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Assessment has been identified as an ongoing problem in physical education (PE). Since the student perspective on assessment is often neglected in research, in this paper, we will report on a study that explored students' experiences of assessment in the Swedish school subject physical education and health (PEH). In particular, the aim of this study was to examine the students' experiences of having equal opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge and skills when being assessed in PEH. Data was collected by conducting focus group interviews with a total of 38 students from four different upper secondary schools in southern Sweden. Data analysis was conducted by drawing on Scott's ([2008]. Institutions and organizations: Ideas and interest. Sage) institutional theory in order to demonstrate how regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive conditions shape assessment practices and students' experiences of these in PEH. The results show that both teaching and assessment/grading practices in PEH are shaped more by cultural-cognitive conditions as associated with the norms and values of competitive and club sports rather than the regulative and normative conditions outlined in the Swedish Education Act and PEH curriculum that put emphasis on equal opportunities, equitable learning outcomes and explicit assessment criteria. The results also demonstrate how both teachers and students are actively involved in reproducing such teaching and assessment practices in PEH. To conclude, we, therefore, call for further work to be done with students, teachers and teacher educators of PEH to draw more attention to and more successfully implement the learning and achievement objectives of the curriculum. In addressing the ongoing problem of assessment in PEH we in particular need to better align assessment processes with the curriculum intentions of an equal quality education and teaching for equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For more than 40 years, health and physical education (HPE) academics in universities and teacher education colleges have drawn attention to issues of social justice specific to the context of PE and advocated for teachers in fields, gymnasiums and other physical activity spaces to do a better job of promoting more equitable outcomes for all students. Building on this advocacy, in the late 1990s, countries such as Sweden, Norway and New Zealand designed HPE curricula that address social justice. However, limited research has focused specifically on the enactment of social justice in HPE practice. Drawing on a larger international project involving Sweden, Norway and New Zealand the aim of this article is therefore to explore the constitution of social justice pedagogies across these three different HPE contexts and more specifically how HPE teaching practice may be understood from regulative, normative and cultural perspectives on social justice. The data reported on in this paper were generated from educational acts, curriculum documents, observations of HPE lessons in each of the three countries and follow-up teacher interviews. In order to analyse the data, we employed Scott's (2008. Institutions and organizations: Ideas and interests (3rd ed). Sage) institutional theory to further understand and discuss the enactment of social justice across the three different countries in HPE practice. In our representation and analysis of the findings we draw attention to how social justice pedagogies are informed differently by institutionalised governing systems and therefore they may be enacted differently by teachers in different societies. In particular, we highlight the influence of (i) regulative; (ii) normative; (iii) cultural-cognitive elements on practice. We conclude by pointing out the complex interplay between regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive elements that both enable and constrain HPE teachers' enactments of social justice in HPE practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the professional integration of a group of newly arrived teachers, mainly from Syria, who participated in the labour market Fast-track programme in Sweden, which aims at facilitating quicker pathways to teaching positions. Drawing on the institutional perspective, our analysis focuses on formal and informal institutional conditions that hinder or enable newly arrived teachers in their striving for legitimacy as professional teachers. Analysis of focus group interviews and observations show that despite their professional experiences there are limits to their prior professional skills and competences being recognized within the Swedish school. The main institutional challenges identified were acquiring Swedish, understanding and managing the pupil-centred curriculum and its associated communication skills and taking on the facilitator teacher role. Handling and negotiating these challenges are important for gaining recognition as professional teachers, which, it seems, influences their opportunities for employment. To afford them opportunities for professional socialization, it is important to enable them to become acquainted with, handle and negotiate institutional conditions within a new school culture. In contrast to the quick-fix view of European integration policy, our study shows that the professional integration process takes time and includes a socialization process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to contribute to the ongoing discussion on teacher professionalism by analyzing the professional strategies of Sweden's two teachers' unions from an organizational perspective. Drawing on institutional theory, the article argues that the teachers' unions' focus on strategies of professionalization has as much to do with questions of legitimacy in the eyes of the public, as with any specific effort at transforming the practice of teaching in a professional direction. Against the background of two recent Swedish education reforms, the article shows that the unions are 'trapped' within a normative order emphasizing professionalization as the primary way of organizational development and legitimacy, resulting in a need for the unions to adopt professional attributes. In the case of the Swedish unions, this is accomplished through mimetic processes whereby union policies, aimed at the improvement of teaching, are modeled upon the medical profession, regardless of the differences between the technologies and practices of the occupations. In this way, the professional rhetoric of the unions is decoupled from the practice of teaching in order to maximize the public legitimacy needed for improving the declining societal status of teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on products of origin and comparative analysis on fish products in Sweden. It mentions the implementation of a protected designation of origin (PDO) certification scheme in the country which fortify competitiveness in European rural areas and provides protection against unfair competition. An overview of institutional theory involving economists, historians and sociologists is also presented.

