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Nordic Countries
The Nordic countries have the world’s best working life. Unlike in many
other countries, global competition has not created inequality, uncertainty,
long working hours, standardization and restrictive managerial control. The
main reason for this lies in the way interests are expressed and conflicts are
resolved. Both employees and employers are well organized and both recog-
nize the interests of the other. Working life develops in a constant interaction
between conflict and compromise.
This book examines working conditions in Norway, Denmark, Sweden
and Finland. It explores how these good working conditions are created and
maintained. The chapters explain:
Work and Wellbeing in the Nordic Countries is addressed to all those who have
an interest in the quality of working life. It will be of particular use to all
students, academics and policy makers working in the fields of social policy,
wellbeing, management studies, employment relations, work sociology and
work psychology.
Typeset in Bembo
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
Contents
Introduction 1
HELGE HVID AND EIVIND FALKUM
PART I
An overview: introduction 7
HELGE HVID AND EIVIND FALKUM
PART II
Organization and management in a working life
perspective: introduction 47
HELGE HVID AND EIVIND FALKUM
3 Democracy at work 49
HEIDI ENEHAUG, EIVIND FALKUM AND HELGE HVID
PART III
Learning, inclusion and equality: introduction 153
HELGE HVID AND EIVIND FALKUM
PART IV
Nordic approaches to New Public Management:
professions in transition – introduction 217
ANNETTE KAMP, AGNETE MELDGAARD HANSEN AND
CHRISTIN THEA WATHNE
PART V
Terms of employment: precarious work in a
Nordic setting – introduction 283
HELGE HVID AND EIVIND FALKUM
Index 364
Work and Wellbeing in
the Nordic Countries
1st Edition
AUTHORS:
This statement rests on an analysis of data from the OECD Job Quality
Framework,1 which enables comparative studies of job quality across countries.
Of all the countries surveyed, Denmark and Norway performed best across the
parameters studied: employment, work-related health, wages, job security, and
inclusion in the labour market. The relatively favourable working conditions
in Norway and Denmark have not prevented those countries from maintaining
their position among the richest in the world.
Those who primarily benefit from the good working conditions in the
Nordics are the employees. For people between the ages of 20 and 65, work
is a major part of the time they are awake, and work is an important factor in
creating income, security and meaning in life. Therefore, we can expect high-
quality working conditions to contribute to happiness. Actually, according to
the 2016 World Happiness Report, Denmark was number one in the happiness
index. In 2017, Norway topped the index, followed by Denmark. In 2018,
Finland was number one in the happiness index, followed by Norway and
Denmark. In the Global Happiness Policy Report 2018, the impact of working
conditions on happiness was examined (Helliwell, 2018), showing a strong
relation between working conditions and happiness.
In this book, we will examine how these relatively good working conditions
are created and maintained. We will examine:
So, what is the right approach for understanding working conditions in the
Nordic countries? Should we praise these working conditions, or should we
criticize them? We suggest that we do both. Research on working life in the
Nordic countries has historically nurtured widespread criticism of working con-
ditions, which, historically, has proved to make a difference. The criticisms are
widely picked up on by trade unions, professional associations, management
researchers, employers’ organizations and public authorities. Such criticism, and
the conflicts it causes, is probably the main reason why working conditions are
better in Norway and Denmark than in most other countries. Criticism matters.
Working life in the Nordics is generally following global trends: global
competition creates heavy workloads. Digitalization has a strong influence on
working life. International concepts for organizing work are also influenc-
ing working life in the Nordics. The principles of new public management
Introduction 5
govern the public sector. New groups in the labour market are experiencing
precarious work. Work-related stress is also an issue in the Nordics. Criticism
from our colleagues outside the Nordic region also tends to be relevant for
those of us studying working conditions in the Nordics. However, compari-
sons often make it clear that technology and globalized competition do not
determine working conditions. Those involved can influence the quality of
working life, with the right approach and with the right institutional setting.
We cannot take for granted the position of Norway and Denmark as the
countries with the best working conditions. Working conditions and the
institutions that support these are constantly exposed to erosion, attacks and
undermining influences. In order to maintain the relatively good conditions,
work, work organization and institutions must constantly change.
Working conditions in Norway and Denmark are rooted in the history of
the two countries and cannot simply be copied by other countries. However,
we hope that insight into these two countries can provide inspiration for the
organization of policies and the creation of institutions that promote high-
quality working life.
people, and we discuss how this is influenced by the social parties. Further
education is investigated as promoting or constraining mobility. Finally, there
is a discussion on how to bring into the labour market people who, for different
reasons, are marginalized with regard to employment.
In Part IV, new public management in the Nordics is explored. In the last
25 years, public employment in the Nordic region has been heavily influenced
by the principles of new public management. However, these principles have
had a distinctive design, character and consequence in the Nordic countries, in
line with the Nordic approach.
Part V examines precarious work in the Nordic context. This phenomenon
is first examined in general terms. Then it is shown how highly educated people
are working under precarious conditions. We investigate how the introduction
of temporary workers in the Nordics influences working conditions more gen-
erally. Finally, there is an examination of how platform economics is handled
in a Nordic context.
Notes
1 Data are presented at www.oecd.org/statistics/job-quality.htm.
2 Denmark, Norway and Sweden are all in the top ten in the ranking made by the
World Bank on ‘Doing Business’. See www.doingbusiness.org/rankings.
References
Andersen, S. K., Dølvik, J. E. & Ibsen, C. L. (2014) Nordic Labour Market Models in
Open Markets, Brussels: ETUI.
Esping-Andersen, G. (1990) Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, New York: John Wiley
& Sons.
FTF-aktuelt (2017) OECD: Nordiske arbejdsmarkeder sikrer de bedste jobs, Copenhagen:
FTF-aktuelt 22-01-2017.
Helliwell, J. F. (2018) Global Happiness Policy Synthesis 2018, In: Global Happiness
Policy Report 2018, UN: World Happiness Council.
The Economist (2013) Special Report. The Nordic Countries. February 2013.
Part I
An overview
Introduction
Helge Hvid and Eivind Falkum
In this Part we will briefly present where we are (Chapter 1), and then we will
explain how we came to be where we are (Chapter 2).
Chapter 1: Nordic working life, shaped through conflicts and compromises. By Helge
Hvid, Eivind Falkum and Arild Henrik Steen.
In this chapter, there are references to some of the many comparative analy-
ses that state that the Nordic countries, including Norway and Denmark, are
rather special in terms of working conditions. You will also find explanations
for this: the strong organization of collective interests, the general recogni-
tion and acceptance of opposing interests, and the building of an institutional
network where interests can meet and compromises made, in individual work
groups, and at company, sector, regional and national level. Further, we discuss
other explanations: the culture, with its high degree of trust (but perhaps it was
the interest-based institutions that created and still maintain the high degree of
trust?), the welfare state (but are the Nordic welfare states so unique?) and the
economy (which is quite successful, but without specific advantages).
Chapter 2: The peculiar history of Nordic working life. By Eivind Falkum, Helge Hvid
and Per Bonde Hansen.
The main argument here is that conflict has been the driving force in the his-
tory of Nordic working life. The Nordic labour market systems were created
through serious conflicts in the labour market. The social-democratic soci-
ety was formed out of the conflicts, in which employees’ interest in wages,
employment and democracy at work were reconciled with employers’ inter-
ests in free market conditions and earnings. During the 1980s, however, the
social-democratic project weakened, and neo-liberal understandings began to
penetrate society. It turned out that the Nordic approach was by no means a
bulwark against neo-liberalism. On the contrary, a Nordic-influenced neo-
liberalism developed, which, on the one hand, has provided far more space
for the market, but on the other, has managed to maintain a certain degree of
equality, safety and quality in working life.
Both chapters present the Nordic experiences as unique. However, it is also
underlined that the Nordics are not alternatives to the global trends in work,
8 Helge Hvid and Eivind Falkum
organization and labour market. They represent a variant of the global trends.
Employers and employees in the Nordic countries are facing the same chal-
lenges as in other developed countries. However, the approach to dealing with
these challenges is somewhat different.
Chapter 1
from the workers as possible. However, the company and society as a whole
are dependent on the workers’ defence of their working conditions through
the workers’ collective. Without workers defending their working conditions,
there would soon be no available workers for the companies. The workers rely
on their shared strength to create decent working conditions. At the same time,
however, they depend on the jobs the company creates, and therefore they are
also dependent on the rational profit-seeking management of the company. We
thus have a contradiction between two subsystems that depend on each other.
This contradiction finds a solution through the workers’ collective.
This basic understanding is the core of the Nordic model. The two sides of
the labour market recognize each other’s existence and eligibility. One party
does not seek to wipe out the other party. However, at the same time, both par-
ties are also aware that they are in conflict with the other party. Their eligibility
is therefore dependent on their ability to produce results at the negotiating table
or occasionally in open conflict.
A group of researchers (Karlsson et al., 2015; Axelsson et al., 2016) returned
to Lysgaard’s paper mill in 2010 and replicated Lysgaard’s analysis. The factory
had completely changed. In the 1950s, the work was physically hard, dirty and
dangerous. In 2010, the paper mill was an automated process industry, and the
workers monitored the processes, maintained the technical system and man-
aged the workflow. These fundamental changes in the work, however, had
not weakened the workers’ collective. The workers still protected their wages,
limited their performance and defended employment security through their
collective. The biggest difference that had occurred in the 50 years was related
to the technical/economic system. It was now quite clear that the technical/
economic system was not one system but two systems. An economic system,
represented by daily management, was still unilateral, insatiable and relentless.
The technical system, however, was represented by technicians and workers
who were oriented towards technical possibilities and limitations and quality.
The workers’ collective was now largely influenced by the technical system.
It not only defended wages, workload and working hours but also the tech-
nical system. It thus defended quality standards and opposed overload of the
technical system.
The development we saw at the paper mill can be largely transferred to
the labour market as a whole. The physically hard and dirty factory work has
declined, and a major part of the work has become knowledge-oriented. There
are those who argue that earlier conflicts have been abolished (Nordström &
Ridderståle, 1999). Knowledge has become the main means of production.
Knowledge is not owned by the employer but by the knowledge worker him/
herself, and workers themselves can therefore decide how and how much they
want to work.
However, it seems that present knowledge work is also in conflict with
the economic system. Knowledge workers are not exempted from high
demands, long working hours, stress and uncertain employment conditions
Nordic working life 11
countries that conflicts and cooperation between the social parties take place at
all levels of society (Madsen et al., 2001; Kjellberg, 2009):
At all these levels, the parties negotiate and/or are engaged in consultations.
Sometimes an agreement cannot be reached and conflicts break out. However,
most often the negotiations result in a compromise. The implementation of the
compromises largely takes place because the parties have multilevel representation.
For local union representatives, it is an obligation to secure local implementation
of agreements and laws, decided far from where the representative works.
In principle, the state is not an actor in the national wage bargaining process.
It is the responsibility of the social parties to reach agreements. Sometimes the
government intervenes in order to make it easier for the parties to find solutions.
