale qui reste dominante, des rédactions qui connaissent un changement de logique dominante – passant de la logique éditoriale à la logique business – et des rédactions engagées dans une voie médiane caractérisée par la recherche d’une logique institutionnelle hybride en voie de pré-institutionnalisation. Notre analyse socio-historique de ce changement institutionnel de la presse de hard news (entre 1944 et 2010) conduit enfin à proposer une lecture prospective de la lutte sous-jacente pour la détention du pouvoir de direction des groupes de presse que se livrent actionnaires, managers et journalistes et au sein de laquelle nous identifions le rôle central rempli par les JM dans la définition et l’orientation à donner au processus de managérialisation / Hard news press faces the early beginnings of a deep institutional change through a managerialization process of newsrooms’ and journalistic practices management. Using the new institutionalism theory we assume to scrutinize this change through studying emerging conflicts between institutional logics – and underlying institutional logics – Inside newsrooms. We particularly notice that the strength of the dominant logic (since 1944 in France) – the editorial logic – that traditionally shapes and governs the newsroom and journalistic practices’ management is eroding; thus sometimes the competitive logic – the business logic –appears dominant or a new hybrid logic – combining elements from editorial and business logics – comes up. We have done extensive ethnographic studies inside newsrooms of three French major national newspapers, La Croix, 20 Minutes, and Le Parisien-Aujourd’hui en France (from 2007 to 2009). As a result we offer a first deep description of the characteristics of journalist-managers and analysis of their daily practices, and we show the major role played by these journalist-managers in the managerialization process. We also identify the three major situations that face the French Press groups regarded to managerialization: some newsrooms are still ruled and shaped by the editorial dominant logic; some that face a shift in the dominant logic – from the editorial to the business one; some that experience the attempt to define a hybrid institutional logic that only appears at a proto-institutionalization stage. Our socio-historical analysis of this deep institutional change process that affect the hard news press (from 1944 to 2010) finally invites to consider the evolution of the underlying struggle for power to run the Press firms involving shareholders, managers, and journalists; we assume journalist-managers play and will play the major role in shaping the orientation and content of managerialization process

This dissertation investigates the nature by which social class membership and identity figure in judgements of transition institutions for the citizens of post-communist Central and Eastern Europe. Using a unique dataset and a series of novel conceptual frameworks, it argues that social class is, in effect, an operationalisation of socioeconomic risk and vulnerability-a premise from which several important implications derive. Drawing on social identity theory, it presents and tests a model of self-conceptualisation, grounded in the belief that individuals variously identify with their social classes, depending on their perceptions of shared socioeconomic risk. From this, it follows that strong identifiers should derive more relevant information about the emerging market system from class-level economic experiences, and therefore accord these cues greater weight in judgements about transition institutions. Beyond testing this theory of interpersonal variation, it invokes signal detection theory from cognitive psychology to determine whether cross-group differences in economic vulnerability are responsible for observed class differentials in reliance on class-based economic cues. It then takes a wider view of class-based economic cognition by considering how the process of transition, itself, influenced the evaluative calculus of post-communist citizens. Building on cognitive mobilisation theory in political science, it is posited that on-going exposure to the prevailing economic system endows these citizens with the ability to link their class-level economic experiences to the effects of the market mechanism. The analysis largely supports the constituent hypotheses, as well as the larger notion that perceptions of shared socioeconomic risk led social class experiences to figure prominently in the minds of post-communist citizens.

In this study I wanted to find out what is said about the preschool in a media debate that took place on a discussion forum of a Swedish newspaper’s web site in 2016. Through critical discourse analysis I have tried to find out what is said and reflect upon what it says about the preschool. Critical discourse analysis focuses on the text, the interaction and the context to find out how different discourses are being drawn upon within the interaction to reproduce or modify the given context. My results show that the studied media debate takes place within a modernistic order of discourse where the preschool as a producer of results and as a business company is at stake. This is the preschool as an institution, where the child needs to develop certain abilities, and as a producer, offering a service to the consumer; the parent. Half of the participants of the debate are questioning the preschool and claim that the institutionalization of children has gone too far. The preschool isn’t able to deliver when it comes to care and security for the little child, according to the critics. The other half of the participants defend the preschool as an institution and see it as a necessary part of the childhood, both as a practical solution for the modern society and for what it can give the child when it comes to learning and preparing for the future. The critics and the defenders can be understood as acting within different historical discourses of the preschool. The critics use arguments from the discourse of the child-crib, a socially determined childcare from the 19th century. The defenders use arguments from the discourse of the kindergarten, a pedagogically determined nursery school with its roots at the turn of the last century. The debate takes place within a certain understanding of the preschool which therefore is being reproduced, even though there are tendencies towards a more postmodern understanding in some of the written arguments. The preschool in the debate show signs of colonization by the systems of money and power, through what Fairclough calls marketization of discourse, discourse of bureaucracy and discourse of counseling. The preschool under debate is a preschool within the global market of free trade, where changing power relations lead to feelings of insecurity and the need for control. Throughout the debate one power relation is taken for granted, that is the relation between the debater and the debated, between the adult and the child.

