Background: In Sweden the national labour market policies are administered by the Public Employment Service which is in charge of assessing job-seekers’ need for support in the process of reaching employment. Equality is a fundamental principle for the administration. Neither ethnicity nor the person’s economical situation should influence the assessment. At the same time job-seekers are entitled to an individual assessment. Although the state has a national responsibility for labour market policy since the 1990s different municipal labour market interventions have also developed.   Aim: To investigate the impact of different income support systems (unemployment benefit/activity support or social assistance) and ethnicity on the assessments made by public employment officers.   Method: The study used a quantitative method with a questionnaire in the form of a factorial vignette experiment with fictitious cases in which only one factor/variable changed. 118 respondents at eight employment offices completed the survey between 20 January and 1 April 2020. Correlation analyses were performed using crosstabs (Cramers V) and Chi2-tests. Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were used to compare data at two different times (first and second phase of the survey).   Results: Employment officers advocated support at the employment service/external operator as their first choice in 86 per cent of cases, against municipal labour market interventions as first choice in 14 per cent of cases. There were statistically significant differences in the assessments based on the form of income support in all three vignettes. Unemployment benefit/activity support and social assistance resulted in statistically significant different assessments. Employment officers want to refer job-seekers with social assistance to municipal labour market interventions more often than they do with those with unemployment benefit or activity income. No significant differences in the assessments were observed regarding the ethnicity of job-seekers.   Conclusions: The study shows that in the process of labour market policy assessment not only the job-seeker's ability to work and the need for support to find a job is evaluated, but the income support system of the job-seeker plays a role. The differences in assessments based on the job-seekers' form of income may be due to categorisations. These categorisations may spring from stereotypical views of job-seekers benefiting from social assistance, or may be due to institutional factors with two different income support systems for the unemployed, or lastly spring from a lack of clarity regarding borders and distribution between national and municipal labour market policies. Regardless the reason, the categorisations might lead to significant consequences for job-seekers with social assistance, who in addition to a lower level of economical compensation also risk being referred to municipal labour market interventions. These are sometimes designed to be a demand for activity in return for receiving social assistance and do not always have as their primary purpose to strengthen working capacity. Based on the results of the study, Sweden thereby does not live up to being a universal welfare state with social citizenship, since social rights do not apply equally to all job seekers.

BISTÅNDSHANDLÄGGARENS RESPEKT FÖR DEN ENSKILDE – ETT ÖNSKETÄNKANDE? Författare: Francisco Mauricio De Leon Gonzalez, Maria Huynh Mälardalens Högskola Akademin för hälsa, vård och välfärd Socionomprogrammet Examensarbete inom socialt arbete, 15 högskolepoäng Vårtermin 2020     Sammanfattning Syftet med studien är att beskriva biståndshandläggarnas handlingsutrymme och uppmärksamma dilemman som kan uppstå under biståndshandläggningen med äldre som har en demenssjukdom samt hur biståndshandläggarna uppfattar sitt handlingsutrymme. Författarna till studien önskade även belysa självbestämmanderättens roll under handläggningsprocessen mellan en biståndshandläggare och en äldre som har en demenssjukdom. För att besvara studiens syfte och frågeställningar använde sig författarna av en kvalitativ metod och genomförde sex semistrukturerade intervjuer. De semistrukturerade intervjuerna genomfördes bland fyra kommuner med sammanlagt sju