To Örebro University

This survey article addresses three questions based on the assumption that significant differences exist between public and private organizations. If this assumption is correct managerial and leadership behavior will differ between public and private managers. Additionally, the propensity to change will also differ between public and private managers. Since a number of studies indicate that managers’ leadership behavior in public organizations differ from that of private managers, difference and similarities in leadership behavior between women and men in public organizations are examined. Three studies are presented here which show that public and private managers have different behavioral patterns of leadership. However, public managers turn out to be more change-oriented than business managers. In the public organizations investigated no differences in leadership behavior between women and men were found.

In 2015 a reform made the national Swedish police even more centralized as a means for improving efficiency and results. This was exactly fifty years after the original nationalization of the police – a reform said to be done in the same spirit of centralizing for efficiency. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and problematize the arguments behind the nationalization in 1965. How and why was the police nationalized and what was the chief political arguments for doing this? The paper also aims to discuss what the meaning of efficiency in policing means politically. 

I rapporten beskrivs, med hjälp av SCB:s betygsstatistik, betygsutfallet för årskurs 9 åren 1990-2017, då tre olika betygssystem varit i bruk (2013-17 ingår även årskurs 6). Tonvikten ligger på att åskådliggöra hur elevernas prestationer i olika ämnen fördelas på de betygssteg som används vid olika tidpunkter. Därigenom synliggörs också hur betygssystemens skilda logiker och språk har betydelse för särskilt de elever som presenterar svagast. Systemen som sådana jämförs således inte, utan enbart hur betygssystemen fördelar alla elevprestationer i åk 9 under 28 års tid. En analys av de politiska ambitionerna bakom olika betygsreformer – vilka problem de ska lösa – ramar in rapporten. En av de mest framträdande slutsatserna är att införandet av ett målrelaterat betygssystem på 1990-talet, med skarp gräns för godkänt, omgående – i kontrast till förväntningarna – medför att en märkbar och över tid påtagligt stabil andel grundskoleelever inte når upp till den godkända nivån. Bytet till en ny skala på 2010-talet innebär härvidlag ingen förändring, vilket också är i linje med den politiska avsikten att låta gränsen för godkänt ligga fast. Under de målrelaterade systemen syns i många ämnen samtidigt en kontinuerlig ökning av andelen elever som får de högsta betygen. De sista åren med ett relativt betygssystem (1990-97) uppvisar, i linje med det systemets logik, en större stabilitet i fördelningen. Vissa ämnesskillnader finns dock under alla tre betygssystemen. 

In Sweden, compulsory school grades determine admission to upper- secondary school. The article maps grading outcomes in compulsory school for 1990–2017, when three different grading scales were used, in terms of students’ distribution across grading steps. Statistics of grades for all Swedish grade 9 students (all school subjects) are used. Contrary to policymakers’ expectations, the results show that a large proportion of students failed to pass compulsory school immediately after a criterion-referenced system with a sharp pass/fail distinction was introduced in the late 1990s. The failure rate has since then remained strikingly constant. Swedish as a second language differs from the main pattern, with a substantially higher failure rate that is increasing over time. This outcome is discussed with reference to grading policy as a matter of social choice.

Authorizing or auditing – national tests as a governing tool

NPM, particularly in the form of output evaluations, have had a large impact on Swedish educational reforms over the past decades. This article focuses on the governing of schools and the professional status of teachers by examining how teachers have experienced the new national tests, introduced in compulsory schools in 2014 in social study subjects. Two ideal types of governing, authorizing and auditing, provide the theoretical framework. The empirical material consists of focus group interviews. The results expose a tension in teacher experience. On the one hand, the teachers feel validated by the tests; on the other, they oppose the questioning of their profession that the tests imply. Trust is a key factor at play. The current way Swedish schools are governed signals a distrust in teachers. At the same time, the teachers display a significant level of trust in the state, combined with a limited professional confidence. This reinforces the status of teaching as a semi-profession. 

