The purpose of the study is to investigate how first-line managers in municipal elderly care perceive and manage the balance between market-oriented working methods and trust-based leadership. The study also aims to investigate whether these experiences differ depending on whether the managers work in small or large municipalities. The method in this study was qualitative semi-structured interviews with six informants working as first-line managers in a municipal nursing home. The experience of working as a first-line manager differs, as several of the informants feel that they have less participation in decision-making processes and have to report upwards a lot, which leads to difficulties in working in a trust-based way. First-line managers in smaller municipalities experience a closeness to superiors and others in the organisation, which makes them feel more involved. The results are discussed in relation to previous research and analysed with the theories Job-demand resources and Coping. / Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur första linjens chefer på inom kommunal äldreomsorg upplever och hanterar balansen mellan marknadsorienterade arbetsmetoder och tillitsbaserat ledarskap. Studien ämnar också undersöka om dessa upplevelser skiljer sig åt beroende på om cheferna arbetar i små eller stora kommuner. Metoden i denna studie var kvalitativa semistrukterade intervjuer med sex informanter som arbetar som första linjens chef på kommunalt SÄBO. Upplevelsen av arbetet som första linjens chef skiljer sig åt då flera av informanterna upplever att de har mindre delaktighet i beslutsprocesser och får rapportera mycket uppåt, vilket leder till svårigheter att arbeta tillitsbaserat. Första linjens chefer i mindre kommuner upplever en närhet till stegen över sig och övriga inom organisationen vilket gör att de känner sig mer delaktiga. Resultatet diskuteras i förhållande till tidigare forskning samt teorierna Job-demand resources och Coping.

Over the last two decades, public sector organisations in the UK have invested heavily on electronic government (E-Government) projects to transform the services offered to citizens. E-government is seen as an enabler that helps public services to become more efficient, transparent, cost effective and accountable. In this respect the implementation of e-government projects have been influenced by private sector thinking borrowed from New Public Management (NPM) principles. However, the evaluation of e-government under the influence of NPM has been primarily focused on economic and technical outputs whereas its value to citizens has been largely ignored. Furthermore, research shows that many e-government projects have failed to deliver the desired outcomes when influenced by NPM principles. Recent studies have emerged that highlights the significance of public value to understand the broader outcomes of e-government services. The aim of this study is to explore the concept of public value and identify the antecedents that affect value and the consequences of value on e-government. To do so, this study develops a conceptual model grounded on Public Value Theory, DeLone and McLean IS Success Model and Means End Chain Theory combining the disciplines of Public Administration, Information Systems and Marketing. The conceptual model was validated through Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) based on online surveys of 705 users of egovernment services in the UK. The findings have highlighted significant theoretical and practical implications for researchers and policy makers. This research highlights that the key dimensions (services, outcome and trust) of public value theory cannot be validated on their own as they are far too abstract in current literature. Therefore, this study verifies that public value can only be validated by drawing from the multiple fields of Public Administration, Information System and Marketing. From a practical perspective, the study offers policy makers a frame of reference to understand the influence of value on the adoption and re-use of e-government services.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century a burgeoning global private military sector is increasingly involved in areas of defence and security that, up until recently, were popularly thought of as being within the monopolistic preserve of the nation state. Finding itself at the vanguard of profound political and economic change, today’s Royal Navy is increasingly reliant on relationships with the private sector that only thirty years ago would have seemed unimaginable to many commentators. As naval shipbuilding, dockyard refitting, logistics, training, and even warship ownership and manning, move from a unitary state to an increasingly self-organising private sector bounded by a differentiated and decentered polity, this thesis is concerned with boundaries of elite discourse on legitimacy in the political economy of Royal Navy and British naval sea power and their implications for New Public Management theory. At its core, the study presents original research into the attitudes of fifty elite opinion formers directly concerned with the discourse of Royal Navy modernisation and profiles their ideational boundaries concerning the political economy of force and violence. The thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge by presenting empirically and framing theoretically the ways in which elite naval attitudes to the political economy of legitimated force have changed and are evolving. The research is important because it challenges what many commentators have come to believe to be an a priori function of the nation state, namely, the monopoly use of force, with the actual views of those opinion formers who currently hold positions of power and influence in and around one of its core ‘ideal type’ institutions: the Royal Navy. The research is also significant because in attempting to clarify the conceptual boundaries of this elite discourse, it also presents a powerful critique of New Public Management with reference to the problematic dimensions of time, economic complexity and socio-political power.