biståndshandläggare inom äldreomsorgen som arbetar eller tidigare har arbetat med det. Författarna valde dessa informanter via ett målinriktat urval och använde de teoretiska perspektiven gräsrotsbyråkrati och konsekvensetik/utilitarismen. Resultatet visar att biståndshandläggare har skilda uppfattningar angående sitt handlingsutrymme och inställningar gentemot självbestämmanderätten. Olika dilemman kan uppstå i relation till den enskildes självbestämmanderätt och biståndshandläggarens handlingsutrymme, som biståndshandläggarna förhåller sig till på olika sätt. Vissa förhållningssätt riskerar att förbise den enskildes självbestämmanderätt mer än andra, i vilket anhöriga kan användas som stöd under biståndshandläggningen. / BISTÅNDSHANDLÄGGARENS RESPEKT FÖR DEN ENSKILDE – ETT ÖNSKETÄNKANDE? Authors: Francisco Mauricio De Leon Gonzalez, Maria Huynh Mälardalen University School of Health, Care and Social Welfare The Social Work Program Thesis in Social Work, 15 credits Spring term 2020     Abstract The aim of this study has been to describe care managers’ discretion and pay attention to dilemmas that can arise during the need assessment with an elderly who has dementia and how the care managers perceive their discretion. The authors of the study wished to illustrate the role of right to self-determination during the need’s assessment between a care manager and an elderly who has dementia. To answer the aim of this study as well as the research questions, a qualitative method with six semi-structured interviews has been carried out. The semi-structured interviews were held with seven care managers from elderly care who work or have previously worked with it, from four different municipalities. The authors chose the interviewees through a target selection and has used the theoretical perspectives of street-level-bureaucracy and consequence ethics/utilitarianism. The result indicates that the care manager has different perceptions regarding their discretion and attitudes towards the right to self-determination. Different dilemmas can arise in relation to the individuals´ right to self-determination and the care managers´ discretion, which the care managers´ relate to in different ways. Certain approaches risks disregarding the individual’s right to self-determination more than others, in which the individual’s relatives can be utilized as support during the need’s assessment.

Young people are the most crime-active group in society, and in the recent decade juvenile delinquency has emerged as one of the central problem areas in Swedish public debate. How the work of preventing crime among children and youths should be designed is therefore a highly relevant question. In the city of Stockholm, so-called “serious talks” with young people who are suspected of crime for the first time, are used as a method to reduce recidivism. However, such initiatives have no clear scientific support based on previous studies. The overall purpose of this study was to examine professionals' perspectives on the work with serious talks in the city of Stockholm. To interpret and conceptualize the results, Lipsky's theory of street-level bureaucracies has mainly been used as a theoretical perspective. Key informant interviews were conducted with professionals in 12 of Stockholm City's 13 district administrations. The overall results show that discretion does not necessarily become or is perceived as desirable due to two main reasons. The first is about the practical, that is, vague guidelines and definitions as well as ambiguities regarding implementation and cooperation with the police. The second is about the value of the intervention, ie that the professionals do not really see any concrete meaning with serious talks due to the lack of knowledge support and that there is a low risk of continued criminal behavior among the majority of young people who are called for serious talks. The discretion given to the professionals is thus not perceived as fulfilling, facilitating or meaningful, but as aggravating and something that creates confusion and undermines work motivation. Finally, the results are also discussed in relation to what can be interpreted as the underlying assumptions that justify serious talks among political decision-makers in the city of Stockholm.