This study aimed at investigating the user needs, practices, experiences and challenges faced in promoting transparency and accountability using ICT in low-resource communities. The research was conducted on two ICT4D (Information and Communication Technology for Development) initiatives, a call center, and a telecenter supported by two projects; (1) “Promoting Social Accountability In The Health Sector In Northern Uganda”, (2) “Catalyzing Civic Participation And Democracy Monitoring Using ICTs”. The two projects sought to fight corruption by increasing transparency and accountability using ICT to enable “whistle-blowing,” i.e., reporting misconduct in service provision. The projects are based in Uganda and are carried out by Spider (Swedish Program for ICT in Developing Regions) partner organizations: Transparency International (TI) Uganda and Collaboration International ICT Policy in East and Southern Africa (CIPESA). Using interviews, focus group discussions and observations, the study addressed three research questions: (1) How have the two projects provided citizens a trusted and effective channel for “whistle-blowing”? (2) What are the enabling factors for whistle-blowing through ICT and challenges that affect whistle-blowers and how can the challenges be overcome?

The ICT service-delivery monitoring and reporting methods used by projects include toll free phone calls, blogs, radio talk shows, SMS and e-mail for reaching out; and processes for verification of reports and for communicating reports to government. There are results that indicate these methods are sound enough to serve the purposes of transparency and accountability, and the track record exhibits real change achieved in many instances. ICT users are optimistic and trustful of these ICT methods. Effective whistle-blowing includes efficient and effective reporting processes, convenience in reporting, actual service delivery improvements, availability and privacy, and affordability. There are also a number of challenges, including user education, gender issues, and general issues pertaining to the business model, including economic sustainability and finding the most effective scope of the operations.

The present paper argues that recent research on public sector reforms offers few contributions to the body of knowledge on this topic because it adds little to the conclusions drawn during the first generation of research in this area. Although these later studies have often been context-specific and have explored the details of the process of change in some depth, it is rather difficult to compare their results or to make reasoned judgements of the comprehensiveness and centrality of the analysed change. Although most public sector reforms that affect hospitals, schools or social services are initiated and designed by national governments, individual case studies of local administrations often fail to capture the generic traits of nationwide reforms. However, public sector change cannot be approached as if it comprises collections of nominally independent local events. The present paper argues for two new approaches to the study of public sector change: (i) the systematic categorization of the different forms of governmental intervention under study and (ii) analysis of the ways in which these forms of intervention are linked and interact. Based on extensive empirical research, this paper suggests a generic classification of these forms of intervention that can be used in empirical research on comprehensive public sector change. Consequently, five interventions in public sector organizations are suggested, namely political intervention, intervention by laws and regulations, intervention by audit and inspection, intervention by management and intervention by rationalizing professional practice. The model is particularly well suited to the longitudinal analysis of complex public sector reforms. This approach provides a conceptual tool to distinguish between interventions based on different forms of knowledge and to investigate how they are linked to each other vertically and horizontally. We demonstrate the usefulness of the model by analysing two empirical examples of reforms in which a variety of interventions were imposed at the local level, through legislation as well as a spectrum of voluntary measures proposed by government agencies, by national associations for local and regional councils and by other national or regional actors.

The market-inspired reforms of New Public Management have been particularly pronounced in Swedish local government. Notably, municipally owned enterprises (MOEs) have rapidly grown in numbers. Principal-agent theory gives rise to the hypothesis that the massive introduction of MOEs has impacted negatively on the conditions for accountability in Swedish local government. To study this, social network analysis was employed in mapping networks for 223 MOEs in 11 strategically chosen municipalities, covering a total of 732 politicians. The analysis reveals substantial overlaps between principals (representatives of the ultimate stakeholders, citizens) and agents (the boards of the MOEs). Hence, corporatization of public services seems to imply worrisome entanglements between the politicians who are set to steer, govern, and oversee MOEs on the one hand, and the board members of MOEs on the other. The increasing numbers of MOEs may therefore have adverse effects on accountability in important and growing parts of Swedish local government.

