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This study explores the evolving, however also “messy”, role of communication professionals in higher education institutions (HEIs), who are involved in organizational science communication. Despite substantial growth and professionalization within HEIs' communication departments, limited research delves into these professionals' own perspectives and their self-understanding. Our investigation employs a metaphors-in-use perspective, through 26 interviews in ten Scandinavian HEIs. The paper contributes to the research on organizational science communication by unraveling the metaphors used by communication professionals: the salesman, the marketplace-facilitator, the police, the missionary, the storyteller, and the overhead-cost, gaining an understanding of how communication professionals perceive their own role.

In recent decades, the role of communication and PR within higher education institutions (HEIs) has grown in significance, marked by the expansion of communication departments, diversified work assignments for communication professionals, and an increasing focus on reputation and visibility. This study examines 203 job advertisements targeting communication professionals in Swedish HEIs from 1999 to 2022. Our analysis identifies a substantial shift in the expectations and roles of communication professionals. It reveals a pronounced trend of increasing expectations, necessitating candidates to possess a broader and deeper skill set to manage a wider spectrum of responsibilities in HEIs. Furthermore, while our findings signal a noteworthy transformation in the communication profession, it also shows the evolvement from a supportive function to a strategically integral role in aiding and forming institutional management and leadership. Moreover, this study highlights communication departments as particularly flexible sites for receiving and incorporating external trends and ideas in university organizations.

Promotional videos produced by higher education institutions (HEIs) are an important medium for introducing new generations of students to HEIs and communicating their roles and purposes to the outside world. Despite the widespread use of such videos, research on their contents and implications is relatively sparse. This study addresses this gap by analysing videos from 12 Scandinavian HEIs. The study found that the videos aligned with the concept of the ‘Promotional University 2.0’, emphasizing an intention to ‘aspire to more’ and ‘add to the real world’, and portraying the university as an arena for play and joy. Three main categories of videos emerged: student-centred, market-centred, and organization-centred. The study also highlights the ideological implications of the representations, as they reflect the tension between traditional and commercialized views of the university. The results contribute to an understanding of how promotional videos shape the expectations of students and other stakeholders. This research is important as it helps us understand how HEIs communicate and represent themselves in the highly competitive marketplace of higher education. It also illustrates the incommensurability between higher education policies aiming to promote democratization and serve the public interest on the one hand, and the images of HEIs created by promotional multimodal content on the other.

There is a growing research that considers the geographical indications (GIs) of agricultural products and foodstuffs as commons. However, narrative approaches exploring this relationship are scarce. This research analyzed stories attached to twelve Catalan and Swedish products within the European Union’s Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), and Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) schemes to map out how narratives of commons are articulated. The analysis raised four key aspects of the narratives of GIs as commons: i) historical constitution; ii) collective effortsas a driving force behind their value; iii) co-responsibilityof the community of producers and related actors; and iv) intangible outputs and focus on heritage. The results show that the narratives of GIs as commons have a stronger presence in Catalonia and more clearly address issues of social engagement and cultural heritage than in Sweden. Internal differences were noted in the two countries and some GIs are more commercially oriented and cater for world markets while others are noncommercial and only regionally consumed. The article contributes to the research on GIs, better connecting their complexities throughout their communicative and narrative constitution and articulation as commons.

During the past 30 years, Swedish eldercare has undergone extensive reforms featuring, among others, far-reaching efforts to construct municipal markets characterised by competition between nursing homes for service provision. Our aim in this paper is to develop new knowledge about how eldercare professionals currently approach the role of competition after it has been present for three decades as a key idea throughout Sweden’s market-inspired reforms. To address that aim, we build on insights from organisational theory, and conduct a study consisting of 39 interviews with professionals working as frontline or management staff in publicly or privately operated homes. Our findings show how competition was similarly perceived across public and private nursing homes: eldercare professionals regarded it as a phenomenon primarily affecting their work in relation to tendering periods. Important differences, nonetheless, existed between staff groups in homes. Thus, the findings of our study also indicate that perceptions of competition ranged from a more employment-focused and episodically occurring phenomenon among frontline staff, to a more visibility-focused and continuously occurring phenomenon among management staff. We finish by discussing competition as a central and peripheral phenomenon in nursing homes, and by highlighting the relevance of our findings for additional eldercare contexts across Europe.