In most issues, conflicts at the national level are negotiated and regulated in
a triangle of employers’ associations, trade unions and the state. The involve-
ment of the government and state administration in regulation of the conflicts
between the social parties varies considerably with the issue. With regard to
organization of work and participation, the state has a very limited role to
play. In terms of wages and (to some extent) working hours, it is the social
parties who act, locally and centrally. However, the state may take a mediat-
ing role if the parties cannot reach agreement. In Norway, working conditions
are more regulated by legislation than in Denmark, where working condi-
tions are largely regulated through agreements. Common to the two countries,
however, is the social parties’ strong involvement in the creation of new laws
related to the labour market. Often there is high responsiveness to the social
parties regarding general labour market policy, unemployment benefits and
working environment. Stein Rokkan (1966) described this particular form of
14 Helge Hvid et al.
• Quality of daily work. People active in the labour market spend a signifcant
part of their waking hours at work. Therefore, the nature and quality of
daily work is, of course, decisive for quality of life and health.
• Salary and employment security. Work is the most important source of
income. Therefore, wage levels are important quality parameters for the
quality of work. However, equally important is employment security.
Employment security gives confdence about future income.
Working hours
Working hours are regulated partly through legislation and partly through
agreements between the social parties. Here, too, legislation plays a more
Nordic working life 15
important role in Norway than in Denmark. Regular working hours, i.e. the
number of hours worked per week, are defined in agreements between the par-
ties. In Norway, the figure is 37.5 hours and in Denmark, 37 hours. Denmark
and Norway are the two countries where a full-time employee works the few-
est hours (EUROSTAT4). The length of holidays, which is set at six weeks in
Denmark and five weeks in Norway, is also agreed between the parties. The
same applies to maternity leave, study leave, etc. Large numbers of employees
work either more or fewer hours than the norm, but agreements are in place
regarding the terms of part-time work or overtime. Especially in Denmark,
state involvement in these areas is very limited.5
The rules regulating working hours have been laid down in agreements
between the social parties, and union representatives are an important factor
in overseeing compliance with the agreements. The annual number of work-
ing hours is relatively low and has not risen in recent years (Bonke, 2016).
However, that does not mean that issues related to working hours are uncom-
plicated and without conflict. On the contrary, there are often conflicts related
to time flexibility, including the boundaries between work and leisure, and
workplace and home. Digitalization makes it possible for many to do (part of)
their work anywhere at any time. That could increase disputes on working
time in the future. This is further elaborated in Chapter 7.
Work satisfaction
Eurofound (2017) finds that Norway and Denmark score quite high in job sat-
isfaction compared with other European countries.6 It is however questionable
whether the job satisfaction indicator is an adequate measure of job quality.
High job satisfaction may well be due to low expectations, not necessarily high
job quality. However, it seems unlikely that expectations for job quality are
lower in Norway and Denmark than in other countries. It is more reasonable
to assume that the extensive regulation of workplace conflicts regarding work
organization and content has made a difference.
As already mentioned, 85% of employees have access to workers’ repre-
sentatives, who may raise criticism of the employer. This may take place in a
direct dialogue between the representative and the employer, or it may be in
the works council, which, according to agreements, is obligatory for all work-
places with a certain number of employees. The main obligation of the works
council is to find solutions to issues related to work organization and technol-
ogy. The works council aims to search for solutions that satisfy both working
conditions and productivity.
This local cooperation between employer and employees is supported by
the parties at the central level. Shop stewards and working environment rep-
resentatives are trained. The unions and employers’ associations have created
a cooperation board where one party at the workplace can file a complaint
against a counterparty if it fails to comply with the provisions of the cooperation
16 Helge Hvid et al.
Working environment
Working environment conditions are better in Norway and Denmark than in
most comparable countries (Aagestad et al., 2017) (see also Chapter 6). The main
reason is not that working environment acts in the Nordic countries are more
restrictive than in other countries. However, in one aspect, Norway is an excep-
tion. In Norway, demands for democratization of work have been included in
the Working Environment Act (see Chapter 6). The Working Environment
Act was not created in isolation from initiatives, demands and political pressure
from the trade unions. However, it is hardly due to the nature of the work-
ing environment acts that the working environment is better in Norway and
Denmark than in most other countries. Instead, it is because employees are
organized at company level. Thus, the state authorities are not alone in oversee-
ing compliance with the law. The regulation of conflicts between the parties at
the workplace level, supported by sectoral institutions, has had a major impact
on the quality of the working environment.
establish and finance a system of further education that has increased wages for
many employees on low pay.
The gap between high and low wages is smaller in Norway and Denmark
than in other countries. Unskilled workers have a higher salary than in many
other countries, whereas highly skilled labour is cheaper than in other coun-
tries. Thus, it is more advantageous to start a form of production that mainly
uses highly skilled labour than one dominated by labour-intensive, low-skilled
labour. Further, relatively high wages for low-skilled labour have encouraged
automation of work processes in order to reduce labour costs and have contrib-
uted to the relative success of Nordic industrial production in the global market.
The Nordic experience seems to confirm the Calmfors–Driffill hypothesis that
postulates a relationship between union density, coordinated wage formation
and low unemployment caused by high productivity (Calmfors, 1993).
In most highly developed welfare societies, the development of the wage
structure is characterized by polarization. An increasing proportion of the
employees are in the highly paid segment, and an increasing proportion in
the low-paid segment. The middle segment is shrinking. In the Scandinavian
countries, the development of the wage structure is different. There is
an increase in the high-wage segment and a decline in the low-paid seg-
ment. The proportion of employees in the segment in the middle is largely
unchanged (Fernández-Macías, 2012).
The wage formation and bargaining systems in Denmark and Norway dif-
fer. Coordination is more explicit in Norway. However, both countries have
some form of coordination and a practice where exporting industries are given
a decisive influence in setting the maximum wage increases.
Employment security
When it comes to security, Denmark is an interesting and controversial case.
Here employment protection as stipulated in laws and collective agreements
is very weak, especially for blue-collar workers, in comparison with other
European countries (Eurofound, 2009; Madsen, 2010). Denmark has therefore
become known for its flexicurity model, with low employment protection,
high social support for unemployment and an active labour market policy that
contributes to high labour mobility through education, supported employment
and support for unemployed people finding work.
In Norway, collective employment protection is weak. This makes it easier
to reduce staffing or close affiliations than in most other developed countries.
Individual employment protection, on the other hand, is quite strong and
in line with other Western countries. Together with the compressed wage
structure and the high level of competence, this provides a better capacity for
adaptation than in many other countries.
The flexicurity model in Denmark and the low collective employment
protection in Norway have to some extent been undermined by changes in
Nordic working life 19
labour market policy towards ‘more stick and less carrot’. Despite the fact that
law- and contract-based employment protection is far greater in Norway than
in Denmark, employees indicate a high level of employment security in both
countries (Eurofound, 2017).8 A relatively large proportion of the population
is certain that they can remain in employment. In both countries, employment
security is considerably higher than in the rest of Europe. This paradox can be
explained in several ways:
• The unemployment rate has been relatively low in Norway and Denmark
for the past 20 years, which means that most people can soon fnd alterna-
tive employment quickly if they lose their job. Employment security is not
only about protection against dismissals but is also very much about the
chances of fnding a new, decent job.
• In countries with strong statutory employment security, a relatively large
group of employees cannot access the protection because they work more or
less permanently in vulnerable temporary or short-term jobs. Employers pre-
fer to have large numbers of staf in such jobs to make it easier to fre them.
• Lifelong learning and continuing training within and outside companies
enables many employees to fnd alternative work (see Chapter 9).
It is still the case that most people work in jobs where either one or the other
gender dominates (Emerek & Holt, 2008; Bloksgaard, 2011). Gender segre-
gation and female part-time work is widespread (Drange & Egeland, 2016).
Women are in administration, retail and care work. Men are in crafts, tech-
nology and management. The public sector is heavily dominated by female
employees. Women are weakly represented in management positions, especially
in the private sector, and there is almost no development in this area (Larsen
et al., 2016). ‘Female jobs’ are generally lower paid than ‘male jobs’, and the
degree of freedom in ‘female jobs’ is generally lower than in ‘male jobs’.
Gender equality is apparently not achieved merely by creating equal con-
ditions for the two sexes. Gender equality work must also include efforts to
change the way employees and managers are ‘doing gender’: the everyday
articulation of gender issues, expectations for the two sexes and the patterns of
behaviour that characterize the two sexes. It could be a major task for the social
parties to change the way ‘gender is done’ at work, but until now this has only
been addressed to a limited extent.
contrast to other welfare states, where citizens earn the right to social benefits
through long seniority at the same company, or where the welfare system
mainly provides social benefits to families and children.
However, there is a good reason to question Esping Andersen’s thesis that
decommodification is particularly advanced in the Nordic countries. Recent
studies have shown that decommodification, calculated as Esping-Andersen
did in 1990, is no longer a particular feature of the Nordic countries (Scruggs
& Allan, 2006).
In addition, the term decommodification may not be a very good label for
the Nordic welfare states (Kettunen, 2012). It may be more appropriate to
describe the welfare states of the Nordic countries with the label ‘fair com-
modification’. The Nordic welfare states have not reduced the impact of the
labour market on the economy and on people’s lives; however, the welfare
states, alongside the social parties, have balanced some of the inadequacies of the
labour market. The demand for labour in the market fluctuates. People selling
their labour in the market are depending on a steady demand, since they need
money every month. Therefore, labour productivity can be better maintained
if there is a social system that ensures income security. However, if there is a
demand in the labour market, the unemployed have to meet the demand. Social
policy has thus not reduced the dependence and involvement of citizens in the
labour market. On the contrary, social policy has supported and pushed the
individual citizen to labour market participation, and social policy has made it
possible and necessary for the individual to live a long life in the labour market.
In all the Nordic countries, social policy has had a strong orientation towards
the labour market: citizens on social benefits should return to work as soon as
possible. This Arbeidslinjen, which can be translated as ‘workfare’, has dominated
social policy was adopted to social policies in Norway since 1935 by legal acts. It
has been reinforced since the 1990 in both countries. To support labour supply,
it has also been appropriate to regulate companies’ use of labour. Companies
tend to create working conditions that are harmful for the labour market: a
company may be interested in high utilization of labour, but if this abolishes
the workability of labour, it is a market imperfection. This imperfection can be
countered by regulation, giving employees a say in work organization and the
working environment and by state regulation of the working environment. In
competence building, companies also tend to act inappropriately from a labour
market perspective. Companies are often in favour of narrow competence
building that only meets the demands of the individual company. However,
if the labour market is to function optimally, it must be characterized by high
mobility and flexibility, where labour is moving to the jobs with the highest
productivity and value creation. The demand for mobility makes it appropriate
to create training and competence building that go beyond the immediate needs
of the individual company (see Chapters 10 and 11).