We present a case study in which a decision support method (ADL) was employed by a local government in order to guide and aid decisions on three complicated and politically infected issues which had remained unresolved for many years. The research inquiry was whether a well-defined and openly accessible method would aid a common understanding of the decision problems, and whether people would be able to accept a clearly motivated decision even if politically they preferred a different option. The ADL method has been used in several public sector projects ranging from very large purchasing decisions to the selection of national policies, but this test case was novel in that it involved close inspection by the public. This case was also devised as a test of new methods for potential inclusion into normal practices. The post-case analysis shows mixed understanding of and belief in the method. The results raise issues concerning both the potential for decision support methods in a political context and the nature of political decision making.

I allt större utsträckning införs automatiserat beslutsfattande i offentlig sektor. Det innebär att datorer ersätter handläggare som beslutsfattare. Flera av de ärenden som avgörs med automatiserat beslutsfattande berör medborgarna. Detta kapitel undersöker om medborgarna är medvetna om denna förändring och hur de tror att besluten förändras när datorer ersätter handläggare som beslutsfattare. Resultaten visar att det är en minoritet (20 procent) som har kännedom sedan tidigare om automatiserat beslutsfattande i offentlig sektor. En majoritet tror att besluten förvisso blir mer opartiska när datorer istället för handläggare fattar beslut, men inte att besluten blir mer tillförlitliga. De tror också att automatiska beslut kommer att ta mindre hänsyn till människornas situation och minska insynen i beslutsfattandet. De som har kännedom om automatiserat beslutsfattande är mer positiva när det gäller beslutens opartiskhet och tillförlitlighet, men anser i samma utsträckning som de utan kännedom att besluten medför mindre hänsynstagande till människors situation och minskad insyn i beslutsfattandet.

In this paper, we examine two methods of public participation, namely consensus conference (conférence de citoyens) and public hearing (débat public). While both methods are used in order to involve the public in decision making about science and technology policy, they differ in a number of aspects. Consensus conference seeks the active participation of a selected group of citizens who are expected to elaborate cooperatively a text of recommendations. Public hearing seeks to inform the public and to collect as many reactions by it as possible. In our analysis, we consider the characteristics of these two methods described in the social and political sciences literature as institutional constraints that can play a role in the production of argumentative discourse. We focus our study on the discourse produced in two concrete instances of the application of these participatory methods on the deliberation over the development of nanotechnology in France. More specifically, we study the expression of counter discourse and seek to describe how the participants in the two deliberation processes end up managing the institutional constraints in order to have their criticisms expressed. In this way, we propose a bottom-up approach to the theorization of the role that institutional context plays in the practice of argumentation, and discuss the descriptive adequacy of existing definitions of the deliberative genre within argumentation studies.

The abolishment of the internal border checks and the common procedures at the external bordersfosters the decision-making of the European Union to establish large-scale IT systems in the area of freedom,security and justice. The decrease of the security deficit by the control of immigration flow consists of threeendeavours: the common border control policy, the common visa policy and the common asylum policy. The aimof this paper is to analyse and evaluate the development of the operational management of large-scale IT systemsin the area of freedom, security and justice. The development process of these systems is not more than theirintegration into the so-called IT Agency. This new regulatory agency was established in January 2012. It hasmerged the operational management tasks of the further developed version of SIS (the SIS II), VIS and EURODACand it is flexible to add other existing and potential new systems. Hence, the added-value of the IT Agency is to beassessed, since new technologies shall be harnessed to meet the requirements of enhancing security and facilitatingtravel at the external borders.

