In recent years there has been an exponential growth of private digital healthcare providers (or “net-doctors” as they are commonly called) in Sweden. Traditionally public healthcare in Sweden has been divided amongst the regions, but with the emergence of net-doctors came the first “national healthcare”. This development has not been without controversy and net-doctors have been critiqued and challenged in the media on multiple occasions.This thesis attempts to explain the emergence of these net-doctors, and how the legitimacy of netdoctors and digital healthcare was negotiated in public debate. It does so by reviewing the history of the Swedish public healthcare system, as well as highlighting important political shifts, changes in legislation, policy, and technological developments. It also includes a study on the debate surrounding these net-doctors, focusing on how they are portrayed, challenged, and defended in the media. It also studies the net-doctor’s responses to said challenges. The results indicate that a combination of market discourse constructions, inertia, and technological development created an opening in the Swedish primary healthcare field. It also indicates that how net-doctors are constructed, be it as a solution or a problem, has remained relatively consistent over time but that the challenges to their legitimacy may have led to a questioning of who should be doing digital healthcare / Under de senaste åren har privata digitala sjukvårdsaktörer (eller nätläkare som de ofta kallas i folkmun) vuxit kraftigt i Sverige. Traditionellt har varje enskild region haft ansvar för att organisera primärvården, men med etableringen av nätläkare har en marknad som täcker hela nationen vuxit fram. Liksom många samhällsförändringar har utvecklingen av nationellt täckande digital primärvård i privat regi väckt samhällsdebatt och nätläkarna har regelbundet blivit kritiserade och utmanade i media. Den här uppsatsen syftar till att förklara hur och varför nätläkare fick utrymme att etablera sig inom den offentligt finansierade primärvården. För att förklara nätläkarnas fortsatta framväxt har legitimitet identifierats som en viktig faktor. Därför behandlar uppsatsen även hur legitimitet har utmanats och införskaffats. Uppsatsen nyttjar en fallstudiemetod i kombination med Faircloughs kritiska diskursanalys där det huvudsakliga objektet är nätläkarföretaget Kry. Primärvårdens historia, politiska skiften, lagändringar och teknologisk utveckling undersöks för att förklara hur nätläkare fick utrymme att etablera sig. För att undersöka hur legitimitet konstrueras och utmanas nyttjar uppsatsen kritisk diskursanalys av nyhetsartiklar publicerade mellan 2014-2021 i tre väletablerade tidningar samt två statliga offentliga utredningar. Fokus för diskursanalysen var att sammanfatta hur valfrihet, privata aktörer och konkurrens konstrueras i SOU:erna samt hur dessa påverkat konstruktionen av nätläkare i media samt deras legitimitet. Uppsatsens resultat indikerar att en kombination av en växande liberal ideologi, lagändringar, organisatorisk tröghet och teknologisk utveckling skapade en glänta inom den svenska primärvården, inom vilken nätläkarna kunde etablera sig. Resultaten indikerar även att den kritik och utmaningar som riktas mot nätläkarna förhåller sig relativt konsekvent över tid. Även de tekniker som nätläkarna nyttjar för att bygga legitimitet samt hur de porträtterar sig själva är konsekvent över tid. Avslutningsvis indikerar resultaten att det finns ett ifrågasättande av vem som ska leverera digital sjukvård.

The primary aim of this thesis is to defend the idea that there are ontologically collective forms of thought and action. This is to say, that there are at least some instances in which a thought or action is appropriately ascribed not to the individual members of a group, but only to the group as a whole. In chapters 2 and 4 existing attempts, primarily in analytic philosophy, to defend such phenomena by appealing to either the content, mode, or subject of intentional states are criticised. These criticisms in turn motivate an alternative understanding of subjectivity, outlined in chapters 3 and 5. This alternative draws on the phenomenological work of Dan Zahavi and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, to argue that subjectivity must be understood, firstly, as constituted by the pre-reflective self-awareness that is central to all intentional experience and, secondly, as intrinsically bodily. Finally, in chapter 6, and by drawing on Merleau-Ponty's thoughts on habituation and intersubjectivity, it is argued that it is possible to understand groups as continually in the process of developing such a form of plural bodily subjectivity through processes of group-level habituation. Overall, therefore, a radical position will be defended, which holds that not only can groups think and act in an ontologically collective sense, but that they can do so in virtue of the fact that they can achieve a certain level of phenomenal self-consciousness. However, this position will be tempered by the thought that unified self-awareness and subjectivity is a matter of degree; where to have a unified pre-reflective sense of self is to be an individual subject, groups must be understood as always in the process of developing a form of unity that is, ultimately, out of their grasp.

