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The use of the customer concept and ways of interacting with customers in support functions are relatively new areas of interest for public organizations. The purpose of this study is to describe the development toward a stronger customer orientation in a support function in a Swedish county council from a management team perspective.

A revision of plans and annual reports and individual interviews with the members of a management team was done. The interviews were examined using qualitative content analysis.

The results are presented in one overarching theme, the double-edged customer concept, and three themes, meeting the customer’s needs, being the customer’s specialist and developing in collaboration with the customer. The development of a customer orientation is illustrated as a spiral involving the concepts of understanding, wanting and acting.

The paper contributes to a new understanding of how customer orientation develops in the context of public organizations’ support functions.

The purpose of this paper is to describe staffs’ perceptions of digital support for medication administration (DSM) and out of the perceptions interpret underlying values.

In total, 22 persons working in elder care participated in the study. The study had a qualitative approach and focus group interviews were used to collect data. To analyze the manifest content a phenomenographic method was used. An interpretation of perceptions was then undertaken aimed at identifying underlying values.

Three descriptive categories, “utility,” “impact on working environment” and “economic impact” were the result of the manifest analysis. The values of having a “good working environment,” “benefits” and “good economy” were interpreted as guidance for staffs’ acceptance or rejection of the DSM.

The care-giving process and its challenges from the perspective of the staffs need consideration. Staffs in this study sometimes expressed strong emotions as a sign of frustration for losing prerequisites to perform their work well. In big complex organizations where economy and effectiveness are often discussed, knowledge of power relations in innovation and implementation processes would be beneficial. Although moral distress is a well-known phenomenon, future research may be needed to find solutions that diminish this negative trend in more economic focussed organizations.

This study had a twofold approach with the intention of going beyond descriptions. To gain a deeper understanding a normative interpretation was completed. Ethical conflicts are frequently characterized as conflicts between at least two values. In this study staffs expressed fear of losing prerequisites needed to perform their work well. Prerequisites that were identified as values and these values were threatened by the DSM.