This dissertation explores strategic planning in federal agencies. The research seeks to uncover difficulties federal agencies experience when making strategic plans, to explore the relationship between these difficulties and the degree of publicness of the agencies, and to uncover and describe techniques used by federal agencies to overcome difficulties. The research is important because strategic planning has gained renewed interest in federal government organizations stimulated by the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 and there are few empirical studies on strategic planning based on the public character of these organizations. The results present the difficulties and techniques reported by planners in eighteen separate federal agencies and show a relationship between the degree of publicness of the agency and the difficulties encountered in strategic planning. / Ph. D.

This study applies a theoretical framework from institutional organization theory (Scott, 2001) to examine the problem of managing government contracting, conceptualized as the "smart buyer problem" by Kettl (1993). Kettl argued that, while embracing the market-based promises of contracting, governments have failed to develop the capacity to address even the most fundamental contracting questions, such as what to buy, who to buy from and what was bought? He suggests that the problem is partly attributable to bureaucratic barriers to information sharing in government agencies that prevent them from becoming learning organizations. This study explores the proposition that institutional characteristics within acquisition organizations may contribute to this problem. Governments do not behave as a single buyer with clearly defined buying objectives. Multiple organizations, each shaped by institutional factors, lay claim to processes relating to Kettl's smart buyer questions. As key organizational participants become aligned with their own regulative, normative, and socio-cognitive institutional "pillars," smart buying behavior may become confounded by institutional factors and constraining organizational structures. For this study, an organizational field consisting of the program office, contracting office, and budget office was selected as the level of analysis. A qualitative multi-approach methodology was developed to analyze data from public sources, including government policy documents, audit reports, and other published information related to five individual cases. Data from autoethnographic accounts, interviews, content analyses, and the case studies helped frame the institutional characteristics of these offices. The study confirmed that the three offices are key participants in acquisition programs, although their roles are not always formally recognized. Strong evidence was found that they each possess unique institutional characteristics. These differences could be creating conditions of divergence and misalignment with the acquisition objectives, raising the possibility of conflicting institutional demands, competing challenges for legitimacy, and institutional change. Policy initiatives to formally recognize the roles and responsibilities of these offices and the use of working-level oversight boards, project teams, and interagency contracting may help mitigate these institutional differences. The study points to the importance of recognizing participants' institutional characteristics when planning and managing an acquisition program. / Ph. D.

Information security management is now a major concern for any organization regardless of its type, size, or activity field. Having an information security system that ensures theavailability, the confidentiality, and the integrity of information is not an option anymorebut a necessity. Information security management identifies difficulties with user behaviourand compliance that is centralized around policies, perceptions, and practices. In order to address how they affect information security management, these three issues are holistically explored using a sociomaterial framework to engage the understanding of human andnonhuman components. A case study of a university in Sweden was conducted and it was found that despite the sophistication of the IT system, human behaviours are a pertinent component of information security management, and not one that can be ignored.

The idea of sustainability is widespread, but it often remains unclear how the idea travelled and how it is translated into practice. In this thesis it is analysed how public organizations translate sustainability into action through Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP). First, an overview of translation theory and previous research on SPP is given. Basing on an empirical analysis, two cases of public organizations in Sweden and Germany that integrated SPP in their strategies are described and analysed. It is revealed that translation theory applies to the two cases and that the theory is useful to explain how the concept of sustainability is acted upon. Characteristics of processes of translation can be observed in both cases, indicating that the translation of the same idea can result in different practices and outcomes. It is found that although both public organizations use the same term, the way SPP is implemented and practiced differs highly. The thesis includes reflections on this different outcome and considers the importance of local contexts and actors.

The open data concept is based on the EU directive from 2003 with the goal to highlight the need for member states to increase and digitalize their public data and thus achieving transparency and stimulating economic growth based on new innovations. In Sweden, the development has fallen behind expectations and are currently the worst performing nordic country in open data development. In relation, research on open data is limited, especially when it come to barriers and challenges for adopting strategies to handle open data for local public organizations. This research is therefore aimed towards understanding and identifying barriers for adopting open data in local public organizations in Sweden. To answer this, we have conducted a case study based on the municipality of Örnsköldsviks. Our findings suggest that existing research on open data is somewhat lacking in the areas of ethical issues,  the private sector and the challenge of  moving towards openness; these are important aspects to consider when it comes to open data development. Furthermore, our results indicate that collaboration on both national and regional levels is advantageous and combined with PSI Directive improvements, is something that can bridge the gap between open data barriers and ambitions.

