SAF och den svenska modellen : En studie av uppbrottet från förvaltningskorporatismen 1982-91

Sammanfattning: In 1991 the Swedish Employers' Confederation (SAF) decided to withdraw all its representatives from the governing bodies of public administration. The decision implied the fall of the "Swedish Model" with highly centralized three-party-cooperation between labour, capital and state on labourmarket and working environment policies. A year later the bourgeois parliamentary majority in the Riksdag, made a decision. It implied that the representatives for the peak-organizations on the union side, LO and TCO, no longer had the right to participate in those bodies from which SAF had withdrawn. The question raised in this thesis is how one should explain SAF's decision to withdraw. Was it a long- term, strategic decision as most Rational Choice theorists would argue? Or was it rather a short-term, semi- intentional or non-intentional decision, supporting theories of incrementalism, logic of approproriateness and/or Garbage Can-processes? The author argues that an empirical test of different theories on organizational decision making requires a combination of four different, but interrelated, methodological approaches: process-tracing, an analysis of motives, an analysis of different organizational members, subgroups and their respective influence on organizational output, and an analysis of organizational culture. The empirical results strengthen the Rational Choice-view insofar as the decision appears a long-term, strategic move. In other words, it was an intentional attempt aimed at altering the rules of the game from a corporatist regime to a pluralist regime. The intention was that of strenghening the relative power of organized employers visavi the union movement, in influencing outcomes in political processes on labourmarket and working environment issues. Howewer, the results also indicates important deviations from what is expected about the decision- process from a Rational Choice point of view. SAF's leadership didn't play a dominant role in the process. Rather, It was in fact actors in the middle of the hierarchical structure who started the change.