Precisely because of the strong relationship between the social parties and
the state’s interaction with them, the Nordic welfare states have not reduced
22 Helge Hvid et al.
the importance of market forces in the labour market. On the contrary, the
welfare states have optimized the labour markets and supported the labour
market to be an essential part of people’s everyday lives.
Universal social rights, which according to Esping-Andersen (1990)
characterize the social-democratic welfare states in the Nordic region, also
encourage labour market participation. A social policy linked to family and
children, which we find in most European countries, tends to restrict women’s
labour market participation. A social policy largely based on insurance paid
by companies, which we also see in many European countries, also tends to
reduce labour mobility. Universal rights lead to a high level of labour market
participation and high labour mobility, and thus contribute to an optimal
labour market.
However, there is another area where welfare states have contributed
to decommodification. Welfare states have moderated the income differ-
entials that the market creates by taxing the highest incomes heavily and
paying social benefits to those with the lowest incomes. This redistribu-
tion mechanism applies in all OECD countries; it may still be stronger in
Norway and Denmark than in the other OECD countries, in spite of being
weakened in recent years (Juul et al., 2016). However, the social parties
in the labour market have maintained relative equality in wage formation,
which has led to lower income inequality in the Nordic countries (Barth
& Moene, 2012).
To summarize: it is not primarily the welfare state that has created the spe-
cific characteristics of the Nordic countries. The Nordic welfare states are
similar in size to those of many other developed economies. The welfare states
in the Nordic countries achieve some social redistribution of wealth through
progressive taxation and social benefits, just as other welfare states do. The
interaction between the welfare state, the labour market and the social parties,
on the other hand, have created a dynamic that has resulted in less inequality,
greater participation in the labour market and more involvement than we see
elsewhere.
The state has an important role to play in order to maintain and develop the
institutional arrangements for wage formation, conflict mediation and the legal
framework regulating and organizing the labour market.
Culture as an explanation
The culture of the Nordics is characterized by trust and high social capital
(Svendsen & Svendsen, 2016). The argument here is that the high degree of
trust is conducive to cooperation in the labour market and in the economy
as a whole, both within companies and between companies. Trust and social
capital support innovation. In addition, trust and social capital encourage
responsibility and the individual’s willingness to perform. The high degree of
trust also makes it easier for the parties to reach compromises.
Nordic working life 23
However, here the famous question arises again: which came first, the chicken
or the egg? Were the institutions where the parties can meet, negotiate and find
a solution, created because of the trust typical of the Nordic culture? Or is it the
reverse, namely that the institutions where conflicts can be solved have created
trust in the labour market and also in civil society?
The relatively high level of trust between the social parties has not always
existed, which is also mentioned in the presentation of the history of Nordic
labour market relations in Chapter 2. In this context, it is worth noting that
the Nordic countries primarily have an institutional similarity rather than a his-
torical similarity. All five Nordic countries are characterized by high levels of
trust and social capital, even though their histories differ, especially in the case
of Finland. In the 20th century, Finland had a civil war, a strong reliance on
Russia and the Soviet Union, and a very late industrialization. Its relationship
with the other Nordic countries helped establish institutions in Finland that
were similar to those developed in the other countries. Today, Finland has the
same level of trust and social capital as the other Nordics.
Whether culture creates institutions or institutions create culture is a difficult
question. However, without institutions that can preserve and further develop
trust and social capital, those cultural features would probably disappear. The
established institutions in the labour market are an important foundation for
the particular Nordic cultural features.
1970s, Norway was a prosperous country. Although the Norwegian oil indus-
try has contributed to raising the cost of living in Norway, there is still a large
private sector that is able to compete in global markets. The oil industry has
also led to technological innovation. The oil resources are located in deep seas
far from land and are being extracted using advanced subsea robot technology.
The Nordic countries are all economies highly dependent on their competi-
tiveness in the global markets. Exporting industries comprise a substantial part
of GDP. However, production structure differs. We have already commented
on Norway’s dependency on oil. In addition, Norway also exports goods based
on natural resources like hydro-power and fish.
Denmark is well known for its agricultural sector. In spite of a limited geo-
graphical area and a cold climate, Denmark is a major European provider of
dairy and meat products. The manufacturing industries (pharmaceutical prod-
ucts and environment-enhancing products), together with other industries
and services, however, account for the main volume of Danish exports. The
Swedish and Finnish economies are also export-oriented but rely more on
traditional manufacturing industries (e.g. metal, cars and paper). There are few
similarities in what the Nordic countries produce and export. They are exposed
to different global markets and different competitors. What they have in com-
mon is their reliance on global markets. This reliance has forced the Nordic
governments, employers and trade unions to adapt rapidly to changes in the
‘terms of trade’.
The Finnish researcher, Juha Vartiainen, stated that the Nordic countries
have learnt to ‘live with the market’ (Vartiainen, 2014). He points out that
the dependency on global markets is a key factor in understanding the devel-
opment of institutional arrangements in the Nordic welfare states and in the
labour markets.
The question thus arises: how does the strongly regulated Nordic labour
market enhance or restrict economic development? The high minimum wage,
set by collective agreements, is not only an economic constraint but also an
economic advantage (Hoeller et al., 2012). In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the
two Swedish economists, Meidner and Rehn, strongly advocated the positive
effects of the solidarity wage policy on the economy. The argument was that
the solidarity wage policy would make low-productivity jobs unprofitable, and
they would thus disappear. This is however not necessarily a problem. On the
contrary, it makes it possible to move labour from low-productivity areas to
high-productivity areas, if workers are helped with mobility-enhancing meas-
ures such as education, housing and support to move to where high-productivity
jobs are located. This understanding of the potentials of the solidarity wage
policy is found among present-day economists, such as the two Norwegian
economists Barth and Moene (2012). They find that the OECD countries
where wage differences are smallest and where the starting wage for young
people is high are also the countries with the highest general and youth employ-
ment rates. Solidarity wages do not seem to harm employment; on the contrary.
Nordic working life 25
The so-called Nordic model is under pressure, but this is nothing new. It has
been the case since the late 1960s, when the economies to a great extent were
opened up to the world market. One might say that the model has shown its
strength by dealing with new issues and challenges and finding new solutions.
Notes
1 The Work Life Barometer is an annual survey among employees executed by WRI
for the Norwegian trade union confederation YS.
2 The decline in organizational density is primarily occurring in the private sector
and in the low-paid areas. One reason may be that many low-paid workers are in
temporary jobs and therefore have little incentive to be organized.
3 See also http://arbeidslivet.no/PageFiles/9979/Orggrad-arbgivere.png.
4 See http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/DDN-20180
125-1?inheritRedirect=true.
5 In relation to the Working Environment Act, the state has laid down rules regulating
the minimum time for rest periods.
6 In Norway 44% and in Denmark 47% of a representative sample of employees stated
that they were ‘very satisfed with working conditions’ in their main paid job. No
other European country scores as highly on this question.The average for the EU is
26%.The proportion answering that they were ‘not very satisfed with their working
conditions’ was 5% in Norway and 8% in Denmark.This is at the same level as in
European countries with relatively low unemployment.
7 www.oecd.org/social/inequality.htm#income.
8 Some 10% of Norwegians and 11% of Danes agree with the statement ‘I might lose
my job in the next six months’.Thus, employment security seems to be at the same
level in Norway and Denmark, and at signifcantly better levels than in Europe as a
whole. Regarding the statement ‘If I were to lose or quit my current job, it would
be easy for me to fnd a job with a similar salary’, 53% in Denmark and 54% in
Norway agree, and only 13% and 12% disagree. In no other countries in Europe are
expectations for a positive job shift as great as in Denmark and Norway.
9 The index contains the following parameters: work (employment rate, degree of
freedom in work, etc.), money (income and risk of poverty), knowledge (edu-
cation), power (political and economic infuence), time (time spent on domestic
obligations), health and violence.
10 For example, Juul’s estimation takes into account the fact that in some countries
people who receive social benefts have to pay taxes. In these countries social
benefts appear to be higher, but are not so high when the taxes have been paid.
However, the national accounts show that social spending is high and the tax
burden is extensive, which can be quite a false conclusion.
Nordic working life 27
11 For Norway one should take into consideration that oil revenues fnance almost
20% of total public expenditure.
12 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=File:GDP_at_
current_market_prices,_2007_and_2015-2017_FP18.png.
13 www.norskpetroleum.no/en/economy/governments-revenues/.
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Chapter 2
Introduction
The Nordic countries have developed independently, but, in the case of
Norway, Denmark and Sweden, largely in parallel. Finland, which today is
part of the Nordic model and has contributed significantly to renewal of the
model, has historically followed another path to becoming a Nordic country
(Sippola, 2015). In the following, we will present key features of the history
of the Nordic model by presenting key events in Norway and Denmark, with
sporadic reference to Sweden.
The Nordic model had its cradle in the conflicts that arose when wage
labour became widespread and the towns grew in the late 19th century. The
conflicts led both employees and employers to organize their own interest
associations. The conflicts were particularly prevalent in the first decades of the
20th century, leading to extensive institutional building in the labour market.
That did not eliminate the labour market conflicts, but from now on, they had
an institutional framework in which they could unfold. These institutions are
still vital today. We call this period ‘from the streets to the negotiation table’.
From the mid-1930s onwards, the institutional framework for regulating
conflicts between employees and employers expanded. During the same period,
a welfare society was gradually established in intensive interaction between the
state, the social parties and other interest groups. The Nordic social democra-
cies dominated the political systems during this period. We therefore call this
period ‘the social-democratic era’.
From the mid-1980s onwards, the Social Democrats gradually lost their
political hegemony. Global competition was growing. International regula-
tion became more comprehensive. The welfare state gradually changed its
character. Governance principles, formed by neo-liberal thinking, took over.
Pay and working conditions were gradually individualized. The period saw
a dissolution of the ties between the trade union movement and the Social
Democrats on the one hand, and employers’ organizations and the conserva-
tive parties on the other. Nevertheless, the social parties and the state have
maintained and further developed the central institutions in the Nordic model.
Peculiar history of Nordic working life 31
urged by the police to emigrate to the United States. In the next decade, trade
unions were further weakened due to an economic crisis. However, from the
mid-1880s the number of workers grew rapidly, as did the trade unions. Now
the peasant movement and the labour movement had become so strong that the
authorities could no longer pursue unions with unconstitutional interventions.
The trade unions’ main strategy was to use what in Danish is called
‘omgangsskruen’ or in English, the ‘wrench’: a strike for better pay and work-
ing conditions was initiated by the unions at a workplace where the union
considered that it would be possible to pressurize an employer. When the
union had won one victory, it would proceed to the next employer. The strikers
received compensation from the union.
In line with the establishment of the unions, employers began to organize
themselves. Employers’ response to the ‘wrench’ was lockouts. If there was a
conflict in one workplace, employers implemented lockouts in many other
workplaces to make it difficult for the unions to compensate workers for their
lost wages.
In 1897, a labour dispute in one major metal enterprise led to a lockout for
the entire metal industry. Employers wanted to ensure their right to lead and
direct the work, their right to decide whom to employ, and they also defended
their right to determine pay and working conditions. The employers lost this
conflict, but it led to the national organization of both parties, across all sectors.
