The aim of this study was to explore evaluation in the Swedish Public Employment Service, with particular focus on how the use of evaluations looks like. The study consists of two studies. The first one is an analysis of the Employment Service’s all policy documents that describe or mention evaluation as well as an interview-study with all the management staff in one of the Employment Service’s local labor market units. The second study is a comparative study with analysis of the Employment Service’s entire evaluation production for the years 2010 and 2015. The results show that the Swedish Public Employment Service is a hierarchically controlled governmental organization with routines for effective communication of management's messages to all levels in the organization. Employment Service's evaluation is governed and implemented centrally and communicated from the top, down through the organization. Evaluations are mainly used as a routine for checking and reporting, as well as accounting to the government. Managers on a middle and local level find that much of the evaluation is about control, and that control is not adapted to needs of the everyday business on the local level. Evaluation activities are extensive. Evaluations seems to have become an end in itself, used in legitimizing purposes rather than as a tool for developing of the service to the clients. Half of the evaluations that the Employment Service carried out by their own, is regular evaluations. Almost all evaluations carried out by the European Social Fund Council in Sweden and “Samordningsförbund” (associations for coordination of social projects) are single occasion-evaluations. Legitimizing dominates the use of evaluation, both 2010 and 2015 in evaluating production. Evaluation for improving of the service to the clients is mentioned only in a small number of policy documents. Evaluations that includes the client’s perspective as well as proposals for change occurs to a limited extent in both 2010 and 2015. The Organization of the Employment Service's evaluation activities are heavily influenced by New Public Management's management philosophy.

In light of growing criticism towards New Public Management and its effects, interest has been directed at alternative management control concepts in the public sector. Whether Public Value Management is an alternative, possibly even a new paradigm, is being discussed on the research front. New Public Management and Public Value Management have evolved in parallel during the past decades. However, New Public Management has had greater impact, not least in governments’ control of state agencies. The aim of the thesis is to gain an understanding of how ideas about the creation of public value diverge between New Public Management and Public Value Management. Beyond the research question of whether management control meets the demands of efficiency and customer-orientation as addressed in previous studies on reforms influenced by New Public Management, this thesis deals with the issue of creating value for the benefit of society. In a qualitative approach, the research is based on interpretations of documents, observations and interviews with examples from state agencies in the museum sector. The result of the study shows that differences between New Public Management and Public Value Management are expressed in notions of accountability, results and proficiency. The time perspective differs, as do the means of financing and involvement of stakeholders. Reforms in line with Public Value Management call for the involvement or consideration of a larger circle of stakeholders, including future generations. The findings of the thesis suggest that the diverging perceptions of value creation does not rule out that elements from both concepts can be combined and complement each other. The main issue is to take into account the contribution made to public value, considering whether the mandate is a long-term government assignment in line with Public Value Management or if it involves activities well suited to New Public Management with prerequisites for market orientation. The dissertation contributes to research in the field of management control in the public sector and the issue of public value.

In the past decades, the public sector has undergone important organisational policy changes, referred to as New Public Management. These management strategies focus on continuous cost improvements and rationalisation of operations. In the aftermath of these policy changes, we have seen reports of increased work demands and less professional autonomy amongst welfare workers. Against this background, the thesis sets out to explore welfare workers’ relationship to their organisation. This was done by investigating how psychosocial and organisational factors related to a number of outcomes assumed to be indicators of the quality of the relationship. Theoretically, the thesis was inspired by psychological contract theory, but also relates to other concepts and theories found in organisational research. The thesis is based on four empirical studies, all of which relate to how welfare workers have perceived their relationship to their organisation. Study I aimed to qualitatively investigate how turnover processes evolved amongst statutory social workers who voluntarily had resigned from their jobs. The results showed that dismissive/admonishing organisational responses to the social workers’ perceived work-related dissatisfactions reinforced their beliefs in psychological contract violation, which led to resignation. Study II and III employed national web-based questionnaire data collected from employees and managers in the social services. The results of Studies II-III showed that if organisations want welfare workers to stop considering exit, want to counteract silence, want to reduce stress-related ill health and want to improve organisational commitment and job satisfaction, management strategies need to be developed that lead to fewer conflicting demands, a reasonable workload and a greater professional autonomy. The results also showed that the organisation’s open climate and attitude towards employees was of great importance for the studied outcome variables. Study IV was based on questionnaire data from different occupational groups in two municipal organisations. The results showed that organisational resources explained additional variance in organisational identification and organisational pride, beyond the contributions of workgroup resources. From the findings of this thesis, it can be concluded that the psychosocial demands need to be balanced with organisational resources in order to (re)build a trustworthy employee-organisation relationship. Further, organisations need to reconsider their human resource management strategies and practices, e.g., by enabling a continuous and open dialogue between the strategic and operational levels. Such changes may lead to balanced psychological contracts between welfare workers and the organisation that can improve the organisation’s stability, continuity and, ultimately, the quality of the welfare services.

