The influence of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) particularly internet technology has had a fundamental impact on the way government is administered, provides services and interacts with citizens. Currently, the use of social media is no longer limited to informal environments but is an increasingly important medium of communication between citizens and governments. The extensive and increasing use of social media will continue to generate huge amounts of user-generated content known as Big Social Data (BSD). The growing body of BSD presents innumerable opportunities as well as challenges for local government planning, management and delivery of public services to citizens. However, the governments have not yet utilised the potential of BSD for better understanding the public and gaining new insights from this new way of interactions. Some of the reasons are lacking in the mechanism and guidance to analyse this new format of data. Thus, the aim of this study is to evaluate how the body of BSD can be mined, analysed and applied in the context of local government in the UK. The objective is to develop a Big Social Data Analytics (BSDA) model that can be applied in the case of local government. Data generated from social media over a year were collected, collated and analysed using a range of social media analytics and network analysis tools and techniques. The final BSDA model was applied to a local council case to evaluate its impact in real practice. This study allows to better understand the methods of analysing the BSD in the public sector and extend the literature related to e-government, social media, and social network theory / Universiti Utara Malaysia

The academy school programme, OFSTED’s use of school performance data, and performance management and performance related pay reforms are dramatically transforming the work and employment landscape in teaching. Yet there is limited knowledge of teachers’ experiences of work in relation to this context. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the impact of these education reforms on school teachers’ working lives through a labour process perspective. A critical realist ethnography of an inner-city secondary academy school was conducted over four months. This comprised a six-week shadowing phase, document collection and 26 semi-structured interviews with Teachers, Managers, HR and Trade Union Representatives. Findings reveal that the removal of a contextual value added measure from school performance metrics leads to an increase in teachers’ workloads and an extension of their working hours. This is compounded by an unofficial erosion of teachers’ directed working time that infiltrates through the academy trust. Pressures on workload also stem from management-led initiatives generated by appraisals in leadership programmes. Furthermore, teachers’ work becomes standardised and re-organised through the heterarchical multi-academy trust model in an effort to improve the school’s OFSTED rating. Performance related pay reforms act as a parallel instigator to the standardisation of work, polarising the creative and mundane aspects of teaching across the workforce, whilst oppositional orientations to work form as the majority of teachers align with a shared sense of commitment to work. This thesis amalgamates labour process theory with the hollowing out thesis, making key theoretical, conceptual, empirical and methodological contributions, alongside practical recommendations. / Faculty of Management, Law and Social Sciences at the University of Bradford Scholarship

This master thesis aims to explore and discuss a central problem within archival science, namely, how to secure transparency in AI-systems. This is done through an analysis of the European commission´s Artificial intelligence act, a proposal meant to address the ethical issues concerning AI and secure a competitive European market. Using the theoretical framework “Frames”, this paper argues that the commission perceives the Artificial intelligence act as a social response to AI as a phenomenon and challenge. This is supported with a comparison with other publications concerning artificial intelligence by the European commission. The paper also investigates the role of archives and recordkeeping in securing transparency of AI. According to the commission’s proposal, its main task is to explain AI decision or by reporting the systems design and capacity. In order to discuss possible consequences to governmental agencies, the AI act is compared with current Swedish archival law and practice. Furthermore, the referrals by the Swedish government and agencies are also included to put this discussion in a wider perspective. Although positive to the initiative, the referrals show a concern of a vague definition of AI, expanding administration and its possible obstructive effect on AI development. I argue that the concerns should be taken seriously. Instead of mindlessly inserting documentation requirements, archivist should take a step back and ask themselves what information is relevant to preserve about artificial intelligence. A difficult question to answer indeed, but necessary because the changes and risks the technology entails requires some sort of documentation in order to guarantee transparency. Therefore, archivists should explore and discuss this important and exciting topic, in order to face a revolutionary technology and future. This is a two years master's thesis in Archival science.

