In approaching the more specific task of understanding and evaluating the Work ing Life Fund, the various elements of the frame of reference outlined in Chapter 2 had to guide the effort. Given all the discontinuities in the development of working life, it was not possible to assume in advance that ALF had acquired a clearly given role, ie, as an agent for the diffusion of existing solutions to workplace problems. Rather, there was a need to assume that the task confronting ALF could be much more complex, ranging from working out new solutions to influencing the society-level context of the implementation of these solutions. Even when our work with the Fund began, in 1991, it was known that there was a'turn towards work organization'in the activities financed by the Fund, beyond what was actually expected in the founding documents. Clearly, this was brought about through outside pressure, but the more specific nature of this turn was not so easy to grasp. A number of other issues could also be mentioned, that had to be treated as fairly open. It was clear from the beginning that a lot of effort would have to be put into the process of understanding the conditions under which ALF had to shape its role as well as the way in which this role was shaped. The need to take little for granted was reinforced by the point that the Fund started its operations in 1990—a year which was in many ways the watershed between two different periods in the Swedish economy. In the 1980s the economy had bordered on the overheated, inflation was high and the labor market overex tended. Unemployment was low and largely structural. Around 1990 this picture was replaced by the more normal one for recent years: an unemployment rate rapidly climbing to around 10 percent, pressure on the value of the Swedish krone, the state finances, and so on.

Although these contextual changes did not imply any formal revision of the mandate of ALF, it was nevertheless reasonably clear that shifts would have to occur in priorities and main focal points, if for no other reason than that the demands placed on ALF from its users were changing. The strong emphasis on