Understanding public agency communication: the case of the Swedish armed forces

• Published date: 01 November 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1552
• Date: 01 November 2015

■Academic Paper

Understanding public agency

communication: the case of the

Swedish armed forces

Edward Deverell, Eva-Karin Olsson*, Charlotte Wagnsson,

Maria Hellman and Magnus Johnsson

Swedish National Defense College, Stockholm, Sweden

This article suggests a diagnostic framework of public communication intended to capture new communication strat-

egies used by Armed Forces across Europe to legitimize new tasks and recruit new personnel. Three distinct commu-

nicative models that impact differently on democratic values and public support are suggested: an Old Public

Administration (OPA) model influenced by bureaucratic values, a New Public Management (NPM) model fuelled

by market values and a deliberative model labelled ‘New Public Service’(NPS) that is largely influenced by propo-

nents of ‘e-democracy’. A case study of the communication of the Swedish Armed Forces identifies a lingering bu-

reaucratic (OPA) ideal. The market ideal (NPM) however clearly dominates. The article concludes that

communication along market purposes, principles and practices risks distancing Armed Forces further from society.

Yet, an embryonic deliberative ideal (NPS)—much fuelled by the use of social media such as blogs—was also identi-

fied. This growing ideal holds the potential of infusing deliberative vigor into the organization and presumably facil-

itates the bridging of the gap to society. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Armed forces across the Western world have been

required to develop new competences in a range of

areas since the end of the Cold War. A key challenge

is to achieve societal acceptance for these new tasks

and practices (Forster, 2006). Communication is vital

in this process, yet how these comprehensive trans-

formations are communicated and anchored in soci-

ety remains understudied. To date, the limited

research on such communication practices related

to public organizations in general are scattered

across academic subfields. Seemingly opposing

trends in previous research stress, for example, that

despite their bureaucratic obligations, governmental

agencies are increasingly adapting to market

influenced communication practices that focus on

visibility and branding rather than on democracy

and transparency (Fredriksson & Pallas, 2013;

Wæraas, 2008). On the other hand, other scholarly

debates related to the emergence of new information

technologies stress that public organizational image

and reputation building are no longer solely in the

hands of managerial functions but are also depen-

dent on coworkers and clients using blogs and social

media to get their stories out, facilitating processes

of deliberation (Eriksson, 2012; Solis &

Breakenridge, 2009). To date, there have been few

scholarly attempts made to bring these various re-

search traditions together. In this article we aim to

do so by introducing a diagnostic model of public

communication developed to study communica-

tive practices from various perspectives, that is,

bureaucratic, market driven and deliberative. We

apply the model to a case study of a public

agency, the Swedish Armed Forces, in order to ex-

amine how and with whom the Swedish Armed

*Correspondence to: Eva-Karin Olsson, Swedish National

Defence College. Box 27805, 115 93 Stockholm, Sweden.

E-mail: eva-karin.olsson@fhs.se

The authors form part of a research group at the Swedish Na-

tional Defense College treating the role of the media in crisis,

war and security policy.

Journal of Public Affairs

Volume 15 Number 4 pp 387–396 (2015)

Published online 8 December 2014 in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pa.1552

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.