Den förtätade staden ses idag som en självklar del av en hållbar stadsutveckling. Vi lever i en urbaniseringstid och frågor kring hur vi kan skapa en förtätad stad av god kvalitet står högt på agendan. När allt fler människor lever i staden skapas ökad efterfrågan på samhällsservice i staden, som till exempel barnomsorg. I Sverige är det kommunen som ansvarar för att tillgodose medborgarna med denna service. Den svenska förskolan, som är den institution där detta behov till stor del ska tillgodoses, har i sin tur krav på god pedagogisk verksamhet samt en bra miljö för barnen, såväl inne som ute.Den här uppstasen handlar om hur förskolans utemiljö konstrueras i den urbana kontexten. Förskolans utemiljö i staden studeras utifrån de strategier som skapas i och med målsättningar kring både en förtätad stad och en förskola med goda utemiljöer. Genom en kvalitativ analys skapas en komplex bild av alla de strategier som genereras på olika nivåer i den offentliga sektorn, samt hur dessa strategier förhåller sig till varandra.Uppsatsens slutsats landar i hur strategierna påverkas av NPM-influenser och hur gräsrotsbyråkraten väljer att använda sig av sitt handlingsutrymme. Det visar sig också att strategierna verkar skapa en diskrepans mellan de delar som utgör helheten för en bra pedagogisk verksamhet. / The dense city is now seen as a self-evident part of a sustainable urban development. We live in a time of urbanization, and questions about how we can create a dense city of good quality are high on the agenda. As more people live in the city the demand for public services, such as childcare, also increases in the city. In Sweden, the municipality is responsible for meeting the public with this service. The Swedish preschool which is the institution where this needs are supposed to be met, have in turn, their demands on sound pedagogical activity and a good environment for children, both indoors and outdoors.This paper is about how the preschool outdoor environment is created in the urban context. The preschool outdoor environment in the urban context is studied from the strategies created by the goals around both a dense city and a preschool with good outdoor environments. Through a qualitative analysis appears a complex picture of all the strategies that are generated at different levels in the public sector, and how these strategies relate to each other.Conclusion of the essay lands in how the strategies are influenced by NPM and how the grassroots bureaucrat chooses to use its freedom of choice. It also turns out that the strategies seem to create a discrepancy between the spheres that make up the big picture for a good preschool.

I och med omställningen som hybridarbete bidragit till, så som att arbeta tre dagar på kontoret och två dagar på distans, har frågan väckts kring hur medarbetare hanterat gränsdragningen mellan arbete och privatliv, återhämtning och sjukfrånvaro. Dessutom har en ny typ av ledarskap efterfrågats från medarbetare och studien utgå därför från medarbetarnas behov och förväntningar kring hur ledare ska hantera en hybrid arbetsgrupp. Studiens frågeställningar handlar om hur medarbetare upplever gränsdragning mellan privat- och arbetsliv samt möjligheten till återhämtning och sjukfrånvaro på en hybrid arbetsplats och hur medarbetare upplever att ledarskapet kan främja gränsdragning. Syftet med studien är alltså att få en större förståelse för hur medarbetare hanterar aspekterna kring gränsdragning och hur ledarskapet kan bidra till detta. Empirin har samlats in genom semistrukturerade intervjuer där urvalet bestod av tjänstemän inom den offentliga sektorn. Studien utgår från medarbetarnas perspektiv och har med hjälp av de valda teorierna bidragit till en djupare förståelse för deras förhållningssätt till den hybrida arbetsplatsen. Genom teorierna har resultatet analyserats och sammanställningen visar att medarbetare upplever ett behov av tydligare riktlinjer kring det nya arbetssättet för att enklare kunna göra en gränsdragning. Dessutom visar resultatet att medarbetare behöver ett ledarskap som anpassar sig efter den hybrida lösningen gällande kommunikation, rättvisefrågor och efter de individuella förutsättningarna. Ett intressant fynd var även att arbetet utfördes antingen på kontoret eller på distans beroende på arbetsuppgiftens karaktär och behovet av den sociala kontexten för individen. / With the change that hybrid work has contributed to, such as working three days in the office and two days at a distance, the question has been raised about how employees have managed to make boundaries between work and private life, recovery and sickness. In addition, a new type of leadership has been requested from employees and the study is therefore based on the employees' needs and expectations regarding how leaders should handle a hybrid work group. The study's questions is about how employees experience the workboundaries between work and private life and the possibility of recovery and sickness in a hybrid workplace and how employees feel that leadership can promote workboundaries. The purpose of the study is to gain a greater understanding of how employees handle the aspects of workboundaries and how leadership can contribute to this. The data have been collected through semistructured interviews where the sample consisted of civil servants in the public sector. The study is based on the employees' perspective and has, with the help of the chosen theories, contributed to a perception of the employees approach to the hybrid workplace. Through the theories, the results have been analyzed and the summary shows that employees feel a need for guidelines regarding the new way of working in order to be able to establish workboundaries more easily. In addition, the results show that employees need a leadership that adapts to the hybrid solution regarding communication between employees and leaders, keeping the justice-aspect in mind and also adapts to the individual conditions. An interesting point of view was that employees chose to work either in the office or remotely depending on the nature of the task and the need for the social context.