There were already a large number of sector-specific employers’ associations.
In 1898, they formed the Danish Employers’ Association. In the same year, the
Confederation of Trade Unions, with the support of a large number of unions,
was established. Now the social parties geared up for battle, and in May 1899,
employers started a large lockout to recover what they had lost.
One key demand of the employers was the right to direct and distribute the
work. They also wanted to protect their right to hire the labour they consid-
ered appropriate. Further demands were an institutionalization of the conflicts
in the labour market and collective agreements to be determined through cen-
tralized negotiations, with an obligation for both parties to comply with the
agreement until it expired. As long as the agreement was in force, strikes and
lockouts were not to be permitted. This was something completely new.
These requirements were in contrast to the demands of the workers, who
fought for their right to direct and distribute the work. Furthermore, the trade
unions were not in favour of centralized negotiations. That would undermine
their effective weapon, ‘the wrench’, which split the employers. The employ-
ers, for their part, could not accept ‘the wrench’ and consequently could not
agree to local negotiations.
The conflict became extensive; it lasted for 100 days and included 40,000
workers, which was a large number for a small country of 2.5 million inhabit-
ants, most of whom worked in agriculture and fisheries. The farmers supported
the workers with contributions. The conflict gained international attention,
and the workers received financial support from all over the world.
Peculiar history of Nordic working life 33
However, the unions could not resist the pressure in the long run. The par-
ties made an agreement on 5 September 1899. Both parties proclaimed this a
victory. Subsequently, however, most analysts found that the employers were
the primary victors.
It was legally confirmed that employers had the right to direct and distribute
the work and employ those they deemed appropriate. From then on, it became
much more difficult to organize local and spontaneous strikes. A system with
centralized collective agreements was established, and the unions were obliged
to ensure labour peace as long the agreement was in force. Employers accepted
trade unions as negotiating partners and were no longer allowed to prevent
employees from organizing in trade unions.
The ‘September Agreement’ was subsequently strengthened by the estab-
lishment of two institutions: a special court and a mediation board. The court
could impose sanctions if agreements were not fulfilled by one of the parties.
The mediation board was to provide support if the parties could not reach a
new agreement when the old one was about to expire. For both these institutions,
the national court and the state have played a decisive role.
The main agreement, concluded with the September settlement in 1899,
is still the constitution of the labour market in Denmark. However, in the
meantime, a large number of modifications and additions have been made to
the agreement.
For some of the employers’ organizations, the goal of the grand lockout in
1899 was to break the trade union movement. However, they did not succeed;
in fact, unions grew in membership and influence in the following years. About
50% of skilled workers were members of a trade union in 1900. Employers’
associations also grew, and the level of organized employers was far higher in
Denmark than in the other Nordic countries (Galenson, 1955).
Since the September Agreement, employers’ organizations and trade unions
have become mutually dependent and have had a common interest in main-
taining an organized labour market.
The other Nordic countries achieved general agreements similar to the
Danish September Agreement, but much later. Norway signed its basic
agreement in 1935, Sweden in 1938, and Finland saw a number of similar
agreements during the 1960s. Consequently, the conflicts were less regulated
for decades in Norway, Sweden and Finland than they were in Denmark.
Next, we will briefly present developments in Norway in the first decades of
the 20th century.
Now the time has come. Not for miraculous experiments and unlawful
actions (which both Communists and Nazis were responsible for), not for
threats and attempts to break down an organized society, but the time has
come to create a community of people to oppose lawlessness and to make
the construction of a new society the goal of our future work.
(Authors’ translation)
The policies of the Nordic Social Democrats were realized in a dual political
system, which Rokkan (1986) labels ‘corporate pluralism’. The social parties
and other interest groups were involved in the creation, administration and
renewal of the democratic policies. The corporate channel, however, included
only organized interest groups, but in great numbers and varieties, which are
covered by the concept of corporate pluralism (Rokkan, 1986). The political
logic was to bring together opposing interests and perspectives in advance, in
order to arrive at shared understandings of the problem at hand.
This model has several advantages over normal political decision making
where the majority prevails. Firstly, the policy at hand is enlightened by groups
with vested interests in it; thus, in principle, it is explored more deeply through
a range of different approaches and perspectives. This is assumed to improve
planning and implementation. Secondly, not only experts, bureaucrats or the
most powerful people in society have a say; the groups that will experience
the consequences of the proposed policies should also participate. Those who
wear the shoes matter. Thirdly, when groups known to have different attitudes,
experiences, knowledge and interests meet each other in such tripartite arrange-
ments, opportunities to negotiate during the elaboration and planning process
will enhance abilities and possibilities to agree on solutions in the early stages.
Finally, this kind of planning and decision making, when successful, will achieve
policies that have support in advance of the final decision, which will increase the
possibility of successful implementation of new policies. This is exactly the same
logic that is intrinsic to democracy in workplaces as we know it in the Nordics
(see Chapters 3 and 4 of this volume).
A possible disadvantage of corporate pluralism, however, may be what the
historian Edvard Bull has called ‘top level partnership’. According to Bull, the
leadership of the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions shared a com-
mon understanding with government and employers that differed from that
of the members and shop stewards in workplaces (Bull, 1979). In addition,
we may assume that the top level involvement of the unions strengthened the
character of the organizations as social institutions rather than social move-
ments that could play a transformative role in society.
The social-democratic era coincided with the Fordist epoch that occurred
throughout the Western world with mass production, mass consumption and
welfare states. In the Nordic countries, a specific social-democratic version of
Fordism was developed. It balanced out differences and conflicting interests
through negotiations and compromises between the social parties (Falkum, 2008).
38 Eivind Falkum et al.
Naturally, we cannot describe here the whole social revolution that occurred in
the era. However, many of the other chapters in this book will illuminate this
period within more specific areas: employment and equality have been discussed
in Chapter 1. In Chapter 3, we will focus on democratization efforts at the end
of the social-democratic era. We will also elaborate further on initiatives taken
during that period in other chapters.
Here we will present two examples of positive and negative effects of
the social-democratic era. We will describe how the state, trade unions and
employers’ associations stood together to introduce Taylorism and Fordist pro-
duction methods in the 1950s, with Denmark as an example (there was a similar
development in Norway). We will briefly describe how the state, trade union
and employers’ organizations subsequently started to find alternatives to the
Taylorist and Fordist production systems, by introducing socio-technology,
here with Norway as an example (this also took place in Denmark, but later
than in Norway).
In the first years after World War II, both the trade union movement and
the Social Democrats were of the opinion that Denmark had outdated pro-
duction facilities. There was a consensus on the need for rationalization in
industry. Although rationalization often leads to job losses, and severe rationali-
zation often hits certain professions and trades particularly hard, it was generally
supported by the trade union movement. Efforts were made to create ration-
alizations in collaboration between management and elected representatives of
the employees, with particular emphasis on ensuring that the rationalizations
were beneficial for both parties.
One step in that direction was the signing of a cooperation agreement
between employers’ associations and the trade union movement in 1947.
Under the agreement, cooperation committees would provide workers with
insight into strategic issues and the company’s economy, and the two par-
ties would collaborate in the creating of rationalizations that respected and
improved the health and wellbeing of workers (Samarbejdsnævnet, 1997).
A special agreement between the social parties in Norway in 1946 had similar
aims (Bjørnson, 1990).
Taylorist time and motion studies were the most advanced approach to
rationalization in the first years after World War II. Work processes were ana-
lysed, time measurements were made for the different processes, the tasks were
split up to let each one be as simple as possible, and work was paid at piece rate.
The trade union movement took an active part in the introduction of Taylorist
principles in Denmark and Norway (Christensen et al., 2015). Rationalization
consultants were employed by the trade unions. They arranged workshops on
rationalization in large companies, and they entered into rationalization agree-
ments in the companies. The workers’ education associations held training
courses in rationalization. The trade unions in Denmark organized study trips
to the United States to learn the most effective approach to rationalization.
The Ministry of Commerce supported these visits (Christensen et al., 2015).
Peculiar history of Nordic working life 39
Eiler Jensen, who chaired the Danish Federation of Trade Unions (DsF) in the
early 1950s, stressed again and again that as long as the modernization of pro-
duction supported the common good, they would succeed. Rationalization
would improve competitiveness, secure employment, increase wages and
improve working conditions. Therefore, cooperation on modernization and
rationalization was crucial.
However, the Taylorist rationalization encountered significant resistance
from the workers. A five-week strike in the Philips television factory in 1954
became iconic. The strike was called because of unrealistically high produc-
tivity requirements and humiliating surveillance. The conflict gained great
support from workers in other companies, while the trade union movement
had to distance itself from the conflict. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, there
were a number of similar conflicts.
The highly controlled and intensive Taylorist work organization met with
strong opposition from workers. This led to a demand for a democratization
of working life that would have an impact on working conditions, influence
corporate leadership and ultimately also involve the influence of workers on
investments and priorities through economic democracy. This democratiza-
tion effort will be presented in more detail in Chapter 3.
Here we will place this democratic movement in a broader historical con-
text. In Norway, initiatives were taken as early as the 1960s to find alternatives
to the Taylorist approach to work organization. These initiatives took place in
cooperation between labour unions and employers’ associations (Thorsrud &
Emery, 1964, 1970).
Democracy as a perspective became quite clear in the revision of the
basic agreement in Norway in 1966 (Bjørnhaug & Halvorsen, 2009).
The basic agreement was significantly expanded. It stipulated a two-stage
democratic process in workplaces. Employees’ participation in workplace
development and work autonomy was introduced as mandatory in work-
places that signed the agreement. This was the first stage. The second stage
was an extension and clarification of unions’ rights to codetermination in
decision making and planning in private enterprises, as further elaborated and
analysed in Chapters 3 and 4 of this volume.
Parallel to the revision of the basic agreement in Norway in 1966, an exten-
sive debate about political regulation of work environments arose after a major
accident with 23 casualties in a coalmine in Svalbard in 1963. Heiret (2003)
argues that this accident, and the following debate, also triggered the revi-
sion of the basic agreement. Political parties argued in parliament for making
employee board representation mandatory by law during the 1960s. Finally, in
1972 the Limited Companies Act included the proposal that employees could
demand to have up to one-third of board members in limited companies,
elected from and by all employees, not only union members.
Efforts to democratize working life were continued in the Working Environ-
ment Act of 1977. Here, socio-technical principles and socio-psychological
40 Eivind Falkum et al.
For the United States and the UK, the neo-liberal project was in line with
the liberal social model that was already established in these countries. In
contrast to these liberal countries are the countries Hall and Soskice (2001)
call ‘co-ordinated market economies’. Here, pay and working conditions are
determined by collective agreements, there is a public infrastructure for educa-
tion and training, business-level collaboration has been developed and investors
have a relatively long-term perspective on their return on capital. In this cat-
egory of countries, we find Germany, Japan, Austria and the Nordic countries.
