This article analyzes how a recent reform of Swedish employment service delivery reshapes the distribution of responsibilities among state, municipal, and private actors, and the challenges this generates for cross-sector collaboration. The study is based on interviews mainly with municipal employees and private providers in three municipalities. Drawing on Jessop’s theory of welfare state restructuring, the findings show that ‘depoliticization of power’ and ‘de-nationalization of the state’ operate as mutually reinforcing dynamics: responsibilities are transferred both from the state to private providers and, for particularly vulnerable job seekers, from private providers to municipalities. However, the study also identifies challenges to cross-sector collaboration, both through fragmented service provision and uneven local presence of actors, and through what we call ‘restatization of politics’, that is, centralized steering within the Swedish Public Employment Service. These tensions challenge the emergence of a networked polity and may reinforce geographical inequalities in employment service delivery.
Although companies and top managers claim that the work environment is a high priority, implementing such policies across organizational levels remains a challenge. In this regard, the Greenlandic labor market is no exception. Using the concept of decoupling as a theoretical lens, our in-depth case study of four major Greenlandic companies reveals where and how decoupling occurs during the translation of work environment priorities from top management to practice at the operational level. Our contribution is twofold: First, we advance decoupling theory by showing how it unfolds through micro-mechanisms with policy-practice decoupling at the top and means-ends decoupling at the local level. Micro-mechanisms which will be relevant in other contexts for work environment management as well as other fields. Second, we shed light on the unique challenges associated with work environment management in Greenland’s labor market. This nuanced understanding can help managers address these mechanisms and reduce the impact of decoupling.
We analyzed the association of job autonomy, mental demands, and organizational support on work engagement and the moderating role of organizational support between mental demands and work engagement. We also examined differences in these factors among onsite, hybrid, and remote workers during the COVID-19 pandemic using data from the Finnish MEADOW survey. Results showed that the remote workers had highest job autonomy, but no other significant differences were found. Job autonomy was positively associated with work engagement, while mental demands had a negative association with it. Organizational support had the strongest positive association with work engagement, and it was able to moderate the negative association between mental demands and work engagement. We conclude that the remote work cannot be classified as good or bad; rather, the question is more on how work is organized and managed. The new environment where remote work is increasingly done, however, presents several challenges for managers and supervisors.
Swedish municipalities have assumed an increasingly vital role in labor market inclusion, particularly for individuals distant from employment. This article examines how municipal labor market units (MLMUs) enact activation policies through a temporal lens. From a mediated discourse analysis perspective, the study explores how frontline staff manage, negotiate, and resist temporal aspects embedded in national active labor market policies. Based on qualitative interviews and focus groups with 71 MLMU frontline staff across eight municipalities, three overarching themes were found: time perspective, time processes, and time friction. The findings reveal a fundamental tension between the individualized, flexible temporalities developed by MLMU staff, and the standardized, efficiency-driven timescales imposed by national activation policy, a tension that staff actively manage and negotiate. This temporal mismatch risks reinforcing exclusion for vulnerable groups and calls for a rethinking of activation policies aimed at better aligning timescales across levels toward more participant-centered and temporally responsive approaches.
The article studies the utilization of blue-collar industrial workers’ competencies as part of organizational citizenship behavior in crisis situations. The research questions are: (1) How do workers perceive their opportunities to utilize their competencies in crisis situations? (2) How are the workers willing to utilize their competencies in crisis situations in terms of organizational citizenship behavior? The data used in the mixed-methods study comprise 983 survey responses analyzed by descriptive methods (quantitative data) and by theory-led content analysis (qualitative data). The findings indicate an imbalance between workers’ opportunities to utilize their competencies and their willingness to do so in crises. Although workers are motivated to draw on their diverse skills and to apply new ideas in crises, the organizational culture does not sufficiently support the use of this potential. Accordingly, there is a need for a more participatory organizational culture empowering employees to contribute to organizational learning required in crises.
This article explores meaningful work across two frontline occupations, bank advisors and schoolteachers. We build on narrative research focusing on the role of stories and storytelling in the sensemaking and identity construction processes related to work to explore the importance of others in the perception and construction of everyday work as meaningful. To study this, we examine the narrative construction of meaningful work in everyday work stories of self, work, others, and organizations as (ante)narrative identity construction processes. Our analysis shows that ‘making a difference by helping others’ is the predominant theme when sharing stories of everyday work situations perceived and constructed as meaningful. Three contributions are made. First, the narrative construction of meaningful work is collective and dynamic; second, others have a powerful voice in negotiating the meaningfulness of work; and third, negative public attention affects the possibility of assessing work as meaningful.
In this study, we examine how occupational safety and health (OSH) professionals and virtual design and construction (VDC) professionals navigate the use of technology for OSH purposes and how the interdisciplinarity between the two professions affects their occupational identities. Through a positioning analysis of interviews with OSH and VDC professionals, we conclude that the use of technology both challenges and supports the identity of OSH professionals. Technology enhances collaborative and alliance building aspects of OSH professionals’ identity; however, it is in risk of replacing dialogue, a core aspect of OSH professionals’ work. We find that cooperation between the two groups may enhance VDC professionals’ identity, as it allows them to exude collaborative competencies. Interdisciplinarity is a fruitful path for enhancing the use of technologies for OSH purposes, but the conservative nature of the construction industry poses a challenge to this.