This study provides an empirical picture of the ways in which the New Public Management doctrine has been implemented in the context of post-Soviet states in Central Asia. Specifically, the data present evidence on the extent of school autonomy along six dimensions in the three states. The implications of the shift towards education decentralisation have been studied and explained. Based on a mixed method this evidence is drawn from three sources: surveys, interviews, and legislative analysis. With the research limitations in mind, based on the analysis undertaken, it is possible to identify some important messages regarding academic theory and education management practice. The first message is that neo-institutional theory, particularly historical institutionalism, has been supported by the evidence from the post-Soviet states. Despite quite diverse trajectories of the countries' political, economic and public sectors development over the last two decades, the policies promoted in education appear to be converging in both outputs and outcomes across the region. The three countries demonstrated persistent path-dependency through their inability to overcome institutional inertia, so that operational policy and structure dimensions have not been decentralized, combined with the effect of declining fiscal and bureaucratic capacity at the centre, so that managerial matters have been delegated to a school level. This trend was regional. The second message is that, the patterns observed in the three post-Soviet states displayed similarities to the patterns observed in education systems of the developed western democracies. Hence, the view that the structure of the post-communist welfare states is problematic, and that the particularities of their transition with budget cuts on top of the communist legacy and a hodge-podge of different approaches do not allow these states to be classified (cf. Orenstein 2008), has not been supported by the evidence. Education institutions in the three post-Soviet countries investigated conformed to a general West European pattern, although for different reasons.

Syftet med denna studie är att utforska hur linjechefer inom offentlig sjukvård upplever och hanterar stöd och styrning i interaktionen med stabsfunktionen HR samt hur organisatoriska omvandlingsprocesser såsom New Public Management (NPM) och HR-transformation (HRT) kan förstås utifrån ett relationellt makt- och styrningsperspektiv. Som teoretisk referensram används olika delar av Foucaults maktbegrepp och som analysverktyg styrningsteknikerna disciplinär övervakning, pastoral makt, styrningsrationalitet samt avancerad liberal styrning. För att svara på studiens forskningsfrågor genomfördes semistrukturerade intervjuer med åtta linjechefer på ett landstingdrivet sjukhus. Studiens resultat visar att de HR-områden där linjecheferna upplever HR-stödet som välfungerande är rehabilitering, arbetsrätt och svårare personalärenden. Vidare finns det bland linjecheferna en samsyn kring att rekrytering, administrativ avlastning och mer personlig interaktion, är områden där stödet kan förbättras och utvecklas. Linjecheferna upplever att styrning från HR begränsar deras arbetssituation och handlingsutrymme främst kopplat till administrativa uppgifter samt till lönesättning av nya  medarbetare. Detta  kan  förstås  genom den  detaljstyrning och  kontroll som styrningsidealet NPM och den organisatoriska förändringsprocessen HRT inneburit, och som medfört en förskjutning och förändring av det relationella maktförhållandet mellan linjechefer och stabsfunktionen HR. Den disciplinära övervakningen blir synlig i bland annat linjechefernas rädsla för att gå emot HR:s uppsatta riktlinjer, med oro för sanktioner. Den pastorala makten synliggörs genom linjechefernas sökande efter vägledning och hur HR visar sig villiga att vägleda. Genom att linjecheferna internaliserar och följer organisationens och HR:s riktlinjer, ideal och normer märks verkningarna av styrningsrationaliteten. I HR-frågor där linjecheferna upplever sig som beslutsfattare och fria att välja utifrån HR:s rekommendationer exemplifieras den avancerade liberala styrningen. Genom att applicera de olika styrningsteknikerna på studiens resultat, ser vi att stöd kan fungera som styrning och styrning kan upplevas som stöd. Den dolda styrning som uppstår i det relationella samspelet mellan linjechefer och HR synliggörs med hjälp av dessa makt- och styrningstekniker, vilket möjliggör ett nytt sätt att se på dessa fenomen i interaktionen mellan dessa aktörer.

