Audit Culture and the Case Worker: A Study of the Public Employment Service and the Social Insurance Agency
This project studies the organizational governance of caseworkers in the Swedish Public Employment Service and the Swedish Social Insurance Agency, focusing in particular on audit culture and what it does to the organization and the individual in the organization. What are the implications of these forms of governance for the caseworkers and their experiences at work? The project combines different data sources, such as interviews with management at all levels in the two agencies and with caseworkers in several local offices, policy documents and organizational routines, in combination with ethnographic observations by shadowing caseworkers in their daily work (excluding direct client encounters). Comparing the two agencies also enables us to see if and how audit culture plays out differently in different welfare bureaucracies
This project aims to study and compare audit culture and its implications for caseworkers in the Swedish Public Employment Service (PES) and the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (SSIA). This includes:
1) to study and compare the current system of governance and monitoring of the two agencies (from political decisions and steering of the agencies, organizational policies and technologies down to the governance and control of the individual caseworker);
2) to investigate the implications of these forms of governance for the individual caseworker, her professional role and identity as well as her emotional experiences and management.
The project combines theories on organizational governance with theories on the self-governance of individuals, including theories on emotion management in organizations. Empirically, the project combines different data sources, such as interviews with management at all levels in the two agencies and with caseworkers in one local office, policy documents and mapping of policy and monitoring technologies, staff training material, organizational routines, in combination with ethnographic observations by shadowing caseworkers in their daily work (excluding direct client encounters). The project explores what audit culture does to the organization and to the individual in the organization. Comparing the two agencies also enables us to see if audit culture plays out differently in different welfare bureaucracies and if so, why.
Project members
Kerstin Jacobsson (project leader), professor in Sociologi, University of Gothenburg
Christina Garsten, professor in Social Anthropology , University of Stockholm
Håkan Johansson, professor in Social Work, Lund University
Katarina Hollertz, senior lecturer, in Social Work, University of Gothenburg
Ida Seing, senior lecturer, Division of Education and Sociology (APS), Linköping University
Ylva Wallinder, PhD in Sociology, University of Gothenburg