Lena Högberg
Research Fellow
https://liu.se/en/employee/lenan50
Finished Projects
Reorganization of the Public Sector
This project aims at describing and analysing the reorganization of the Swedish public sector from ethnic, gender and age perspectives. The Swedish public sector is in a process of transformation. The current changes are often in line with the international New Public Management trend. As the welfare services in Sweden are an obligation to the 290 municipalities, empirical studies have to be conducted on the local level. Improved democracy in terms of freedom of choice to the citizens, increased diversity in services available, lower costs for the local community, and development of new markets are often the aspired goals from the promoters of the changes. These new markets are expected to encourage local entrepreneurs and especially former employees. As women are overrepresented among the employees, the new strategies are expected to be very positive for women and, due to an assumed demand from the clients, for ‘ethnic specialists’. This means that the reorganization might entail new possibilities for entrepreneurs with a business profile different from ‘the mainstream entrepreneur’ but to this point we find a domination of large organizations rather than small.