In her thesis, Pernilla Danielsson examines the conditions for user-oriented work in the welfare sector and why it so often remains at the level of ambition rather than leading to real change.
“User-centred approaches often remain superficial. If you want to do it properly, it is not enough to have committed staff on the front line; the whole organisation must be on board, from operational staff to management and the political level,” says Pernilla Danielsson.
The defence will take place on April 24, at Campus Helsingborg. Faculty opponent is Professor Per Skålén Service Research Center, Karlstad University Business School.
Abstract
In today’s welfare services, how the user is viewed has increasingly been shifting away from a passive recipient towards an active participant in value creation. This shift is reflected in policy reforms, organisational strategies, and academic discourse, with all of these placing a growing emphasis on user orientation. Within the theoretical framework of Public Service Logic (PSL), user orientation is presented as a way of enhancing value creation through closer engagement with users and the more integrated use of resources. Despite these aims, less is known about how such intentions are understood and enacted in everyday welfare practices, and under which organisational conditions they can be sustained. This thesis examines the organisational challenges entailed by user orientation in Swedish welfare services, based on PSL. The thesis consists of five articles drawing on qualitative and quantitative studies of Swedish welfare services.
The results show that professionals express a strong motivation to engage with their users, but that recurring organisational barriers are collectively creating a situation in which they only have limited organisational scope to act on that motivation. User orientation remains conditional and uneven rather than developing into an integrated and enduring professional orientation. Unless issues such as the early termination of exploration, limited opportunities for professional skills development, obscured value, and individualised responsibility are addressed as barriers, user orientation will likely persist as a superficial and reactive practice rather than becoming a long-term orientation in welfare services. Using a multi-level analytical perspective, the thesis demonstrates that user orientation spans organisational levels, roles, and responsibilities beyond frontline practice. In conclusion, this thesis argues that numerous organisational challenges must be addressed in order to support user orientation in practice.
Read the thesis in the Lund University research portal.
