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The purpose of this paper is to explore and describe the perspective of the management group regarding how they reasoned when deciding to engage in a model focussing on systematic work environment management, and what motives that influenced their decision.

This qualitative study with semi-structured interviews includes 18 representatives from the management groups in 18 Swedish municipalities. Data were analysed with a constant comparative method.

The participants described two aspects that were of importance when making the decision; establishing commitment before making the decision and establishing strategies to legitimise the decision. Furthermore, they expressed motives that were linked both to their individual expectations and wishes and to policies and facts in their organisations. The participants experienced the model as a valuable tool in their organisations to increase employee participation and to provide structured support to their first-line managers.

The managers’ motives were linked to individual expectations and external directives. These were often intertwined and influenced their decisions. When implementing this type of model, it is important to discuss decisions in a larger group to avoid building an organisational initiative on one person’s expectations. Furthermore, it is important to support the management’s work to establish commitment for the model in the municipal organisation.

This study adds to knowledge of the complexity of deciding and implementing models to support systematic work environment management in organisations.

Pilgrimage brings humans and other-than-humans together through a dual process – movement across space and the transformation of space through the process of sacralisation. This paper aims to explore this dual process by outlining the development of qualitative research on contemporary pilgrimage where the dominant representational approach which focuses on human agency has been complemented by a relational perspective where statues, springs and rocks, for example, are seen as possessing their own agency that influences human action.

This paper describes the development of qualitative research on contemporary pilgrimage by bringing together both the representational and relational approach and drawing on the author’s experience of pilgrimage over many years and his reflections on that experience as a trained qualitative researcher.

This paper explores the ways in which the dominant representational approach in pilgrimage studies can be complemented by the relational approach by drawing on the author’s experience of pilgrimage in three different contexts

The paper is original by bringing together both the representational and relational perspectives, contextualising them through the author’s experience of different types of pilgrimage and linking pilgrimage to the wider issues of migration, space and agency.