Work ability - a study of organisational boundaries and street-level bureaucrat´s assessments

Research problem and specific questionsThe overall aim of the project is two-folded.

First: to explore the degree of coherence between the Public Employment Services (PES) and municipalities when assessing social assistance recipient’s work capacity, analysing differences in coherence between municipalities, and assessing what characterise clients that authorities disagree upon.

Second: to increase the knowledge of processes on organisational and case worker level that affect work capacity assessment of social assistance recipients, including aspects such as organisational culture, regulations as well as case worker´s educational background and work experiences.

The project contributes to previous research, which acknowledge a problematic gap in coherence of assessment, by (i) quantitatively assess the gap, (ii) analysing what clients that are affected, and (iii) analysing what processes that generates the gap.Data and methodThe project includes three work packages.

The first investigates degree of coherence between the PES and the municipalities by quantitatively analysing register data.

The second is a quantitative vignette experiment where officers at the PES and the municipalities assess work capacity of fictional clients.

The third work package is a qualitative comparative case study including focus group interviews with PES-officers and social assistance officers operating in 3-5 municipalities.Societal relevance and utilisationThe project responds to the societal need to offer unemployed well-planned and structured labour market policies.

The findings can be used to support organisational development aimed at offering unemployed people a coherent line of service from national as well as municipal organisations, and to clarify the division of labour between these organisations.Plan for project realisationThe project begins with the register study, proceeds with the vignette experiment and is ended with the qualitative case study.

The three work packages are linked through partly overlapping case selection, overlapping client characteristic selection, and by grounding the last work package in the findings of the previous two.

The bulk of the budget funds the researcher’s salaries and collection of data which is necessary to carry out the project.

The budget also secures both scientific and practical impact through open access publishing, conferences and advisory board meetings