A critical task of social policy in most Western welfare states during recent decades has consisted of reducing the economic burden on society due to sick leave, by stimulating participation in the labour market. Many jurisdictions have introduced activation policies, based on the premise that work “per se” has a therapeutic effect on sick-listed workers. People are expected to be “active”, rather than “passive”, recipients of financial benefits. However, there is limited knowledge of how activation policies focusing on return to work (RTW) are carried out in local practice. Against this background, the overall aim of this thesis is to study the local practice of activation policies by analysing how they are received, implemented and experienced by welfare state organizations, employers and sick-listed workers. The analysis has been influenced by theories concerning organization fields, individualization, street-level bureaucracy and organizational governance. In this thesis, the overall aim is investigated in four interrelated papers. In Paper I, the aim is to analyse the perspectives of stakeholders (i.e. welfare state actors and employers) on work ability by studying multistakeholder meetings. Paper II sheds light on activation policy, focusing on early RTW in the context of modern working conditions; the aim is to analyse RTW practice in local workplace contexts, in relation to Swedish early-RTW policy. The third paper focuses on employers, with the aim of analysing their role and activities regarding RTW, in local workplace practice. In Paper IV, the aim is to analyse sick-listed workers’ experiences of the sickness insurance system in their contact with the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (SSIA) and their front-line staff. The empirical material comprises two empirical studies: 1) audio-recorded multi-stakeholder meetings from regular practice (n=9) and 2) semi-structured interviews with sick-listed workers and their supervisors in 18 workplaces (n=36). The analyses of the material have been performed in accordance with the principles of qualitative content analysis. Main findings of the papers reflect strong organizational boundaries in the implementation process of activation policies. Welfare state actors and employers appear to be governed by their own organizational logics and interests, so the actors involved fail to take a holistic view of sick-listed workers and do not share a common social responsibility for individuals’ RTW. This thesis illustrates how current activation policies focusing on RTW are based on a rather idealized image of the standard workplace. There is an explicit or implicit assumption that employers and work organizations are able to welcome sick-listed workers back to work in a healthy way. However, the intensity of modern working life leaves limited room for accommodating people with reduced work ability, who are not considered to have a business value to the workplace. In several cases, findings indicate that the SSIA’s focus on activation and early RTW clashes with the financially oriented perspective of employers. Economic considerations regarding their business take precedence over legal and ethical considerations, and employers have difficulty taking social responsibility for RTW. Sick-listed workers are encouraged to adjust to new workplace settings and environments to meet the demands of the workplace, and, if RTW is not possible, to the demands of the labour market. The findings also show that sick-listed workers experience that contacts with the SSIA are ‘standardized’; i.e., they perceive that the officials are loyal  to demands in their organizations rather than being involved actors who support workers’ individual needs. Sick-listed workers clearly experience that measures in Swedish activation policies have a strong focus on demanding aspects (financial work incentives) and less on enabling aspects (investments in skills). Overall, this thesis illustrates an emerging social climate where sick-listed workers are positioned as active agents who must take responsibility for their sick leave and their RTW process. In a Swedish context, RTW is a matter of activating the sick-listed rather than activating the workplace.

This is a study about employment officers at the Swedish public employment service. The aim of this study was to examine how they understand and use their discretion in their daily work. We used a qualitative method and the data was gathered by semi-structured interviews with eight employment officers working at the same office in a small town in Sweden. Lipskys theory about street-level bureaucracy and Lazarus description of coping theory are applied to analyze the empirical data. The work for the Swedish employment officers have changed over the last years with an increasing focus on control and administration. The results from the study show that the employment officers considered that they have a freedom of action in their daily work about planning their meetings, but all of them thinks that the administration, and the fact that they have to handle too many unemployed means that they are lack of time, what leads to a negative impact on their discretion. All of the interviewed subjects indicated that the Swedish public employment service has a top-down organization. We found that the informants used a unified strategy to cope dilemmas by referring to the existing laws, both when they handled disgruntled unemployed and even as a way to cope their own liable situations. They could interpret the laws in different ways and they took help from the colleagues at the local office to decide how to interpret the laws. Even if dilemma was common in their work with the unemployed, they considered that their mission to control was mainly positive. The main reasons, to how the employment officers margin for manoeuvre are limited, appears to be the laws, the regulations and the available efforts for the unemployed.

