<p>The main aim of this thesis has been to compare psychosocial working conditions in workplaces with different forms of ownership, i.e. public, private and cooperative. A second aim has been to study how organisational characteristics of relevance for psychosocial working conditions (in terms of management control strategies and prerequisites for management) are manifested in these ownership forms. The empirical data is based on structured interviews with managers at 60 workplaces within the service sector and on a questionnaire to all employees working in the participating workplaces, resulting in a set of 1384 individuals. An additional seven interviews with first-line managers within geriatric care were also conducted for the last study. The results show that employees in cooperatives perceived that they had better opportunities to influence decisions concerning the workplace as a whole, although there were also results showing advantages for public and private employees. Regarding opportunities for employees to influence their own work situation, there were no differences between the ownership forms. Differences were found in the prerequisites for first-line geriatric care managers. As a result of an earlier organisational change, the public managers were now further away from the strategic level and had to focus on daily, operative work tasks, while simultaneously also being responsible for keeping within the budget. The private managers, on the other hand, having group leaders to deal with the daily work concerning personnel and operations, could focus more on strategic work related to financial results in terms of planning and follow-up of the budget. One conclusion is that there are certain differences in both psychosocial working conditions and organisational characteristics between the ownership forms, but when the comparisons were restricted to only one type of service, in this case the provision of care, it is rather the similarities within the care organisations, regardless of ownership form, that are most pronounced.</p>

Using case studies from Australia, Sweden and Finland, and also drawing on examples from parts of Asia, including Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and Thailand, the thesis explores how state and market actors respond to Indigenous claims and how Indigenous claims are themselves reconstituted through those particular responses. While the duty of protecting Indigenous rights might nominally fall upon the state, we are increasingly witness to the enfolding of market actors and market rationalities in debates concerning Indigenous claims. The research contained in the thesis highlights how a practice of 'passing the buck', or passing of responsibility onto others, is constituted through both market and government relations whereby responsibility for addressing Indigenous claims is shifted from states to corporations, from corporations to states, and from states back to Indigenous peoples themselves. The thesis consists of four articles. Article 1, titled 'Obliging Indigenous Citizens: Shared Responsibility Agreements in Australian Aboriginal Communities' provides a critique of the governmental provision of services to remote Australian Aboriginal communities through quasi-market arrangements. Article 2, titled 'Corporate Social Responsibility, Supply-chains and Saami Claims: Tracing the Political in the Finnish Forestry Industry' explores conflicts over state logging in Saami territories and the construction of the state/market divide in CSR debates over the rights of Indigenous peoples. Article 3, titled 'NGO Campaigns and Banks: Constituting Risk and Uncertainty' studies the negotiated and contested boundaries of markets through debates over the governance of social and environmental risks in the investment banking sector. Article 4, titled 'The Last Frontier? Windpower developments on traditional Saami lands' considers how colonial rationalities constituting the state-Saami relationship are reproduced in new debates over windpower developments in Saami mountain areas. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 4: In progress.</p>

The main aim of this thesis has been to compare psychosocial working conditions in workplaces with different forms of ownership, i.e. public, private and cooperative. A second aim has been to study how organisational characteristics of relevance for psychosocial working conditions (in terms of management control strategies and prerequisites for management) are manifested in these ownership forms. The empirical data is based on structured interviews with managers at 60 workplaces within the service sector and on a questionnaire to all employees working in the participating workplaces, resulting in a set of 1384 individuals. An additional seven interviews with first-line managers within geriatric care were also conducted for the last study. The results show that employees in cooperatives perceived that they had better opportunities to influence decisions concerning the workplace as a whole, although there were also results showing advantages for public and private employees. Regarding opportunities for employees to influence their own work situation, there were no differences between the ownership forms. Differences were found in the prerequisites for first-line geriatric care managers. As a result of an earlier organisational change, the public managers were now further away from the strategic level and had to focus on daily, operative work tasks, while simultaneously also being responsible for keeping within the budget. The private managers, on the other hand, having group leaders to deal with the daily work concerning personnel and operations, could focus more on strategic work related to financial results in terms of planning and follow-up of the budget. One conclusion is that there are certain differences in both psychosocial working conditions and organisational characteristics between the ownership forms, but when the comparisons were restricted to only one type of service, in this case the provision of care, it is rather the similarities within the care organisations, regardless of ownership form, that are most pronounced.