In some of these countries, social conditions have deteriorated remarka-
bly during the neo-liberal era. This applies for instance to Germany, where
the influential institutions connected to the labour market and social parties
have been maintained in traditional industries without significant renewals.
However, the rising group of low-paid workers in the service industries and
the increasing numbers of highly educated people in the services sector are
not included in the institutional protection associated with coordinated mar-
ket economies (Thelen, 2014). This has created a sharp rise in the numbers of
working poor, and an unregulated labour market for the highly educated.
The neo-liberal social order has been heavily criticized (e.g. Standing, 2010).
Some of the criticisms are as follows: market relations will surpass all other social
considerations; both the state and the private sector are managed within a short-
term perspective; individuals are obliged to find a position in the labour market
themselves and must accept pay and working conditions that correspond to
their market value; and individual competition replaces social solidarity.
Neo-liberalism, however, does not appear in a uniform manner from
country to country. Kathleen Thelen (2014) identifies different varieties of
liberalization, and she investigates attempts to defend solidarity in different
neo-liberal frameworks. Among a wide range of countries, she examines the
formation of a neo-liberalism that, to use Wolfgang Streeck’s term, can be
called ‘competitive solidarity’ (Streeck, 1999).
This competitive solidarity has developed especially in Denmark, perhaps
because both employers and employees have been relatively well organized in
all sectors, while social democracy, compared with the other Nordic countries,
has remained relatively weak. As a result, the state has played a minor role in
the labour market in Denmark compared to the other Nordic countries, and
the legacy of the social-democratic society has been less extensive. The social
parties therefore have had wider scope to find a compromise between the
flexibility employers wanted in order to participate in global competition,
and the equality and social security which are the eligibility of employees’
organizations.
Competitive solidarity, as it has evolved in the Nordic countries, especially
in Denmark, is characterized by:
unions are involved in these concrete measures to bring citizens into work.
From the mid-1980s, large-scale pension funds, established through collec-
tive agreements, are intended to provide workers with reasonable pensions
when they leave the labour market.
• Productivity-enhancing health. The working environment, particularly the
psychosocial environment, has become an object of increasing concern
among the social parties. An unhealthy psychosocial working environment
can lead to physical and mental health problems and sickness absence. At
the same time, a poor psychosocial work environment leads to poor com-
munication, lack of loyalty to the company, a high turnover rate – in
short, productivity losses. Therefore, there has been a common interest in
improving the psychosocial working environment.
We can hardly conclude that the Nordic model has been a protective buffer
against neo-liberalism. On the contrary, the model has widely embraced neo-
liberalism, and adapted to it to ensure its own survival: the social parties do not
oppose market forces, they accept and adapt to them. The social parties con-
tribute to a regulated and predictable implementation of market mechanisms.
By following the neo-liberal trends and seeking to shape the neo-liberal poli-
cies, instead of opposing the neo-liberal flow, the trade unions have succeeded
in remaining in touch with the entire labour market and have managed to
maintain a high employment rate and a high degree of equality.
Does this mean that we can reject the criticism of neo-liberalism? In our
opinion, no. Market competition is for many experienced as a life of high speed
and unpredictability. In the Nordic region, employees also experience individ-
ualization of responsibility for their own working life. Inequality is growing,
even in the Nordic countries, only to a lesser extent than in other countries.
However, the Nordic experience shows that neo-liberalism can be shaped.
Norway has not until now followed the path of neo-liberalism to the same
extent as Denmark. Norway still has centralized wage formation, and the gov-
ernment is in charge of a large part of the labour market and related social
policy. On the other hand, Norway has privatized many key companies that
were previously run by the state, such as the postal service, railways and the
distribution of alcohol. Political governance was replaced with corporate gov-
ernance structures in hospitals and social services in the early 2000s, as in many
other European countries. A Social-Democratic government introduced new
public management as a public variety of neo-liberalism in the early 1990s
(see Chapter 4 of this volume). In addition, the ban on private intermediation
and hiring out of labour was lifted in 2000. Thus, an important part of the
regulatory framework that constituted the standard employment relationship
was removed. The ban legally protected the bilateral employment relation-
ship consisting of a worker and an employer, where the worker was under
the direct supervision of the employer. The bilateral employment relationship
was, and still is, the institutional prerequisite for industrial relations consisting
44 Eivind Falkum et al.
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[The Power of the Members and Social Responsibility (1935–1969], Bind 2 i LOs
historie 1899–2009, Oslo: Pax.
Bjørnson, Ø. (1990) På klassekampens grunn (1900–1920) Arbeiderbevegelsens historie i
Norge [On the Battlefeld of Social Class Conficts. The History of the Labour Movement in
Norway], Oslo: Tiden Norsk forlag A/S.
Bull d.y., E. (1979) Norge i den rike verden: Tiden etter 1945 [Norway in the Rich World
after 1945], Norges historie. Bd. 14. Oslo: Cappelen.
Christensen, L. K., Kolstrup, S. & Hansen, A. E. (2015) Arbejdernes historie i Danmark
1880–2000 [The Workers’ History in Denmark 1880–2000], Copenhagen: Saxo.
Debes, I. (1919) Økonomisk demokrati. Arbeidernes andel i bedriftsledelsen [Economic
Democracy. The Workers’ Share of Management in the Companies], Kristiania, Norway:
Steenske Forlag.
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Norwegian Working Life], PhD dissertation, Oslo: Universitetet i Oslo.
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Tiden Norsk Forlag.
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46 Eivind Falkum et al.
Organization and
management in a
working life perspective
Introduction
Helge Hvid and Eivind Falkum
Democracy at work
Heidi Enehaug, Eivind Falkum and Helge Hvid
liberalism (Friedman, 2002 [1962]) rejected the desire for democracy at work.
The argument was that the whole legitimacy of private companies lies in their
ability to generate profits and thus create growth in society. Therefore, the right
to take decisions should lie with those who can identify themselves with, and
have a personal interest in, profits and growth, namely the owners. Democracy
will weaken the focus on earnings, thus weakening the economy to the detri-
ment of us all. We find a similar argument with regard to the public sector.
Democratically elected politicians govern public sector institutions, and workplace
democracy would be a restriction on parliamentary democracy. In Norway, the
basic agreement for employees in government offices and enterprises excluded
political issues from autonomy and co-determination arrangements, arguing that
it would give governmental employees more political influence than other
citizens (Lægreid, 1983).
In opposition to this point of view, we find more conservatively oriented
understandings, for instance represented by Emile Durkheim. Durkheim stud-
ied the possibilities for creating social cohesion in modern society. For him,
the establishment of companies led by both workers and employers was an
opportunity to reduce the level of conflict in society (Durkheim, 2014 [1893]).
When workers and employers run the companies together, they could set-
tle the many unconstructive labour conflicts. The well-known conservative
political scientist Robert Dahl argued for formal and informal democracy in
workplaces as an important part of a modern democracy (Dahl, 1985). Pateman
(1970) agrees with Dahl when she argues that democracy in the workplace
would make citizens able and interested to participate in general democratic
processes. The workplace can be a place for learning democracy.
Another argument for the common interest in democracy relates to pro-
ductivity. Democracy in the workplace has also been economically justified.
Democratization of working life can enable workers and employers to work
together to improve productivity and quality (Thorsrud & Emery, 1970;
Appelbaum et al., 2000; Gustavsen et al., 2010; Ekman et al., 2011). This
argument relates to the extensive literature on human resource management.
However, in this literature, concepts of motivation replace concepts of democ-
racy at work (Pink, 2009).
Finally, we have the socialist-oriented approach to democratization. Here
democracy is a means to strengthen the power of the workers and in that way
ensure decent working conditions. Only by gaining power can workers protect
themselves against exploitation and alienation at work. There are, however,
also representatives from the left wing of the labour movement who argue
that so-called democracy at work will weaken the power of labour, since the
workers themselves will be co-responsible for the “necessary” exploitation of
the workers (Olsen, 1984; Olstad, 2010).
Combinations of conservative-oriented wishes to create harmony and pro-
ductivity at the workplace and socialist-oriented wishes to defend the interests of
workers initiated democratization of working life in many European countries.
Democracy at work 51
that they have taken place in an interaction between the social parties who
have created the frameworks, researchers who have contributed to the crea-
tion and assessment of the content, and the government which has financed
research projects and, in some cases, has legislated in support of democracy
at work.
UK (Skorstad, 2002) showed that “if optimizing the technical system at the
expense of the social system, the results achieved will be suboptimal” (Herbst,
1971, p. 12).
Direct democracy (participation) was a necessity, according to Thorsrud and
Emery (1964, 1970). Individual participation in development processes was essen-
tial to increase the involvement and knowledge of employees in order to reduce
alienation at work and simultaneously develop workplaces and productivity. The
idea was that individual involvement and autonomy at work would contribute
to the development of human resources. Employees’ learning capabilities would
be enhanced by their participation in decision making, their own “job enrich-
ment”, and by “partly self-governing groups”. Such learning processes could lead
to more interesting work and better working conditions (Heiret, 2003). In other
words, there was a need for broader communicative practice when dealing with
complex local processes in work organizations (Gustavsen, 2017).
At the Work Research Institute in Norway, the concept of work organization
was used in relation to autonomy, broad participation and the psychological
demands of work (Thorsrud & Emery, 1970; Gustavsen et al., 2010). These
demands refer to employee needs to have interesting tasks and varied work
processes, to learn and develop competencies, to participate in decision mak-
ing, to gain managerial recognition, to avoid alienation at work and to fulfil
future life expectations at work. Work organization became the central mecha-
nism to link people and environmental factors in companies.
Employee participation in workplace maintenance, as well as the develop-
ment of jobs and organizations, was the basic methodological principle in the
collaboration experiments. Falkum (2008) claims that Thorsrud and Emery
(1964) presented both a management model and a model of collaboration. The col-
laboration experiments can thus be seen as two-faced: a management face
of means and ends, and a collaboration face of employee participation and
autonomy at work. As a management model, the collaboration experiments
fit in with the early traditions of human resource management at that time
(Falkum, 2008). Thorsrud’s focus on the autonomy and influence of the indi-
vidual worker, or groups of workers, as a means to reduce alienation at work
and enhance learning and development in work and the workplace in general
by direct individual participation, represents a logic that is partly in line with
Habermas’ (1984) concept of communicative rationality, where communica-
tive actions will ensure that the best argument wins.
There were approaches to democracy at work by other Norwegian
social scientists that differed significantly from the collaboration approaches
of Thorsrud and Emery (1964). Lysgaard (2001 [1961]) and Holter (1958,
1964) paid less attention to individual participation than the action research
programmes. They considered it more important for workers to protect their
collective interests. Both Holter and Lysgaard suggested a representative con-
cept of democracy. Unions would represent employees by participation in
company decision making (Falkum, 2008).
Democracy at work 55
Thorsrud and the Tavistock researchers were more oriented towards dia-
logue between managers and employees, and the outcome of development
processes, thus more in line with human and labour relations than with the
institutionalization of regulatory elements in industrial relations.
