Abstract
This article explores discretion in welfare professional work. The aim is to analyse what room for discretionary decision-making that exist in case handling of debt relief at the Swedish Enforcement Authority (SEA). The analysis is guided by a conceptual distinction between structural and epistemic aspects of discretion, as well as between substantive and procedural aspects. The data comprises official and internal SEA documents, interviews with management and staff and field notes from observations. The analysis points to a change in the balance between standards and discretion in relation to the on-going formalization of case handling at the SEA, though not in the simplistic sense that discretion is diminished through formalization. When taking into account the different analytical aspects of discretion, it is concluded that discretion is narrowed only in some respects. There is still space for case officers in selecting and interpreting information and assess-ing the conditions regarding subject matter.
Highlights
Contact: Bengt Larsson, Department of Sociology and work science, University of Gothenburg, PO Box 720, 405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden bengt.larsson@ socav.gu.se
Our aim is to explore and analyse what aspects of discretion exist in case handling of debt relief, and to discuss changes in the balance between standards and discretion in relation to the on-going formalization of case handling at the Swedish Enforcement Authority (SEA)
Central questions guiding the empirical analysis are: To what extent do laws, policies and case management systems give room for discretionary decisionmaking by case officers? How is discretion practiced in the assessment of subject matters and reasoning in case handling? The focus is in particular on the relation between the reorganizations of the SEA and two aspects of discretion – structural and epistemic (Molander and Grimen, 2010) – yet we introduce a distinction between substantive and procedural discretion in order to sort out what aspects of discretion exist and how they have changed
Summary
The authority responsible for handling debt relief, the Swedish Enforcement Authority (SEA), continuously tried to improve its performance in terms of both economic efficiency/productivity (i.e., reducing turnover times and processing more cases at a lower cost) and legal consistency (i.e., in producing just and uniform decisions) (Espersson, 2010). These re-organizations were made against the backdrop of the last decades of New Public Management (NPM), aiming to increase cost-efficiency through performance-based systems and management by objectives Central questions guiding the empirical analysis are: To what extent do laws, policies and case management systems give room for discretionary decisionmaking by case officers? How is discretion practiced in the assessment of subject matters and reasoning in case handling? The focus is in particular on the relation between the reorganizations of the SEA and two aspects of discretion – structural and epistemic (Molander and Grimen, 2010) – yet we introduce a distinction between substantive and procedural discretion in order to sort out what aspects of discretion exist and how they have changed
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