Background: CEO duality has been a highly discussed topic for the last 20 years. The trend shows that more and more companies and countries move towards a separation of the roles of CEO and chairman of the board, but the empirical results show little evidence that this is beneficial for firm performance. The two main accepted theories explaining if CEO duality has a positive or negative effect on firm performance has been the agency theory and the stewardship theory Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explain CEO duality´s effect on firm performance based on the agency and stewardship theory by analyzing and comparing the U.S. as an agency country versus Sweden & Japan as a stewardship country. The study also aims to contribute with evidence if a stewardship country as Sweden instead would benefit from a CEO duality board structure.   Method: To be able to fulfill our purpose was a deductive approach used for this study. A quantitative empirical method is used and data for the various dependent, independent and control variables were collected in order to get the results needed to be able to give answers to the stated hypotheses. The data collection consists of data from a total of 200 firms. 100 firms were collected from the U.S. market in order to represent the agency theory where 50 had a CEO duality board structure and 50 without. Furthermore, data from 50 Swedish non-CEO duality companies and 50 Japanese firms with CEO duality were collected as the stewardship country. The data was obtained between the years 2016-2020. Conclusion: The result indicates that CEO duality on some performance variables have a negative impact on firm performance. Contrary to our first hypothesis, our results suggested evidence that CEO duality had a negative effect on firm performance in the stewardship country (Sweden & Japan). In line with our second hypothesis, our results also suggested that CEO duality also had a negative impact on firm performance in the agency country, USA. Although not all performance variables were significant, the thesis could not provide any support for the stewardship theory explaining CEO duality relationship on firm performance.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how school counselors in high schools work with students that are exposed to honor-related problems and how they experience their work with these students. We have used a qualitative method and semi-structured interviews with seven school counselors who have experience of working with honor-related issues. To analyze the material we have used previous research along with Michael Lipsky's theory of street-level bureaucracy with the concept of discretion and Carl Rogers' theory of the therapeutic relationship. The conclusions we can draw after completing our study is that school counselors experience organizational and honor contextual challenges, but their discretion can help them in their work. To be able to detect vulnerable students, the school counselor uses strategies by being where the students are and asking straight questions. Another important side of the work to succeed at drawing attention to vulnerability is that there is knowledge and that all staff at the school possess this in order to cooperate in identifying vulnerable students. To help students that are vulnerable the dialogue is important both with the students but also the student's parents to be able to talk about the problem and the school counselor contributes with knowledge and information regarding human rights. When the problem is too big for the school counselor's discretion, a strategy for helping will then be to contact other street-level bureaucrats that have the knowledge and discretion to help. Having a trusting relationship is described as the key to being able to discover and help vulnerable students and there are important qualities the school counselor can possess, which increases the conditions for being able to discover, help, create relationships and meet the challenges the work requires.

This thesis examines teachers' discretion during the COVID-19-pandemic. Unlike many other countries, the Swedish government chose its own way and implicated public restrictions that made it possible for preschools and elementary schools to remain open. While high schools and higher educational institutions, during certain parts of the pandemic were forced to distance education. Drawing on insights from street-level theories and street-level-bureaucraty in crisis, the study explores how the teachers have experienced that the coronapandemic, and the policies pursued as a result of it, have affected their discretion over time. This study adopts a qualitative research design and the data is retrieved from newspaper articles from the two trade unions for teachers. By applying Gioias et al. (2013) method to group the data into overall concepts and dimensions the results of the study show that teachers have constantly had to pay attention to new restrictions and guidelines decided by politicians with input from the Public Health Agency based on the current spread of infection in society. The lack of experience and knowledge of similar situations was limiting the teachers' discretion at the beginning of the pandemic, but as the crisis developed so did the teachers' experience and knowledge which increased their discretion. The teachers have also experienced that their discretion has been limited by the lack of financial resources, lack of time, and lack of information about the virus. They have developed coping strategies into their work to balance the contradictions in their work during the pandemic. Finally, the findings confirm that the teachers have acted on the basis of what has been possible in the current situation at the current time within the framework of the regulations. / Den här studien studerar den del av förvaltningsforskningen som innefattar tjänstepersoner som arbetar närmast medborgarna, närbyråkrater, och hur de agerar utifrån politiska styrdokument under tid av kris. Studien syftar till att studera hur lärare, som räknas in i epitetet närbyråkrater, har upplevt att coronapandemin, och den politiken som förts till följd av den, har påverkat och format deras handlingsutrymme över tid. Med utgångspunkt i Lipskys teori om närbyråkrater och handlingsutrymme presenterar den teoretiska refererensramen vidare forskning om kris och lärares upplevelser av pandemins inledande månader. Denna fallstudie har genomförts med en kvalitativ metod för att djupgående kunna ge en analyserande bild av närbyråkraters agerande i kris. Datainsamlingen har genomförts genom en kodnings-och tolkningsprocess av tidningsartiklar från de två fackförbunden, Lärarförbundet och Lärarnas Riksförbundet. Den studerade tidsperioden är februari 2020- februari 2022. Studiens resultat visar på att lärarnas handlingsutrymme under coronapandemin har reglerats av de nya restriktioner och riktlinjer beslutade av politiker med input från Folkhälsomyndigheten (Fohm) som grundats i den aktuella smittspridningen i samhället. Bristen på information, finansiella medel och tid har begränsat lärarnas handlingsutrymme vilket har resulterat i ett sämre möte mellan lärarna och eleverna. I takt med att pandemin har fortlöpt har lärarnas handlingsutrymme formats av deras växande erfarenhet och kunskap om att bedriva undervisning under en pandemi. Slutligen visar studien att lärarna har agerat utifrån vad som varit möjligt i den aktuella situationen vid den aktuella tidpunkten inom ramen för regelverket.

