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Mikael HolmgrenDocent

Research projects

Strategies and strategizing

In this research project, knowledge of the Swedish Transport Administration's operational management is developed by identifying and understanding the challenges that arise in the translation of strategies formulated by top management to an operational level.

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Publications

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

  • When calculative practices are no more

    2019. Mikael Holmgren Caicedo, Linda Höglund, Maria Mårtensson. Financial Accountability and Management

    Article

    This study reports on an attempt to remove management accounting’s calculative practices at the operational level of a Swedish Public Agency. Using a Habermasian perspective, the study shows how the agency has attempted to replace the previous accounting practice, which involved target setting, performance management and measurement with a new leadership philosophy, and accounting practices that aim at generalizing the individual’s private interest toward organizational interests. The result is interpreted as an attempt to make the individual responsible for the welfare of the collective in which, in its absence, the kind of validity that accounting’s calculative practices enable is very much present as a longing to soothe the anxiety and uncertainty brought about by the responsibility to lead oneself.

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  • The development of the management accountant’s role revisited

    2018. Mikael Holmgren Caicedo, Maria Mårtensson, Kristina Tamm Hallström. Financial Accountability and Management 34 (3), 240-251

    Article

    This study traces the development of the management accountant (MA) role at the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (SIA). In 2012, the agency began a reformation by implementing the Lean management system in hopes of increasing customer trust. The results of this study show that the authority of the MA rests on decentralization and the proximity of MAs to managers, as previous research has shown, and more specifically on a definitional and a moral prerogative that may or may not be awarded to MAs enabling them to act as de facto managers. The study shows how the role of the SIA's operative level MAs changed into a helpdesk function with the role of assisting other groups to help themselves, in this case operative-level teams that had begun performing management accounting tasks. Thus, this study bears witness not to the expansion and hybridization of existing MA roles, but to the reduction in authority and de-hybridization of the MA role, from business partner to a pedagogical role on a consultative basis.

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

    2018. Linda Höglund, Mikael Holmgren Caicedo, Maria Mårtensson. Financial Accountability and Management 34 (4), 354-366

    Article

    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 entrepreneurship (SE). The results showed that the agency's renewal processes are simultaneously entrepreneurial and strategic. The agency is historically well known for its detailed management and control, which creates several tensions with entrepreneurship. We contributed to previous literature by focusing on the organizational aspects of these tensions and the SE practices of balancing entrepreneurship with strategic management.

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  • Strategic Management in the Public Sector

    2018. Linda Höglund (et al.). International Public Management Journal 21 (5), 822-849

    Article

    Strategic management (SM) has become prominent on the agenda in several public organizations due to new public management (NPM) reforms. Nevertheless, there are few studies investigating how public organizations apply SM in practice and what tools are used. As a result, calls have been made for such studies. This article can be seen as an attempt to meet this call by presenting a qualitative case study of how SM has been applied in the Swedish Transport Administration (STA), a central government agency in Sweden, and what tools it used in strategy making. By analyzing the micro processes of strategizing at STA, our results indicate that public organizations need to be aware of at least three specific tensions that can enable or constrain strategy making. These tensions are: short v. long-term, parts v. whole, and reactivity v. proactivity.

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  • Managing paradoxes in governance

    2015. Linda Höglund, Mikael Holmgren Caicedo, Maria Mårtensson. Contingency, behavioural and evolutionary perspectives on public and nonprofit governance, 1-30

    Chapter

    Purpose: Taking a micro-perspective of governance that includes pro- blem-solving and stakeholder involvement capabilities as part of the stra- tegic steering role, we wish to contribute to the understanding of the human side of governance. Thus we have studied the relationships between the board and its management and stakeholders, and in so doing we recognize internal and external actors as well as the board itself, and how they all contribute to the implementation of the governance function.

    Methodology/approach: Based on an interpretative approach that focuses on change over time, we performed a qualitative empirical study of the governance of Robotdalen, a small non-profit public organization in Sweden that is a joint public and private collaboration. This chapter forms part of a longitudinal study that has been carried out since 2009. It is based primarily on interviews with board members, management and other stakeholders, and complemented by document studies and observations.

    Findings: Governance practice entails multiple and multilevel tasks, and the tensions between representativeness/professional boards, confor- mance/performance, and controlling/partnering up with management, are prevalent in both small non-profit and public organizations. According to our results the apparent choice between the extremes of each tension is, however, not a choice at all but rather a balancing act. In trying to balance tensions through collaboration between managers, board, financiers, and the hosting university, new governance structures and practices emerge at the organizational level.