This study focuses on immigrants’ labor market prospects in Sweden and their subsequent opportunities for mobility in the occupational structure with particular reference to the likelihood that immigrants of European and non-European origins work in low and high-paid jobs. We use data from the Swedish Labor Force Survey and compare outcomes of two key periods: 1998–2000 and 2012–2014. Our findings reveal an increasing ethnicization of the occupational structure, as the number of immigrants in low-paid employment has increased over time. We also find tendencies of polarization of the occupational structure that have not been conducive to equal opportunities for immigrants on the Swedish labor market who face various disadvantages and migration history penalties. Immigrants of non-European descent are at particular risk of working in low-paid employment and of having fewer opportunities for high-paid jobs. Thus, recent changes in the Swedish occupational structure contribute toward reinforcing ethnic inequalities and severely challenge the notion and ideal of Swedish equality.
Digitalization and the transition toward Industry 4.0 in manufacturing involve changing organizational needs for skills and competences, which, in turn, necessitate strategies for digital competence management. Based on qualitative interviews in four manufacturing companies in Norway and Sweden, this study shows how the transition to digitalized production involves several key decisions regarding staffing strategies, job design, and competence development. Moreover, it illustrates how various contextual conditions influence these decisions. Recognizing these strategic choices as partly interdependent, two contrasting paths are presented: the enabling path vs. the pragmatic flexibility path. While institutional factors in Sweden and Norway mainly push toward the enabling path, company-specific factors push instead toward the pragmatic flexibility path.
Working conditions among healthcare workers became more demanding during the COVID-19 pandemic, and new types of work hour schedules emerged. The aim of the study was to investigate how working hours in the Swedish healthcare sector were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Payroll data were extracted from one mid-size Swedish region, including 1,130,391 shifts worked by 3392 individuals between December 2018 and September 2023. Paired t-tests were used to compare working hours before and after the onset of COVID-19. There were few changes to the working hours during COVID-19. A new schedule (4 workdays, 2 days off) increased weekend work and decreased the proportion of quick returns and single free days. Exploratory analyses showed that overtime increased. In conclusion, the pandemic had few and weak effects on the ergonomic qualities of work hour schedules. More research is needed to explore whether the findings are representative of other contexts.
Remote work is fundamentally changing the organization of work, replacing the physical work environment of the office and creating a spatial distance between colleagues. This article investigates the relationship between remote work frequency and three aspects of the psychosocial work environment (quantitative job demands, control, and social support) and to which extent the relationship is mediated by the frequency of contact with supervisors and co-workers. The Norlife Remote Work - Longitudinal Study (NorRemo-LS) of Norwegian employees (n = 2553) across four waves between February 2021 and September 2022 is analyzed using general structural equation modeling (GSEM). The results show that the extent of remote work is associated with increased schedule control. Remote work may diminish employee control and increase quantitative job demands if employees have less frequent contact with their supervisor. Less frequent contact with co-workers not only entails lower job control and less social support but also lower quantitative demands.
Recent research on changes in the occupational structure in the Nordic region points in different directions. Some studies indicate upgrading of jobs with better quality, advanced skill requirements, and higher wages, while others show tendencies toward polarization in the skill distribution of jobs. The present article finds gendered patterns of upgrading or polarization in the occupational structure in the Nordic countries in the years 2012–2019. The changes in the occupational structure have been more beneficial for women, who increasingly occupy higher-level positions. Especially, the public sector has served as a vehicle for high-level female positions. While previous research has stressed technological change, especially digitalization as the primary driver of change, this article argues that developments in the public sector also need to be considered to fully understand occupational change in the Nordic region.
This article focuses on foreign-born teaching staff in higher education institutions and their experiences of cultural learning, as well as their psychological and sociocultural adaptation to their workplaces and to the Finnish society. Among highly skilled migrants, the area of foreign-born teaching staff in higher education is under-researched. This study is based on a qualitative thematic analysis of interviews of 13 foreign-born teachers. The findings showed that in the adaptation process, the place of living was particularly significant for the informants. Support from social and professional communities, as well as the informants’ own positive attitudes, fostered adaptation. Fluency in the local language promoted the informants’ social and professional adaptation and career development in higher education.
Change and crisis increase the need for organizations to manage employee emotions, such as fear or resistance to change. The human resource (HR) function is vital for such emotion management. In the Nordic context, characterized by pronounced human resource management (HRM) devolvement, managers interact with employees independently, while HR provides support and HRM practices. The article argues that devolvement necessitates a reconceptualization of the HR function’s emotion management. Drawing on meeting observations and interviews in a Swedish public sector organization, the article examines how the HR function performs emotion management in a devolved setting. The concept of ‘emotion management by proxy’ is introduced, referring to the emotion management performed through an intermediary in order to manage the emotions of a third party. Emotion management by proxy was found to be achieved through three main tactics: managing managers’ emotions; monitoring stakeholder emotions; and prompting and supporting managers’ emotion work.