In this thesis, public housing was investigated with particular reference to the nature of communication between the landlord and tenant. It focussed on interactive behaviours and the incidence of litigation. The study attempts to bridge the gap between social theory and social practice through the application of existing social theory in the description and analyses of social problems. Based on a critical review of the relevant literature, the characteristics of communicative interaction and human relationships are described, together with the history of housing provision and the growth of litigation to resolve issues in public housing. Research of communicative interaction in the housing sector in general and the landlord-tenant interaction in particular has been a neglected area of research that is addressed in this thesis. An initial study surveyed both tenants and housing officers in the Sydney metropolitan area. Social analysis focuses on local interaction between landlord and tenant and how these local interactions expand into global patterns. The thesis analyses how power-relating, ideological/evaluative and ethical choices of housing officers and tenants influence their communicative interaction and the subsequent access and distribution of services and resources in the public housing sector. The theoretical framework explicates on complex responsive processes (CRP) perspective. CRP is a process theory that looks into the simultaneous and co-influencing relationship between the individual and the social and multi-agency approach in social analysis. The conceptualising framework relies on the application of this theory and the principles of Humanity, human rights and social justice to achieve a dialogical communicative interaction. The thesis applied complementary quantitative and qualitative methods where a quantitative study of a small population was conducted using structured interviews and group meetings to guide the qualitative research. The population was identified by natural experiment, i.e., identification of two populations in a public housing estate: a Participative group, comprising tenants who had consciously participated in the housing authorities?? renewal programs, and a Non-participative group of tenants who had not taken part in the Tenant Participation programs by Housing New South Wales (HNSW). The housing officers and tenants were identified using snowball and quota sampling. The findings reveal a conspicuous absence of research that focus on local interaction between housing officers and tenants in public housing. The study confirms the anti-dialogical nature of communicative interaction in public housing, which is iterated, sustained and perpetuated by the use of litigation, a mechanism that is increasingly being preferred to settle disputes, by both landlord and tenant.

The purpose of this thesis was to get a deeper comprehension of how Swedish schools are affected by institutional change, what influence eventual governmental intervention has on the professional autonomy of street-level bureaucrats and towards which direction the educational system is heading.   As a theoretical frame of reference, the study used two primary theories. The first theory consists of a classical work in political science – the theory of street-level bureaucracies by Michael Lipsky. Its insightful pondering on public service workers as policy decisionmakers served as a tool to better understand the crucial part that street-level bureaucrats play in the political game. The second theory is the principal-agent theorem. With its assumtions grounded in rational choice, it aims to explain the agency problem, which occurs when the agent is acting in his own best interest. The principal-agent theory was used in order to explain why the government could have an increased need for control and surveillance. Through empirical evidence, the study found that decentralization leads to an increased governmental need for control and surveillance over Swedish schools. Furthermore, the study found that governmental intervention has a negative impact on the professional autonomy of street-level bureaucrats. The actions taken by the government is indicative of an attempt to strengthen the control of goal fulfillment. Thus, the study concludes that the educational system is heading towards a situation with more political control and less professional autonomy.