Social enterprises make up one of the groups of participants that provide welfare services financed by public funding. The object of this study is to describe and analyze from a theoretical point of view which conditions, in what fields, by which division of responsibility and finally through what decisions these social enterprises are allocated a place in the market for social welfare services. The company that has been the object of study offers services in the field of social welfare and in employment. In the study a triangulation of qualitative methods has been used: studies of literature on the subject, recurrent interviews and observations and also reviews of documents. The results have been analyzed from theories on the space available on the market for social services, on social economy and on social capital in the form of strong, weak and bridging bonds. The study indicates that it is important to analyze social enterprises by the help of criteria for companies, social enterprises, the characteristics pertaining to the social entrepreneurs, available space on the market, organization, funding, production, political decisions, approval as a participant and finally choices made by patrons. The study also offers a general checklist with criteria that may be used for analysis and the explanation of social enterprises. / Sociala företag är en av de aktörer som levererar välfärdstjänster finansierade med offentliga medel. Syftet med denna studie är att utifrån ett teoretiskt perspektiv beskriva och analysera vilka förutsättningar, på vilka arenor, med vilken ansvarsfördelning och vilka beslut som ger sociala företag utrymme på den sociala välfärdsarenan. Det studerade sociala företaget erbjuder sociala välfärdstjänster och sysselsättning. I studien har en triangulering av kvalitativa metoder använts: litteraturstudier, återkommande intervjuer och observationer samt granskning av dokument. Resultaten har analyserats utifrån teorier om utrymmet på den sociala välfärdsarenan, social ekonomi samt socialt kapital i form av starka, svaga och överbryggande band. Studien visar att det är av vikt att analysera sociala företag med kriterier för företag, sociala företag, egenskaper hos de sociala företagarna, utrymme, arrangemang, finansiering och produktion samt politiska beslut, godkännande som aktör samt kunderna och brukarnas val. En generell checklista med kriterier som kan användas för analys och förklaring av sociala företag har tagits fram i studien.

This thesis describes and analyses in three substudies how home-based measures for children are expanding and why an open care idea are established as part of the Swedish child welfare. The first substudy describes the national increment of what today can be considered as a treatment policy – non-institutional care in child welfare. The results are analysed with Kingdon's agenda setting theory and shows that the factors of what Kingdon describes as problems-, politics- and policyflow influenced the national increment. Significant mechanisms have primarily been, the profession, the society's concerns for socially disadvantaged children, negative experiences of institutionalisation and a political position to deinstitutionalise all care. The second substudy focuses on how knowledge and research contributes to ideological, professional, and organizational change in child welfare by analysis of Research &amp; Developments reports and articles from the professional journal Socionomen. Based on the neo-institutional concepts of organisational fields and isoformism the study's results shows that a consequence of adaptation strategies and "rationalized myths" are a number of similarities in how home-based measures are organized and which measures that are used. The third substudy, a case study, analyses how we can understand a local development of ideas in social services for children with concepts from neo institutional theory. Interviews and municipal documents are analysed and shows that the local translation of an open care idea is characterized by discretion, personal preferences and action and affects the choice of method and organization. The study also shows a political mistrust of institutional care while there is at the same time political confidence in the individual social worker's ability to find solutions that allow non-institutional measures to be an alternative to institutional care. An overall conclusion of the thesis is that there is now a treatment policy in social services for the children, which involves extensive efforts at home and it has led to that more children receive support from social services. One result of non-institutional care increment is that it led to increased costs for municipalities for intervention for children and young people when out-of-home care has not decreased. Another general conclusion is that translation and adaptation of ideas to local contexts is something that generally fits street-level bureaucrats need for discretion.

This thesis describes and analyses in three substudies how home-based measures for children are expanding and why an open care idea are established as part of the Swedish child welfare. The first substudy describes the national increment of what today can be considered as a treatment policy – non-institutional care in child welfare. The results are analysed with Kingdon's agenda setting theory and shows that the factors of what Kingdon describes as problems-, politics- and policyflow influenced the national increment. Significant mechanisms have primarily been, the profession, the society's concerns for socially disadvantaged children, negative experiences of institutionalisation and a political position to deinstitutionalise all care. The second substudy focuses on how knowledge and research contributes to ideological, professional, and organizational change in child welfare by analysis of Research &amp; Developments reports and articles from the professional journal Socionomen. Based on the neo-institutional concepts of organisational fields and isoformism the study's results shows that a consequence of adaptation strategies and "rationalized myths" are a number of similarities in how home-based measures are organized and which measures that are used. The third substudy, a case study, analyses how we can understand a local development of ideas in social services for children with concepts from neo institutional theory. Interviews and municipal documents are analysed and shows that the local translation of an open care idea is characterized by discretion, personal preferences and action and affects the choice of method and organization. The study also shows a political mistrust of institutional care while there is at the same time political confidence in the individual social worker's ability to find solutions that allow non-institutional measures to be an alternative to institutional care. An overall conclusion of the thesis is that there is now a treatment policy in social services for the children, which involves extensive efforts at home and it has led to that more children receive support from social services. One result of non-institutional care increment is that it led to increased costs for municipalities for intervention for children and young people when out-of-home care has not decreased. Another general conclusion is that translation and adaptation of ideas to local contexts is something that generally fits street-level bureaucrats need for discretion.