Employers in Sweden are mandated to take active measures to prevent discrimination against sexual minorities. While it is important that relevant measures are taken, knowledge is lacking about cisgender lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people’s minority stress experiences at Swedish workplaces. The present work is based on a thematic analysis of interviews with 53 cisgender LGB participants, focusing on how they experienced and dealt with minority stress experiences at work. Results are drawing on the minority stress model and illustrate experiences of distal minority stress due to a heteronormative work climate. This distal stress led to proximal stressors, such as constantly being on guard. Participants took considerable responsibility for others’ feelings, felt a responsibility to educate on LGBTQ issues, and sometimes engaged in formal policy work to improve workplace conditions. The study points at the importance of shifting the burden of workplace minority stress from individual LGB people to employers.
This study explores organizational work environment issues related to the dynamics of client-consultant teams in complex automation projects. Focusing on a Swedish industrial company’s long-term collaboration with a consultancy firm to implement HR process automation, the study highlights how the interplay between knowledge and power shape the collaboration, stakeholder salience, and project success. Grounded in Nordic traditions of user-participation and democracy, it draws attention to how automation initiatives affect structural working conditions, job demands, and resources. This qualitative, single-case study, featuring participatory observations and semi-structured interviews, reveals the importance of addressing work environment issues at an organizational level and underscores the challenges of ensuring knowledge transfer, balancing stakeholder interests, and maintaining agile, collaborative prac-tices. The findings contribute to current Nordic and global discourses by demonstrating how client–consultant relationships and dependency can transform an organization’s conditions and requirements for work, emphasizing the need for a strategic approach to project management.
Background: The aim of this study was to explore experiences of how 1177 Direct, a medical system incorporating auto-anamnesis, auto-triage, and online chat, affected the work environment of registered nurses in Swedish primary health care. Methods: A qualitative study using content analysis of 29 semi-structured interviews was conducted with nurses from the central 1177 service (n = 10), official primary health care (n = 10), and private primary health care centers (n = 9). Results: Three main categories were found with regard to the study aim: ‘professional competence and patient interaction’, ‘job demands’ (cognitive and psychological job demands), and ‘resources’ (job control, support, and desired resources). Conclusion: Registered nurses reported altered patient interactions, increased job demands, and partial reduction in job control associated with 1177 Direct. To mitigate these challenges, they emphasized the need for streamlined contact channels, increased autonomy, reduced accessibility for minor conditions, and a strengthened recognition of their professional role in the digital context.
The Nordic working life is characterized by high union density, flat organizations, and trust. In this context, ethical artificial intelligence (AI) implementation requires dialogue and collective decision-making between employers and employees. This scoping review displays argumentations in scientific literature about AI implementation in working life through five ethical frameworks: utilitarianism, rights-based justice, distributive justice, ethics of care, and virtue ethics. Results show that rights-based ethics and ethics of care are the most prominent framings, while utilitarian and distributive justice arguments rather support tensions between efficiency and fairness. This displays how AI’s promise of efficiency exists in tension with fundamental working life values such as transparency, fairness, and collective wellbeing. As the Nordic model is under pressure, in parallel with the structural shifts that follow AI implementation, this study highlights how ethical leadership will be more important to ensure that AI implementation strengthens the collective values that have historically distinguished Nordic working life.
Entrepreneurs in Nordic countries and elsewhere in Europe are often in precarious positions compared to salaried employees; they are outside organized occupational health care systems and solely responsible for their own well-being. It is therefore important that they have ways to proactively enhance their well-being. Building on the concepts of job crafting, leisure crafting, and work–life balance crafting, this study proposes a new concept of entrepreneurial crafting for well-being (ECW) and examines it in Finland, using open-ended written survey responses and group discussions with 39 solo self-employed individuals and small-business owners. Qualitative content analysis shows that the most common forms of ECW are work–life crafting and leisure crafting, while cognitive, task, and relational crafting were the least frequently mentioned. The study contributes to the entrepreneurial well-being and crafting literature by showing that crafting in work and other domains can be used outside salaried work to promote well-being.
This study explores leadership in public sector automation, considering how contextual characteristics in two Swedish municipalities interact with the evolution of leadership. Through qualitative analysis of semistructured interviews with leaders and employees in elder care, we examine leadership skills and behaviors understood as crucial for implementing medicine robots. Grounded in reflexive thematic analyses, we present six themes: (1) Tech openness, (2) Optimism toward change, (3) Collaborative coordination, (4) Training and support, (5) Instrumental understanding, and (6) Operational feedback. The main findings illustrate how leadership skills, including cultivating optimism, engaging with technology and fostering collaboration, were considered essential. While proactive leadership was limited, knowledgeable and supportive leadership was apparent. Behaviors understood as supportive included communicating purpose and providing timely education. Leadership is vital in automation implementations, requiring skills to address complexities of human–technology interaction and balancing enthusiasm for automation with strategic foresight and deep understanding of the public sector context.
