Browsing by Subject "selviytymismekanismit"

This master’s thesis focuses on the coping behavior of the officials in employment offices during the implementation of activation model. Based on the theory of street-level bureaucrats by Michael Lipsky and a synthesis from a categorization of coping mechanisms by Lars Tummers and his colleagues and Evert Vedung, aims the thesis att identifying the coping behavior of the officials in the job centers. A complementary explanatory analysis of the effect of contextual factors on coping is carried out based on previous research. Due to the fact that Lipsky has identified a discrepancy between official policy and executed policy, it is of importance to focus on coping behavior of officials in employment offices in order to understand the underlying causes. A qualitative content analysis was carried out in order to analyze the survey of the experiences of the officials in job centers. Material for analysis consisted of three open questions directed to the job center officials. Questions focused on the effects of activation model on the activities of employment offices and on the personnel’s opinions about the model. Questions were divided in coding units where every distinct response equalled a unit. The coding scheme was created based on the categorizations of Tummers et al. and Vedung. As a result of the analysis four coping mechanisms were identified: prioritizing among clients, routinizing, rationing and rigid rule following. The prevalence of routinizing was remarkably greatest in the material, and the tree other mechanism were clearly more rare. The complementary explanatory analysis of the effect of contextual factors’ effect on coping demonstrated that prioritizing was caused by an external performance regime and a high working pressure. The prevalence of rationing could be explained by an external performance regime, even though former research had indicated that rationing is a product of an interplay between high autonomy and external performance regime. There was found signs that routinizing could have been a cause of steering which diminishes the discretion of officials by standardizing the modes of operation on job centers. Rigid rule following could be explained in terms of an increased working pressure and an emphasis on effectivity. This behavior showed to go against the mode of operation which the officials considered to be desirable. The examination proves that the officials used coping mechanisms in order to cope with the stressful circumstances that the activation model had created. However, the analysis of the effect of contextual factors on coping behavior should be complemented by statistical analyses with which the causalities between variables can be proven more unequivocally. Furthermore, a future research could focus on explaining the effect of contextual factors on a kind of coping behavior which prevalence have not yet been studied in the light of the context.