Svensk äldreomsorg har under de senaste 30 åren genomgått omfattande reformer som, bland annat, har innehållit långtgående ansträngningar att konstruera kommunala marknader karaktäriserade av konkurrens mellan äldreboenden. Vårt syfte med detta papper är att utveckla ny kunskap kring hur äldreomsorgsanställda i dagsläget ser på rollen av konkurrens efter att det har varit ett genomgående fenomen under Sveriges tre decennier av marknadsinspirerade reformer. Vi tar oss an detta syfte genom att använda organisationsteori som bakgrund till en studie bestående av 39 intervjuer med anställda på frontlinjen eller inom styrning bland privata eller offentliga äldreboenden. Våra resultat visar hur konkurrens sågs på liknande sätt bland privata och offentliga boenden: anställda närmade sig konkurrens som ett fenomen vars huvudsakliga påverkan upplevdes i förhållande till upphandlingsperioder. Stora skillnader fanns samtidigt mellan yrkesgrupper inom äldreboenden. Våra resultat visar också att förståelser av konkurrens sträckte sig från ett mer arbetsfokuserat och episodiskt närvarande fenomen bland anställda på frontlinjen till ett mer synlighetsfokuserat och kontinuerligt närvarande fenomen bland anställda inom styrning. Vi avrundar genom att diskutera konkurrens som ett centralt och perifert fenomen inom äldreboenden, och genom att understryka relevansen av våra resultat för ytterligare äldreomsorgskontexter runtom Europa.

Marknadsliknande reformer i början av 1990-talet innebar att svensk offentlig sektor genomgick en omvälvande transformation där statligt centraliserad styrning med likvärdighet och standardisering som ledstjärnor till stor del byttes ut mot kommunalt delegerad styrning med valfrihet och effektivitet som grundläggande principer. I denna rapport använder vi oss av organisationsteori för att studera hur 1990-talets reformer 30 år senare tar sig uttryck inom dagens äldreomsorg. Vårt fokus ligger framförallt på hur dessa reformer idag manifesteras i mötet med de som kan sägas vara äldreomsorgens kärnfigurer –den personal som arbetar på äldreboenden. Vi studerar detta möte genom intervjuer med vårdande, administrerande och ledande personal bland offentliga, privata och ideella äldreboenden i två svenska kommuner åren 2018-2019. Vår nästintill självklara utgångspunkt är att reformer förändras under deras väg från den politiska nivån (”idealet”) till den verksamhetsnära nivån (”golvet”). De uttryck som det tidiga 1990-talets marknadsliknande reformer tar sig i mötet med nutida personal på äldreboenden är dock en öppen empirisk fråga, vilken vi undersöker utifrån tre sammankopplade perspektiv: konkurrens, identitet och ansvar.

Market-inspired reforms in the early 1990s transformed Sweden’s public sector profoundly. These reforms generally implied a transition from state-centered control, with equality and standardization as central features, to municipally delegated control, with choice and efficiency as core principles. In this report, we use organizationtheory to study how the early 1990s reforms come into play today within Swedish eldercare. Our focus is placed on how these reforms manifest themselves as they meet some of the primary figures in eldercare –the employees at retirement homes. We study this meeting through interviews with nursing, administrative, and leadership personnel at retirement homes operated by public, private, and civil sector organizations in two municipalities. Our almost obvious point of departure is that reforms undergo changeson their way from the political level to the operational level, but how these changes are expressed is an empirical question that we explore in this report through three connected perspectives: competition, identity, and accountability.