Cette thèse s'intéresse au travail quotidien des acteurs administratifs de la justice pénale et de la police c'est-à-dire aux greffiers, secrétaires, collaborateurs, estafettes, assistants, soit à tous les employés qui travaillent dans les coulisses des institutions étudiées aux côtés des magistrats et policiers, plus connus et plus étudiés. Notre intérêt pour ces acteurs a d’abord été guidé par un questionnement central et volontairement large visant, d’une part, à identifier et à découvrir la nature de leur travail et, d’autre part, à comprendre en quoi et comment ils contribuent à l’action de la justice pénale et de la police. Il s’inscrit dans une démarche empirique et inductive qui cherche à éclairer cette réalité professionnelle et son impact sur le fonctionnement institutionnel « à partir et au plus près » du quotidien des acteurs étudiés, en recourant à des immersions de type ethnographique au sein des coulisses de commissariats, parquets et tribunaux. En se penchant sur les pratiques d’acteurs qui œuvrent au fonctionnement des instances de justice pénale et de police, nous cherchons donc à mieux comprendre l’activité et le fonctionnement d’institutions chargées de réagir aux comportements problématiques, de les prévenir, de les réguler ou de les punir, et donc à éclairer les processus de réaction sociale. Notre démarche se situe ainsi au croisement entre une sociologie de l’action publique par le bas et une sociologie du travail privilégiant l’approche par l’activité ou la relation de service. Le premier courant est notamment inspiré des travaux précurseurs de M. Lipsky qui mettent l’accent sur la participation active de fonctionnaires – les street-level bureaucrats – à la construction des politiques publiques, malgré leur éloignement des instances décisionnelles (LIPSKY, 2010 [1980]). Le second courant s’éloigne d’une sociologie du travail « classique » qui s’intéresse à l’organisation du travail et aux politiques en la matière pour se focaliser davantage sur l’activité « en train de se faire » inscrite dans un système d’interactions impliquant d’autres acteurs et un contexte de travail (AVRIL, CARTIER et SERRE, 2010 ;HUGHES, 1996 ;UGHETTO, 2013 ;WELLER, 2007).La thèse répond au questionnement de départ en montrant comment les acteurs étudiés participent aux pratiques de la justice pénale et de la police à travers leurs pratiques quotidiennes, leur pouvoir discrétionnaire et les bricolages et routines qu’ils mettent en place pour fonctionner. Malgré une forte invisibilité – entendue comme un manque de reconnaissance de la valeur et de l’importance de leurs activités par le grand public, par la hiérarchie, par les travailleurs eux-mêmes et par les institutions qui les emploient (CRAIN, POSTER et CHERRY, 2016) – ils participent de manière indispensable à l’action publique, ils la rendent possible et l’influencent. Ils exercent donc bel et bien un rôle de « policy maker » au sein d’organisations dont les spécificités atténuent ou renforcent ce rôle. Ils participent à la construction des décisions qui y sont prises (par d’autres) en les mettant en forme et assurant leur légalité ;ils influencent les décideurs par leurs actions ou par leurs interactions ;ils créent et préservent le lien entre les collègues mais aussi entre les organisations chargées de mener une action collective – la restauration et le maintien de l’ordre public – dans un contexte particulièrement segmenté. La thèse montre également que ces acteurs sont des professionnels à part entière qui exercent un métier spécifique, indispensable au fonctionnement de la justice pénale et de la police. Ils participent au contrôle social et, dans le même temps, subissent le contrôle exercé par les institutions sur eux et leur travail. / Doctorat en Criminologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

abstract: Individual behavior change is a goal of many public policies directed at people of low socioeconomic status. Without evidence of behavioral change, these policies cannot be considered a success: a process of co-production where some level of cooperation between the client and program administrators is required to successfully meet program objectives. The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), is one example of a co-production design. WIC encourages women to engage in healthy behaviors by providing healthy food along with nutrition education to improve the health status of low-income families. However, while WIC is one of the most studied nutrition programs, little attention has been paid to the nutrition education portion or to interactions between staff members and participants. This research draws on the public policy and administration literature about street-level bureaucrats and co-production, which provides a framework for understanding the purposeful, inter-dependent relationships between front-line service providers and clients. However, neither literature explicates the process of interactions that is expected to lead to client behavior change and co-production. The primary contribution of this research is the creation of a grounded theory that identifies and explains the WIC interaction process as one of "negotiating healthy self-government". Based on analysis of three months of observations of WIC encounters in two clinics, this research finds that participants and staff members enter into tacit and explicit negotiations concerning the degree to which participants should govern their family's nutrition-related behavior. Clients actively shape the interactions by demonstrating their discipline and efforts to feed their families, while staff members refine and reinforce self-governing behaviors through assessing action, and providing advice to ensure behaviors meet recommendations. Finally, participants and staff members distinctly link self-governing behavior to identity: "good mothers" feed their children healthy food and govern their behaviors to meet nutritional recommendations. This research has implications for the study of behavior change promotion in public programs by introducing the concept of identity as a mechanism for governance and explicating the interaction process between front-line service providers and clients / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Public Policy 2014

