| Keywords | Marknadisering, professionalisering, anställningsbarhet, granskning, new public management, delaktighet, arbetslivsfrågor, policyanalys., marketization, professionalization, employability, auditing, new public management, participation, work life issues, policy analysis. |
| The research project is a collaboration between the School of Public Administration, University of Gothenburg and the Department of Nursing, Health and Culture, University West. The purpose of the thesis is to study the interaction between participative and health promoting work, and the characteristics of the contemporary swedish working life. Important areas of research in public administration are the ideas about the causes of unemployment today, as well as the methods presented as efficient, innovative and thus desirable for the modern state to implement.
The research project is focused on how the policy term employability has been considered during the period when the Swedish Public Employment Service has collaborated with private enterprises. As an empirical example I have chosen to study job coaching and the effect in terms of employability this measure has had.
The thesis is based on a discourse analytical framework, inspired by institutional ethnography. From this perspective employability can be seen as a concept that is given meaning and significance in relation to trends like management by objectives and auditing as well as the changing relationships between citizens and experts that have characterized public administration in recent years. The private enterprises are often described as innovative and effective enablers of the self-management of job seeking, while the image of them as exercisers of authority "at a distance" emerges.
In the thesis I analyze how a supposedly innovative method as coaching rhetorically has meant a shift from control to self-control of the job seekers. This has given the concept of employability partly new meanings.
Supervisors:
Stig Montin, School of Public Administration, University of Gothenburg
Carina Kullberg, Department of Nursing, Health and Culture, University West |