Towards a Multi‐level Approach on Frontline Interactions in the Public Sector: Institutional Transformations and the Dynamics of Real‐time Interactions

This study develops a multi‐level approach on frontline interactions in the public sector. Previous research suggests that detailed analyses of frontline interactions are essential to our understanding of how welfare services take shape when policies and rules are applied and negotiated in individual cases. The dynamics and performances of real‐time interactions have, however, rarely been analyzed as such. This study shows how the methods developed in the field of Conversation Analysis can contribute to this research. Our multi‐level approach integrates analyses of the policy‐ and institutional transformations that shape conditions for frontline interactions; and analyses of how policies and rules are evoked, negotiated and reshaped in the turn‐by‐turn organization and performances of interaction. The approach is applied on an analysis of how rules regarding financial aid are applied in an authority highly affected by changes in welfare policy towards standardization and detailed regulations. The empirical case is the Swedish Board for Study Support. The empirical study includes analyses of documents, interviews and analyses of taped telephone conversations. The study shows how institutional arrangements of standardization, detailed regulations, monitoring and depersonalization, structure the frontline work and shape narrow frames for officials' discretion in interactions with clients. The study also shows how rules are invoked and negotiated in recurrent practices in the interaction: in the careful design of decisions; in the investigations of alternatives and exceptions from the rules in order to find solutions to the client's problems. The analyses of concrete interactional practices clearly indicate that also a rule‐governed work dominated by task discretion involves recurrent negotiations, flexibility and local policy‐making.     

Governance,Accountability, and Organizational Development: Eldercare Unit Managers’ and Local Politicians’ Experiences of and Responses to State Supervision of Swedish Eldercare

This article explores how local politicians and care unit managers in Swedish eldercare experience and respond to state supervision (SSV). Twelve politicians and twelve managers in 15 previously inspected municipalities were interviewed about their experiences of and reactions to SSV in relation to their views of care quality and routines in eldercare practice. The findings indicate that local managers and political chairs perceived SSV in eldercare positively at a superficial level but were critical of and disappointed with specific aspects of it. In terms of (a) governance, chairs and managers said SSV strengthened implementation of national policies via local actors, but they were critical of SSV’s narrow focus on control and flaws in eldercare practice. With regard to (b) accountability, SSV was seen as limited to accountability for finances and systemic performance, and regarding (c) organizational development, SSV was seen as limited to improving routines and compliance with legislation, while local definitions of quality are broader than that. In general, local actors regarded SSV as improving administrative aspects and routines in practice but ignoring the relational content of eldercare quality.     

Windows to the Soul? Deliberate Eye Contact as a Cue to Deceit

Although people overwhelmingly believe that liars avoid eye contact, meta-analyses of deception literature have shown a non-significant relationship between gaze and deception. In the present experiment we measured eye movements in an innovative way. We coded the extent to which interviewees deliberately made eye contact with the interviewer. Liars take their credibility less for granted than truth tellers. They therefore may have a greater desire to be convincing and hence more inclined to monitor the interviewer to determine whether they seem to be being believed. We therefore hypothesized that liars would give more appearance of deliberately making eye contact than truth tellers (a relationship which opposes the stereotypical belief that liars look away). A total of 338 passengers at an international airport told the truth or lied about their forthcoming trip. As well as the deliberate eye contact variable, we coded the amount of time the interviewees looked away from the interviewer (e.g., gaze aversion), which is typically examined in deception research. Liars displayed more deliberate eye contact than truth tellers, whereas the amount of gaze aversion did not differ between truth tellers and liars.     

“Too Weird for Banknotes”: Legitimacy and Identity in the Production of Danish Banknotes 1947–2007

In this article I argue that questions of banknote design are closely related to ideas of the national collective. Using the Danish banknote design competitions from 1947 to 2007 as an exemplary case I show how the Danish central bank, Nationalbanken, continuously sought to balance banknote iconography between different and evolving perceptions of the national community in an attempt to underpin the legitimacy and authority of Danish banknotes. I suggest that concepts from institutional theory can explain this equipoise relationship and I argue that banknote designers need to somehow reconcile conflicting ideas about the national community. As such, this article contributes to a more detailed understanding of the considerations and challenges facing banknote‐issuing authorities.     

