Employer Branding within Public Sector from a New Public Management perspective - case study of the Swedish Armed Forces

Sammanfattning: This qualitative mixed methods case study aims to seek understanding of employer branding within the public sector from a New Public Management perspective. The chosen case is two campaigns from the Swedish Armed Forces of 2011 and 2019. Due to political changes in Sweden, the Swedish Armed Forces faced major organizational changes regarding their staffing. Through a text analysis of the commercial videos from the two campaign, a semiotic analysis and a critical discourse analysis provides New Public Management themes and Employer Branding themes. The identified themes are used to design a questionnaire for group interviews and a meaning condensations sheet in which the empirical material of the three group interviews are studied as a reception analysis. The participants of this study are divided into three groups depending on their sector of employment: public sector, private sector or employees within the Swedish Armed Forces. This case study results in that utterances of stronger New Public Management trends indicates that the employer branding image alludes more to the individual’s benefit of employment, and that user’s choice is prominent. While low New Public Management trends indicates that the employer branding image alludes more to the collective’s benefit of employment while higher purpose and citizen’s responsibility is prominent.