Measures of accountability and delegated discretion in activation work: lessons from the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Service

Activation work – the complex task of motivating, compelling and assisting marginalized citizens into labour market participation – pinpoints critical issues of discretion and accountability in the welfare state. Investigating accountability measures aimed at ensuring qualified discretionary judgements is therefore important. In this article, I discuss the reformed Norwegian Labour and Welfare Service and the accountability measures aimed at discretionary judgements of frontline workers. The conclusion is that, because activation tasks in the Norwegian frontline service imply professional discretion more than administrative discretion, structural measures aimed at restricting the discretionary space of frontline workers seem to have only limited impact. This is because the knowledge necessary to perform means – end judgements is insufficient. Rather, there seems to be a need for epistemic measures aimed at improving the knowledge base for professional discretionary reasoning.     

Profession and Workplace Expectations of Social Workers: Implications for Social Worker Subjective Well-Being

The expectations people have of social workers, and those that social workers hold of themselves, can negatively affect social worker's perceived well-being, via work stress and strain and other negative workplace experiences. This qualitative research presents findings that help to better understand what aspects of these expectations have the greatest impact on the well-being of a sample (n = 19) of social workers with reported low levels of workplace and profession satisfaction. Our data support a conceptual framework of social worker's expectations that relate to outcomes of practice, social worker roles, the perceived functioning by other health-related professionals, conflict in direct practice with social worker identity and having to work in adverse situations, as all contributing to the well-being of social workers. Findings are discussed in relation to social work practice and the role and function of professional associations and educational programmes in addressing these issues that emerge in practice.     

A Postmodern Critique of Societal Discourses of Male Violence in Interpersonal Family Relationships: A Balancing Act for Social Work

In recent years, treatments of family violence have tended to be built around conventional discourses suggesting that men are major initiators in instances of interpersonal violence. Utilizing a postmodernist analysis, we assess societal discourses that continue to give life to this narrow conceptualization of interpersonal violence. We also examine literature suggesting that both men and women resort to violence to resolve relationship difficulties and suggest that a more holistic and inclusive approach to understanding interpersonal violence is critical for social workers committed to social justice and a balanced understanding of the contextual nature of human problems.     

Anthropological Theories of Low-Wage Work

This review assesses the use of anthropological theories in the examination of low-wage work. Due to the vast differences existing between different cultures in low-wage work, this review focuses on theories that have been applied in Western, and mainly American, contexts. There are primarily three fields from which this literature is drawn: economic anthropology, gender and race anthropology, and theories of power—the last integrates all these theories. Differences and controversies over the applicability of these theories are also highlighted. The review concludes with a conceptual map describing the interrelatedness of these theories and how they explain the realities of low-wage workers.     

Retrofitting Drucker: Knowledge work under cognitive capitalism

This article uses Peter Drucker's work vector-like, to carry the thesis of cognitive capitalism into the management field. Drucker's prophetic insights into the knowledge society are juxtaposed with recent, Italian autonomist Marxist-inspired analyses of capitalism's cognitive phase. If the capacity to create knowledge – or what autonomists call the ‘general intellect’ – is becoming the key productive force, arguably there is a need for a full-blown social form of knowledge management. Our reading of Drucker thus retrieves the one worthwhile thing from the rubble of normative knowledge management. It is the idea of society-level knowledge management premised on a universal and unconditional guaranteed basic income (GBI; or social wage). Basic income represents not just a social investment in knowledge, which Drucker himself called for, but also compensation for biolabour's augmented social productivity. With Drucker as the steppingstone, we conclude, the autonomist tradition merits greater attention from critical management and organisational scholars interested in factoring class and gender back into the knowledge management equation.     

All that is solid melts into work: self‐work,the ‘learning ethic’ and the work ethic

In this paper I examine the intersections between a general commitment to education and learning and the moral and ethical dimensions of the work ethic under contemporary capitalism. Drawing on Kathi Weeks' (2011) recent exploration of the work ethic in The Problem with Work, I suggest there is a relationship between the form and function of the work ethic‐ and what I term the ‘learning ethic’. I suggest that commitment to a learning ethic, to the unreserved power of learning and education‐ may reiterate a moral commitment to the personal characteristics that define the work ethic under capitalism. As a consequence, consideration of the form and function of these moral character ideals in the continuation of unequal social relations across educational and workspaces, become obfuscated by a generalized celebration of learning, education and self‐work.     

Gender,Work and Organization: A gender–work–organization analysis

This article, celebrating 25 year of Gender, Work and Organization, reflects on some of the events that led to establishing the journal. It proceeds to consider the three central elements that have inspired the journal ‐ gender, work and organization ‐ and how they have become more problematic, perhaps much more problematic, over the lifetime of the journal. Indeed, paradoxically, these shift have occurred at the same time as GWO and the field of which it is part have become more established. Just as the field of gender and organizations has become more legitimate area of study, the concept of ‘gender’ has become more complex, more contested, less certain. This also applies to the notion of ‘organization’, perhaps less so to ‘work’. The latter part of the article considers what happens when one views the GWO itself in terms of gender‐work‐organization analysis, and how such questions may develop in the future.     

Scandalous Care: Interpreting Public Enquiry Reports of Scandals in Residential Care

ABSTRACT

This article reviews an earlier study written for the Wagner Committee (1988) on scandals in residential care. That review was based on a study of ten enquiry reports, only two of which were about homes for older people. The main events that were described are grouped as: institutionalised practices, indifference and neglect, physical cruelty, humiliation, too authoritarian a life-style, a dull and depressing life-style, an overcrowded and run down environment, disharmony amongst the staff team, and staff misappropriating goods or money. Now, more weight should be given to: residents' abuse of residents and of staff, an improper influence on the life-style of others, and sexual abuse. Explanations proposed are: structural, environmental, and individual and worker style. Abuse is considered in the context of the nature of direct care and the acts of intimate caring of others.     

Job quality,industrial relations and the crisis in Europe

This paper reports results from recent Eurofound research on the impact of the crisis on industrial relations and working conditions in Europe, based on the output of Eurofound's European Working Conditions Observatory and European Industrial Relations Observatory and data from the European Working Conditions Survey. Overall, the crisis – even if it is sometimes difficult to separate the effect of the crisis from megatrends in working conditions and industrial relations – seems to have had an impact on both domains. With reference to industrial relations, the impact of the crisis has influenced actors, processes, and outcomes. Regarding working conditions, the results appear to be in line with the literature on the topic, which relates the crisis to an increase in job insecurity, a decrease in work intensity, in working hours, and in anti-social working time arrangements, and a general improvement in terms of health risks and related outcomes.     

Examining coping strategies used by Spanish female social work students: evidence for the importance of social problem-solving abilities

The present study examined the role of social problem-solving abilities in the coping strategies used by 310 female social work students from Spain. Results from comparative analyses of the coping strategies, used by students to deal with stressful situations, indicated the greater use of functional forms of coping (eg problem solving and cognitive restructuring), compared to dysfunctional forms of coping (eg problem avoidance and wishful thinking). Moreover, results from regression analyses indicated that constructive social problem-solving abilities, namely, positive problem orientation and rational problem solving, predicted the use of functional coping strategies (eg problem solving, cognitive restructuring, and express emotions). Alternatively, one damaging social problem-solving ability, namely, negative problem orientation, predicted the use of dysfunctional coping strategies (eg problem avoidance, wishful thinking, self criticism, and social withdrawal). Taken together, these findings provide an important first step for understanding what and how social problem-solving abilities might inform how social work students cope with stressful situations as they arise. Some implications for social work education and training are discussed.