Managementidéer och modeller som New Public Management (NPM) fick i början av 1990-talet ett stort genomslag i den offentliga förvaltningen. Reformer har därmed gjorts i rationalitetens och effektivitetens tecken. Tidigare forskning visar att NPM även slagit igenom stort på det kulturpolitiska området. Det saknas dock studier som har kombinerat NPM och kulturarvssektorn som helhet. I uppsatsen undersöks hur NPM har tolkats och omsatts i regeringens styrning av den statliga kulturarvsförvaltningen 1990 till idag. Undersökningen har bestått av en kvalitativ innehållsanalys av officiella dokument för myndigheterna Riksantikvarieämbetet, Riksarkivet och Statens historiska museer i form av regleringsbrev, myndighetsinstruktioner, samt kultur- och kulturarvsinriktade propositioner och SOU:er. Nyinstitutionell organisationsteori har utgjort uppsatsens övergripande teori. Därutöver har NPM-teori och teoribildning inom Public Value Management (PVM) fungerat som teoretiska utgångspunkter. PVM har använts som en teoretisk motvikt till NPM i syfte att bättre förstå kulturarvsförvaltningens specifika förutsättningar. Resultatet av undersökningen visar att NPM framför allt har påverkat styrningen av kulturarvsförvaltningen på ett idémässigt plan. Detta har inneburit att rationalitetsbaserade värderingar har adderats till de redan existerande kulturprofessionella/humanistiska i styrningen av kulturarvsförvaltningen. Mål- och resultatstyrningen av de tre undersökta myndigheterna har stundtals över den studerade tidsperioden balanserat på gränsen till att ta över det för kulturområdet så viktiga armslånga avståndet mellan politik och förvaltning. Kulturarvsförvaltningens kärnfrågor urval och värdering har dock inte varit föremål för detaljstyrning från regeringen.

This study investigated the perceptions of emergency managers regarding the degree of emergency management professionalism in Mexico and how it can be improved. The disaster of the Mexico City earthquake of 1985 was used as the starting point for this case study, as the prospects for more-frequent and more-intense disasters lend credence to the need for improved professionalism and, thus, effectiveness among emergency managers in the future. An expansive framework of emergency management professionalism mechanisms (or characteristics) and an additional compilation of new public management components (or values) were devised from the extant literatures found within the respective emergency management and public administration fields. The theory advanced by this study is that by integrating new public management components with emergency management mechanisms, professionalism in Mexico will improve and, thus, emergency managers will become more effective. ualitative field research was the methodology employed and it included interviews with 35 emergency managers in Mexico in corroboration with documentary evidence, to ascertain emergency managers' perceptions of professionalism in Mexico. The findings of this study determined that emergency managers in Mexico are implementing many of the mechanisms of professionalism but fewer new public management components. This study posits that by integrating new public management components with emergency management professionalism mechanisms, professionalism in Mexico will improve and will increase emergency managers' effectiveness.

O novo modelo de gestão pública, denominado Administração Pública Gerencial, promove a participação ativa da sociedade e uma visão de resultados na administração com o cidadão sendo o centro das atenções. Incentiva o uso de ferramentas da administração privada para determinar os objetivos estratégicos e acompanhamento das ações escolhidas e priorizadas pelos governos. Este estudo objetiva analisar e discutir as práticas de Gerenciamento de Portfólio, especificamente seleção e priorização, à luz do modelo da Administração Pública Gerencial, nos municípios de São José dos Campos e Taubaté, processo este, adotado pelas empresas privadas para gestão de suas ações e projetos em busca de atingir resultados e alinhamento com a estratégia empresarial. Adotou-se como método a pesquisa exploratória de abordagem qualitativa, e do ponto de vista dos procedimentos técnicos esta pesquisa foi bibliográfica e documental. Os dados complementares aos estudos documentais e bibliográficos foram obtidos pela aplicação de um questionário aos responsáveis pelo departamento de planejamento de cada uma das prefeituras estudadas. Utilizou-se a metodologia de análise de conteúdo, reunindo um conjunto qualitativo de informações que contribuíram para a análise e validação da proposta desta pesquisa. Os resultados obtidos apontam para dois cenários distintos, um demonstra que as Prefeituras de São José dos Campos e Taubaté possuem processos de gestão com referências de base legal sólidas, com conceitos e itens que permitem uma modernização limitada, porém não aplicados em sua totalidade. Outro, que ambas as prefeituras, possuem processos de seleção e priorização de ações e projetos distintos, porém não totalmente aderentes às práticas de Gerenciamento de Portfólio, modelo potencialmente pronto para utilização na administração pública. / The new public management model, called New Public Management, promotes the active participation of society and a vision of results in administration with the citizen being the center of attention. Encourages the use of private administration tools to determine the strategic objectives and monitoring the actions chosen and prioritized by Governments. This study aims to analyze and to discuss the practices of Portfolio Management, specifically selection and prioritization in light of the model of New Public Management in the municipalities of São José dos Campos and Taubaté, this process, adopted by private companies for managing your actions and projects seeking to achieve results and alignment with the business strategy. The method adopted was the exploratory research of qualitative approach, and from the point of view of technical procedures this is bibliographical and documental research. The additional were obtained by applying a questionnaire to responsibles for Planning Department of each of the prefectures. It was used content analysis methodology, bringing together a set of qualitative information that contributed to the analysis and validation of this research proposal. The results shows two distinct scenarios, the first scenario shows that the cities of Taubaté and São José dos Campos have management processes with solid legal basis, with concepts and items that allow a limited modernization, but not applied in its entirety. Another scenario shows that both prefectures have distinct process for selection, prioritization of projects and actions, though not totally aligned to best practices of existing Portfolio Management and potentially ready for use in the public administration.