Cette thèse a pour objet le traitement administratif des chômeurs en Pologne, étudié à travers des pratiques des agents de l’administration locale de l’emploi. L’objectif est de mettre en évidence comment ces agents traduisent les buts officiels et les règles formelles en actions et surtout d’identifier les éléments qui structurent leurs pratiques à l’égard du public accueilli. L’analyse porte sur le « people-processing » (Prottas, 1979) : c’est-à-dire les opérations consistant à transformer des personnes, dont les expériences biographiques et les conditions de vie sont très hétérogènes en sujets lisibles, classifiables, mesurables et modifiables. L’examen de ces processus a permis de s’interroger sur la transformation de l’État social en ce qui concerne les droits sociaux des chômeurs, l’inégalité face à l’administration de l’emploi et les techniques de contrôle des chômeurs et des agents publics. Les résultats s’appuient sur plusieurs enquêtes réalisées entre 2007 et 2014 dans 5 établissements locaux de l’administration de l’emploi et sur une analyse documentaire qui les a complété. Les recherches de terrain ont consisté en 111 entretiens approfondis menés surtout avec le personnel de ces agences travaillant en première ligne de l’accueil ainsi qu’avec des personnes inscrites en tant que chômeurs. Outre les séries d’entretiens, le matériau qualitatif se compose de documents administratifs et d’outils de travail dont les agents de base se servent au quotidien ainsi que de courts épisodes d'observation. Quant à l’analyse de documents nationaux, elle a compris le cadre légal depuis la création du statut administratif du chômeur en 1989 et les statistiques publiques. / This PhD thesis discusses what is actually done in the name of unemployment policy in Poland. It demonstrates how street-level bureaucrats in Public Employment Services (PES) translate official objectives and formal rules into practices and it identifies elements that structure their actions towards people, who register as unemployed. The study concern ‘people-processing’ – to use a notion of Jeffrey Prottas (1979): i.e. operations which consist in transforming people with heterogeneous biographies and life situations into subjects who are legible, subjected to standardised categorisation and measurable. The analysis gives critical insight into changes of welfare state with respect to social rights of unemployed and their accessibility, mechanisms of reproduction of inequalities through PES and technologies of control of both street-level bureaucrats and the unemployed. The results are based on several researches conducted between 2007 and 2014 in 5 local PES, which were complemented by a vast documentary analysis. Fieldwork consisted of 111 in-depth interviews conducted mainly with street-level bureaucrats and people, who were currently or previously registered as unemployed. The study also covered administrative documents, daily working tools (such as individual action plans, data basis, activation textbook, etc.), spatial organisation of the offices and it was supplemented by short observations. The additional documentary analysis included legal acts since 1989, public statistics and other official documents concerning labour market policy.

La thèse porte sur un champ spécifique des politiques publiques abordé à travers le filtre des interactions quotidiennes entre les agents d’État et le public. Plus spécifiquement, elle est centrée sur la politique migratoire de la Pologne. Elle consiste à interroger un cas particulier (le Département des étrangers de l’office la Voïvodie de Mazovie) comme lieu où se cristallisent et révèlent les logiques divergentes et souvent contradictoires caractérisant l'ensemble d'un champ de politique étatique. Elle est guidée principalement par la question de savoir ce que les pratiques quotidiennes des fonctionnaires du Département peuvent révéler sur la configuration et les logiques internes du champ des politiques migratoires en Pologne. Inscrit dans une perspective interactionniste, ce travail puise également son inspiration dans les travaux sur les « politiques de guichet » ou encore la « street-level bureaucracy ». Il inclut aussi d'importants éléments de la tradition néo-institutionaliste, notamment par l’usage du concept de champ organisationnel. Le point central de la démarche est l'idée qu'il est possible de mettre en lumière la configuration d'un tel champ et les dynamiques qui le parcourent, à partir d'une analyse focalisée sur un de ses acteurs clés. Ainsi, ce travail, réalisé en co-tutelle et situé à l'intersection de la science politique et de la sociologie, allie une réflexion sur le processus politique d'élaboration des politiques publiques à une étude sociologique à l'échelle micro. Dans une approche qualitative, l'enquête inclut une période d'observation participante au sein de l'institution étudiée et une série d'entretiens semi-directifs. / The dissertation focuses of Poland's migration policy as seen through the lens of the daily face-to-face interactions between immigrants and civil servants at the Department of Foreigners of the Masovian Voivodeship Office – an institution responsible for the legalization of foreigners' stay in Poland. This specific case is analyzed as a site where different and often divergent logics characteristic of this field of policy come into play and become apparent. Thus, the central question is what can be learned about the configuration and internal dynamics of a field of public policy through an observation of everyday practices of the agents of the Department. While adopting an interactionist perspective, this work draws as well on a literature focused on what can be called « street-level bureaucracy ». It also includes important elements of the neo-institutionalist tradition, notably through the use of the concept of organizational field. An idea central to the approach taken here is that it is possible to throw light on the configuration and the logics characterizing such a field based on an analysis of one of its key actors. Situated between the disciplines of political science and sociology, this work combines a reflection on the process of policy-making with a micro-scale sociological inquiry. Following a qualitative approach, the research consists of a period of participant observation and a series of semi-structured interviews.