In 2005, the Nord Stream Consortium launched a pipeline project with the intention to bring Russian natural gas to Germany across the Baltic Sea. Although this raised crucial issues of Russia-EU-Sweden relations on security, energy and the environment the focus of this report is on the Gotland local government response to the Nord Stream approach, thus illustrating the need for a transversal human geography-political studies perspective. Situated in the heart of the Baltic Sea, and in line with the established Swedish governmental "remiss" procedure of commission and referral for consideration the Gotland authority was requested by the Swedish Government to make a statement about the pipeline. How-ever, before the government was even asked for permission the Nord Stream Consortium with Russian Gazprom as the major shareholder turned to the Gotland authority with an offer they after some conflict-ridden twists and turns, manifested in three policy lines as described in the report, decided not to refuse. A narrative inspired analytical ap-proach is applied to dissect the more or less contradictory standpoints and legitimating arguments posed by the actors in the political process preceding the local authority decision to accept the Nord Stream offer, i.e. the local scale actors were provoked to take a stand on a big issue raised by a huge multinational company. By in detail examining the local political repercussions of the energy project the case study contributes to a trans-disciplinary understanding of multi-scalar/multi-level govern-ance. In an epilogue the report also highlights the sudden turnaround of the local narrative in autumn 2016 when Gotland Regional Authority was on the brink of making a deal with Nord Stream II. The turnaround flashlights the geopolitical position of the island in the crossfire of inter-ests concerning the Baltic Sea Region.

The article describes and reflects upon how multi-level governance and planning in Sweden have been affected by and reacted upon three pending major challenges confronting humanity, namely climate change, migration and the Covid-19 pandemic. These ‘crises’ are broadly considered ‘existential threats’ in need of ‘securitisation’. Causes and adequate reactions are contested, and there are no given solutions how to securitise the perceived threats, neither one by one, no less together. Government securitisation strategies are challenged by counter-securitisation demands, and plaguing vulnerable groups in society by in-securitising predicaments. Taking Sweden as an example the article applies an analytical approach drawing upon strands of securitisation, governance and planning theory. Targeting policy responses to the three perceived crises the intricate relations between government levels, responsibilities, capacities, and actions are scrutinized, including a focus upon the role of planning. Overriding research questions are: How has the governance and planning system – central, regional and local governments - in Sweden responded to the challenges of climate change, migration and Covid-19? What threats were identified? What solutions were proposed? What consequences could be traced? What prospects wait around the corner? Comparing crucial aspects of the crises’ anatomies the article adds to the understanding of the way multilevel, cross-sectional, hybrid governance and planning respond to concurrent crises, thereby also offering clues for action in other geopolitical contexts. The article mainly draws upon recent and ongoing research on manifestations of three cases in the Swedish context. Applying a pragmatic, methodological approach combining elements of securitisation, governance and planning theories with Carol Lee Bacchi’s ‘What is the problem represented to be’ and a touch of interpretive/narrative theory, the study reveals distinct differences between the anatomies of the three crises and their handling. Urgency, extension, state of knowledge/epistemology, governance and planning make different imprints on crises management. Sweden’s long-term climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies imply slow, micro-steps forward based on a combination of social-liberal, ‘circular’ and a touch of ‘green growth’ economies. Migration policy displays a Janus face, on the one hand largely respecting the UN refugee quota system on the other hand applying a detailed regulatory framework causing severe insecurity especially for minor refugees wanting to stay and make their living in Sweden. The Covid-19 outbreak revealed a lack of foresight and eroded/fragmented responsibility causing huge stress upon personnel in elderly and health care and appalling death rates among elderly patients, although governance and planning slowly adapted through securitising policies, leading to potential de-securitisation of the issue. The three crises have caused a security wake-up among governments at all levels and the public in general, and the article concludes by discussing whether this ‘perfect storm’ of crises will result in a farewell to neoliberalism – towards a neo-regulatory state facing further challenges and crises for governance, planning and the role of planners. The tentative prospect rather indicates a mixture of context-dependent ‘hybrid governance’, thus also underlining the crucial role of planners’ role as ‘chameleons’ in complicated governance processes of politics, policy and planning.

