Kassakultur i förändring : Samspelet mellan organisationskultur och administrativa reformer på Försäkringskassan

In 2005, The Swedish Social Insurance Agency (Försäkringskassan), was reformed from being local county authorities to a nationalized and integrated organization. The aim of this thesis is to describe how Försäkringskassan’s organizational culture has changed. The key questions are: ”How has Försäkringskassan’s culture changed?”, ”How are the organizational culture perceived and handled by the employees?” and ”How can the interaction between organizational culture and the changes connected with the nationalization and merger in 2005 and beyond, be understood?”. The thesis revolves around the concept of organizational culture which is understood as a metaphor consisting of three different layers; artifacts, norms and basic assumptions. Five cultural themes structure the analysis: identity, status, gender, threats and rescue. To monitor and analyze the changes that the culture has undergone these themes are linked with different models of public administration. These models are called: the bureaucratic, the professional, the social movement and the market model. The study is based on two kinds of material: internal journals and interviews with employees. The material show how Försäkringskassan went from being an organization rooted in a small-scale social movement tradition into being a large national government agency. The deepest layer of organizational culture is basic assumptions. The results in this thesis show that three assumptions are especially important in understanding the staff’s reaction towards the merger: "We are different!", "We are a family!" and "We have a contract!”. These assumptions became organizationally overplayed after the merger, but still exist as elements of the organizational culture