The thesis examines how the European Commission incorporated and implemented migration policy as part of the European Union’s external relations, also known as the external dimension of migration. The focus of the thesis is on the period between the coming into force of the Amsterdam Treaty in 1999, when migration largely came to fall under the Commission’s remit, and the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009. The study compares how the Commission’s Directorates-General (DGs) involved in the external dimension of migration during this period—Justice, Liberty and Security, External Relations and Development—made sense of the changes introduced to their responsibilities. The thesis proposes that the concept of organisational culture, drawn from organisational sociology, can explain how actors interact with and collectively make sense of their organisational environment. The main argument of the thesis is that each of the DGs possesses an organisational culture based on its members’ shared readings of priorities and the function of their unit. The thesis examines these divergent organisational cultures to gauge how policies are internalised and translated into output. The analysis contributes to the external governance literature, which has theorised the external dimension of migration as a continuation of European integration processes without accounting for internal organisational dynamics. It also leads to reflections on organisational sociology theorising, and the implications of the findings on studies of organisational change and implementation. This thesis is divided into five chapters. The first provides a background for how the Commission came to be involved in migration policy. The second provides a theoretical framework for the study, building on organisational sociology. The remaining chapters empirically analyse the three elements of organisational culture: DG members’ sources of organisational identity, their perceptions and prioritisations of the external dimension of migration, and their reading of the Commission’s implementation practices, focusing on relations with Morocco as a tool for illustrating the latter.

Français : Partant de la question du renouvellement de la main-d’œuvre québécoise, ce mémoire s’intéresse aux salariés professionnels des organisations syndicales québécoises. Ces dernières se sont dotées d’un important salariat professionnel dont le renouvellement en cours ou à prévoir suppose des défis importants, notamment à propos de la transmission de la culture organisationnelle. Ainsi, ce mémoire portera sur la socialisation des salariés professionnels des organisations syndicales québécoises à partir de quatre études de cas (FTQ, Syndicat des Métallos, CSN et FIQ). Il sera notamment question des pratiques de gestion de personnel de ces organisations liées au transfert de la culture, soit les pratiques de socialisation et de recrutement, de la formalisation de ces pratiques et de leur contrôle. Les résultats permettent de mettre en évidence les rapports entre la structure administrative des organisations syndicales et le modèle de socialisation des salariés professionnels nouvellement embauchés y ayant cours. De plus, bien que la tendance va en s’amplifiant, les pratiques de socialisation, à l’instar des autres pratiques de gestion de personnel en milieu syndical, demeurent peu formalisées. Enfin, les résultats permettent également de constater que le contrôle des dirigeants syndicaux sur la transmission de la culture aux professionnels est relativement faible comparativement à celui des pairs. / English : In the larger question of staff renewal in Québec, it is interesting to tackle more specifically union staff renewal. The union organizations are in the process or will soon be largely hiring new appointed staff, which will be a challenge in terms of organizational culture transmission. This memoir will research into the socialization of the appointed staff of Québec’s unions based on four case studies: the FTQ, Syndicat des Métallos, CSN and FIQ. The question of culture transfers in the personnel management practices of these organizations will be tackled by studying hiring and socialization practices, and the formalization and control of these practices. The results of our studies bring forth a link between administrative structure in the studied unions and the way the newly hired appointed staff are socialized. Even if there is a slight increase in the socialization practices’ formalization, on the whole, like in other practices of personnel management in union organizations, the formalization is minor. Moreover, our studies also show that the union leaders’ hold on culture transmission is minimal compared to the peers’.

Français : Partant de la question du renouvellement de la main-d’œuvre québécoise, ce mémoire s’intéresse aux salariés professionnels des organisations syndicales québécoises. Ces dernières se sont dotées d’un important salariat professionnel dont le renouvellement en cours ou à prévoir suppose des défis importants, notamment à propos de la transmission de la culture organisationnelle. Ainsi, ce mémoire portera sur la socialisation des salariés professionnels des organisations syndicales québécoises à partir de quatre études de cas (FTQ, Syndicat des Métallos, CSN et FIQ). Il sera notamment question des pratiques de gestion de personnel de ces organisations liées au transfert de la culture, soit les pratiques de socialisation et de recrutement, de la formalisation de ces pratiques et de leur contrôle. Les résultats permettent de mettre en évidence les rapports entre la structure administrative des organisations syndicales et le modèle de socialisation des salariés professionnels nouvellement embauchés y ayant cours. De plus, bien que la tendance va en s’amplifiant, les pratiques de socialisation, à l’instar des autres pratiques de gestion de personnel en milieu syndical, demeurent peu formalisées. Enfin, les résultats permettent également de constater que le contrôle des dirigeants syndicaux sur la transmission de la culture aux professionnels est relativement faible comparativement à celui des pairs. / English : In the larger question of staff renewal in Québec, it is interesting to tackle more specifically union staff renewal. The union organizations are in the process or will soon be largely hiring new appointed staff, which will be a challenge in terms of organizational culture transmission. This memoir will research into the socialization of the appointed staff of Québec’s unions based on four case studies: the FTQ, Syndicat des Métallos, CSN and FIQ. The question of culture transfers in the personnel management practices of these organizations will be tackled by studying hiring and socialization practices, and the formalization and control of these practices. The results of our studies bring forth a link between administrative structure in the studied unions and the way the newly hired appointed staff are socialized. Even if there is a slight increase in the socialization practices’ formalization, on the whole, like in other practices of personnel management in union organizations, the formalization is minor. Moreover, our studies also show that the union leaders’ hold on culture transmission is minimal compared to the peers’.