    Originality/value: By following the process of the emergence of a new board, we illustrate how various actors work together to co-produce gov- ernance functions in practice. In the past little or no effort has been made to take into account contextual factors such as organizational size an aspect that may influence or shape board characteristics and work methodology. We therefore attempt to do so in our chapter, by studying the emergence of a new board in a small public organization, what possible paradoxes and tensions are involved in such work, and how such tensions are managed. 

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  • Defying interpretation

    2014. Mikael Holmgren Caicedo. Culture and Organization 20 (3), 232-249

    Article

    To defy interpretation, delay sense making and accommodate a process view, I propose metonymy as an alternative/complement to metaphor in organization studies. By way of three examples I attempt to show how the unpacking of metonymies, i.e. metonymic reading, can delay metaphorical interpretation to allow for the inclusion of alternative views of concrete experience. Thus, although metonymy ultimately yields to metaphor, it seems worthwhile to dwell on and delve into. 

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  • Identifiering av parallella styrmodeller och deras olikheter

    2014. Mikael Holmgren Caicedo, Maria Mårtensson Hansson, Kristina Tamm Hallström.

    Report

    Försäkringskassan är en myndighet som under senare år genomgått flera stora omorganisationer och försök att förändra och förbättra sin styrning. Verksamhetens storlek och den mångfald av krav som ställs på denna myndighet gör styrningen komplex. Syftet med föreliggande rapport är att bidra med kunskap om styrningens komplexitet i svensk offentlig sektor utifrån exemplet Försäkringskassan. Vi ställer oss tre frågor: Vilka styrmodeller arbetar Försäkringskassan med? Vilka grundläggande antaganden baseras olika styrmodeller på? Hur förhåller sig dessa modeller till varandra på ett konceptuellt plan? Genom beskrivningen av Försäkringskassans styrning kan vi i analysen identifiera tre styrmodeller som används parallellt, vilka bygger på delvis olika grundläggande antaganden. I diskussionen problematiserar vi modellernas lik- och olikheter och konsekvenserna för styrningens förutsättningar. 

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  • The quest for public value in the Swedish museum transition

    2014. Kerstin Thomson, Mikael Holmgren Caicedo, Maria Mårtensson. Public value management, measurement and reporting, 105-128

    Chapter

    Purpose — The aim of this paper is to investigate the nature of public value in the context of Swedish public museum management and how it is created.

    Methodology/approach —The museum context is introduced, and assumptions and principles underpinning new public management (NPM) and public value management, along with examples of applicability and implementation in museums, are presented. Three key issues of convergence and divergence within the theoretical framework — strategic orientation, accountability and performance — are identified and introduced as a gateway to the empirical findings and the ensuing discussion.

    Findings —NPM-oriented values have become part of the strategic orientation of the museum sector. The results of this study show that there exist at least three conceptions of museum management that are based on two different strategic orientations, that is, accessibility and conservation, which also point to different conceptions of value.

    Social implications — Museum management can be seen as the management of tensions between conservation and accessibility and between customer orientation and stakeholder orientation towards the creation of museum value.

    Originality/value of paper — The findings will assist museum management determine not only what value is but also for whom it is valuable, taking into account both present and future generations. 

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  • New Public Management

    2013. Mikael Holmgren Caicedo, Maria Mårtensson, Kristina Tamm Hallström. Företagsekonomin och samhället, 107-140

    Chapter

    Kapitlet baseras huvudsakligen på en kvalitativ intervjustudie som inkluderar representanter från den högsta ledningen i Försäkringskassan och deras perspektiv på hur myndigheten organiserar och implementerar sin verksamhetsstyrning. Den frågeställning som kapitlet utgår ifrån är: hur är styrningen i Försäkringskassan organiserad och vilka oavsedda konsekvenser kan identifieras av pågående verksamhetsstyrningsförsök? I analysen identifieras oavsedda konsekvenser som uppstår till följd av hur verksamhetsstyrningen organiseras i en komplex organisatorisk kontext som karaktäriseras av två parallella och delvis motstridiga styrlogiker. Dessa styrlogiker diskuteras sedan utifrån New Public Management. 

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  • The story of us

    2011. Mikael Holmgren Caicedo. Culture and Organization 17 (5), 403-416

    Article

    Inquiring along the lines of reflexivity into the style of scientific articles as portrayed in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA), an attempt is made to bring forth the nexus between metaphor and plot in the story of academic writing. The contention is that the APA manual expounds a protoplot (B. Czarniawska. 1999. Writing management - organization theory as a literary genre. Oxford: Oxford University Press) in and through its description/prescription of the form of the scientific article that is held together by a metaphor, the incessant strife for progress, that binds together the elements of the story (plot) of writing scientific articles. Writing is then the creation of organization in an always already organized manner so that we can know a scientific article as a scientific article and ensure ever-forward motion in and through its end.