Malmö diskont, a Swedish bank, was forced to close in 1817 after 14 years of operation because of a bank run. At the time, it was one of only three private commercial banks in Sweden. Eventually, all three banks succumbed to bank runs. The purpose of this article is to study the 1817 banking crisis from a new perspective by attempting to answer the following research question: why did Malmö diskont go under? Institutional theory is used here as a research tool. The assumption is that institutions set the limits for individuals' actions and sometimes direct them towards particular actions. The conclusions are derived from analysing the institutional framework at the time and how it interacted with Malmö diskont. The crisis evolved in two stages. The first stage occurred when the financial position of Malmö diskont severely deteriorated in the interaction between institutions and actors in 1817. The implementation of a bailout and a new institutional structure would have been necessary to save the bank. This conclusion complements earlier theories related to monetary or credit overexpansion as to why banking crises occur. The second stage occurred when the Swedish government allowed Malmö diskont to fall in October 1817. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Strategic management in the public sector is a controversial issue. Both supporters and detractors coincide in the difficulties of introducing the changes that it involves. This paper analyzes the different factors involved in the implementation process of strategic management and how they affect the result of the implementation. We study twelve local governments in Australia, Spain, Sweden and the USA with acknowledged experience in strategic management. We find that, although local governments state similar objectives, they are not always consistent with the efforts carried out in the strategic management implementation process. We also show that the behavior of the personnel is a key aspect of the implementation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the changes in the management of provincial newspapers in Sweden from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Five Swedish newspapers form the focus of the study: Barometern (Kalmar), Borås Tidning (Borås), Jonkopings-Posten (Jonkoping), Nya Wermlands-Tidningen (Karlstad) and Sundsvalls Tidning (Sundsvall). The article traces the development of the organizational cultures of the newspapers and the ways-of-thinking that have guided editors and publishers, in particular their ideas of the paper as a business or editorial venture, respectively. The findings indicate that changes in managerial thinking hardly follow a linear development, but are instead characterized by what is known in institutional theory as critical junctures (formative phases) and path dependency. At certain crucial points in a paper's history choices are made that continue to influence the paper's development for many years thereafter. Typically, it is the ways-of-thinking regarding the business aspects of newspaper publishing, the ideas about the newspaper's role in society and the newspapers approach to other political, cultural and social institutions that linger on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the 'institutional turn' in economic geography, relatively limited attention has been paid to the comparative political economy literature that investigates the institutional underpinnings of the different versions of capitalism that we observe in the world. In turn, this literature has shown little interest in variety within national models of capitalism, an issue more often tackled by economic geographers. This paper asks if the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) framework of Hall and Soskice is a useful tool for investigating institutional disparity within national models, and if it can indicate deviation from national or sectoral norms that may provide insights into the success or failure of local clusters. It applies the framework to two Swedish furniture locations - Tibro and Virserum - that together dominated the industry in the mid-1940s. Today, Tibro maintains its leading position whereas Virserum has been wiped off the map in terms of furniture production. The paper finds that applying the framework in this rather unorthodox manner does indeed paint a more nuanced picture of a rather coherent Swedish institutional system, and that there is varying scope for local creativity among the predetermined institutional spheres of VoC. In particular, the paper illustrates how local outcomes of national systems may differ across space, depending on particular configurations of institutional and non institutional factors at local and sectoral levels playing themselves out against national developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes and discusses the adoption and implementation of Business Process Re-Engineering (BPR) at a hospital and Balanced Scorecard (BSC) at a local government. At the hospital, BPR was adopted as a solution to problems, but became de-coupled from operations, and later used for legitimacy reasons. At the local government, without having identified clear problems, BSC was adopted as an attractive solution but became coupled, rather than de-coupled, to operations. Our study shows that de-coupling does not follow the path proposed by neo-institutional theory, and that legitimacy from popular management concepts can be obtained both by coupling and by de-coupling the concepts from operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some practices not spread? Although this is an important question for both diffusion theorists and those interested in institutional change, we know surprisingly little about the limitations on diffusion because most diffusion studies sample on successful diffusion. I address the question of why some practices fail to spread by introducing the concept of a "deviance discount." A deviance discount is a systematic downgrading of the observed adoption performance of controversial practices, which limits the contagion of such practices. I test and find qualitative and quantitative support for my thesis in the product introduction behavior of Swedish mutual fund firms. My findings hold implications for diffusion theory and theories of endogenous institutional change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public sector organizations have increasingly been subject to varying forms of marketization, ranging from competitive contracting to a more general conception of citizens or users as customers or consumers regardless of whether such economic factors prevail. Drawing on neo-institutional sociology (NIS) and other advances in economic sociology, we examine such marketization efforts as an institutionally embedded phenomenon with particular reference to how it is implicated in the performance measurement practices (PMPs) of two state agencies in Sweden. This reveals how PMPs are embedded in only partly consistent institutional logics and under what circumstances such practices can be reconciled. Some PMPs, especially those grounded in efficiency concerns, tend to play an important constitutive role in operating-level practices, partly as a result of also being embedded in regulatory pressures. Other PMPs, imbued with symbolic meanings signifying a more customer-oriented rationale, only seem to approach such a status if they are dis-embedded from the ‘global’ practices in which they originate and re-embedded in evolving PMPs dominated by efficiency concerns. We discuss the implications of these findings for emerging research into practice variations embedded in competing logics in institutional fields and for policy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last two decades, the question of organization has been a matter of great interest in many Swedish municipalities, and remains so today. What are the ideas behind the way municipalities organize themselves and how are the ideas related to the municipality context? This is the focus of this article. The discussion is based on a broad study of organizing activities in four municipalities in Sweden. The ideas of organizing identified in the study are analysed in two institutional dimensions related to contextual circumstances. The first covers the way the ideas are influenced by two ways of thinking, termed respectively political and administrative logic. The second dimension covers the way the ideas are affected by local and national institutional thinking. We show how these dimensions influence organizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study to evaluate the first results of an ongoing research that explores under what life conditions internal migrants lived in a small pre-industrial Swedish town during a time of considerable social change. It also examines how these migrants coped with their everyday lives as new residents in town. It was found that men experienced failures in providing for their family due to different circumstances. This study suggests that a focus on the continuing study can be placed on the migrants' parenting phase of life, which is viewed in a gender perspective.

This essay reports on a series of empirical studies conducted in public sector organizations in Sweden between 1985 and 1990. The analysis for these studies employs a framework that combines institutional theory with a narrative approach. "Identity" is considered, along with the "market" and the "state," as a modern institution. The analysis of the ways in which a modern identity is constructed supports the claim that identity has a narrative character. This perspective is then applied to interpretation of developments in public sector organizations, whose identity has been challenged and is currently reformulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]