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In this paper, we investigate how public organizations, through their senior managers, perceive media-related activities and to what extent these perceptions support the existence of a ‘media logic.’ We interviewed 64 managers from 40 Swedish government agencies and compared their perceptions related to media with their perceptions related to the corporate logic, which has become vital in public sector contexts. The findings reveal that media and media-oriented activities are understood as contextual, contingent, and driven by individual events. In contrast to the understandings of management and strategy (i.e. corporate logic), which was much more coherent, universal, and aligned to sectoral conditions. Accordingly, media are generally more open for interpretations, local adaptations, and contextualization, making it difficult to provide clear-cut answers to what media means for public organizations. Our study suggests that public managers understand media in a manner that challenges the media logic rationale. We also challenge an institutional logic argument that institutional structures surrounding public organizations are, in general, to be seen as open for strategic responses. Our results point in another direction. The way managers understand different institutional structures, such as those associated with media, are, to a much greater extent, characterized by uncertainty linked to a lack of necessary knowledge about what constitutes the underlying qualities of the structures at hand; and by ambiguity about what meanings to mobilize and follow when institutional structures are to be introduced into specific organizational contexts.

In this conceptual paper, we discuss how collegiality as a governing form in contemporary universities is challenged in its ability to influence organizational control over—and responsibility for—teaching and research. In particular, we examine how contemporary organizational conditions, beyond mere formal structures, might limit the space within which collegiality remains relevant, and how these conditions undermine the very academic practices it aims to serve. We suggest two different processes of ‘decollegialization’ of higher education and research that, as we see them, jointly redefine collegiality as a governing form: colonization and adulteration.

We approach field-configuring events (FCEs) as gatherings that engender formative moments in the trajectory of technologies, professions, or industries. Previous research has focused on the field-level consequences of FCEs, implying we still know little about how these events are produced and sustained. Our aim in this paper is concomitantly to theorize the particular role of prizes as elements that help produce and sustain FCEs. Drawing on a qualitative case study of awards allocated at the 2018 Gothenburg Book Fair, we show how prize givers arduously attempt to raise issues and celebrate accomplishments in ways that are packaged for dissemination through media outlets. And these awards generate occasional visibility for prize givers and – by extension – for event organizers. Our paper contributes by highlighting how FCEs and prizes co-construct each other, and how such co- construction regularly unfolds in relation to a media logic that favors simplification and standardization.

This book is a dedication to Kerstin Sahlin, delving into the world of ideas and tracing their journey through the realms of science, higher education, and society. With collective efforts of Kerstin’s colleagues and friends, the book explores the multifaceted aspects of dominant ideas in science and higher education, unraveling their global trends and pro-found influences on universities and beyond. Structured into four comprehensive themes – critical remarks on global trends shaping universities and academic institutions; exploration of intricate relationships between the sciences and society; collegiality and governance of academic institutions; and the impact of global ideas in the public sector – the volume echoes Kerstin’s pioneering research on the translation, editing, and dissemination of popular ideas and management concepts. It also showcases her recent work on the ecology of ideas in science and higher education. This book stands as a testament to Kerstin’s enduring legacy, acknowledging her profound influence on our understanding of contemporary developments in society as well as in academia.

Under Covid-19-pandemin smittades 765 miljoner människor och 6.9 miljoner avled. Världens länder och deras sjukvårdssystem gjorde sina yttersta för att minimera antal smittade och avlidna. Men att skydda sina befolkningar från viruset handlade inte bara om det rent medicinska och folkhälsoaspekterna. Stora insatser krävdes också för att samhället skulle kunna fortsätta att fungera inom områden som skola och utbildning, barn- och äldreomsorg, sociala tjänster, försvar, forskning och kultur. Men hur gick detta till? Baserat på dagböcker, observationer och intervjuer med människor som representerar ett trettiotal olika välfärdsyrken och professioner i Sverige tecknar vi en bild av det dagliga välfärdsarbetet i tider av kris. Detta i ett land som i internationella jämförelser ansetts vara ett undantag i hur pandemin skulle bemötas.

