Statslige idealer og virkeligheden i kommunerne: En kortlægning af kommunernes brug af Arbejdsmarkedsstyrelsens benchmarks på sygedagpengeområdet

摘要

The Danish Government has suggested that a way to achieve a more effective public sector is by benchmarking the performance levels of the Danish municipalities. In the future, a rise in the number of state-driven benchmarks can be expected, measuring the performances of the municipalities of Denmark. The state level actors are expecting the municipalities to use the benchmarks as an instrument for improving their performances. The goal of this thesis is to investigate how the municipalities utilize state-driven benchmarks in the area of sickness benefits, compared to the expectations of the state level actors - expectations that are summarised in a theoretical constructed organisation recipe. Though a series of phone interviews with nineteen municipalities, it has not been possible to present a short and general answer to this question. Instead, we found that the municipalities have utilized the benchmarks in several different ways and therefore, the conclusion of the thesis is made up by various tendencies that sum up the municipalities’ use and non-use of the benchmarks. Many municipalities did not use the benchmarks in accordance with the organisation recipe due to financial reasons. Many municipalities consider the steps that are expected by the state-level actors too cost demanding. Especially the efforts to follow up on the benchmarks fell short of the expectations of the state-level actors. Only a minority of the municipalities conducted a supplementary analysis to find out the causes of their performance in the benchmarks. Many municipalities also failed to establish new co-operations with municipalities that performed well in the benchmarks, an important point in the organisation recipe. There were some positive tendencies, seen in the light of the expectations of the state-level actor, there were some positive tendencies. Some municipalities followed the organisation recipes all the way, while others used alternatives to the state-driven benchmarks - thereby indicating that the state does not have to encourage municipalities in order for them to focus on performance and efficiency. This after all is the ultimate goal of the state driven benchmarks.