Introduction

This chapter introduces the book’s aim to explore how public sector agencies shape the roles of frontline caseworkers through evolving governance models. Whereas New Public Management (NPM) relied on performance metrics and control, post-NPM models govern through values, cultural tools, and identity shaping. To explore these issues, the book combines critical management studies and street-level bureaucracy research, drawing on theories of normative governance to understand how management influences caseworkers beyond formal rules and policies. Sweden serves as a key context, known for its early adoption of both NPM and post-NPM models from the private sector. Comparing the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (SIA) and the Public Employment Service (PES), the study employs a mixed-methods approach, including 112 interviews with politicians, managers, and caseworkers, along with document analyses and extensive observations of formal and informal office meetings. Through the study of normative governance by ‘discourse’, ‘emotions’, ‘peers’, and ‘numbers, colours, and symbols’, public sector governance is seen to be nested and layered, that is, more complex than stylized NPM and post-NPM models presume.