What is the role of media(tisation) in organisation and provision of elderly care? By looking at how planning, organising and execution of elderly care is understood in two Swedish municipalities this paper seeks to contribute to discussions of the ways in which values, preferences and working practices of news media play out in shaping conditions for provision of municipal welfare services. Our findings suggest that we can see the role of media values and preferences as embedded – although in different ways and to varying extent – in three distinct but inter-related processes that influence how actors connected to organisation and provision of municipal welfare services understand and relate to each other. These are: 1) setting the aims, aspirations and priorities in the provision of welfare services (i.e., the what); 2) translating these aims, aspirations and priorities into necessary means, resources and activities (i.e., the how); and 3) explaining and justifying the what and the how to different constituencies (i.e., the why). The paper concludes that commonly held values and beliefs about media reinforce the ongoing changes in the governing regime of elderly care in a direction where the role of municipal administrative bodies is more explicitly articulated, especially in terms of accountability and responsibility.

How various central government agencies (CGAs) in Sweden respond to the contemporary and highly digitalized media landscape and explore intricate patterns of the ambiguity in organizational and media relations are discussed in this study. Organizational responses caused by the perceptions of the media landscape on governmental agencies are analyzed as a process of bureaucratization. This study suggests that the agencies do not attempt to defend themselves; their efforts are directed toward maintaining internal trust and trust of the public. The studied responses turned out to result in decision-making aspects as preemptive measures, casting light on the significances of the ideal hierarchical authority. Furthermore, the extent of openness in relation to the communication showed rule-based actions. Additionally, the consequences of the media pressure for the more general codes of conduct among the bureaucrats led to the ideal of professional staffing. Our contribution is twofold. First, we argue that the contemporary media landscape – including all institutionalized (i.e., both digital and conventional) forms, structures, platforms, and interfaces – has led to an increased self-control in CGAs; and secondly, that the bureaucratization turns professional employees into “passionate bureaucrats.”

This chapter explores the processes by which cultural fairs can become symbols of larger societal debates and the potential consequences on their cultural activities. We focus on the case of the Gothenburg Book Fair, which between 2016 and 2017 became the center of an intense public debate on the appropriateness of an extreme right-wing publisher exhibiting at the Fair. Ambiguous since its start, the Fair was forced to take a stand on its commercial or cultural raisons-d'être and engaged in a media debate about Freedom of Expression and its state in Swedish society which shifted the focus of the Fair from literature to politics. The chapter shows how the Book Fair through its properties as a media event become a symbol of the upraise of the extreme right-wing movement and how this symbolization process transformed the Book Fair from being primarily a cultural event into an arena of political contestation. We point at three mechanisms of such transformation: temporally extending the field-level event; decentering the agency from the organizers to other centers of actions, and redefining the focus and eventually also the core of the event.