Since the early 1960s, this tension between direct participation and rep-
resentative participation has existed in the understanding of democracy in
working life. However, empirical studies seem to show that representative
democracy and direct democracy complement each other (see Chapter 4).
The central issue was – and is – its focusing efect. It brings work organiza-
tion on the agenda as a theme similar to noise, temperature, unfortunate
work postures, hazardous substances, and everything else that can afect
the work environment.
(Gustavsen et al., 2010, p. 74)
[a] force that operates inside conversations rather than outside and that,
even if all eforts at new forms of communication between workers and
managers were a failure, there is no other way in which the possibility of
democracy can be tested.
(Gustavsen, 2018, p. 15)
• To downsize from 700 to 600 employees within the three years, but with-
out dismissals.
• To increase employees with vocational training from 40 to 90% of employees.
• To reduce absence due to work accidents and injuries by 80%.
• To increase profts by NOK 120 million.
The union representatives in the council discussed the plan with their members.
They suggested improvements and adjustments. The managerial representatives did
the same. The CEO and the works council presented adjustments in a final draft in
plenary meetings with all employees. In the end, management and all the unions
signed the agreement. This collaboration and the negotiated agreement now
became the plan for economic improvement. At the end of the three-year period:
The board of the corporation was very pleased with the results and encouraged
other subsidiaries to copy the project.
Works councils are common in private companies. Union representatives
and managerial staff are members. Even some companies without union
members establish such bodies to practise democracy at work, especially in
small businesses with only a few employees. In the public sector, management
arranges meetings with union representatives in order to discuss and eventually
negotiate terms of labour or organizational change.
How these collaboration bodies are organized, what they do and the results
of their activities vary considerably between companies, even within the same
sectors and industries. Representatives from all unions at the workplace partici-
pate in such bodies, but practice can vary. These bodies of democracy may be
very formal organizations with a strong focus on rules, norms and procedures.
They may have formal agendas and protocols for every meeting. However, in
some companies, democracy at work can be very informal, with good personal
relations between the management and the union representatives (Colman
et al., 2011). Thus, case studies and qualitative research are necessary to capture
the practical impacts of work life institutions at the workplaces, in addition to
data from registers, surveys and process documentation.
Working environment councils are often more formal than works councils.
Management and the employee-elected HES representatives have their roles
defined in clearer terms. These bodies are responsible for looking into HES
problems, discussing solutions for them, proposing measures to handle health
and safety issues and ensuring that the company complies with the legal rules and
demands. The chairmanship of the working environment councils shifts annually
between management and employee representatives. When management chairs
the meetings, the employee representatives are secretaries of the council, with the
roles reversed at the next meeting.
These are just two examples of companies in Norway that have made great
efforts at co-determination as well as individual participation. This democrati-
zation took the interests of individuals, organizations and the local community
into consideration. However, new organizational models and recipes, new
management concepts and the general development of working life in an era
of globalization challenge these models (Koch, 2013) (see Chapter 4).
interests in the Nordic countries. This balance is fragile and skewed but less so
than in other countries and economies. The labour market actors still maintain
this fragile balance in the Nordics. The balance provides greater predictability in
politics and economics, as well as for the social parties on all levels. This perhaps
pinpoints the concept of democracy at work, in the Nordic way.
This balance is under pressure from external as well as internal change and
development in the Nordic countries, as in most Western countries. The globali-
zation of economies has introduced new markets, competitors and suppliers, and
changed economic competition and, thereby, national and industrial economic
competitiveness. These economic developments provide new models of organiza-
tion and management. Some of these models are less compatible with democratic
organization at work than others. We address this problem in the next chapter.
Short-term perspectives have become more prominent in recent decades.
Shareholder values increasingly dominate parts of the private sector. That makes
it more difficult for employee representatives to defend longer-term develop-
ment of autonomy and learning opportunities at work. The same applies to
employee representatives in the public sector, where the institutions focus on
achieving short-term goals and quality standards.
The short-term perspective strengthens the growth of precarious working
conditions. Employers’ demands for a flexible workforce increases employees’
financial risks and the predictability of a decent income. The last Part of this
book presents research on precarious work.
Foreign owners dominate a growing part of private companies. These own-
ers bring with them new principles of management and organization, and
introduce new relations between employees and management alien to the
Nordic context. They introduce new production concepts developed under
different social conditions from those of the Nordic countries. Chapters 4 and 5
analyse this in detail.
Migrants have entered the Nordics since the large expansion of the EU and
its free labour markets in 2004. Migrant workers from East Europe and Asia
have taken employment in Norway, especially in building and construction,
shipbuilding and low-skilled service industries. They are not used to demo-
cratic work organization and industrial relations, and their union density is
lower than that of domestic employees.
Within certain sectors, only a minority of the employees are members of a
trade union. This is especially true for low-skilled work in the service sector,
for instance in hotels and restaurants. Here it is difficult to maintain democratically
inspired principles.
New technology increasingly allows for standardization of work in many
industries, especially in the oil and gas industries and process manufacturing.
Standard operating procedures have replaced the need for specialized educa-
tion and training in some areas. Work tasks and resource needs are changing.
Employees are becoming more replaceable. Employability demands are lower.
One might argue that the driving forces of management have taken a U-turn:
Democracy at work 63
However, these conditions are not new, and until now, the Nordic democ-
racy model has had the strength to survive the current challenges. On the
other hand, as is shown in Chapter 4, democracy in work is on the decline.
Nevertheless, as already mentioned, history has taught us that increased democ-
racy usually manifests itself in short periods. Nobody knows when the next
sprint for democracy will take place.
References
Appelbaum, E., Berg, P. B., Kalleberg, A. L. & Bailey, T. A. (2000) Manufacturing
Advantage. Why High-Performance Work Systems Pay Of, Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press. https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.37-5767.
Berg, A. M. (1998) Den vanskelige medvirkningen. Arbeidstakermedvirkning i staten
1970–1996 [The Difcult Collaboration. Employee Participation in the State 1970–1996]
(Vol. 5), Oslo: Arbeidsforskningsinstituttet.
Bjørnson, Ø. (1990) På klassekampens grunn (1900–1920). Arbeiderbevegelsens historie
i Norge [In the Class Struggle (1900–1920). The History of the Labour Movement in
Norway], Oslo: Tiden Norsk Forlag A/S.
Brøgger, B. (2007) Samarbeid som produksjonsfaktor: en introduksjon [Collaboration
as a Production Factor: An Introduction], In: Brøgger, B. (ed.) Å tjene på samarbeid:
medvirkning, partssamarbeid, bedriftsutvikling [To Beneft from Collaboration: Participation,
Co-Determination, Corporate Development], Oslo: Gyldendal akademisk, 11–31.
64 Heidi Enehaug et al.
Introduction
Workplace democracy helped to balance the different interests of labour and
capital after World War II in Norway. The main intention of the basic agree-
ments in the Nordics was to reduce the high levels of labour conflicts (see
Chapters 1, 2 and 3 of this volume). The social partners agreed on how to
disagree in order to avoid manifest conflicts. Chapter 3 outlined the establish-
ment, implementation and development of democratic workplace structures
from the 1940s. Here we focus on the practice of workplace democracy today.
An analysis of democratic practices at workplaces in Denmark and Norway
shows some decrease in employee participation, autonomy and influence in
work organization and work situations, as well as co-determination by unions
(Dølvik et al., 2015). Hagen (2017) shows a decline in employee representation
on company boards. Nordrik and Falkum (2017) show that the role of working
environment committees and health and safety representatives has diminished
at some workplaces as well.
The global economy and distribution of ownership seem to be introducing
new concepts of organization and management that may challenge practices of
workplace democracy (Falkum et al., 2017). This chapter presents an analysis
of the present situation and possible future of the Nordic working life models
with reference to Denmark and Norway. To what degree will the introduction
of new and international models of governance and management challenge
Norwegian workplace democracy?
Individual
Standardization Participation
and control and involvement
Competitive Collaborative
Loyalty and
Co-determination
obedience
Collective
measure the extent to which the different types govern company organization,
how they combine and how they are related to each other.
Governance of work organizations rests on a shared understanding of reali-
ties at work. Lukes (2005) defines thought control as a major premise of power
and the distribution of power in society in his new version of Power, a Radical
View from 1974. He refers to Foucault (1982) when he emphasizes thought
control as a third dimension of power in society. Foucault claimed that the
ability to establish shared and institutionalized understandings of realities rep-
resented “truth regimes” but also that such regimes are reversible and change
over time. Power to define “thought control” and “truth regimes” would
dominate the whole organization as a strong form of governance. The shared
understandings of realities can determine the direction in organizations but
also set some cognitive limitations on what we pay attention to. To establish
shared understanding of realities is a basic premise in the governance of organ-
ized activities.
The four concepts in the model in Figure 4.1 represent different ways to
establish such shared understandings of realities within the work organiza-
tion. Shared understandings are a cognitive framework for the development
of policies, goals and objectives that make all those involved move in the
same direction.
Shared understandings of realities and situations can arise from open and
free discussions in democratic systems where everyone can participate and con-
tribute to the development of such understandings. In authoritarian systems,
those in charge will define how to understand realities. They have the power
and legitimacy to make subordinates accept and commit to the understandings
Workplace democracy under pressure 69
employees should make improvements in their own work, in their own work
situation and at their workplace in general. Some of the companies that par-
ticipated in the collaboration experiments organized work in self-governing
groups. The experiments aimed to increase productivity and reduce alienation
of workers in labour processes by increasing individual autonomy at work.
The basic agreement of 1966 stipulated employee rights to participate and
thus become involved in workplace development. Participation and involve-
ment were conceived as an individual entitlement to influence the work
organization. We introduce the concepts as a model of governance and man-
agement at the workplace, and as a way to use close relations, communication
and employee autonomy as a toolbox for running and developing the work-
place and improving production and productivity.
Thorsrud and Emery (1964, 1970) launched their version of employee
participation as a model of collaboration. In Norway, manufacturing com-
panies were the first to implement the model. The experiments introduced
participation as a model of collaboration and consensus making, not a model
of governance and management. Later studies, however, interpret Thorsrud
and Emery’s model of participation as a management model and one that was
intended to support productivity and efficiency at the company level (Falkum,
2008). This dual interpretation of employee participation and involvement as
a model of collaboration as well as management allows for both top-down and
bottom-up orientations.
Open communication and dialogue between individual employees and their
immediate superiors and colleagues establish a consensus on what to do and
how to do it: how to perform the work and organize the workplace, i.e. con-
tinuous and collaborative development of shared understanding of realities at
the workplace on an individual level. The model allows for different employee
and management opinions and understandings. They can solve differences of
interests through negotiations between individual employees and their imme-
diate superiors, and in teams of workers responsible for certain tasks, sometimes
in self-governed groups. Such negotiated compromises at the individual level
are likely to rely on mutual trust and respect, in other words negotiations on
equal terms in a democratic manner.