Title: Organizational identity in the public sector during times of crises Date of submission: 2021-06-01 Authors: Lowe Björklund and Jakob Boyer Advisor: Josef Pallas Course: Master’s thesis 30 credits Purpose: Organizational identity (OI) has gained attention due to its feasibility in several organizational respects. Swedish healthcare is a well-debated area, and there is an ongoing discussion on how it should be managed. Crises can spark discussions about OI, opening up the possibility to gain insights related to the concept. Therefore, OI may work as a tool for making progress in understanding management within Swedish healthcare. The research might show if a prominent crisis can produce alternative views of how OI is affected during times of crises. Design/Methodology: To investigate OI, a qualitative method was chosen together with semi-structured interviews as a data collection method. The motivation for the particular research design and methodology stems from prior research investigating OI, where qualitative semi-structured interviews were used. Findings: The findings showed that the OI of the Swedish hospital had been highlighted and reinforced after Covid-19's introduction. The hospital had developed a more congruent idea of their OI, while the temporary nature of the connection between hospital staff indicated that the connection had not become stronger. The findings also indicated a relationship between the motivation of hospital staff and management’s actions. Many of the effects forced upon the hospital by the crisis had produced many positive changes (e.g., less territorial thinking and increased digital measures). However, part of these changes was thought to stay only temporarily; thus, the hospital’s OI was considered fixed and fluid. In addition, the research indicated that the hospital’s OI was shaped in an ongoing process of interactions between organizational members internally rather than external factors. The findings also suggest that organizational members had viewed the crisis both as a threat and an opportunity, while perceiving gaps between the present and the future along with costs not to change. Research limitations: The findings may have a questionable level of generalizability due to the case study approach.

The public sector has undergone extensive changes in recent years following the implementation of New Public Management. Studies on the subject are still retained in previous grounds made in other circumstantial prerequisites. Therefore, this study aims to increase the understanding of decision processes in public authorities to provide a nuanced picture of the phenomenon and further complement the established literature on decision-making theory. In doing so, we answer the question of how and why and it is decided which educational course an employee at a Swedish governmental agency attends.Through the use of a snowball sample approach, we reversed tracked the decision process and examined the underlying incentives of the process. By using both interviews with identified relevant actors in combination with related documents, we achieved a triangulation effect of our data. The results demonstrated a variety of applicable approaches to the decision made by the different actors throughout the decision process in their contextually dependent circumstances. Moreover, the results indicate that previous decision-making literature is insufficient on its own. Instead, we claim that a broad understanding is required to grasp decision-making behavior and advocate for a combinatorial and holistic approach which adhere to the varying decision-making behavior.