När vi skriver detta präglas, mer eller mindre, hela tillvaron av covid-19. Pandemin har påverkat stora delar av samhället och haft konsekvenser för mycket mer än människors hälsa; och ett område som har drabbats extra hårt och fått extra mycket uppmärksamhet är äldreomsorgen. Allt sedan pandemin fick fäste i Sverige har mycket av diskussionerna kommit att handla om virusets förödande konsekvenser för äldre och samhällets oförmåga att skydda de äldsta, trots att det är extra utsatta. På så vis har Covid-19 pandemin kommit att bli en fråga som skär rakt in i debatten om hur välfärdssektorn ska organiseras och styras. Det krävs inga större kunskaper om det politiska landskapet för att förstå att den här debatten kommer att fortsätta. Vi kan räkna med ett stort antal politiska utspel, rapportpresentationer och seminarier som presenterar satsningar som alla hävdar att det som föreslås är det bästa sättet att göra svensk äldreomsorg mer robust och bättre lämpad för att klara framtida kriser. Många aktörers argument kommer vara desamma som tidigare men omfattningen av krisens konsekvenser kan kanske öppna för nya positioner. Vad vi är intresserade av i sammanhanget är inte de konkreta förslag som hittills har kommit fram eller de som kommer att presenteras längre fram. Vad vi intresserar oss för är istället mediernas betydelse i sammanhanget. För det råder ingen tvekan om att äldreomsorgen har fått stå i fokus under 2020. Bevakningen av äldreomsorgen har varit omfattande och det är en bevakning som har lyft fram vissa perspektiv, tonar ner andra och som presenterar vissa aktörer som ansvariga, andra som offer och ytterligare andra som hjältar. För de allra flesta som följt den dagliga nyhetsrapporteringen kan det kanske framstå som att det är självklart. Dels utifrån våra antaganden om hur mediers bevakning vanligtvis ser ut dels utifrån vetskapen om att äldreomsorgen är ett av välfärdsstatens absolut största åtaganden. Vi tänker oss kanske att äldreomsorgen är ett återk

Intresseorganisationer eller non-governmental organizations(NGOs) som de kallas i engelsktalande länder är den organisationsform som både nationellt och internationellt har vuxit sig till en av de starkaste samhällsaktörerna. I kort kan vi definiera dessa organisationer som aktörer som agerar på mandat från sina medlemmar och som har till syfte att samla, utveckla och sprida sina medlemmars intressen och önskemål till andra aktörer i samhället –främst men inte uteslutande till politiken. Dessa organisationer står idag för en betydande del av både nationelltoch internationellt utvecklings-,reglerings-och styrningsarbeteinom de flesta samhällsområden som ekonomi, ekologi, kultur, idrott, utbildning, forskning m.m. (Djelic & Sahlin-Andersson, 2006). I många avseenden är intresseorganisationer en nödvändig komponent för en fungerande samhällsordning då dessa organisationer genom sina medlemmar representerar intressen, behov och önskemål som inte alltid uppmärksammas, förstås eller prioriteras av den politiska och offentliga sektorn. Samtidigt har framväxten och betydelsen av dessa organisationer gjort att de traditionella institutionernahar kommit att utmanas och på en del områden även ersättas av organiserade intressen. Eftersom intresseorganisationer inte har mandat att påverka olika samhällsområden genom direktreglering och styrning (som de folkvalda institutionernakan) pratar vi vanligen om intresseorganisationers arbete i termer av soft governance–dvs. arbete som kommer till uttryck genom att ta fram och sprida kunskap, värderingar, normer och standarder inom de områden inom vilka de är verksamma (Mörth, 2004).

The aim of this chapter is to flesh out how Scandinavian institutionalism can help us better understand public relations and to contribute to the increasing stream of research focusing on public relations as a socially embedded activity. Scandinavian institutionalism is a response to the critique institutional theory faced for thelack of agency and autonomy it attributed organizations. There was an obvious tendency among institutionalists to oversee actors’ motives and skills of and how they relate to the institutions they are embedded in. Scandinavian institutionalism highlights organizational variations and distinctiveness. It rests on an ambition to explain how stable insti­tutions change over time and how actors play an important role as change agents when they encounter and interact with institutions. Without losing track of the institutional conditions actors are embedded in however. Central to this stream of research is ideas understood as narratives connecting causes and effects providing actors with 1) descriptions of an universal problem and 2) solutions to these problems. In the chapter we conceptualize public relations as a management idea and the chapter provide answers to why and how organizations pick up public relations; the significance of carriers involved in the transformation and distribution of the idea and the processes in which public relations gets de- and re-contextualized to gain relevance in different organizational contexts.