Loyalty and obedience is a model that we have identified in recent stud-
ies in social psychology and organization (Ulrich et al., 2009; Ulrich & Ulrich,
2010). We include transformation management in this concept. The models
we refer to introduce the values of the owners and top management as the
objectives of the company. Value-based management is another label of this
model. Employee acceptance of the established values, and commitment to
them as norms and guidelines for attitudes, can institutionalize loyalty to the
established understanding of realities in a company. This, however, implies
that employees obey the managerial policies, goals and decisions. Without
employee acceptance of and obedience to the established understanding of
realities, loyalty to management will be fragile.
Workplace democracy under pressure 71
This model may very well produce employee loyalty and obedience based
on true employee convictions that the established values represent the “one
best way” for the company. In one scenario, this may actually be shown to be
the case. In another, employers’ understandings of realities are very convinc-
ing and employees really believe in them, without proof of evidence. A third
scenario is that the employees do not really believe in the managerial values,
but the sanctions against opposition lead to loyalty and obedience. Finally,
employers may manipulate employees to believe in managerial values, policies
and plans that in reality are a construct without evidence. In all these cases,
the model is likely to shape employee loyalty in action, while the legitimacy
of management may still be false. The three latter cases may lead to unsta-
ble relations between management and employees. Unpredictability and social
insecurity may be intrinsic to this model when the management–employee
relationship is poor.
Relations between management and employees are the main tools in this
model. Relations are important, since employees are expected to adopt and
commit to proclaimed norms and values. Performance measures support
employee commitment to the values of employers by rewarding good and
sanctioning bad performance.
Transformation management is about establishing a specified understanding of
realities as the truth of a company and its context. Managers use different methods
to motivate their employees to perform at their best and to implement managerial
decisions and plans as expected. Competition between colleagues will motivate
and improve individual performance, according to some studies (Busch et al.,
2015). Some of the studies of transformation management introduce the idea that
anxiety at the workplace will improve performance (Moxnes, 2012).
Loyalty and obedience, as we define them, represent methods, assump-
tions and tests in a range of motivation triggers. Busch et al. (2015) distinguish
between internal and external motivation. Management may reward improve-
ments and good results with external goods like bonuses. Kuvaas (2006) showed
that material rewards had to be very large in order to affect performance and
enterprise results significantly. He found that intrinsic motivation had bet-
ter effects on individual performance. Intrinsic motivation would improve
through individual development of competencies, organizational identifica-
tion and other personal aspects. External motivation is linked to transaction
management, while intrinsic motivation is connected to transformation man-
agement. Some research has found evidence that transformation management
improves performance.
To establish a shared understanding of workplace realities is the main key
to ways to govern and manage work organization that involve loyalty and
obedience. The model rests strongly on the management–employee relation-
ship, as the employees are expected to commit to managerial goals and values.
Companies that apply this model are more likely to be top-down than bottom-
up oriented.
72 Eivind Falkum et al.
and organizational means and tools, not only employee and union rights and
obligations, in this perspective.
Loyalty and obedience were measured using the scale 1 = completely disagree
to 5 = completely agree, Cronbach’s alpha = 0.89:
MB 2017 1 3 17 43 37
MB 2016 1 3 20 43 34
Fafo 2009 2 9 34 55
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
The responses from 2017 showed only insignificant differences from those of
2016.
These results question the common assumption that Nordic working life is
stable and democratic. The participants perceived working life to be develop-
ing in a less democratic and employee-friendly manner than one would assume
from recent studies of the Nordic model (Dølvik et al., 2015).
The state 19 39 32 10 1
Local government 9 32 39 16 4
Private enterprises 14 31 33 15 7
organized by the state differ considerably from both of them (Figure 4.3).
Respondents employed by the Norwegian state have less influence on gov-
ernance and organization at their workplace, and this difference is statistically
significant (p < .001). They experience higher degrees of standardization and
control, and lower degrees of co-determination and autonomy at work than
do employees in private and local government enterprises. In Figure 4.4, we
present differences in degrees of governance and forms of management across
industries. The panel data includes 20 different industries, which implies that
the numbers of respondents in some of them are quite small. We include only
those industries with sufficient numbers of respondents (about 100 or more)
to be significant.
Health services have the lowest degree of co-determination and the third
lowest degree of participation and involvement. We will comment in more
detail on the low ratings in the public sector and connect them to the introduc-
tion of new public management in the next paragraph.
The main point in Figure 4.4, however, is the variations in levels of co-
determination, and participation and involvement (autonomy) across industries.
We use indexes of all the four types of governance and management that we
elaborated in the introduction to this chapter. These indexes give robust findings
that are statistically significant (Falkum et al., 2017; Falkum & Drange, 2018).
Union–employer collaboration and high levels of union co-determination
dominated governance and management in the oil and gas industry until 2008,
when the largest companies introduced standardization programmes for produc-
tion and maintenance, including HES issues in North Sea installations (Colman
78 Eivind Falkum et al.
Construction 69
66
Education/kindergarten 62
61
Manufacturing/technology 55
59
Governmental offices 54
56
Banking/finance 53
57
Oil/gas/energy 46
44
Nursing/care 45
43
Health services 34
46
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Co-determination Participation and involvement
41
Construction
15
Education/kindergarten 47
13
Manufacturing/technology 50
29
44
Governmental offices
16
53
Banking/finance
31
60
Oil/gas/energy
28
53
Nursing/care
24
56
Health services 22
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Standardization and control Loyalty and obedience
life models and the stakeholder perspectives, the relations between manage-
ment, unions and employees dominated companies and organizations.
The co-determination survey in 2017 shows huge differences in govern-
ance and forms of management in corporations and other ways to organize
enterprises. Corporations are normally a structure of several enterprises that are
run from the same headquarters. Non-corporations are autonomous companies
and other enterprises (Figure 4.6).
A regression analysis shows that the differences in co-determination
between corporations and non-corporations is statistically significant (Falkum
& Drange, 2018). The three other forms correlate in the expected directions,
but the differences are at present not big enough to be significant. Thus, cor-
porations reduce levels of co-determination. That means that unions, their
representatives and their members have less influence in corporate structures
than in non-corporate structures. Corporations reduce the roles of collectively
oriented representative democratic institutions. There are no significant dif-
ferences in autonomy and participation when we compare corporations and
non-corporations.
Non-corporate enterprises have about the same levels of standardization
and control as corporations have. Loyalty and obedience score lower than all
three other forms of governance, in both corporate and non-corporate struc-
tures. Thus, the organizational structure varies, and they carry different forms
of governance, management and collaboration between employers, unions and
employees. This is quite surprising when we know that they do not differ
in having established the formal democratic structures prescribed by national
industrial relations and working life institutions. Institutionalization of demo-
cratic structures seems to be no guarantee for the practice of democracy at
3.8
4 3.7
3.4 3.5 3.4
2.8 2.8
3
2.4
0
Standardization and Loyalty and obedience Participation and Co-determination
control involvement
Corporations Non-corporations
Figure 4.6 confirms the common assumption that the introduction of cor-
porate governance, and shareholder perspectives, would affect democratic
practices and labour relations at workplaces. Differences in ownership, size and
site of the headquarters will affect distances and thereby communication lines
and labour relations. These characteristics may explain some of the differences
in the practical use of governance and management methods, and employee
and union influences at work. However, these characteristics are likely to be
the result of the introduction of corporate governance and NPM, and not the
opposite, i.e. that the introduction of corporate governance and NPM is a
result of size, ownership or site of headquarters. They are the owners’ preferred
ways to govern a large part of working life. The differences still remain when
we control for number of employees (size).
Corporations let the owners’ interests dominate enterprises according to
corporate governance principles (Hagen, 2010, 2015). Relations between own-
ers and management become dominant in the shaping of the understandings
of realities, strategic choices and principles of governance and management.
In this way, relations between employers, unions and employees will be of
less importance in the running of enterprises. Shareholder perspectives take
over from stakeholder perspectives through labour relations and the practice of
industrial relations at workplaces.
We found that the practice of workplace democracy varies by industries,
sectors and by enterprise structures. Models of work and working life have
to reflect realities at workplaces in order to support predictability, stability
and consensus. Despite the proven varieties of workplace practices, conflicts
between employers and unions are still scarce in Denmark and Norway.
liberalism” from the early 1980s in the public sector. Customer/user orienta-
tions in public services, cost control and reduction of public spending were
high on political agendas (Christensen & Lægreid, 2007). In parallel with cor-
porate governance in the private sector, NPM put a public variant of owners’
governance in charge.
NPM led to the privatization of many public services. Privatization intro-
duced variants of corporate structures as the main way to organize services
like telecommunications, railways, the national postal service, the national oil
company and more. Parliament established them as “state limited companies”
(statsaksjeselskap) by legal acts. The relevant ministry was to hold the general
assembly of the new limited company. The general assembly in limited compa-
nies represents the shareholders. It elects the board of directors in representative
democratic structures. NPM carries principles of corporate governance (Meld.
St. 27 (2013–2014)). Today the Norwegian state owns 74 such companies
(Nærings- og fiskeridepartementet 13.01.2018).
The public authorities restructured hospitals in a somewhat similar way
in the early 2000s. The state now organized hospitals and defined them as
health corporations and enterprises, known as “special law companies” (sær-
lovsselskap), i.e. state companies with particular authority. Political decisions
transferred the responsibility for hospitals from the 18 counties to 5 state-
owned regional health trusts (helseforetak) in 2002. This was a huge reform
implemented in a very short time. The Ministry of Health is in charge of
the five health regions. The reform introduced corporate structures similar to
those of the limited companies owned by the state. However, this was not a
Norwegian innovation. The same model applied in Denmark and several other
European countries.
We have examined differences in governance and management models in
some of the workplaces under governmental authority.
Table 4.3 shows the survey responses on the indexes for the four models of
governance and management in different areas of state activities. The figures
show the average scores in the different areas on a scale from 1 = very low
degree to 5 = very high degree. It also shows statistically significant differences in
the degree of participation and involvement (autonomy) and co-determination
in the different types of enterprise. Autonomy and co-determination in privatized
state-owned limited companies and health enterprises score significantly lower
than the other types of enterprise. Universities and university colleges are at
the top. Standardization and control scores are highest in health enterprises
and state-owned limited companies compared to all the others, significant at
the 0.01 level.
These findings may have many different explanations. The restructurings
took place in the early 2000s. The privatized limited companies used to have
strong labour unions, party collaboration and union influence on the man-
agement and business in their period as public enterprises. Since then they
have developed their business and reorganized and restructured the enterprise
84 Eivind Falkum et al.
higher than in most other areas and industries, except for oil and gas, where 58%
thought that working life was developing in a more authoritarian direction.
We have controlled these findings for numbers of employees and other
independent variables by regression analysis (Falkum & Drange, 2018). Size
matters but not so much to make the correlations statistically insignificant.