In 1994 the new democratic South Africa called for the shift in legislation and policies. Social welfare service delivery post-1994 has to be aligned with the principles and key themes of developmental social welfare heralded by the RDP (1994), the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, as well as the Copenhagen Commitments to Social Development (1995). In the social welfare sector, the White Paper for Social Welfare of 1997 was adopted as social welfare policy for South Africa. The White Paper for Social Welfare is embedded in a developmental approach and charted a new path for social welfare in the promotion of national social development. Developmental social welfare is a pro poor strategy which strives to promote a welfare system that facilitates the development of human capacity and self-reliance within a caring and enabling socio-economic environment. The goal of this study was to determine the progress of social welfare service delivery towards a developmental social welfare approach in the Vhembe district, Limpopo. A qualitative research approach was used for this study and the research design was an instrumental case study. The sample for the study was selected purposively and included 28 social workers and four supervisors from four sub-districts in the Vhembe district. Data was collected through four focus group interviews with social workers and one-on-one interviews with the supervisors. Research findings indicate that developmental social welfare service delivery in this district has progressed in terms of protective services to families and children. However, in terms of poverty reduction and sustainable livelihoods, the social service sector still lags behind. The overall conclusion is that the progress of social welfare service delivery towards the developmental approach is slow and unsatisfactory. The recommendations of this study are captured in strategies that social workers could use to promote progress in developmental social welfare service delivery, strategies suggested for supervisors to promote progress in developmental social welfare service delivery, and lastly strategies on the creation of an enabling environment. / Dissertation (MSW)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / tm2015 / Social Work and Criminology / MSW / Unrestricted

The long-awaited Welfare Services Act came in force in 2007. The act is the first act which is based on a free choice of help, a free choice of a type of service and primarily, it stems from a person{\crq}s individuality and their needs. The act defines basic kinds and forms of welfare services and it redounds to the creation of needed room for services transformation focused on their own development. Canistherapy is a kind of zootherapy which can support an individual{\crq}s health and it is based on a mutual interaction between a person and a dog. It makes use of a globally standardized client relations method, it stems from a person{\crq}s individual needs and it can be applied to a wide variety of targeted groups of clients.

Transformation of social service delivery began after 1994 with the establishment of the Reconstruction Development Programme. It was followed by the commitments made in the World Summit on Social Development (Copenhagen, 1995) with the emphasis on sustainable development. The Financing Policy for Developmental Social Welfare Services (1999) was introduced as a transformation tool to implement the White Paper for Social Welfare (1997). The researcher is working as a social worker in Tembisa and discovered in practice that there is little evidence of the transformation of social welfare services as stipulated in the Financing Policy for Developmental Social Welfare Services (1999). This study was part of a team effort among four researchers to investigate the impact of the Financing Policy for Developmental Social Welfare Services (1999) on service delivery in different communities in Gauteng. The aim of the study was to determine the impact of the Financing Policy for Developmental Social Welfare Services (1999) on service delivery in Tembisa from the perspective of service providers. A quantitative research approach was utilized and data was gathered through a questionnaire. From the research findings, it was concluded that, although service providers have made progress with regard to transformation of social services to a developmental approach, many challenges remain with regard to fast tracking this transformation process. Recommendations based on the research findings and conclusions of the study indicated that transformation of social service delivery to a developmental approach depends on clearly defined guidelines to give direction to service providers on how to transform social services to a developmental approach. These guidelines should include training, partnerships, communication forums, monitoring and evaluation and practice of principles for developmental approach. / Dissertation (MSD (Social Policy))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Social Work and Criminology / unrestricted

Sverige har en vision om att digitalisera samtliga delar av den offentliga sektorn, med målet att uppnå en god hälsa och välfärd för hela befolkningen. De verksamheter som allt mer blir föremål för digitalisering är bland annat verksamheter som handlägger ärenden om ekonomiskt bistånd. Syftet med denna undersökning är att försöka få svar på hur digitaliseringen av ansökan om ekonomiskt bistånd påverkar det sociala arbetet och klienterna. För att få svar på detta har vi skickat webbenkäter till 15 olika verksamheter för ekonomiskt bistånd i Sverige. Resultatet visar att handläggarna övervägande ser positivt på den digitala utvecklingen där de menar att handläggningen blivit enklare och mer effektiv. Det framkommer även att handläggarna blivit tilldelade fler klienter än tidigare där tiden med varje enskild klient har minskat. En begränsning som är framträdande gällande digitaliseringen av ansökan är att enskilda som inte har tillgång till de digitala verktyg som krävs blir hänvisade att ansöka via pappersansökan. Våra resultat visar att digitaliseringen kan bidra till ett mer effektivt och för klienterna mer lättillgängligt socialt arbete men som behöver utvecklas för att kunna inkludera alla medborgare i det svenska samhället. / Sweden has a vision of digitizing all domains of the public sector, with a goal of achieving good health and welfare for the entire population. The organizations that are increasingly becoming the subject of digitalization are, among other things, those that deal with financial aid matters. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the digitalization of the application for financial aid affects the social work and its clients. To answer this, we have sent out web surveys to 15 financial aid organizations in Sweden. The results show that the social workers for the most part are positive concerning the digitalization since the application process has become easier and more efficient. The social workers express that they have been assigned more clients than before and that they have gotten less time with each individual client. One prominent limitation regarding the digitalization of the application is when individuals who do not possess the digital tools required to apply have to apply via paper application. Our results show that digitalization can contribute to social work being more efficient and easily accessible for clients. Thus, for it to be accessible for the whole Swedish population more development needs to be done.