The aim of this chapter is to flesh out how Scandinavian institutionalism can help us better understand public relations and to contribute to the increasing stream of research focusing on public relations as a socially embedded activity. Scandinavian institutionalism is a response to the critique institutional theory faced for thelack of agency and autonomy it attributed organizations. There was an obvious tendency among institutionalists to oversee actors’ motives and skills of and how they relate to the institutions they are embedded in. Scandinavian institutionalism highlights organizational variations and distinctiveness. It rests on an ambition to explain how stable insti­tutions change over time and how actors play an important role as change agents when they encounter and interact with institutions. Without losing track of the institutional conditions actors are embedded in however. Central to this stream of research is ideas understood as narratives connecting causes and effects providing actors with 1) descriptions of an universal problem and 2) solutions to these problems. In the chapter we conceptualize public relations as a management idea and the chapter provide answers to why and how organizations pick up public relations; the significance of carriers involved in the transformation and distribution of the idea and the processes in which public relations gets de- and re-contextualized to gain relevance in different organizational contexts.

If we want to understand the circumstances within which public sector organizations operate, their governance, and the ways in which they are organized and managed, we have to take the media into account. To some extent, this is because the media functions as a fourth branch of government (the executive, legislature, and judiciary being the others). Through this role, the media is given extensive—and often constitutionally supported—liberties to scrutinize and critically examine the actions of public organizations and their representatives. This order of things was set up to uncover policy failures, corruption, inefficiency, and other forms of malfunctions. The media therefore assists citizens to exercise their legitimate right to control and evaluate public officials and hold them accountable for their actions. Such activities are supposed to have preventive as well corrective effects on organizations (Norris, 2008). This role, and the understandings it provides in relation to how we can conceptualize the media in a public sector context, is of great significance, but it is only part of the story, due to a large extent to the processes of mediatization.

Mediatization has become a way to understand the functionalities of a wide variety of sectors and fields including politics and public administration. It is commonly referred to as an adaptation where actors adjust and modify their decisions, actions and communication according to (news) media’s logic. To become mediatized then means that organizations are set under pressure and eventually adapt their activities to media’s logic rather than the field logic - i.e. the logic of politics (Esser, 2013) or the logic of bureaucracy (Laursen & Valentini, 2015). Among scholars, these transformations have to a large extent been motivated and explained by changes in media systems including commercialization, new technologies, journalistic professionalization and others (Asp, 2014). Accordingly, differences between media systems have been used in explaining why mediatization plays out differently in different countries (Cushion, Rodger, & Lewis, 2014; Esser, 2008; Strömbäck & Dimitrova, 2011). There are examples of studies taking others characteristics into account (Schillemans, 2016), but when so happens, these aspects – such as differences in election system or figurations of the politico-administrative system – are commonly assigned only indirect significance. In addition, organizational contexts are often overseen in the analyses, whereby some of possible drivers and mechanisms of mediatization including organizational figurations and professional norms are left out in the analyses. We would argue that is to ignore some rather important aspects of why and how mediatization plays out, and what it means for public bureaucracies to be mediatized. Recent research, particularly in the Nordic countries (Pallas, Fredriksson, & Wedlin, 2016; Salomonsen, Frandsen, & Johansen, 2016; Thorbjornsrud, Figenschou, & Ihlen, 2014)support our argument that the processes of how public administrations become mediatized must be understood in terms of media systems as

This conceptual article extends three ongoing scholarly debates on the mediatisation of politics – the risk of media centrism, the tendency to see mediatisation as a linear process, and the preoccupation with elected officials. We argue for the need to identify, foreground, and systematise non-media dimensions of mediatisation processes. We also argue that actors encounter mediatisation as a set of dynamic ideas rather than a fixed logic. With a focus on government agencies and a comparison of the politico-administrative systems in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, this article gives certain attention to politicisation, autonomy, and accountability and suggests that the degree of freedom granted to agencies in Denmark and Norway is relatively limited compared with agencies in Sweden. Consequently, we present two propositions: 1) agencies in Denmark and Norway are less inclined to mediatise, whereas 2) Swedish government agencies will more likely mediatise and show conformity with widely accepted norms regarding media.