There are different views on the cause of the onset of homelessness. For example, it is sometimes suggested that the reason lies with the individual, while others stand by the idea that the cause would be found in the country's lack of housing. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the issue of how the social workers works with the housing aid in Sundsvall at the Social Services handle applications and assess eligibility for the housing aid. The purpose is also to investigate how the social workers approach and assess the background problems of those applying for the housing aid, and how the they based on this construct clients. The theory of the present study is that presented by Michael Lipsky in "Street-level bureaucracy" - the dilemmas of the individual in public service (1980). It describes how the street-level bureaucrats, that is, those in direct contact with the public, carry out or enforce actions undertaken by the legislator and by decisions taken in the public sector. In order to be able to perform and execute decisions on the needs of the individual applicant, street-level bureaucrats have a large individual self-determination, also called discretion. It is both a prerequisite for individualized decisions, while opening up unwanted influences in decision making. To answer the purpose and the questions asked, three different methods has been used, consisting of: a document study based on assessments on the social housing aid, a vignette study with three hypothetical cases and individual follow-up interviews. The results have shown that the street-level bureaucracy/social workers uses their discretion while assessing the eligibility of the social housing aid, whilst also relying on legislative regimes. Different factors of the background problem relative to different other aspects are shown to be part of how the social workers construct clients and make their decisions regarding the housing aid. / Det finns divergerande uppfattningar om orsaken till uppkomsten av hemlöshet. Det anförs exempelvis ibland en ide om att orsaken ligger hos individen, samtidigt som andra förfäktar iden om att orsaken skulle stå att finna i att den större delen av landet har brist på bostäder. Syftet är att undersöka hur socialsekreterarna vid enheten för bostadssocialt bistånd på socialtjänsten i Sundsvalls kommun arbetar med biståndsbedömningar, men även att undersöka hur de förhåller sig till den bakgrundproblematik som de som ansöker om bostadssocialt bistånds har och hur socialsekreterarna utifrån detta konstruerar klienter. Teorin för den föreliggande studien är den som presenteras av Michael Lipsky i ”Street-level bureaucracy”- dilemmas of the individual in public service. Den beskriver hur gräsrotsbyråkraten, det vill säga den som är i direkt kontakt med allmänheten, utför eller verkställer åtgärder som föranstaltas av lagstiftaren och genom beslut tagna i den offentliga sektorn. För att kunna utföra och verkställa beslut om behov för den enskilde hjälpsökande har gräsrotsbyråkraten ett stort individuellt självbestämmande, även kallat diskretion. Den är både en förutsättning för individanpassade beslut, samtidigt som den öppnar upp för oönskade influenser i beslutstagandet. För att besvara syftet och de ställda frågorna har tre metoder använts, de består av: en dokumentstudie, en vinjettstudie, samt intervjuer. Resultatet har bland annat visat på att gräsrotsbyråkraterna/socialsekreterarna använder diskretion vid bedömningen kring bostadssocialt bistånd, samtidigt som de förlitar sig på lagstiftningar och riktlinjer. Olika faktorer i individernas bakgrundproblematik i förhållande till andra aspekter som exempelvis socialsekreterarnas erfarenhet och ålder, kulturella och ideologiska föreställningar och ekonomiska ansvar visar sig vara en del i hur socialsekreterarna konstruerar klienter.

Syftet med denna studie var att genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med yrkesverksamma LSS-handläggare analysera om det förekommer policykrockar/policykonflikter i deras arbete samt att utifrån en tolkning av deras berättelse analysera hur deras handlingsutrymme ser ut och om det kan antas ha förändrats utifrån den ekonomiska åtstramningen som präglar insatserna inom LSS. Studiens två frågeställningar är följande: Förekommer det några yttre policykonflikter, det vill säga, en diskrepans mellan intention och utfall i LSS-handläggarnas arbete samt förekommer det några inre konflikter hos handläggarna? Och: Hur ser LSS-handläggarnas handlingsutrymme ut och har det förändrats på grund av den ekonomiska åtstramningen? Studien har utgått från Michael Lipskys teori om street level bureaucracy som under uppsatsens gång utvecklats genom senare studier. Den insamlade datan har sedan, med hjälp en abduktiv tematisk dataanalys, analyserats utifrån de två valda teoretiska begreppen: policykonflikter samt handlingsutrymme. Resultatet visade att handläggarnas handlingsutrymme ser olika ut utifrån vilken stadsdelsförvaltning de jobbar inom och påverkas av vilken ekonomi som råder. Rättsläget förändras kontinuerligt vilket kan leda till att inre policykonflikter inom handläggarna uppstår, i form av att deras egna åsikter och värderingar skiljer sig från vad de har för resurser att besluta om men även yttre konflikter där de behöver använda fler typer av dokument för att kunna förstå intentionen bakom en riktlinje. Resultatet visar även på att arbetsbördan för LSS-handläggare ökar, i form av arbetsuppgifter där det kan handla om att bemöta personliga ombud till rent administrativa uppgifter som växer i antal.