How do public organizations manage crises? How do public organizations learnfrom crises? These seemingly basic questions still pose virtual puzzles for crisismanagement researchers. Yet, the interest of the academic and practitionerrealms in crisis management has grown in recent years. In this doctoral dissertationEdward Deverell sheds light on the problems regarding the lack ofknowledge on how public organizations manage and learn from crises, with anumber of critical knowledge gaps in contemporary crisis management as thestarting point.   In the last few decades the interest in crisis management as a scholarly fieldhas grown. This developing field is composed of an increasing number of looselyconnected social science scholars concerned with issues of extraordinary events,their repercussions and the way in which they are managed by authorities,organizations, policy makers and other key actors. However, there are severallacunae to be dealt with in the emerging field of crisis management research.This dissertation sets the spotlight on four of these limitations of the crisis managementliterature to date.   First, influential scholars within the field call for increased structuration andfeasible models to help us understand and explain various important factorsinfluencing the crisis management process. In this dissertation I try to bridgethis gap by developing theory on crisis response and learning. Crisis responsesignifies organized activities undertaken by a stakeholder when a community ofpeople – an organization, a town, or a nation – perceives an urgent threat to corevalues which must be dealt with under conditions of uncertainty. Crisis-inducedlearning refers to purposeful efforts, triggered by a crisis event and carried out bymembers of an organization working within a community of inquiry, that leadto new understanding and behavior on the basis of that understanding.   Second, organizations play a key role in crisis management. Surprisinglyenough, however, crisis management research have only occasionally built theoryon how organizations respond to crisis. So far, the literature tells us moreabout crises as events than on how these events are actually managed. One reasonis the focus within crisis management research on highly unusual, big catastrophicevents and industrial accidents. Therefore, this dissertation explorescrisis episodes that affect specific organizations rather than entire communitiesor national governments. In addition, the dissertation brings together debateson crisis management and crisis-induced learning from a public managementand organizational perspective.   Third, crisis management researchers have to date dealt mostly with acutecrisis response and issues of preparedness, while the issues of crisis aftermathsand crisis-induced learning are still relatively unknown. However, althoughthis study recognizes the importance of crisis planning and sense-making, thisshould not lead to a relative neglect of the issue of learning from crisis. Crisisinducedlearning is important as crises are rare events with huge repercussions.Thus crises are opportunities to draw lessons in order to improve future managementand crisis response, and to mitigate the risk of future crises.   Fourth, the relatively few studies that have dealt with crisis-induced learninghave focused on learning after the crisis (intercrisis learning), while theoryon learning during crisis (intracrisis learning) is not as developed. My interestin both inter- and intracrisis learning obligates me to study crisis response andcrisis learning in conjunction. This means studying how organizations respondto crises and how they learn during and from these episodes. By focusing onprocesses of crisis response and learning under pressure – rather than pre-crisisplanning, threat perception, risk management and preparedness – the dissertationlooks into how organizations and their members manage the challenge ofcrises and how they take on, make use of and implement lessons learned fromone crisis to the next.   The lacunae outlined above are theoretical points of departure for this dissertation’sinterest in the extent to which public organizations learn from crises.Accordingly, the overall objective of the dissertation is to increase understandingof crisis response and crisis learning in public organizations. In doing so, Iconduct an abductive study of how public organizations respond to crises andhow they learn during and after these events. The term ‘abductive’ refers toa research strategy which is characterized by continuous movement back andforth between theory and empirical data.   The first step of the research process was grounded in the empirical world.The empirical contribution is a careful process tracing and case reconstructionof six cases involving Swedish public sector organizations. In the methodologychapter (Chapter 3) I describe the basis of the empirically bounded case study approach and case reconstruction and process tracing method. Six case studiesof organizational crisis management and learning were selected for furtheranalysis. The case studies were based on a variety of sources including posthoc accident investigations, articles, organizational documents and 129 extensivesemi-structured interviews with key crisis managers. The process tracingand reconstruction efforts led to case narratives, which were then dissected byidentifying dilemmas and critical decision-making occasions that were studiedin more detail. The following cases are explored in the dissertation: TheSwedish energy utility Birka Energi’s management of two cable fires that causedlarge-scale blackouts in Stockholm in March 2001 and May 2002; The cityof Stockholm’s management of the 2001 blackout and the repeated incidentin 2002; The Swedish Defence Research Agency’s (FOI) management of hoaxanthrax letters in 2001; and three Swedish media organizations’ (the Swedishpublic service radio Sveriges Radio, the Swedish private TV station with publicservice tasks TV4, and the Swedish public service TV station Sveriges Television)management of news work and broadcasting challenges on 11 September 2001(and to some extent following the murder of the Swedish Foreign MinisterAnna Lindh in September 2003).   As the case selection reveals, all organizations under study are not puregovernment organizations. Rather three organizations (Birka Energi, SverigesRadio and Sveriges Television) are publically owned corporations, while one(TV4) is a privately owned media organization. Accordingly, this dissertationclaims that ownership is not the only measure of ‘publicness’. Media organizations,for instance, are of great importance for democratic societies. The term‘public organization’ is thus in this dissertation not used in the sense of equatingto government, but rather in reference to the degree of which political authorityand influence impacts on the organization.   The theory generating approach that this dissertation takes on impliesthat the case studies are ‘heuristic’ case studies. The dissertation aims to promotenew hypotheses for further research rather than to produce generalizedknowledge. To this end the case studies are further analyzed by specific theoreticalapproaches suggested by prior research. This second step of the researchprocess is dealt with in some detail in the literature review. The literature reviewin Chapter 2 aims to bring an injection of organizational studies into the fieldof crisis management research. The review presents relevant studies from thefields of crisis management studies, organization studies (with special attentiongiven to organizational learning theory) and public administration and management.The review puts forth a twofold argument: There is a need of increasedknowledge not only about crises and how they develop, but also about how theyare actually managed by public organizations. However, prior crisis managementresearch with bearing on public management organizations are mostly based on either political executive foreign policy decision making or on veryspecific high reliability organizations operating in the pre-crisis phase. Hence,organization studies and public management studies should play a greater partin crisis management research.   The review also provides an overview frame for the study by highlightingrelevant research. The chapter discusses the problems of defining, categorizingand operationalizing key concepts such as crisis, crisis management and organizationallearning.   