Doctoral Theses / Doktorsavhandlingar Förvaltningshögskolanhttps://hdl.handle.net/2077/98232024-03-19T02:24:21Z2024-03-19T02:24:21ZEn berättelse om att (få) vara kvar- En studie i att skapa utrymme för samverkansuppdrag i offentlig sektorHellgren, Hannahttps://hdl.handle.net/2077/791842024-01-22T21:01:11Z2024-01-22T00:00:00ZEn berättelse om att (få) vara kvar- En studie i att skapa utrymme för samverkansuppdrag i offentlig sektor
Hellgren, Hanna
This thesis explores the intricacies of novel collaboration among diverse actors working towards
the common goal of organizing labor market integration for foreign-born individuals. The research endeavors
to understand how novel collaborations emerges and stabilizes within the public sector spotlighting the
collaborative practices that develops during this evolution.
Taking inspiration from Czarniawska's framework, which accentuates the translation of ideas into
practice with the interplay of time and space this study employs this framework to create understanding for
the multifaceted dynamics of collaboration, identity construction, and legitimacy within the context of
collaboration for labour market integration. It unveils how collaborative endeavors not only address
immediate challenges but also form the very essence and character of the undertaken missions. By focusing
on actions and patterns of actions, the study unveils how these initiatives emerge and stabilize within the
public sector. Expanding upon these insights, it underscores the significance of the practices that emerge and
their role in sustaining these missions and ensuring their continued existence. These practices, encompassing
mobilization, recruitment, and negotiation, collectively constitute what this study terms "space-creating
collaborative practices."
The study also probes into why specific missions and collaborative practices endure over time, drawing
from the identified “spatial-creating collaborative practices” and the efforts expended to guarantee their
persistence—referred to in this study as "Spatiotemporal work." Ultimately, the study concludes that these
endeavors attribute identity and sufficient legitimacy upon the initiatives, granting them the resilience to
endure. This unveils that persistence to endure does not hinge solely on the formation of a formal organization
or a fixed position within a predefined organizational structure. It can also manifest as the perpetuation of
practices, conceptual frameworks, or the emergence as a central actor in addressing particular questions.
Furthermore, the study underscores how ambiguities in mission formulations stimulate openness to change.
Initiatives persist but not always in their original form or with identical objectives due to often broadly
outlined missions, affording room for interpretation and adaptation during the process of organizing the tasks
at hand. In summary, this study offers valuable insights into the intricate realm of novel collaborative
endeavors within the public sector. It underscores the dynamics of relations in the emergence of collaborative
practices and how it can lead to enduring collaborative spaces beyond the ideas of organizations and
structures, but also how these evolve in tandem with the ambitions and interests of collaborative actors causing
changes from the original ideas in the missions.
2024-01-22T00:00:00ZDesirable Victims: Systems of Refugee Selection in Swedish and Canadian Migration GoverningAsplén Lundstedt, Andreashttps://hdl.handle.net/2077/792592024-01-09T21:02:43Z2024-01-09T00:00:00ZDesirable Victims: Systems of Refugee Selection in Swedish and Canadian Migration Governing
Asplén Lundstedt, Andreas
This thesis explores how states try to govern refugee migration by classifying and ordering its subjects. It argues that a unifying construct of state migration control is selection: to maintain a system that offers protection to wanted people and keeps out unwanted people. This in turn requires an administrative machinery which efficiently renders people as cases. While the Refugee Convention provides a baseline definition of what a refugee is, there is widespread variation in its application across countries. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in classification in migration studies, but the dominant theories on migration control tend to assume that ”refugee” is a neutral construct. This study challenges that assumption by seeing refugeehood as a status which comes about through its regulation. Its aim is to contribute to theoretical development on how states make refugees governable through classification and contribute to a better understanding of how people processing differ across countries. This is conducted through a comparative case study of Sweden and Canada. The thesis builds a framework from historical institutionalist theory and writings on government classification to study classification systems as institutions. The data consists of documentary and archival material left by policymakers, officials, and administrative courts. The study is divided into two parts. Part I, set in the mid-1960’s to the early 1990’s, details the historical origins and institutionalization of a new type of migration governing, which centered on the idea of actively molding migration through making its subjects administratively legible. Part II studies the judicialization of migration control by unpacking the contemporary application of these control systems in administrative courts. This part questions the widely held hypothesis that courts protect migrant rights. Here, it is compared how Canadian and Swedish courts assess individuals from Afghanistan during the 2000’s, where issues such as age and nationality are made governable through law. The study makes contributions to both migration studies and public administration and policy. The results show how similar regulatory frameworks for processing refugees in Sweden and Canada were animated by enduring differences in immigration tradition, welfare models and administrative-legal traditions. This in turn gave rise to different moral vocabularies of what deserving refugee is. The result also show how enduring legal traditions lead to judicialization having different implications in different contexts. The conclusions point to how the sorting of people for purposes of governing over them has increasingly moved from a means to an end in itself. This implies a shift from an ideal of control as the flexible choosing of deserving victims, to one of control as the precise sorting of people into rigid legal frameworks. The concluding discussion outlines future avenues of research into comparative people processing.