I denna rapport förordas att regeringen ska inrätta en varaktig utvecklingsmiljö inom kommittéväsendet. Det skulle ge ytterligare politisk handlingskraft. Avsikten skulle vara att bekä­mpa sådana sektorsövergripande samhällsutmaningar som involverar ett system av aktörer och som visat sig svåra att bemästra genom ordinarie styrning och samverkan. Som exempel kan nämnas punktligheten i järnvägstrafiken eller den fara för patientsäkerheten som uppstår när livsviktiga läkemedel saknas vid landets apotek.

Både i fråga om kvalitet och kostnad kan betydande samhällsekonomiska vinster då hämtas hem. Samtidigt skulle varken utvecklingsmiljön eller de lösningar den frambringar medföra någon belastning på statsbudgeten. Myndigheternas ansvar påverkas inte och deras deltagande skulle inte medföra några juridiska konsekvenser. Inte heller krävs det någon ny mottagarkapacitet eller andra förstärkningar inom Regeringskansliet.

Med en regeringsnära utvecklingsmiljö skulle Sverige ansluta till en lång rad av länder som redan etablerat vad som ofta kallas för labb eller som mera kraftfullt beskrivs som en insatsstyrka.  Poängen är dock inte att tvinga fram eller att styra utformningen av de lösningar som utvecklas, ej heller att ta över ägarskapet.

I utvecklingsmiljön skulle aktörerna få den kvalificerade hjälp de efterfrågar för att gemensamt lösa ut frågor som ”trillat mellan stolarna” och där ansvaret tycks ligga på ”ingen, någon, vemsomhelst eller alla”. Nackdelarna med den annars relativt väl fungerande sektorsindelningen och resultatstyrningen skulle kunna minska. En del av kritiken mot den så kallade stuprörsförvaltningen skulle kunna stillas. 

Idén är inte ny. Andra har tidigare argumenterat för liknande åtgärder. Föreliggande rapport bidrar med en extensiv genomgång av relevant litteratur samt en kartläggning av Regeringskansliets arbetssätt, förmågor och tillkortakommanden. För att undersöka vad myndigheterna själva kan hantera har det även gjorts praktiska försök samt kartlagts vilka förmågor som finns i befintliga svenska utvecklingsmiljöer. 

Försöken och kartläggningarna visar att myndigheternas egna ansvar att samverka räcker långt. Av naturliga skäl saknar de dock uppdrag och mandat att självsvåldigt anpassa och använda andra aktörers resurser i tjänstesystemet. Många myndighetsöverskridande utmaningar blir svåra att åtgärda när inte alla ställer upp. Myndigheternas representanter efterfrågar därför en aktörsneutral arena på regeringens överordnade nivå där de ges vägledning och professionellt stöd. Något sådant stöd har hittills inte kunnat påräknas.

Genom kartläggningen av Regeringskansliets arbetssätt blir det tydligt varför idén om en utvecklingsmiljö inte tidigare har tagits tillvara. Kansliet är helt enkelt utformat för beredning av ärenden och styrning och inte lämpat för praktisk utveckling. 

Förutsättningarna är däremot bättre inom kommittéväsendet. Där skulle den efterfrågade miljön kunna inrättas utan en bortre tidsgräns, som fallet varit med Expertgruppen för Studier i Offentlig ekonomi (ESO).

Kommittéväsendets relativa närhet till regeringen gör att de aktörer som bjuds in till miljön sannolikt kommer att vilja delta. Genom att låta uppdragen tilldelas av Statsrådsberedningen skulle även många av de oavsiktliga hinder kunna undanröjas som följer av att styrningen är sektorsindelad och primärt inte avsedd för gränsöverskridande frågor.