Bakgrund: Användningen av uppföljnings- och kontrollsystem har stor betydelse både för privata och offentliga verksamheter. Uppföljning och utvärdering är två viktiga processer som oftast inte är tillräckliga inom offentliga verksamheter. För att öka användningen av dessa och för att nå en högre effektivitet efterfrågas ökad kompetensnivå samt kontinuerliga rutiner för utvärdering och utveckling. Dessa processer används för att avgöra om offentliga verksamheter utvecklas i enlighet med sina mål och att organisationens arbete fungerar som planerat. Syfte: Studien syftar primärt till att utvärdera hur Kronofogdemyndigheten Sydosts interna uppföljningssystem GUPP fungerar och är uppbyggt samt om det uppfyllt sitt implementeringssyfte utifrån dess förväntade effekter. Med utgångspunkt i analysen skall studien också generera åtgärdsförslag för att på så sätt öka användbarheten för verksamheten och deras medarbetare. Metod: Denna uppsats är genomförd som en utvärderingsstudie då vi tilldelats ett uppdrag från enhetschefen för Kronofogdemyndighetens Sydostregion. Vi har via kvalitativa semistrukturerade och ostrukturerade intervjuer samlat in empirisk data. Intervjuer har genomförts med enhetschef, controller, åtta teamchefer samt fyra medarbetare. Resultat och slutsatser: Det råder delade meningar om hur systemet fungerar och om dess syften har uppfyllts. Problemen kan dels härledas till hur systemet är utformat men framförallt till hur ledningen agerar i styrandet samt implementeringen av GUPP. Sex olika fokusområden med tillhörande aktiviteter har framställts som åtgärdsförslag för att KFM ska kunna förbättra sin uppföljning och öka användbarheten. Fokus gällande åtgärder bör riktas mot att utveckla kommunikationen samt att införa utbildningar och tydliga instruktioner för användarna av GUPP.

La “Gestión Pública Moderna” o también llamada “Nueva Gestión Pública” (NGP) o “New Public Management” (NPM) es una tendencia impulsada por las Reformas del Estado de segunda generación que prioriza la generación de “valor público” a tres niveles (estratégico, entorno político y operativo); a su vez reconoce al “proceso político” como mecanismo para la asignación de recursos del Estado y favorece la incorporación de los “gerentes públicos”como franja directiva que se sitúa entre las autoridades políticas y los empleados públicos.

This essay concerns teacher professionalism and how its prerequisites have been affected by the politcs of the employer organization Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR). In Sweden, the government has during the last thirty years carried out extensive school reforms, fueled by the paradigm of New Public Management. On the whole, these reforms have contributed to the so called 'de-professionalization' of Swedish school teachers. However, the impact of labour politics has to great lenghts been neglected in political research on teacher professionalism, and that is the gap which this thesis aims to fill. By using a wide range of material, such as collective bargaining agreements, policy documents, debate articles and semistructured interviews, a reconstruction of the SALARs' labour politics has been made. Furthermore, an ideal-typical analytical framework of the two contrasting and competing governance models new managerialism and professionalism was applied on the reconstruction. The results are in short that the organization in many ways has contributed to the de-professionalization process which Swedish school teachers have undergone. By allocating power and authority to headmasters and municipalities, the discretion and legitimacy of theteacher profession itself has been circumscribed. Via these policies, a clearer hierarchy between the profession and its headmasters has come into place. Furthermore, the results indicate that the SALAR promotes organizational norms and values, rather than professional dito. In the light of the now being 'recruitment crisis' and the low attraction of the teaching profession, the results are particurlarly relevant.