Lean Management and Lean Six Sigma (LM/LSS) are improvement methodologies that have been utilized to achieve better performance outcomes at organizational and operational levels. Although there has been evidence of breakthrough improvement across diverse organizational settings, LM/LSS remains an early-stage improvement methodology in public sector organizations, specifically within local government organizations (LGOs). Some LGOs have benefited from LM/LSS and reported significant improvements, such as reducing process time by up to 90% and increasing financial savings by up to 57%. While the success of LM/LSS can lead to satisfactory outcomes, the risk of failure can also result in a tremendous waste of financial and non-financial resources. Evidence from the literature indicates that the failure to achieve the expected outcomes is likely due to the lack of attention paid to critical success factors (CSFs) that are crucial for LM/LSS success. Furthermore, research in this research area regarding characterizing and statistically examining the CSFs associated with LM/LSS in such organizational settings has been limited. Hence, the aim of this research is to provide a comprehensive investigation of the success factors for LM/LSS in LGOs. The initial stage of this dissertation involved analyzing the scientific literature to identify and characterize the CSFs associated with LM/LSS in LGOs through a systematic literature review (SLR). This effort identified a total of 47 unique factors, which were grouped into 5 categories, including organization, process, workforce knowledge, communications, task design, and team design. The next stage of this investigation focused on identifying a more focused set of CSFs. This involved evaluating the strength of the effect (or importance) of the factors using two integrated approaches: meta-synthesis and expert assessment. This process concluded with a total of 29 factors being selected for the empirical field study. The final stage included designing and implementing an online survey questionnaire to solicit LGOs' experience on the presence of factors during the development and/or implementation of LM/LSS and their impact on social-technical system outcomes. Once the survey was concluded, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted to identify the underlying latent variables, followed by using a partial least square-structural equation model (PLS-SEM) to determine the significance of the factors on outcomes. The EFA identified three endogenous and five exogenous latent variables. The results of the PLS-SEM model identified four significant positive relationships. Based on the results from the structural paths, the antecedent Improvement Readiness (IR) and Change Awareness (CA) were significant and had a positive influence on Transformation Success (TS). For the outcome Deployment Success (DS), Sustainable Improvement Infrastructure (SII) was the only significant exogenous variable and had the highest positive impact among all significant predictor constructs. Furthermore, Measurement-Based Improvement (MBI) was significant and positively influenced Improvement Project Success (IPS). Findings from this dissertation could serve as a foundation for researchers looking to further advance the maturity of this research area based on the evidence presented in this work. Additionally, this work could be used as guidelines for practitioners in developing implementation processes by considering the essential factors to maximize the success of LM/LSS implementation. Given the diversity of functional areas and processes within LGO contexts, it is also possible that other public sector organizations could benefit from these findings. / Doctor of Philosophy / Lean Management and Lean Six Sigma (LM/LSS) is an improvement methodology that is used by businesses and organizations to improve how they work and achieve better results. LM/LSS has been especially helpful in various organizations; however, the implementation of this improvement methodology has been limited by many challenges for public sector organizations, especially local government organizations (LGOs). The overall aim of this dissertation is to improve the success of LM/LSS implementation within the context of LGOs. More specifically, this dissertation systematically studied the critical success factors associated with LM/LSS success. Different research approaches, including research formulation, development, and testing techniques, were conducted to achieve the aim of this dissertation. Publications related to LM/LSS in LGOs have been rigorously analyzed to identify a comprehensive list of CSFs. To identify the most important factors, a meta-synthesis evaluation and expert survey assessment have been conducted. Following the refinement of the factors, a large-scale field study using a survey questionnaire has been designed and distributed to LGOs. Once the survey concluded, statistical methods that included Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) were conducted. The former was used to identify the underlying latent variables, while the latter was conducted to examine the influence of the factors on social and technical outcomes. This dissertation could be used as a reference guideline helping practitioners to increase the success of LM/LSS implementation in LGOs. This dissertation can also guide scholars to potential research avenues that could advance this research area.

