Forskarseminarium

Managerialisation of Swedish Healthcare: How to empirically study the figurative shift from egalitarian welfare models to market oriented utilitarianism

The paper discusses the historical development of managerialisation in Swedish healthcare, specifically studying the shift from egalitarian welfare models to market-oriented utilitarianism. It employs a theoretical framework based on Elias's concept of analysing figuration to show the influence of a management rationale on healthcare provision. The paper highlights how managerial meaning systems have reshaped the understanding of healthcare provision, altering the core values of healthcare as a social institution. By examining public reports and policy documents from 1945 to 2022, the paper identifies expressions, key trends and stable structures in healthcare assessment, emphasizing the changing roles of state intervention, market principles, and the evolving dynamics between public and private sectors.

Through a analysis of a historical process, the paper provides insights into the long-term transitions in healthcare, offering a understanding of how managerial ideologies and meaning systems have become embedded in the assessment of health care.

This research seminar aims to explore the empirical and methodological approaches to studying figurations, or long-term historical processes, within the healthcare sector. How can the dynamic networks of interdependent relationships that shape healthcare systems be studied empirically? The focus will be on understanding how concrete stable structures legitimised abstract managerial meaning systems and ideologies to infiltrate healthcare, transforming it from an egalitarian welfare institution to a market-oriented utilitarian organisation.