Legitimitet och förändring : En studie om privata assistansbolags kommunikation kring regeringens översyn av insatser enligt LSS och assistansersättningen

Sammanfattning: Gaining or obtaining legitimacy is more and more important to all types of organizations. In the aspiration for an organization to achieve legitimacy, it is crucial to take the surrounding environment into account. The surrounding environment can for example include governing authorities or the general citizen. By using the “right” communication efforts, an organization can more or less maintain its legitimacy in the eyes of the public. Our study uses neo-institutional theory and its key concepts of legitimacy, isomorphism, rationalized myths and so on, to examine and analyze how private companies in Sweden who are operating in the arena for assistance care are affected by the Swedish government’s investigation of the Swedish law that regulates assistance care. The primary study perspective is how these companies act in their communication to assert its existence based on theoretical concepts within neo-institutional theory. The result of this thesis has concluded that the different assistance care companies communicate about this governmental investigation. However, one of the companies (Frösunda) did not communicate about the investigation very much compared to the other two companies (Särnmark and Humana). Särnmark and Humana usually used their communication to criticize or influence politicians to prevent the negative consequences of the investigation. The study connected the material to important concepts of neo-institutional theory and the result confirmed that most of the communication was used to gain or maintain legitimacy. Also most of the communication contains signs of isomorphism and rationalized myths.