Barn riskerar att fara illa eller dö när anmälningsskyldiga underlåter att följa den lagstadgade anmälningsplikten. Denna studie har därför genom sex kvalitativa semi- strukturerade intervjuer undersökt hur anmälningspliktig skolpersonal upplever att organisatoriska faktorer påverkar deras skyldighet att anmäla oro till socialtjänsten, samt vilka faktorer som anses underlättande eller försvårande i anmälningsproceduren. Kuratorer, pedagoger samt skolledare har deltagit i undersökningen. Organisationsteori och Lipskys handlingsutrymmesbegrepp har använts som teoretiska utgångspunkter. Tematisk analys har tillämpats. Resultatet indikerar att skolornas organisering kan underlätta eller försvåra anmälningsproceduren. Det upplevs positivt om anmälningsrutinen är organiserad så att pedagogerna inte behöver underteckna orosanmälningar – för att skydda relationen till eleven. Synen på socialtjänsten bland vårdnadshavare beskrivs vara negativ och påverka beslut om anmälan. Förmågan och möjligheten att upptäcka sådant som kan föranleda en orosanmälan beror på hur skolan är organiserad samt personalens yrkesroll och arbetsmetoder. Vidare är beslut om orosanmälan kontextbundet och beror till stora delar på vårdnadshavarnas respons när skolpersonalen uttrycker sin oro. Formella och informella möten beskrivs underlätta anmälningsproceduren då kollegial samverkan minimerar risken att elever faller mellan stolarna. Sekretessen mellan socialtjänst och skola upplevs försvårande. En lättad sekretesslagstiftning för att främja samverkan mellan socialtjänst och skola beskrivs vara önskvärt. Avslutningsvis finns en rad faktorer, både organisatoriska och individuella vilket ökar eller begränsar skolpersonalens handlingsutrymme i anmälningsproceduren, exempelvis personalens utbildning, arbetslivserfarenhet, yrkesroll samt organisationens rutiner.

The following study aims to study how social workers in the processing of social assistance relate to child perspective after the incorporation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It has been also examined how organizational guidelines and rules affect the processing of social assistance. This study has a qualitative research approach, and the empirical data has been collected through five interviews with social workers, who are working with social assistance in two different municipalities in Sweden. The empirical material has been analyzed through Michael Lipsky´s theory of street-level bureaucrats and discretion. All the social workers in this study consider that taking into consideration to child’s perspective is very important in the processing of social assistance but it is somehow ambiguous and complex. As a result, sometimes the social workers do not have the opportunity to consider child perspectives, even though there is now a law stipulated after the incorporation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child into Swedish law. Some of these factors that make the work difficult for social workers in the processing of social assistance are lack of time, rules and laws, indistinct organizational guidelines, etcetera. The results of this study also show that the social workers do not want to talk to or meet the children during the processing of social assistance and the working process can differ between the municipalities, where one municipality has much more difficulty in considering child perspectives due to too much workload and lack of time.

Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka hur strukturella och organisatoriska förutsättningar samt förståelsen av kvinnors våldsutsatthet påverkar det stöd som ges inom socialtjänsten och inom ideella kvinnojourer till kvinnor utsatta för mäns våld i nära relation. En kvalitativ innehållsanalys har använts för att analysera insamlad empiri från semistrukturerade kvalitativa intervjuer med fyra kvinnojoursanställda, tre behandlare inom socialtjänsten och en socialhandläggare. Handlingsutrymme och intersektionalitet har sedan använts som teoretiska ramverk för att analysera studiens resultat. Studien visade på att mäns våld mot kvinnor främst tolkades av verksamma som ett resultat av strukturell ojämlikhet. I kombination med en strukturell förståelse kunde mäns våld mot kvinnor i nära relation även tolkas som ett resultat av våldsutövande mäns kommunikationssvårigheter. Skyddat boende, praktiskt stöd, stödsamtal och rådgivning var de behov som verksamma i första hand bedömde att kvinnorna hade. I fråga om strukturella och organisatoriska förutsättningar och hinder lyftes framför allt samverkan, kompetens, intresse, tid, administrativ börda, personalresurser, organisationsform, lagstiftning och bostadsmarknaden fram som de faktorer som upplevdes påverka arbetet med kvinnor utsatta för mäns våld i nära relation. Förståelsen av kvinnors våldsutsatthet påverkar och påverkas av strukturella och organisatoriska förutsättningar och hinder vilka också påverkar verksammas handlingsutrymme och möjlighet att ge stöd. / The purpose of this study was to investigate how structural and organizational factors and the understandings of women's exposure to violence affects the support provided in social services and nonprofit women's organizations to women exposed to intimate partner violence. A qualitative content analysis has been used for analyzing empirical data from eight semi-structured qualitative interviews. Four employees in nonprofit women's organizations, three counsellors and one social worker participated. Discretion and intersectionality have been used as theoretical frameworks to analyze the results of the study. The results show that men's violence against women was mainly interpreted by social worker and employees in nonprofit women's organizations as a result of structural inequality. In combination with a structural understanding, intimate partner violence could also be interpreted as a result of men's communication difficulties. Sheltered housing, practical support, consultation and counselling are needs that woman exposed to intimate partner violence had according to the respondents. In terms of organizational prerequisites or obstacles, collaboration, competence, interest, time, administrative burden, human resources, organizational form, legislation and the housing market were highlighted as the factors that are perceived to influence the work with women exposed to intimate partner violence. The understanding of women's exposure to violence affects and are affected by structural and organizational prerequisites or obstacles which in turn affects professional discretion and their ability to support women.

Tvångsvård är ett omdiskuterat ämne i dagens samhälle och Sverige. Många debatter råder där betoningen ligger på de tvivelaktiga omhändertaganden där barn och unga far illa. I denna studie undersöker vi hur socialsekreterare resonerar kring LVU med fokus på handlingsutrymme, makt samt överväganden och osäkerheter i LVUhandläggning i syfte att undersöka socialsekreterarnas egna tankar och upplevelser vilket är ett perspektiv som i nuvarande forskningsfält är svagt behandlat. Med utgångspunkt i Lipskys teori om gräsrotsbyråkrati har vi utfört semistruktureradeintervjuer med åtta socialsekreterare vid fyra barnenheter och två ungdomsenheter. Vi fann att socialsekreterarna i vår studie beskrev en komplex bild av deras arbete. Stundom upplever de att de har makt och handlingsutrymme, och stundom inte. Detta kunde bero på LVU-handläggningens utformande, samt hur mycket ansvar den enskilde socialsekreteraren fick från sin organisation. Deras arbete genomsyras även av flera genomgående osäkerheter som uppstår i svåra överväganden i LVUhandläggning. Vi såg även att makt hade en stor roll i socialsekreterarnas arbete,framför allt när det kommer till samarbete med familj och hur mötet med barn och unga struktureras. Samtidigt beskrev socialsekreterarna hur LVU-handläggning ibland följs av en känsla av maktlöshet när det inte går som planerat.