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Public employment services are provided in all developed economies, justified on the basis of a public interest in efficient, effective operation of national labour markets. Although such countries adopt different approaches to delivering these services each offers what I refer to as ‘the three essential roles of a public employment service’. These are labour exchange services, providing job brokerage to labour market participants to enhance the efficiency of the labour market; an equity role, offering assistance to disadvantaged jobseekers to improve their prospects of employment; and a ‘compliance monitoring role’ which contributes to maintaining the integrity of the welfare system by detecting welfare abuse. Informed by a body of research on policies and practices in the OECD I construct a model of a notional public employment service incorporating these three essential roles that I call ‘an OECD model’. The Job Network, an early policy reform of a newly-elected Coalition government, appeared to replicate ‘the OECD model’, insofar as it performed brokerage, offered equity measures and conducted invigilation of welfare compliance. However, it differed from its predecessor, the CES, in two significant respects. First it was created by the bureaucracy as a new ‘market’ in which all employment services were purchased through a competitive tending process from private sector providers; in this, it was unique in the OECD. Second, rather than offering prescribed employment programs and services designed by public officials, private providers were free to determine the needs of clients (within broadly-defined service categories) and devise their own strategies to achieve contractually-defined ‘outcomes’ for which they would be paid. Services were focused particularly on disadvantaged jobseekers who were expected to receive personalised assistance tailored to overcome their complex or multiple barriers to employment. The purpose of my thesis is to discover whether the Job Network (in the period from its inception to the end of the second contract) was an OECD model, by which I mean whether its three roles were conceptualised, constructed and delivered in ways that enabled them to perform the same functions as the three essential roles of the OECD model. I see this question as involving two distinct, but interrelated issues. First, I am concerned to discover whether the three roles of the Job Network share the objectives and priorities of their counterparts in the OECD model, positing that these will shape the design of services. Second, informed by a body of literature which draws attention to a range of issues emerging from privatisation of public services, I consider the impacts that private delivery had on the design and implementation of its services. iv I approach this task from a qualitative perspective to explore assumptions and priorities underpinning the political construction of the issues deemed to require policy intervention and the responses to these as reflected in the design and implementation of services, noting the effects of practices on service recipients. I argue that, together, these are the determinants of the Job Network’s policy objectives and capacities. I take as my data the political discourse, bureaucratic texts, interview materials and texts of service recipients that I have gathered to investigate, in turn, each of the three roles of the Job Network using tools and techniques from the broader field of discourse analysis, selecting those most appropriate to the nature of the data. My analysis concludes that the Job Network’s three roles do not reflect those of the OECD model, first because they are predicated on different policy objectives and second, because privatisation of service delivery affected the design of its services and the priorities of service providers in ways that undermined its capacity to perform the ‘essential roles’. The evidence suggests that ideological-based assumptions and preferences of a conservative government steered the Job Network towards prioritising its role in compliance monitoring, positioning it as a tool of welfare reform rather delivering interventions to enhance efficiency or equity in the labour market such as those predicated of the OECD model.

The purpose of the study is to create an understanding of whether, and in such cases how, employers in IT-firms examine jobseekers' social media as a part of the company's recruitment process. The study has been limited to recruiters in the IT-industry as it was considered extra interesting to examine the recruitment process related to social media due to the technical skills that are required within the IT industry. The choice of industry was also based on the fact that it is estimated that 70.000 new employees will be needed until the year of 2022, to meet Sweden's demand of employees within the IT-industry. Ten respondents with various positions in different IT-firms, that are responsible for the recruitment process, have participated in the study through semi-structured interviews. The conclusions drawn from the respondents' answers in relation to the theoretical framework are that all respondents actually examine job seekers' social media. This is done regardless of whether the company has considered that this is something that should be avoided or not. It was shown that the recruiters examined the job seekers' social media by their own initiative rather than on the basis of established guidelines. It did not appear that any specific guidelines nor policies existed or was used by any company regarding the review, and neither that there exists any form of internal dialogue regarding any specific approach. The majority of the respondents performed the review of social media in the final stages of the recruitment process. It has, however, been shown that the review is not used as a decisive decision in the recruitment process, rather as a complement for the overall picture. Even so, it turned out that there is content on social media that could have been decisive, but this only applies to individual cases where the content was considered extreme. Examples of such content were strong political statements that for instance regarded racism or other statements concerning inequality.

The topic of the diploma thesis is "The evaluation of implementation the socially purposeful job's program in Prague". The thesis describes the public policy process including methods of evaluating public policies. Further, it elaborates active employment policy of Czech Republic, current form of the socially purposeful job's program, realization of this program and the arrangements for evaluating the programme efficiency and targeting. Evaluation of this program is just based on evaluation of efficiency and targeting which are also a research problem of the whole thesis. What is the efficiency and targeting of this program in Prague shows the findings, whether participants of this program remain on the labour market even after the end of the program, and whether the program really involves those unemployed for which it is targeted. These informations have been found from the results of the questionnaires which were filled by labour office employees who participated in this programme and from semi- structured interviews with employees of labour office managing this program and with employers who are benetifing from this program. Furthermore, the research shows problems in the realization of this program, their causes, consequences and the overall impacts of the program on society.