In the third step of the research process, the case studies are further analyzedusing theoretical approaches aimed at proposing propositions on how publicsector organizations may respond to crises, and how they may learn from theircrisis experiences. These analyses have been carried out with an aim to producestand-alone articles aimed for publication in international scholarly journals.Thus this dissertation differs somewhat from the typical public administrationdissertation as it is comprised of an analysis of several articles, as opposed to amonograph. The journal articles are published or accepted for publication inthe Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, the Journal of HomelandSecurity and Emergency Management, Public Management Review, and RiskManagement. The articles are reprinted in four empirical chapters (Chapters4-7), which make up the core of the dissertation. Introductory and concludingchapters aimed at bringing the discussion together have then been added.I present the first empirical analysis in Chapter 4. It looks into how organizationalculture affects strategy and adaptability in crisis management. The keyresearch question is: What mechanisms affect organizations’ ability to restructurein order to cope with acute crisis management challenges? In the study I propose atypology of temporal organizational responses to crises in public perception. Thetypology is based on organizations’ abilities to change strategy and adapt theirmanagerial and operational levels to deal with crises. The empirical data used toconstruct the typology covers three organizational crisis responses: 1) The utilityBirka Energi’s response to a cable fire that caused a thirty-seven hour blackoutin Stockholm in 2001; 2) The TV station TV4’s response in terms of how toreorganize and broadcast during the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks; 3)FOI, the Swedish National Defence Research Agency’s response to the anthraxletter scare of 2001 and 2002. The different organizational outcomes featuredby the typology reveal distinct aspects of organizational crisis management.According to the typology, the Fully Adapting Organization (TV4) managesto adapt both its strategy and its managerial and operational levels to deal withthe crisis. The Semi-Adapting Organization (FOI) changes its strategy but lacksthe capacity to change managerial and operational levels according to the newstrategy. The Non-Adapting Organization (Birka Energi) does not grasp theimportance of strategy change in the first place. Based on three inductive case studies, the study concludes that organizational culture plays an important rolein this process where the Semi-Adapting Organization and the Non-AdaptingOrganization were dominated by strong expert cultures which proved to be lessinclined to change. In contrast, the Fully Adapting organization had deliberatelyfostered an organizational culture in which flexibility – understood as thecapacity to readily adapt to changing demands – was a cornerstone.   The second empirical analysis is presented in Chapter 5. It deals with theissue of flexibility and rigidity in crisis response and crisis learning at two Swedishpublic organizations. The point of departure for the study is that the relationshipbetween crises, organizational crisis management response and learning hasto date been understudied. In an effort to broaden theoretical knowledge on therelation between crisis and learning, the study analyzes the crisis responses oftwo public organizations during a sequence of two failures. The empirical datais grounded in thorough process tracing and case reconstruction analyses ofhow the utility Birka Energi and the city of Stockholm managed two comprehensiveblackouts in March 2001 and in May 2002. The key research questionis: How does organizational rigidity and flexibility affect public organizations’ crisisresponse and crisis learning? A framework of rigidity versus flexibility in responseis utilized in the analysis. The findings are then discussed in relation to theirimplications for the nexus between crisis and learning. The study concludes byraising four propositions for further research.   The third empirical analysis is presented in Chapter 6. This study aims tocontribute to the debate on organizational learning from crisis by sheddinglight on the phenomenon of crises as learning triggers. In the study I pose thefollowing key research question: How can we analyze organizational learningduring and after crisis and what criteria should be part of the analysis? In an effortto unveil patterns of how organizational crisis-induced learning may appearand develop, I suggest a conceptual framework based on conceptual categoriesand answers to four fundamental questions: what lessons are learned (single- ordouble-loop)?; what is the focus of the lessons (prevention or response)?; whenare lessons learned (intra- or intercrisis)?; is learning carried out or blocked fromimplementation (distilled or implemented)? In the analysis section I explorethe practical applicability of the framework by using the same empirical casestudies as in Chapter 5. The final section suggests four propositions for furtherresearch.   The last empirical study is presented in Chapter 7. There I construct aframework of management, learning and implementation in response to crisis.My point of departure is a proposition from previous crisis managementresearch which posits that previous experience can shape crisis response as away of repeating former routines or as a precondition for improvisation. Thekey research question is: How do organizational management structures affect crisis response, learning and implementation? In the study I argue that flexibilityis closely connected to the way organizations learn – in behavioral or cognitivemodes. Moreover, these learning modes are connected to the role of managerialgroups, where I differentiate between centralized and decentralized top managerialgroups. In addition, two case studies of how two bureaucratic media organizations(Sveriges Radio and SVT) managed and learned from extraordinarynews events – most notably 9/11 and the assassination of the Swedish ForeignMinister Anna Lindh – are conducted. The findings show how the decentralizedmanagerial group learned in a behavioral fashion, by creating new formalpolicies and structures, while organizational members in the centralized managerialgroup relied on individual cognitive structures as a way of ‘storing’ lessonslearned. The study ends by discussing the findings from a crisis managementperspective, where I propose that the two modes of learning profoundly affectthe crucial issue of flexibility in organizational crisis response.The concluding Chapter 8 discusses and contrasts the findings and propositionsgenerated from the four separate empirical analyses. Here the role oforganizational structure and culture are highlighted by revisiting specific organizationalfactors that seem to impact on organizational crisis management andlearning processes, such as previous experience, flexibility and rigidity in crisisresponse and learning, and centralization and decentralization. These factorswere also outlined in the literature review. Further empirical evidence of howthe factors affect crisis response and crisis learning in organizations was foundin the four empirical analyses.   In addition, findings from the empirical studies also related to different types of learning processes such as intra- and intercrisis learning and singleand double-loop learning. Consequently these concepts are also deliberated upon in the concluding sections of the dissertation. As a final attempt to bring the propositions and arguments together, a framework of the crisis management and learning process is proposed. In regard to this venture, it is important to acknowledge the limitations of the framework, and of the dissertation as a whole. As it is only based on data from six cases of Swedish public organizational responses to crisis, the framework is merely a visual schematic of a number of propositions to be further tested and validated by further research. However, the framework also has a few virtues. It is an attempt to approach the ambiguous nature of crises and crisis management processes. The framework may also assist in providing more sensible and practical conceptualizations, and thus bring us closer to definitions that remain close to everyday operations of practitioners involved in crisis management. This dissertation thus makes an effort to bridge the gap between crisis management scholars and practitioners. This is also an overall goal guiding research activities at the National Center for Crisis Management Studies (CRISMART) at the Swedish National Defence College, where the research behind this dissertation has been conducted.