‘Blowing up the pylon’: the limitations to Lacanism in organization studies,seen from the perspective of Deleuze and Guattari

We critically engage with the Lacanian notions of fantasy and lack through an understanding of desire as ontologically productive. The introduction of the Lacanian psychoanalytic notions of fantasy and lack into organizational studies has helped to widen the understanding of the mechanism that makes employees desire the idealized images of identity provided by the organizations for which they work. Our claim is that Deleuze’s and Guattari’s conception of desire as productive contributes to the understanding of the role that desire plays in producing and organizing the social setting in which such fantasies and a sense of lack emerge in the first place. Furthermore, we argue that Deleuze and Guattari can help point to the inherent danger of Lacanism’s blunting its own analytical and critical potential when trying to understand such social settings.     

Bayes Estimates for the Price and Income Elasticities of Alcoholic Beverages in Finland From 1955 to 1980

The Lindley–Smith theory of Bayes estimates for multiple regression equations with exchangeability between the regression coefficients of the individual equations is extended to the case in which a first-order autoregressive process generates the regression coefficients. The ensuing formulas are applied to study monthly Finnish consumption of alcohol. The point of this application is that exchangeability between the regression coefficients is less than we can assess beforehand when there is a natural ordering, in this case according to chronological time, of the equations. Still, the general task of the Lindley–Smith estimators, to consider the combined data when estimating individual regression coefficients, is a relevant one.     

Ecologies of Boundaries: Modes of Boundary Work in Professional Proto‐Jurisdictions

Ecological approaches to professional work, authority, and regulation have seen a resurgence in the sociology of professions, as epitomized in the linked ecologies framework of Andrew Abbott. Alongside this resurgence comes a renewed attention to the way symbolic and material boundaries within and between professions, as well as between professional, university, and political institutions, come to be defined, negotiated, and changed as part of ongoing professional projects. Building on and comparing case studies set in Denmark into three emerging professional “proto‐jurisdictions”—of water‐related climate adaptation, lifestyle disease prevention, and innovation management—this article identifies three key modes of interprofessional boundary work important for such projects. In doing so, it grounds Abbott's meso‐level framework of linked ecologies in more situated accounts of workplace‐level boundary interaction, by reconnecting to a wider tradition of symbolic interactionist studies of professions.     

The will to sanction: How sensitive are caseworkers to recipients’ responsibility when imposing sanctions on non-compliance in a welfare-to-work programme?

The activation trend in social policy entails that caseworkers on the frontlines of the welfare state are expected to decide ‘reasonable’ activation requirements for clients and when and how non-compliance should be sanctioned. This study investigates how caseworkers form judgements about their clients’ personal responsibility when activation requirements are violated and how their judgements about responsibility matter for the sanctions they impose. We find that caseworkers are sensitive to personal responsibility, varying the motivation for not fulfilling the activation requirement from a case where the client has less control (circumstances) to one with more control (choice) more than doubles sanctions.     

Measurement errors in survey questions: Explaining response variability

In this paper, the response variability in questions from the Swedish Survey of Living Conditions, is studied. A multivariate study of the variation over questions has been done. This study uses questions as statistical units. The questions have been classified in a number of respects, dealing with question character and structure, what the questions ask about and what they require from the interviewee. The study shows that a substantial part of the response variability, i.e., the variation in reliability, can be explained by a few characteristics of the questions.     

High-risk families: the unequal distribution of infant mortality in nineteenth-century Sweden

An analysis of infant mortality (based on 133,448 births) in two regions, Sundsvall and Skellefte?, in north-eastern Sweden during the nineteenth century shows that infant mortality was highly clustered with a relatively small number of families accounting for a large proportion of all infant deaths. Using logistic regression, two important factors were found to be associated with high-risk families: (i) a biological component evidenced by an over-representation of women who had experienced stillbirths, and (ii) a social component indicated by an increased risk among women who had remarried. The results strengthen the argument for using the family rather than the single child as the unit of analysis. The clustering of infant deaths points to the need to re-evaluate our interpretations of the causes of infant mortality in the past.