Children´s Rights Organisations in the Swedish Welfare State A qualitative, comparative study about the Swedish Children´s Rights organisations BRIS, Friends and Rädda Barnen

Abstract

The aim with this study is to investigate the Swedish Children´s Rights organisations: BRIS, Friends and Rädda Barnen and how the professionals at these organisations perceive the organisations role in the Swedish welfare system. The design of the study is qualitative, where ten professionals have been interviewed using a qualitative semi-structure method. The objectives were to explore the professional’s view of the strategic work of the organisation, along with their adaption to the external environment and how this can be explained. The theoretical framework of Neo institutional theory and Recourse dependency theory has been used to explain how the external environment influence and control the organisations to move in a certain direction. A thematic analyse method was used in order to identify coherent themes in the interviews. The results of this study implies that it is a major difference in how the respondents at the different organisations perceive their organisations contribution to the Swedish Welfare system and that this can be explained by the different environment of the organisations creation and tradition. However, even though the organisations differ in the structure, their origin and the work they perform, the organisations tend to become more similar to each other. With the contribution of the theoretical framework, this can be explained by the organisations requirements to adapt to the external environment and the environmental recourses of which they are dependent on in order to gain legitimacy and financial recourses. These isomorphic mechanisms is in this study shown to create a development in all of the three organisations to become more professionalized and administrative organisations and similar to organisations in the governmental and private sector.