Nationally and globally the public sector is exposed to new challenges. Tthe most recent is the global pandemic covid-19. The health care system faces new challenges, such as an ageing population which means that more people are in need of more care. The technological and the medical development also means an increased expenditure. As a way of handling the challenges liberal ideas on how the market should work were transferred to the public sector and New Public Management (NPM) was created. Ideas of decentralisation, privatization, demands of cost-effectiveness and the public sector competing with each other on the market are examples of NPM. The purpose of this study was to find out how NPM is expressed in health care law. The countries chosen for this comparative study were Finland, Norway and Sweden, based on a most-similar design. The study was conducted using thematic textual analysis on each country’s health care law.

Socialt arbete är vad man skulle kunna kalla ett relativt ungt fenomen och ett organiserat arbete mot sociala problem är i Sverige inte mycket äldre än 100 år gammalt. Med det sagt kan man förstå att det sociala arbetets karaktär är under ständig förändring, och förhoppningsvis förbättring. De senaste decennierna har dock socialt arbete präglats av en ny förändringstrend. En privatiseringstrend. Som nyexaminerad socionom är valen av arbetsgivare fler än vad de var för 30 år sedan och alternativen skiljer sig åt. Syftet med denna uppsats är således att undersöka hur den snart nyexaminerade socionomen uppfattar de olika alternativen, som en eventuell arbetsgivare men också rent generellt. Studien är utformat efter kvalitativ metod med ett induktivt förhållningssätt och bygger på fyra olika intervjuer med fyra stycken snart färdigutbildade socionomer. Som teoretiskt ramverk ligger Max Webers teori om byråkrati i idealtypiska termer som grund för arbetet, samt teorin om handlingsutrymme. Tack vare användandet av tematisk textanalys kunde vissa likheter och teman urskiljas ur informanternas utsagor och resultatet kom att skildra en på många sätt homogen uppfattning av brister och risker med olika arbetsgivare. Samtliga informanter talar om en byråkrati som riskerar växa sig för stor för att fungera effektivt, och på ett rättvist sätt. Mot såväl klienter som anställda inom organisationen. Weber talade i pessimistiska termer om hur framtiden skulle komma att tillhöra byråkratin, en uppfattning som han delar med samtliga informanter. Uppfattningen är att en organisation som växer sig för stor, kommer att behöva arbeta på ett ytterst rationellt sätt rent byråkratiskt. Slutsatsen är att en rationell byråkrati inte är förenligt med ett rättvist socialt arbete gentemot klienten eller, återigen, den anställde. / Social work is what one could call a relatively young phenomenon and an organized work against social problems in Sweden is not much older than a century. That being said, one can understand that the nature of social work is under constant change, and hopefully improvement. However, in recent decades social work has been characterized by a new trend of change. A privatization trend. As a newly graduated social worker today, the alternatives to employers are more than they were 30 years ago and the alternatives differ. The purpose of this thesis is thus to investigate how the soon-to-be-graduated social worker perceives the different alternatives, as a possible employer, but also generally. The study is designed according to a qualitative method with an inductive approach and is based on four different interviews with four social work bachelors. As a theoretical framework, Max Weber's theory of bureaucracy in ideal-typical terms lies as the basis for the work, as well as the theory of scope for action. Thanks to the use of thematic text analysis, some similarities and themes could be distinguished from the informants' statements, and the result was to depict, in many ways, a homogeneous perception of deficiencies and risks with different employers. All informants talk about a bureaucracy that risks growing too large to function effectively, and in a fair way. Towards both clients and employees within the organization. Weber spoke in pessimistic terms about how the future would belong to the bureaucracy, a view that he shares with all the informants. The perception is that an organization that grows too large will have to work in an extremely rational way bureaucratically. The conclusion is that a rational bureaucracy is not compatible with a fair social work towards the client or, again, the employee.