A balance of strategic management and entrepreneurship practices—The renewal journey of the Swedish Public Employment Service

• Date: 01 November 2018
• Author: Linda Höglund,Mikael Holmgren Caicedo,Maria Mårtensson
• Published date: 01 November 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/faam.12162

Received: 27 January 2017 Revised: 27 April 2018 Accepted: 30 May 2018

DOI: 10.1111/faam.12162

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

A balance of strategic management and

entrepreneurship practices—The renewal journey

of the Swedish Public Employment Service

Linda Höglund1Mikael Holmgren Caicedo2

Maria Mårtensson3,2

1Schoolof Business, Society and Engineering

(EST),Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden

2StockholmBusiness School (SBS), Stockholm

University,Stockholm, Sweden

3Schoolof Business and Economics, Linnaeus

University,Växjö, Sweden

Correspondence

LindaHöglund, School of Business, Society

andEngineering (EST), Mälardalen University,

Västerås,Sweden.

Email:linda.hoglund@mdh.se

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to study the first phase—from 2014 to

2016—of the Swedish Public Employment Service's renewal journey

by examining how the agency worked to achieve its new strategy

through processes of strategic management and entrepreneurship.

We did this through the theoretical lens of strategic entrepreneur-

ship (SE). The results showed that the agency's renewal processes

are simultaneously entrepreneurial and strategic. The agency is his-

torically well known for its detailed management and control, which

creates several tensions with entrepreneurship. We contributed to

previousliterature by focusing on the organizational aspects of these

tensions and the SE practices of balancing entrepreneurship with

strategic management.

KEYWORDS

entrepreneurship, public sector, strategic entrepreneurship, strate-

gic management, trust

1INTRODUCTION

In 2016, the Swedish governmentintroduced a reform aiming to investigate how the public sector can develop through

trust-based management (Government Decision, 2016). The reason for the reform is the government's deficiency in

managing and controlling its businesses based on their specific conditions, the needs of the citizens, and not least

the officials’ skills and experiences (GovernmentDecision, 2016). A core concept is that politicians in the government

wield power through conditional trust. This mutual trust allows politicians to govern the agencies while giving them

an enhanced acting space for their core businesses. In the Budget Bill for 2016, the government argues that “There is

a need for developed forms of governance and monitoring that balance the need for control with trust” (Budget Bill,

2015/16, p. 59). Thus, trust and trust-based control are created and maintained by following learned norms and meth-

ods, through mutual exchangeand mutual respect for each other's roles, not by detailed steering (SAPM, 2016).

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2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/faam FinancialAcc & Man. 2018;34:354–366.