Diss. Göteborg : Göteborgs universitet, 2006.

Management by contract is nowadays a common method within the public sector since the NPM overtook as paradigm with its mechanisms of control inspired by the private sector. The public agency is foremost a service provider where they interact with citizens in the service process. Swedish eldercare has significantly increased its expose to competition which means that eldercare can be executed not only by the municipalities own provider. Such an adaption increases the requirements to inspect quality and how the purchasers assure goal achievement by control. The outmost liability stays with the municipality to ensure that the service produces god care since their position as the service purchaser implies the responsibility to plan, precise and evaluate the required work that the executor has to accomplish. Previous research has shown the difficulties to define quality in the tendering process. The purpose of this paper is to examine how municipalities control executors to achieve objectives and inspect the design of quality indicators in agreements. The procedure that followed was to describe various in the theoretical frame of reference factors which influence management by contract and to present different perspectives of approaches on how purchaser can control the providers to ensure quality. The paper is a qualitative multiple case study approach with a document analysis and a semi-structured interview with a specialist in care and procurement. In the result section the municipalities are first displayed separately with a model of analysis as reference and characteristic aspects in the contracts before a gathered result is shown. In the same section there are demonstrating examples that indicates how the municipalities tend to control. The results discussion connect the results with theory and what previously been observed in this field of study. The discussion ends with a general discussion regarding the overall implementation of management by contract. The conclusion answers the purpose from a perspective of the emerged result. The result of the study presents that quality indicators in general are sufficiently concretized to regard them as possible to follow-up and the municipalities way of controlling the provider to assure objectives of the activity are accomplished differs from one another.

Uppsatsen syftar till att jämföra Umeå kommun som för tillfället inte tillämpar lagen om valfrihet i upphandling av särskilt boende med Stockholms stad som gör det. Sverige står inför en utmaning med en åldrande befolkning och kraven på en välfungerande äldreomsorg ökar vilket gör det intressant att undersöka de system för äldreomsorg som idag tillämpas. Studiens problem analyseras genom teoretiska ramverk kopplade till NPM och som grund ligger teorin om ”demokratins svarta hål” vilken berör förskjutningen av ansvarsutkrävande från den politiska nivån till de utförande tjänstemännen. Vidare uppmärksammas en teori gällande kommuners paradoxer och ett resonemang om hur valfrihet och rättvisa står i möjlig kontrast till varandra. Den insamlade empirin har tagits fram genom intervjuer med tjänstemän och ombudsman i de två kommunerna. Resultaten visar att de mest märkbara skillnaderna ligger i synen på valfrihet rent generellt. Medan det mer kommunalt inriktade Umeå kommun fokuserar på värden som jämlikhet, trygghet och stabilitet har det mer privat orienterade Stockholms stad ett större fokus på individualism, flexibilitet och mångfald. Det förefaller sig även som att den upplevda valfriheten är viktigare än den reella valfriheten som verktyg för demokratiskt inflytande över välfärden.