Förändringsledning inom en svensk myndighet - En kvalitativ studie av Arbetsförmedlingens pågående förändringsarbete

Sammanfattning: Title Change Management within a Swedish Authority – A qualitative study of Arbetsförmedlingen’s ongoing change journey Authors Charlie Hedhav Supervisor LTH Carl-Johan Asplund Background In 2014, the Employment Service, Arbetsförmedlingen, started a change journey. The organization had struggled with a bad public reputation and the employees experienced micromanagement. With the new change project, they wanted to change this by introducing self-management, developing a value platform and changing the internal structure among other things. Purpose The purpose of this thesis is to: - Describe and analyze the implementation of a change project using previous research in change management. - Analyze the implementation of self-management since it’s a central part of this change journey. And also analyze the value platform since it possible that it has greatly effected the self-managed employees. How has this both changes effected the goals of the change journey and the goal of Arbetsförmedlingen. - Based of the two purposes above give recommendations to future changes within organizations and develop a change framework. Methodology The study is based on the three steps. An extensive literature review which mapped the previous research in change management, self-management and value platform. A review of internal documents and previously done quantitative and qualitive studies of the change project. In addition to this a small number of qualitative interviews with employees at Arbetsförmedlingen was conducted. Conclusion Arbetsförmedlingen succeeded with some of the steps in Kotter’s 8-step-modell. They minimized the internal resistance by creating a feeling of urgency and by having an engaged board. The change project is well known within the organization and most of the employees have a positive attitude, but they find it hard to see any concrete changes and they are missing some important guideline. The problem was mainly that the goal was to big and not well defined. The appropriated structures were not in place which made it hard for the employees to take on their new responsibilities. Keywords Change Management, Self-management, Core Value, Value Platform, Public Sector