The public sector is becoming increasingly complex. As complexity leadership theory has been formulated in order to understand leadership in such a context, it thus seems appropriate that it should inform public leadership research. However, the applicability of complexity leadership theory and the concomitant adaptive leadership practices have thus far been underexplored empirically in a public sector context. To address this omission, this article uses a qualitative case study to exemplify how adaptive leadership practices may manifest themselves in a public sector context. The article’s findings indicate that adaptive leadership practices that reduce, rather than induce, tension within the dynamics of actors’ interactions may be a more viable route to handle challenges within a public sector context. Future research could beneficially pay greater attention to the public sector context when studying how adaptive leadership practices might manifest themselves in public sector organizations, as well as when assessing the merits of complexity leadership theory in informing public leadership.

This paper reports and analyses a case where a Decision Support System (DSS) was used in a local government for the purpose of arriving at a decision on a complicated and politically infected issue the City Council despite years of effort had failed to sort out. It was assumed that a strict and open method would make the grounds for the decision clearer, and that people would accept a clearly motivated decision even though they personally preferred another solution. The project was also intended as a test of new methods for potential adoption into normal practices. The analysis shows mixed understanding of, and mixed belief in, the method. While generally happy with the project work, also this time the Council failed to make a decision as constituency concerns eventually overruled the rationality of the arguments in the decision making council. The case raises issues of both the potential for DSS in a political context and the nature of political decision making. In particular we conclude that DSS use has to be carefully crafted but swiftly executed, and more than a one-off effort as a change process is involved.

The ‘Electronic Highway’ is most often discussed as a network of computers and cables, but it is also a service infrastructure and as a new communication medium bringing individuals and organizations together in new ways. Public Computer Systems (PCS), computers employed as an interface between organizations and their clients, are discussed as actors in client-organization relations in terms of the nature of the service delivered, the focus in terms of activities in the business process, role changes on part of professionals and clients, and the communicational style of the systems. It is concluded that PCS are not just information delivery machines, but also actors in a dialogue. Different designs of PCS will lead to the action space on part of the human actors changing in different ways.

"Public Computer Systems" (PCSs) are systems used in client-organisation encounters. The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for discussing PCSs as tools in client-organisation communication.

To that end, a three-level analysis scheme for client-organisation encounters (COEs) and the potential role of PCSs as change agents for those encounters is suggested; the object level, discussing the elements of COEs, the functional level, discussing the role of PCSs as a tool for achieving changes in the functionality of the client-organisation interface, and the strategic level, discussing COE paradigms.

It is concluded that PCSs provide an important new focus for IS studies because they may be used to design new social fora and make for changed roles of clients and professionals, thus affecting the terms of the societal dialogue. It is suggested that the public sector has a special responsibility for this dialogue, and that therefore strategic level analysis, largely ignored so far, should be added to the agenda of public sector information system issues.

This article assesses the maturity of the e-government (e-gov) field by examining the nature of 170 papers published at three major e-gov conferences using a straightforward maturity model. Papers were examined mainly for rigor but, to some extent, also for relevance. It was found that theory generation and theory testing are not frequent, while case stories (no theory, no structured data collection) and product descriptions (no analysis or test) are. Also, claims beyond what is reasonable, given the method used, are frequent. As for relevance, only a few of the cases where theories are either tested or generated concern the role and nature of government and governance; most concern general organizational issues that could well find a place within traditional IS conferences. On the positive side, involvement of various pertinent disciplines appears relevant, and global outreach goes far beyond the Atlantic shores. It is concluded that e-gov conferences need to address quality criteria, both rigor- and relevance-oriented, if e-gov is to develop into a mature research field.

This paper follows up on an earlier study [1] by assessing the nature of 80 papers from EGOV 05 in terms of rigor and relevance criteria. Both studies use the same method and makes comparison between the results. We find that however still focusing overwhelmingly on descriptions and little on theory testing and creation, paper quality appears much better in that references to literature have increased grossly, there are very few dubious claims, philosophical research and theoretical arguments are virtually extinct, and the number of case stories is vastly reduced. However, the number of product descriptions is more than doubled to just over 30 %. The reasons for this are discussed, and as most of these papers are based on EU research funding we propose that an important reason may be the funding mechanism where researchers are employed as helpers in product development rather than critical scrutiny and analysis.