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Abstract

Welfare professionals and street-level bureaucrats are increasingly engaged in administrative tasks through, among others, organizational and regulatory demands. Research has shown that this might lead to issues regarding accountability, deprofessionalization and work-environmental problems. Despite these consequences, there has been little attention directed to consequences for the quality of the provided welfare service. This essay draws on a broad theoretical base to understand how teachers´ administrative duties affect quality in education, and aims to develop hypotheses on the subject. A service-dominant logic is used to understand the concept of quality as a process of co-production. The concept of administrative duties is defined as a more fluent and dynamic concept. The empirical material contains interviews with teachers and pupils from swedish schools. The material was analyzed mainly through the outspoken meaning of respondents´ statements, but how respondents constructed narratives, contextualization and discursive aspects was also used to catch further information in the data. Not so counter-intuitive, this studys´ main hypothesis is that administrative duties only create value when the administrative products are used in practice. If not used, administrative duties are more likely to destroy, or at least not create quality. Logics of organization and pro-administrative attitude can both create and destroy quality, but little is known on administrative duties´ long-term consequences for teaching. The study highlights leadership and school order as two additional important factors for quality.