abstract: This dissertation consists of three essays, each examining distinct aspects about public organization adaptation to extreme events using evidence from public transit agencies under the influence of extreme weather in the United States (U.S.). The first essay focuses on predicting organizational adaptive behavior. Building on extant theories on adaptation and organizational learning, it develops a theoretical framework to uncover the pathways through which extreme events impact public organizations and identify the key learning mechanisms involved in adaptation. Using a structural equation model on data from a 2016 national survey, the study highlights the critical role of risk perception to translate signals from the external environment to organizational adaptive behavior. The second essay expands on the first one to incorporate the organizational environment and model the adaptive system. Combining an agent-based model and qualitative interviews with key decision makers, the study investigates how adaptation occurs over time in multiplex contexts consisting of the natural hazards, organizations, institutions and social networks. The study ends with a series of refined propositions about the mechanisms involved in public organization adaptation. Specifically, the analysis suggests that risk perception needs to be examined relative to risk tolerance to determine organizational motivation to adapt, and underscore the criticality of coupling between the motivation and opportunities to enable adaptation. The results further show that the coupling can be enhanced through lowering organizational risk perception decay or synchronizing opportunities with extreme event occurrences to promote adaptation. The third essay shifts the gaze from adaptation mechanisms to organizational outcomes. It uses a stochastic frontier analysis to quantify the impacts of extreme events on public organization performance and, importantly, the role of organizational adaptive capacity in moderating the impacts. The findings confirm that extreme events negatively affect organizational performance and that organizations with higher adaptive capacity are more able to mitigate those effects, thereby lending support to research efforts in the first two essays dedicated to identifying preconditions and mechanisms involved in the adaptation process. Taken together, this dissertation comprehensively advances understanding about public organization adaptation to extreme events. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Public Administration and Policy 2020

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka hur arbetsmarknadssekreterare och socialsekreterare inom socialtjänsten Väster i Malmö upplever pilotprojektet Tidig inskrivning samt hur deras handlingsutrymme och inbördes samverkan förändrats i projektet. Syftet med projektet är att förkorta vägen mot självförsörjning och skapa en tidig planering för klienten. Projektet riktas mot de klienter som erhåller ekonomiskt bistånd. Pilotprojektet implementerades den åttonde januari 2018 och skall avslutas den 30 juni 2018. Vi undersöker således hur projektet erfars av arbetsmarknadssekreterare och socialsekreterare angående projektet och dess implementering samt hur informanterna upplever att pilotprojektet påverkat deras handlingsutrymme och inbördes samverkan. De teoretiska utgångspunkterna för uppsatsens är ett instrumentellt organisationsteoretiskt perspektiv samt Michael Lipskys teori angående street-level bureaucracy. Använd metod för denna uppsats är en kvalitativ metod med semistrukturerade intervjuer. Vi har intervjuat tre arbetsmarknadssekreterare och tre socialsekreterare som arbetar med projektet. Vi fann i det empiriska materialet att informanterna upplevde implementeringen som vag och ytterst lite information gavs till arbetsmarknadssekreterarna och socialsekreterarna angående hur projektet skulle förändra deras arbetsgång. Informanterna upplevde även en frustration både hos kollegor, de själva och klienten i ärendegången i projektet. Informanternas handlingsutrymme och inbördes samverkan har förändrats i projektet då resurs-och tidsbrist skapat förändringar i både samverkan och handlingsutrymme för de båda professionerna. / The aim of this bachelor essay is to examine the experience of the social workers in the project pilot called the “Tidig inskrivning”, meaning early enrollment. The aim of this project is to plan the enrolment towars the regular labour market. The project pilot launched in 8th of January and ended in 30th of June in 2018. The involved professions in the project on a daily basis is labour secretaries and social secretaries. The issues concerning our essay is: How does the labour secretaries and social secretaries experience the project pilot and how do the informants experience that the Early Enrollment pilot project has influenced their leeway and mutual cooperation?The theoretical premise for this essay is an instrumental organization theory and Michael Lipsky’s theory concerning street-level-bureaucracy. The method used in this essay was a qualitive method using a semi structured interview. The project pilot is directed to all clients that applies for a social assistance. These clients are the called to a meeting with the labour secretaries to a survey including the clients past work experiences and education. The client is then to have a meeting to review the conditions of the social assistance. We found that the labour secretaries did not experience the project as useful, they found the project as time consuming and unnecessary for both the client and to them as labour secretaries. The social secretaries experienced the project and unnecessary and informed us that the client found the project as time consuming and frustrating. The leeway for the labour secretaries and the social secretaries has changed within the project pilot. The cooperation between the two professions is affected by the project in the sense that it is greatly time consuming for the labour secretaries and the social secretaries have no chance to a cooperation with the labour secretaries as they did before. The changes made to the leeway and cooperation between the two professions have changed because of lack of resources and time.

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Introduction. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the means of control that a municipality has over privatized library services. Specifically what methods of evaluation it uses, and how it formulates its demands in contracts and other documents. The case study was the municipality of Nacka, Sweden. Method. All documents investigated in the thesis with information concerning the public libraries of Nacka kommun were gathered from the municipality's website and archive. Interviews were conducted with representatives of the two contractors currently in charge of operating the six library branches of the Nacka library system. Analysis. Document analysis was used to identify sections of text with relevant information. Taking into account the status and relationship of the source documents theses were arranged thematically according to a model of organizations proposed by Charles Perrow. The motive of the analysis was to identify the ends the municipality has in mind for the libraries and what means they propose to use to reach those ends. Perrow’s concept of bounded rationality was used to look for inconsistencies in the relationship between means and ends in the organizational structure. Insights gained from the interviews were used to corroborate the findings. Results. Instances of bounded rationality was found in the way the municipality specifies and evaluates the work of the external contractors. Further studies should take into account the interests of the contractors and how that affects the privately run public libraries. This is a two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science.

Diploma thesis "U.S. Homeland Security: Reality or Myth? Domestic Counterterrorism post-9/11" examines the change in U.S. domestic counterterrorism policy after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. More specifically, it focuses on the U.S. government's reorganization, which led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. As outlined in this thesis, the homeland security agenda was aimed at unifying the U.S. efforts to prevent terrorist attacks within the United States, reducing America's vulnerability to terrorism, and minimizing the damage and recovering from attacks that do occur. This thesis sets out to answer two interconnected questions: (1) whether the proposed homeland security agenda led to an efficient and unified system of U.S. domestic counterterrorism measures based on enhanced information sharing; and (2) why, in spite of the unique opportunity created by the 9/11 attacks, a comprehensive reorganization of the U.S. government to create a coherent homeland security agenda did not materialize. Throughout this thesis, it is argued that an efficient U.S. government reorganization was obstructed by three main factors. First, the change was obstructed by the organizational nature of the government agencies. Second, the reorganization was hindered by the "rational choices" of the U.S....

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