In recent years, there has been an establishment of private actors as providers of social work,and since then, the branch of private actors has expanded significantly. This has led tocountless discussions and questions about what it means for social work. The media andsocial scientists question how appropriate it is for private providers to operate social work.One problem that is addressed in research is the concern of private actors focusing onincreasing demand. The second main problem is the concern that Social Services becomes thecustomer instead of the child who is actually in need of help from a Residential care unit(RCU). This essay examines how managers at private RCU:s experiences the benefits anddisadvantages of running a RCU in the private sector, by interviewing seven managers. It alsocompares the interviewees' answers to theories of professionalism in order to examine howworking in the private sector affects professional values of social workers. The results showthat there are both benefits and disadvantages to running a privately owned RCU. The mostsubstantial benefit is that it is easier for managers to make decisions because of the closework with the owners of the RCU. This makes it easier for managers to make large changesand implement new working methods, which also means that private organizations can bemore flexible. Furthermore, the personnel working with the children also have greater impactover the organization. The largest disadvantage that is experienced is the difficulty of runningan organization with requirements of earning a profit. This also has an impact on theprofession of being a social worker. To work in a business that requires a profit can bechallenging as that goes against professional values. The interviewees, however, mean that itis easier to follow professional values, such as care for others, while working in the privatesector due to the personnels’ greater impact over the organization and how to manage their own work.

Medical tourism is a relatively recent global economic and political phenomenon which has assumed increasing importance for developing countries, particularly in Asia. It has been slower to develop within the context of the tourism industry in English-speaking Caribbean countries but there is evidence that the tourism policy makers in the region perceive medical tourism as a potentially lucrative niche market. However, while the potential of medical tourism has seemingly been embraced by the region's political directorate, there has been limited discussion of the extent to which this market niche can realistically provide competitive advantage for the region. The argument of this conceptual paper is that the English-speaking Caribbean cannot hope to compete successfully in the global medical tourism market with many developing world destinations in Asia, or even with other Caribbean countries such as Cuba, on factors such as low cost, staff expertise, medical technological capability, investment in healthcare facilities or even in terms of the natural resources of sun, sea and sand. Rather, in order to achieve competitive advantage the countries of the region should, on the one hand, identify and develop their unique resources and competences as they relate to medical tourism, while, on the other hand, they should exploit the demand of the postmodern tourist for authentic experiences. Both these supply and demand side issues, it is argued, can be addressed through the development of a medical tourism product that utilises the region's indigenous herbal remedies. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]; Medical tourism is a relatively recent global economic and political phenomenon which has assumed increasing importance for developing countries, particularly in Asia. It has been slower to develop within the context of the tourism industry in English-speaking Caribbean countries but there is evidence that the tourism policy makers in the region perceive medical tourism as a potentially lucrative niche market. However, while the potential of medical tourism has seemingly been embraced by the region's political directorate, there has been limited discussion of the extent to which this market niche can realistically provide competitive advantage for the region. The argument of this conceptual paper is that the English-speaking Caribbean cannot hope to compete successfully in the global medical tourism market with many developing world destinations in Asia, or even with other Caribbean countries such as Cuba, on factors such as low cost, staff expertise, medical technological capability, investment in healthcare facilities or even in terms of the natural resources of sun, sea and sand. Rather, in order to achieve competitive advantage the countries of the region should, on the one hand, identify and develop their unique resources and competences as they relate to medical tourism, while, on the other hand, they should exploit the demand of the postmodern tourist for authentic experiences. Both these supply and demand side issues, it is argued, can be addressed through the development of a medical tourism product that utilises the region's indigenous herbal remedies. Reprinted by permission of Carfax Publishing, Taylor & Francis Ltd.

The reforms that were implemented in the early 1990s changed the way the Swedish school system worked and how it was governed. This sparked a debate in whether this was beneficial for the equality of the education. The debate regarding the Swedish school system has been never ending since the start and implementation of New Public management reforms that swept through Swedish politics in the late 1980 and the 1990s. The discourse regarding the issues created by the implementation of these reforms and the impact of NPM in this area will be discussed an analyzed in this essay. The essay aims to explain and analyze the impact New public management, decentralization and its reforms has had on the equality of the Swedish education and the discourse it has created.