Freedom with responsibility : A qualitative study on unit managers’ work, converting political policy and guidelines into practical care within communal home care service

The purpose of this study was to understand how unit managers within communal home care service for older people, convert political policy and guidelines into practical care, and how they within this process govern their personnel. The study was based on a qualitative method with a hermeneutic approach. Former research disclose that the process of converting political policy and guidelines and how unit managers govern personnel are somewhat tenuous. Previous research show structural shifts and reorganisations within public service consequently shaping todays structure of organizations and management. The study draws on eight interviews with unit managers within two municipalities in Sweden. To carry out our interviews we used a semi-structured interview guide followed with an analysis of our main results using Lipskys concept of discretion and Foucaults theory of governmentality. The results indicate that unit managers’ work, converting political policy and guidelines into practical care, are complex. The study shows that unit managers experience difficulties and differ in their ways in the process of adapting political policy and guidelines into practical care. Unit managers therefor find some of the guidelines more difficult to integrate than others. We find it important in this study to highlight the different ways unit managers work in the process of converting political policy and guidelines, and how they in the process govern their personnel.