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  • Extensions and intensions of management control

    2010. Mikael Holmgren Caicedo, Maria Mårtensson. Critical Perspectives on Accounting 2010 (21), 655-668

    Article

    Interest in management control of intangibles has grown remarkably during the last decades and now includes managing employee health. Research in this field is so far in the early stages: few empirical studies have been undertaken and fewer studies take into consideration the implications of such systems. In this paper we wish to contribute to the field with a qualitative study of instances of management control of health in ten Swedish organizations.

    Many good intentions lie behind the idea of making health and ill-health a subject for management control and the expected results are very positive—lower sick-leave rates, reduction of costs and human suffering. Such intentions stand for an intension, i.e. the ideas, properties or state of affairs that are connoted by a word or symbol, in this case what can be connoted by the concept of management control of health, its conceptual position. An intension, however, is not given insofar as a word or concept may be associated to more than one. Thus we set out to interpret management control of health in terms of two conceptual positions, modernism and postmodernism, in order to bring forth two very different intensions of management control of health: one where the practice is seen as an investment with a purpose to visualize ill-health and increase efficiency by putting in place measures to increase employee health; the other where the practice is seen as a means to make the individual accountable in order to be able to intensify control and colonize leisure. 

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  • Managing and measuring employee health and wellbeing

    2010. Mikael Holmgren Caicedo, Maria Mårtensson, Robin Roslender. Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change 6 (4), 436-459

    Article

    Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify the case for taking employee health and wellbeing into account in some way and to consider a range of objections that might be raised against such exercises.

    Design/methodology/approach – The paper identifies the existence of a persistent sickness absence as a cause for concern for a range of stakeholders and how it might be accounted for in the light of recent developments within the intellectual capital field. Attention then turns to some of the difficulties such well meaning interventions might encounter, and briefly considers how a self-accounting approach might in some part overcome these.

    Findings – The paper finds that a programme of empirical research within the field of employee health and wellbeing is now required to ensure that employee health and wellbeing into account.

    Practical implications – While predominantly a discursive contribution to the literature, the paper incorporates some discussion of innovative accounting interventions.

    Originality/value – In contrast to viewing sickness absence from a cost perspective, the paper encourages stakeholders to embrace a wider spectrum of ways of seeing to better understand employee health and wellbeing issues in the work place.

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  • The makings of a statement

    2010. Mikael Holmgren Caicedo, Maria Mårtensson. Journal of Human Resource Costing and Accounting 14 (4), 286-306

    Article

    Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how the idea of health statements is constructed and on what assumptions it rests.

    Design/methodology/approach – Published health statements from the Swedish municipality of Umea ̊ are analysed in terms of the rhetoric of the arguments that are presented. This is done in order to identify the assumptions the arguments rest on.

    Findings – Although no empirical proof is provided, the arguments presented in the health statements of Umea ̊ municipality follow a logic that goes from success factors to good results via employee health and satisfaction as a proxy of internal quality of work that in turn is assumed to create good quality of service. The construction of that logic is concomitantly the production and reproduction of a moral system of values that rest on the ambiguousness and implicitness.

    Originality/value – A discussion about the assumptions expressed in Umea ̊ municipality’s health statements, how they are constructed to make the management accounting of employee health work and the construction of morals that is implicit in that system. 

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  • Retorik

    2009. Mikael Holmgren Caicedo.

    Book

    Retorik är betydligt mer än vältalighet och språkutsmyckning. Den återfinns ständigt i allas vår vardag genom ord, handlingar, texter och bilder. i den här boken skildras retoriken och dess förhållande till samhälle och samhällsvetenskap.

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  • A 6-hour working day

    2001. Torbjörn Åkerstedt (et al.). Journal of Human Ergology 30 (1/2), 197-202

    Article

    The effect of the total amount of work hours and the benefits of a shortening is frequently debated, but very little data is available. The present study compared a group (N=41) that obtained a 9h reduction of the working week (to a 6h day) with a comparison group (N=22) that retained normal work hours. Both groups were constituted of mainly female health care and day care nursery personnel. The experimental group retained full pay and extra personnel were employed to compensate for loss of hours. Questionnaire data were obtained before and 1 year after the change. The data were analyzed using two-factor ANOVA with the interaction of year*group for social factors, sleep quality, mental fatigue, and heart/respiratory complaints, and attitude to work hours. In all cases the experimental group improved whereas the control group did not change. It was concluded that shortened work hours have clear social effects and moderate effects on well-being.

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