Environmental Planning theory tells us that continued improvement in environmental outcomes will require new approaches that are voluntary; behavior change will come from within organizations, not imposed from outside. The concept of sustainability fits in this new phase of environmental planning and policy. In order for organizations to be successful in achieving sustainability goals, they must create an organizational context that produces innovative ideas (considered a strength of organic or learning organizations), along with an organizational context that effectively manages and implements continuous change (considered a strength of bureaucratic organizations). Effectively striking this balance appears to be a key component of making progress in sustainability for large public organizations. The research completed through this doctoral dissertation addresses gaps in the literature by asking the question: How have large public organizations implemented sustainability programs? A multiple case study design was used that examined three large public organizations that have adopted sustainability goals and established programs for achieving these goals. The data were analyzed based on a conceptual framework that predicts the types of activities and attributes organizations will exhibit to successfully achieve sustainability goals. The results demonstrate that sustainability implementation in these organizations is dependent upon leadership support, cross-functional teams, orientation to the external environment, effective management systems and consistent support over time. Bureaucratic organizations are structured to effectively accomplish the core mission, but if they also want to be more sustainable, they must adopt and promote more organic attributes to enable change, learning and innovation.

IT services are increasingly being offered via a shared service model. This model promises the benefits of centralization and consolidation, as well as an increased customer satisfaction. Adopting shared services is not easy as it necessitates a major organizational change, with few documented exemplars to guide managers. This research explores a public IT unit’s realization of shared services with the intent to improve the transparency of its value proposition to their stakeholders. An ethnographic field study enabled in-situ data collection over a 24-month period. We analyzed the resulting, rich process data using the Punctuated Socio-Technical IS Change (PSIC) model. This resulted in several contributions: an explanatory account of shared services realization, an empirically grounded punctuated process model with seventeen critical incidents, and twelve key lessons for practitioners. Several extensions to extant process research methods are developed. These contributions combine to form a detailed and nuanced understanding of the process of realizing IT shared services at a large public university over a multi-year period.