Management or Politics – or Both? How Management by Objectives May be Managed: A Swedish Example

Rather than manage the government administration in a systematic fashion, the Swedish Government reacts to all sorts of unsystematic information. Thereby, it ignores the decision-model that it has decided to employ. This situation has been criticised, and a coupling of practice to the decision-model has been recommended. However, while the political leaders have not found arguments to renounce a management approach to government, neither have they found means to employ it. In this article, it is suggested that a situation with two decision-models – one that is discussed but not used, and one that is used but not discussed – is a functional solution to this dilemma. Frequent criticism of this situation may help sustain it.