The travel of a labour market integration method- Institutional contexts shaping the translation of an idea into practice

Abstract

The study investigates how public and private organisations adopt novel labour market integration practices and their implications. It is informed by the case of one Multinational Cooperation (MNC) and two municipal companies that have adopted a novel method to integrate recent refugees and youths into the labour market in Sweden, called job tracks. Theoretically; we build on translation theories in organisation studies. The study is based on semi-structured interviews combined with observations and internal documents. The findings show differences and similarities in the translation of accounts of the job track into the different settings: recruitment process, education, usage of professional certificate or validation tools, and financial resources. The different translations of the job tracks are explained by the institutional context of each organisation, which cannot be taken for granted. This leads to a variation of the original model as the idea travels from one organisation to another organisational context. Despite being either a public or a private company, where one would expect a public company being driven by social and political demands and a private company to be driven by technicality and efficiency, the findings illustrate a paradox where contemporary organisations take inspiration from other institutional contexts and add features usually belonging to other sectors.