2024-01-09T00:00:00ZProjects as interaction in context: Managing public health issues within public sector organisationsSöderberg, Erikhttps://hdl.handle.net/2077/760192023-10-06T11:51:34Z2023-05-15T00:00:00ZProjects as interaction in context: Managing public health issues within public sector organisations
Söderberg, Erik
The increasing use of projects has been one of the most important developments in the public sector over the past decades. In tandem with the proliferation of projects, the traditional view of projects as demarcated from their environment using the four concepts of task, time, team and transition has, without attracting much attention, also trickled down to public sector organisations. This traditional view may be suitable for projects in an industrial or commercial context, where they are often designed for well-defined problems and in order to deliver a technical installation. However, public sector projects are often more value-driven, with the aim of creating ideological change. An ex-ample of this is public health initiatives to promote physical activity and healthy eating habits. The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the understanding of value-driven public sector projects by focusing on what characterises the interaction between a value-driven project and local public sector organisations in developing and embedding public health issues into everyday organising.
Different theoretical concepts have been used in the thesis’s four papers to understand what characterises the interaction between a public health project and two local public sector organisations. Paper I uses the theoretical frame-work of Multiple Streams Theory to analyse the policy process, following the project´s task. In Paper II and Paper III, boundary work is used to analyse the interaction between temporary and permanent organising. Paper II focuses on the interaction at the local level, at schools, while Paper III focuses on the project team´s boundary work in different arenas. In Paper IV, the concept of frame is used to study how the policy was implemented. The field material consists of interviews, observations, field note documentation from meetings and activities, as well as textual documents illustrating the course of the project at different organisational levels during the three years.
The papers’ findings demonstrate how important it is that value-driven projects in a public sector context are continuously engaged in interactions throughout the entire project as a way to achieve transition. This is in contrast to trying to demarcate projects in relation to the surrounding environment, and developing and embedding results at the end of the project. This leads to the conclusion that transition, instead of constituting a single concept, is also an important mean within the concepts of task, time and team. In fact, the results of the papers show how transition, through interactions between actors in the project organisation and actors in organisations involved, occurs through each of the three concepts of task, time and team. This perspective on creating transition by means of value-driven public sector projects requires another view of projects in interaction with their context, which can be an important consideration when planning and managing projects.
2023-05-15T00:00:00ZPlanering på gränsen och gränsen för planering - En studie av gränsöverskridande samhällsplaneringErnits, Heitihttps://hdl.handle.net/2077/756342023-10-06T12:47:56Z2023-04-27T00:00:00ZPlanering på gränsen och gränsen för planering - En studie av gränsöverskridande samhällsplanering
Ernits, Heiti
This exploratory thesis aims to describe and analyze how boundaries emerge, affect planning
practices, and how boundaries are managed over time in order to achieve integrated planning
processes. This thesis is particularly interested in how the interplay between boundary-spanning
and boundary-crossing activities in relation to the organization of strategic spatial planning can be
understood from an institutional perspective. The overall research question was sub-divided into
three further research questions: How do boundaries emerge, and how are they managed, when
planning is organized? What boundary arrangements emerge over time for the managing of
boundaries? How can the choice of boundary arrangement be understood in relation to
institutional orders?
The thesis involves a case study of two urban planning projects and an organizational planning
reform. Using a qualitative research approach, empirical data were collected through participant
observations when planners collaborated, shadowing planners in their work environment,
conducting semi-structured interviews with planners, hosting focus group discussions, and
analyzing relevant documents.
The findings of the present study demonstrate that planners face multiple challenges related to
boundaries, which in turn encourages continuous transformation processes. Negotiations are
revealed to play a crucial role in managing and modifying boundaries. More specifically, different
and conflicting views on how boundaries should be drawn and desired characteristics of the
boundaries converge in negotiation processes. Drawing on the institutional theoretical framework
of the study, the organizing principles of egalitarianism and hierarchy are positioned in
opposition to one another. Negotiations ultimately result in an egalitarian approach to boundary
management, which involves preserving formal boundaries and organizing planning work across
boundaries. An informal planning organization emerges alongside the formal planning
organization, and specific boundary arrangements and approaches to organize collective action in
a polycentric planning environment become institutionalized. This development, however, gives
rise to new problematic boundaries between the formal and informal planning organization,
which in turn leads to further negotiation and incremental changes to boundary arrangements
and planning practices.
2023-04-27T00:00:00Z