In the last decade, the reach of New Public Management (NPM) has stretched well beyond its Western origins as modernising African governments and their global health partners have sought to import new approaches. Public health systems in Africa are entirely different to those of the West however, and this sort of application introduces a number of contextually-specific questions that are not considered by the majority of the NPM literature. The few studies that do investigate NPM in Africa are evaluative in content, seeking to understand whether reforms work and to identify barriers to success. Invariably, whether they find in favour of public management reform or not, the same issues are highlighted: lack of capacity, weak institutions, and improper implementation. This thesis will build a theory of NPM reform that is particular to the African context. I develop this theoretical extension through an intensive ethnographic case study of one of the most important on-going public health reform efforts in Africa—the transformation of the entire Ethiopian hospital system to an NPM-style administrative regime. I develop a constructionist theory of African NPM through thick description of the hospitals under reform. I detail the various ways in which the reforms are indigenised as they meet up with local understandings, institutions, and market contexts, and the inevitable unintended consequences as managers seek to ‘make do’ in environments radically different to those of NPM’s origins. I then conduct a detailed consumer analysis to describe the strategies employed by patients seeking care. Patients from different class positions use very different strategies to get health services and I demonstrate that the reform has very different consequences for Ethiopians across classes. Many patients are not recognisable as the ‘customers’ described in the reform documents, and so the hospitals do not organise their reform efforts to serve them.

This paper focuses on the link between economic context and legislation. In 1992, an extensivemarket led reform on Swedish elementary school made it possible for corporations and othernon-governmental foundations to run schools with funds from taxes. Meanwhile, Swedensuffered from a severe recession. This paper seeks to analyse the role of the economic crisis inthe debate regarding this reform. The object of analysis is editorials in two major newspapers,government bills and excerpts from parliament debate, and the theoretical framework is acombination of Karl Polanyi’s commodification theory and Christopher Hood’s New PublicManagement definition. The results show a diversity in the use of economic arguments,depending on political position and source. Explicit justification of the reform – where therecession make a major argument – have been found foremost in government bills.

I en politisk kompromiss mellan Socialdemokraterna, Miljöpartiet, Liberalerna och Centerpartiet beslutades att Arbetsförmedlingen ska omstruktureras. Privata aktörer ska förmedla arbeten till medborgarna istället för myndigheten. Beslutet ska inkludera alla grupper i samhället, förutom personer med funktionsnedsättning. Denna grupp ska Arbetsförmedlingen fortfarande ansvara för att förmedla sysselsättning till. Privatisering av en myndighet kan kopplas till styrningsmetoden New Public Management. Sverige är ett intressant land att undersöka NPM i, då mycket NPM har implementerats samtidigt som landet framförallt har styrts av socialdemokratiska regeringar. Denna uppsats syftar till att undersöka den diskursiva kampen av implementeringen av NPM i en svensk kontext, detta genom att analysera Arbetsförmedlingens omstrukturering och i synnerhet beslutet att inte inkludera personer med funktionsnedsättning i beslutet. Slutsatserna av studien visar på att NPM-diskursen i princip har blivit hegemonisk i den svenska politiken, men att det fortfarande finns en diskursiv kamp mellan NPM och en traditionell socialdemokratisk diskurs. Denna diskursiva konflikt resulterar i beslutet att inte inkludera personer med funktionsnedsättning i Arbetsförmedlingens omstrukturering.

During our time as substitute social secretaries within financial support we heard colleges that criticized the magnitude of documentation. This critique sparked our interest of documentations relation to client focused work. The aim of this study was to create an understanding regarding how the duty of documentations takes form in the work of social secretaries. We seek clarity in what purpose social secretaries pay documentation and what function it plays in their work. We met with six social secretaries involved with financial support and interviewed them, using semi structured interviews. The answers received showed an understanding of the importance of documentation but also that it is a time consuming task. Documentation within itself does not lead to anyone being self-contained regarding their financial situation, yet the results show that documentation make up over 60% and sometimes 80% of the worktime of social secretaries within financial support. The time spent on documentation was thought of as necessary to fulfill the task the social secretaries are handed. One of the interviewed secretaries expressed that this balance of work tasks shapes their work in a way that cannot be considered “social work”. The phenomenon is analysed using professionalism theory and “acting space” as a theoretical concept.