This study examined the influence of human resources development on systemic practices, utility, and organizational results among contracting professionals within the public and private sectors. The study used a quantitative, correlational research design to answer the research questions, which asked whether or not statistically significant correlations were observed between human resources development and systemic practices, utility, and organizational results in the public and private sectors. A purposive sample was drawn from the membership of the National Contract Management Association to obtain the data necessary to answer the research questions. Once data was collected, it was reviewed for missing values and outliers. Then, the data was coded and imported into SPSS version 22.0 for Macintosh for data analysis. The data was first analyzed descriptively to identify similarities and differences between public and private sector contracting professionals. Additionally, the data was arranged by construct and analyzed for correlations between HRD and systemic practices, utility, and organizational results. The study was grounded in two theories – Kirkpatrick’s hierarchy and contingency theory. The data were evaluated against each of these theories. Keywords: Federal contract management, contract specialist, contract professional, contracting professional, human resource development, organizational results, federal contracting, training, workforce development

No / This study sought to investigate the characteristics of 'nearby' leaders by eliciting the constructs of male and female top, senior, and middle-level managers and professionals working in organizations in two large UK public sectors (local government and the National Health Service). An instrument, the Transformational Leadership Questionnaire (TLQ-LGV), was developed and piloted on a national sample of 1464 managers working for local government organizations. Analysis of the data, presented here, revealed the existence of nine highly robust scales with high reliabilities (.85) and with convergent validity (range r = .46 to .85). These findings are discussed, together with suggestions for subsequent research.

I en tid av digitalisering och ständiga förändringar i teknik, står många offentliga verksamheter inför utmaningen att byta ut sina IT-system för att möta moderna krav och behov. För att studera och analysera övergången från ett befintligt system till ett nytt undersöker denna fallstudie en specifik medelstor Kommuns pågående systembyte och dess förändringsprocess. Genom att fokusera på ett utvalt systembyte strävar vi genom denna studie efter att förstå de utmaningar och framgångsfaktorer som är kopplade till processen.  Empirin har samlats in genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med personer som varit involverade i projektet och slutanvändare av det nya systemet. Systemet var nytt för alla informanter, de befann sig i olika faser i processen att implementera det nya systemet. Empirin har analyserat genom en innehållsanalys som leder till slutsatser som visar på vikten av ett noggrant kravarbete, välplanerat projekt och kontinuerlig kommunikation genom olika kanaler för att minska motstånd mot förändring. / In an age of digitalization and constant changes in technology, many public organizations face the challenge of replacing their IT systems to meet modern demands and needs. In order to study and analyze the transition from an existing system to a new one, this case study examines a specific medium-sized Municipality's ongoing system change and its change process. By focusing on a selected system change, we strive through this study to understand the challenges and success factors connected to the process.  The data has been collected through semi-structured interviews with people involved in the project and end users of the new system. The system was new to all the informants, and the informants were at different stages in the process of implementing the new system. The data has been analyzed through a content analysis that leads to conclusions that show the importance of careful requirements work, well-planned projects and continuous communication through various channels to reduce resistance to change.

Background: Management Control Systems (MCS) have been withheld as useful tools to support managers and increase performance, whereas Simons’ Levers of Control (LOC) increase the understanding of relations between different MCS. The characteristics of the public sector induce new dimensions of complexity in a municipal setting, where this study reveals how tensions exist between both levers and managers in turn impacting the performance of the organization.  Purpose: The purpose of this study is to clarify the comprehensive use and efficiency of the MCS within Swedish municipal organizations. By using existing frameworks to acknowledge the unique challenges inherent, the relation between LOC and municipal performance is tested.  Method: The study reconciles with the pragmatic paradigm, following an abductive mixed-method approach. The research problem is addressed through a sequential explanatory method, where the quantitative research accounts for the foundation of the study, and to further enhance the understanding of the data, qualitative interviews were conducted.  Conclusion: This thesis reveals the intricate relationship between MCS and performance in Swedish municipal organizations, confirming the significance of MCS while challenging assumptions about LOCs’ direct impact on performance. By exploring the moderating role of professional discretion, the study underscores the importance of considering contextual factors in designing effective control mechanisms tailored to organizational needs.