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The nexus between work and social categories is known to have an impact on how people develop in their careers. The purpose of this study was to examine the conditions for career work undertaken by civilian criminal investigators (CIs) who are currently entering police organizations, complementing police officers in criminal investigations. The empirical study encompassed 71 interviews conducted with both civilian and police CIs in the Swedish police. The conditions for career work were analyzed through a social-symbolic lens, recognizing the impact of both resource distribution and agency in a network of different actors. Furthermore, the contextual nature of career work was examined, highlighting tensions between civilian and police CIs, influenced by gender dynamics and cultural factors. The situatedness and cultural characteristics of the workplace, involving gender and academic and professional background, have divergent outcomes in career work. This research discusses the multifaceted nature of career development among civilian CIs, providing an extended understanding of career as a socially negotiated process and unraveling the mutual influence of organizational dynamics, cultural norms, and resource distribution in shaping individual career trajectories.

Investigating online child sexual abuse (CSA) crimes is challenging for law enforcement agencies, demanding both digital expertise and knowledge about offences against children while exacting a mental toll on investigators. This article identifies challenges in the investigative process, drawing on audit reports, interviews with police management, observations of meetings, and a workshop with online CSA investigators. The findings reveal difficulties in resource allocation due to varying case sizes and rapid escalation. In addition, while online CSA investigators handle most cases, they require support from other police units; however, a widespread fear of these cases among non-specialized investigators complicates collaborative efforts. Lastly, a culture of organizational “compartmentalization” was described as hindering collaboration, as different branches of investigation remain separated. We discuss how these challenges pose problems to online CSA investigation practices.

While there is broad agreement about their importance, courses in professionalism have proven difficult to teach and assess. Furthermore, there is currently a lack of knowledge regarding problems that are common across professional boundaries. The purpose of this article is to examine what teaching and assessing professionalism in higher education entails in three distinctly different professional education contexts in Sweden: medical, police, and social-work education. The study is qualitative and comparative, with data consisting of documents (curricula, syllabi, course content n > 200), interviews (n = 18), and participant observations (∼30 h) of how professionalism is taught and assessed in each programme. The results describe the practice architectures of teaching and assessing professionalism, where problems and dilemmas are made visible. The results also show a tension between the ambition to practise and the ambition to assess, which leads to what we call 'assessment avoidance'.

This article aims to contribute to the theorization of power in workplace learning. We examined the ways in which civilian investigators participate in criminal investigation practice, and how these modes related to the social ordering in the police organization. Civilians, mostly women and well educated, are being hired in large numbers to help with the shortage of staff within the Swedish police organization. We analysed 71 interviews with both civilians and police officers, covering views on the nature of investigative work, the introduction of civilians, and their competence. The interviews were analysed in an abductive process using a practice theory outlook on power and participation. The results show four different modes of participation for civilians that have vastly different consequences for their integration into the police. These modes are dependent on how civilian competence is viewed, whether civilians are viewed as different or similar, and whether they are considered competent at investigating crimes. We conclude that the struggle to define competent practice is at the core of understanding the relationship between learning and power.

The number of civilian crime investigators (CIs) has been increasing among the police, a trend that is called civilianisation. However, conflicts have arisen from perceptions that civilian CIs undermine professional police efforts. The purpose of this study was to investigate the intersection of doing gender and professional identity in narratives on inclusion and/or exclusion in CIs' professional practices. Because professional background and gender composition change with the civilianisation of the police, this study included interviews with 48 female CIs from Sweden. The study showed that aspects of belongingness and uniqueness interact in complex ways and conclude that the intersection of being a civilian CI and a woman is at the core, especially in narratives on exclusion. Taken together, this means that civilian CIs' narratives are important to learn from and can help the police become aware of obstacles to and opportunities for civilian employees' full participation in the criminal investigation practice. Aspects of belongingness and uniqueness are discussed to contribute knowledge of how gender and professional identity can be redone in a way that helps reduce future barriers to full inclusion of female and civilian CIs in police work.

This article is a review of recent Swedish leadership research in two large public-sector areas: education and care. By comparing and contrasting research in these areas, we unveil the specifics and commonalities of research in public-sector leadership. We reviewed research articles from 2018 to 2020 and analyzed theories used, data-gathering methods employed, and topics researched. The results show some fundamental differences between the two areas. Compared to research on education, research on care is to a larger extent non-theoretical and is often focused on change management, quality assurance, and leaders’ roles in employee health. Conversely, studies on education are theory driven and mostly focused on leaders’ roles in learning and shared leadership. We discuss the state of Swedish public leadership research and make suggestions for mutual learning and moving forward in this research field.

Professional boundary takes place as actors negotiate occupational boundaries and division of labour. In this article, we examine the conditions of defensive, accommodating, and configurational boundary work in the context of crime investigation. We analyse how professional boundaries are negotiated as civilian investigators become involved with policing. The article is based on 71 interviews with civilian and police crime investigators from a variety of investigation units in Sweden. Findings show how policing as a professional field is shifted as civilians from a wide variety of backgrounds and with varying motivations enter the occupation. Defensive boundary work that devalued civilians was widely occurring. However, boundary work that focused on learning, collaboration, and training was also occurring in high-status units. The discussion focuses on how power asymmetries impact boundary work when professions are undergoing change. This study exemplifies how organizational actors navigate, defend, and challenge their positions as professional boundaries are negotiated.

This article addresses how rural environments characterized by remoteness impact the work of police detectives in their casework. It reports on an ethnographic study of two investigative departments (working on volume crime and domestic crime) located in Northern Sweden. Interviews (N=27) and participant observations (N =56) were conducted in order to examine how investigators approached and managed rural conditions in their daily work. Findings indicate that police investigations in rural areas are characterized by constraints, such as resource shortages, extended set-up times (due to travelling), and challenges in multitasking. The findings identify two main practices for investigating crime in such settings: 'rural investigation' that entails a decentralized approach in which investigators are embedded locally; and 'investigating the rural' that entails a distanced, centralized approach. This article discusses trade-offs and predicted outcomes in crime investigation and highlights how the urban/rural binary divide encompasses a paradoxical tension that investigators must manage continuously

In this paper, we contribute to the understanding of how managers engage in efforts to influence the sensemaking of others without prescribing a specific redefinition of organizational reality, and doing this while trying to empower their subordinates. Through observations of leadership conferences and interviews, we followed an attempt to establish a new management philosophy in the Swedish police. The aim of the initiative was to facilitate the development of independent co-workers with little or no hierarchical support. The results show how managers utilize reflexivity in sensegiving to facilitate participants’ sensemaking. We suggest the following definition for reflexive sensegiving: a multivocal process aiming to influence how the sensemaking and construction of meaning evolves. Reflexive sensegiving has four distinctive features: open-endedness, low control over cues given, several sources of cues, and the encouragement of complexity and ambiguity. Our contribution, which has conceptual and theoretical consequences, is centred around new outlooks on the content, agent(s), and process of sensegiving.