We take these findings to indicate that the restructuring of public sector
workplaces by the logics of NPM are changing workplace structures and
cultures in a less democratic direction.
under pressure, a pressure that originally stems from the neo-liberalism of the
1980s and the logics of corporate governance and new HR strategies derived
from that ideological base. This case study, as well as the survey data, indicate
that the collective democratic structures of co-determination are under greater
pressure than individual participation, but there are also examples of attempts
to transform individual participation and involvement into loyalty and obedi-
ence, as in the case here.
Note
1 Medbestemmelsesbarometeret is funded by Lederne (The Norwegian Organization
of Managers and Executives), Legeforeningen (The Norwegian Medical Association
(NMA)), Forbundet for ledelse og teknikk (The Norwegian Engineers and Managers
Association (FLT)), Forskerforbundet (The Norwegian Association of Researchers
(NAR)) and Politiets Fellesforbund (Norwegian Police Federation).
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Chapter 5
International management
concepts meeting Nordic
working life
Peter Hagedorn-Rasmussen and Pål Klethagen
Introduction
Management concepts travel across contexts. Protagonists present management
concepts as universalized knowledge that fulfils desirable goals by following the
ideas and prescriptions proposed. But what happens when decontextualized
knowledge developed in one context travels across contexts and is recontex-
tualized? In this chapter, we explore how international management concepts
travel into the Nordic working life – and to what extent international man-
agement concepts challenge the work environment and transform inherent
principles in the Nordic Working life Model (NWM). In the first section, we
sketch out what we understand as NWM in order to explore how this inter-
acts with international management concepts. We then identify two rough
theoretical perspectives in the understanding of management concepts and
organizational transformation. The first perspective aligns to the idea that man-
agement concepts represent universalized knowledge that is transferred across
context and transforms organizations. This perspective, which we label Transfer,
includes two opposing approaches: one is that of the proponents and advo-
cates of specific managerial concepts; the other is that of those who critically
scrutinize management concepts and the outcomes they produce. The second
theoretical perspective we label Translation. The translational approach adheres
to the idea that management concepts can never be transferred without also being
translated. Each has implications for understanding the relationship between
management concepts and organizational transformation.
This leads us to the second section of the chapter, in which we explore
the travel of Lean into Nordic working life. We begin by sketching out Lean,
and then, by means of earlier literature studies, ask what can be said about the
influence of Lean on work environment and health. While these studies reach
beyond the scope of the Nordic countries, we reflect upon their implications
for Nordic working life and implications for the principles and characteris-
tics implied in NWM. This leads us to explore in more depth some of the
translational processes of Lean into the Nordic countries, including the role of
researchers and social parties. We present three cases of translational processes
in Norway and Denmark.
Management concepts meeting Nordic life 93
reference point within the field of working life studies and organization the-
ory. The scene of what later became such an influential stream of thought, the
sociotechnical school at the Tavistock Institute, was set by Eric Trist and Ken
Bamforth (the latter had been working in the mines for 18 years). In “Some
Social and Psychological Consequences of the Longwall Method of Coal-
Getting”, Trist and Bamforth describe how the “outstanding feature of the
social pattern with which the pre-mechanized equilibrium was associated”
had deteriorated (1951, p. 6). The loss of responsible autonomy within the
smaller groups who had previously worked in the coal mines was associated
with the shift towards a work organization with large groups with very little
or no autonomy. The key learning points from these studies was that, when
changing the work organization, social and technical systems had to be con-
sidered in combination. It exhibited how innovations in the work organization
increased productivity as well as the social quality of working life, greater
cohesiveness in groups, greater personal satisfaction and a decrease in sickness
and absenteeism (Trist & Bamforth, 1951).
The researchers behind the studies had ambitions of reforming working
life in order to create an industrial democracy, but in the UK such a move-
ment proved difficult to establish. In Norway, on the other hand, such studies
found fertile ground; the research program Industrial Democracy was established
in 1962 and became a source of inspiration in the formation of Nordic work-
ing life in the decades that followed. The Industrial Democracy program “grew
out of a widespread public discussion of alienation in industry and utilization of
human resources” (Thorsrud & Emery, 1970, p. 187) and was led by Thorsrud
and Emery, aiming at a democratization and sharing of social power of all those
engaged in industry (Thorsrud & Emery, 1970, p. 188). The programme’s first
phase was concerned with employee representatives on company boards, while
the second phase consisted of field experiments on employees’ “opportunities
to participate in determining how they did their work” (Thorsrud & Emery,
1970, p. 187).
The programme documented the somewhat conflicting roles of the rep-
resentatives on boards which had been instigated in the 1950s. The boards
prioritized the economic prosperity of the firm (Thorsrud & Emery, 1970,
pp. 189–191), thus externalizing issues relevant for working conditions. Here,
work councils were seen as sites for negotiation of a more practice-oriented
influence, in which employees were capable of handling problems in the con-
crete work settings. The insights from the first phase led to focus on some basic
needs in the following experiments, for example:
These ideas and principles came to inspire and permeate projects and pro-
grammes around the Nordic countries, thus giving strength to the formation
of an idea, almost reifed as NWM, although always in its becoming. This was
not without challenges. The Industrial Democracy programme was a reac-
tion to decades of joint practices based on Tayloristic principles. Likewise,
the sociotechnical approach during the 1970s was criticized for neglecting the
power relations within companies. In this process, the Norwegian professor
Bjørn Gustavsen, who was also at the Norwegian Work Research Institute,
played a signifcant role. By means of action research into the continuation
of experiments on work organization, he emphasized the role of language
and dialogue. Technology policies came to play a role, and a revitalization
of the idea of equal cooperation was strengthened and gave birth to new leg-
islation strengthening employee rights at company level (Hvid et al., 2003,
p. 12). Concepts like The Developmental Work arose in the 1990s in Sweden and
Denmark and were propagated by unions and also disseminated by research-
ers (Hvid et al., 2003, p. 12). As such, Nordic working life was in an ongoing
transformation. Although the nature of this becoming had its own dialectic char-
acter, the formation of a line of principles and characteristics thrived. It thrived
to a degree that the NWM became a concept in “such a wide spectrum of areas
as management, user-friendly technology development, industrial democracy,
group-work, welfare legislation, and industrial relations. Many observers even
came to Scandinavia to study the future” (Byrkjefot, 2003, p. 29). Byrkjefot
emphasizes how this climaxed in the mid-1980s, when international man-
agement concepts became more important. In the following section, we will
probe the landscape of management concepts before we turn to explore their
travel into the Nordic working life.
Also in the Nordic countries, criticism of and concerns over the possible
influence of mainstream management thoughts on working life have been
put forward. The Norwegian social anthropologist Tian Sørhaug stayed
at the Norwegian Work Research Institute (AFI). Sørhaug, who had also
been Director of AFI, stayed there during the times of Thorsrud. He writes
on the influence of US consultants in the aftermath of World War II (as part
of the Marshall Plan) and argues that the influence of the US consultants was
seen to clash with the ideas outlined and practised within the programme on
Industrial Democracy in Norway, in which a sharing of social power in indus-
try of all who are engaged in industry was seen as a means to de-alienate
the industry (Sørhaug, 1996, p. 188). US consultants, Sørhaug wrote, had a
far more hierarchical perspective on management, in which robust organiza-
tion equated to a clear, straightforward, authoritarian leadership. Likewise, the
influence from Japan increased (Gustavsen et al., 2010; Skorstad, 2011). Both
authors emphasize the difference between Japanese and Norwegian approaches
to involvement, implying a critique of transferring concepts and ideas from one
context to another. During the 1980s, an instrumental approach to involvement as
a means of creating ever more efficient and flexible companies superseded that of
involvement as a driver for democracy and equality. This made critical researchers
conclude that, for instance, Lean equals “loss of autonomy and further intensifica-
tion of work” (Skorstad, 1994, p. 429). Gustavsen et al. (2010) specify that working
life research in Norway was weak at the end of the 1980s. This created an open
space for influences from other sources. The prescriptive management literature
expanded (Peters et al., 1982) and provided a source for inspiration and influence.
The Machine that Changed the World (Womack et al., 1990) was a bestselling book
that paved the way to success for Lean as a specific management concept.
What the critics and proponents share is a belief that decontextualized manage-
ment concepts work across contexts: by transferring decontextualized knowledge,
it is possible to transform organizations. Proponents argue for the sake of improve-
ments, quality and efficiency in terms of company goals. Critics argue there
is a negative influence on the work environment, which may be said to stem
from the externalization of variables, principles, practices and characteristics such
as autonomy, psychosocial work environment, balanced job demands, learning
opportunities and whole tasks, not to mention democracy and participation. Such
ideas are externalized from the agenda and from the mental maps that managers
(and consultants) apply as sense-making heuristics (Weick, 1995; also see Simon,
1971). The critique unmasks the flaws and failures following from such externali-
zation by interpreting, analysing and describing the complex dynamics of power
and discipline associated with the practice of these mental maps.
on working life. But each of these perspectives might neglect the complex-
ity and micro-sociological processes implied in the ‘transfer’ of universalized
knowledge. A neo-institutional approach was formulated in which the need
for more critical examination of the micro-sociological processes of organi-
zational change was suggested (Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996), presumably to
uncover a much more diverse, complex and rich understanding of organiza-
tional change. Sometimes this is referred to as the Scandinavian neo-institutional
approach and sometimes as the pragmatic neo-institutional approach. Czarniawska
and Joerges (1996), together with other colleagues, explored the travel of ideas
and challenged the notion of how management concepts unilaterally influence
organizational transformation. An important contribution was that ideas them-
selves are also transformed by literally, as well as metaphorically, going through
the process of translation. This idea provided a rich ground for research on dif-
ferent perspectives on translation studies (Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996; Røvik,
2007; see also Spyridonidis et al., 2014). Any transfer of a managerial idea from
one context to another implies translation. The idea is woven into the context
and cannot be moved without its fundamental content being translated.
As a contributor to the pragmatist Scandinavian neo-institutionalism,
Norwegian professor Kjell Arne Røvik (2007) provides an account of trans-
lation within sociological studies. He distinguishes between two paradigms
(Røvik, 2007, p. 251). The early paradigm of translation predominantly
emphasized literal translation, in which the author is obliged to translate word
by word: the aim is to reproduce the text as precisely as possible. The transla-
tor’s obligation is to be loyal to the text and only the text. Metaphorically, this
would be tantamount to an organizational change process guided by a manage-
rial concept, including tools/heuristics, which is implemented 1:1.
This standard of translation was challenged during the 1980s. The chal-
lenge contended a cultural turn, in which the translator was “expected now to
consider the receiving culture” (Røvik, 2007, p. 252). The original idea of an
author, Røvik argues, is intimately linked to the cultural context in which it is
produced. If you transfer the text to another cultural context, the meaning of
the original text is likely to get lost in translation. Translation needs to include
co-authorship on the part of the translator in order to bring the ideas to life in
the new context.
Any consultant, management guru, manager or employee who participates
in dissemination of a managerial concept becomes part of the translation pro-
cess and, consequently, a potential co-author. If you practise the managerial
concept 1:1, and are true only to the text, you are likely to expect cultural
clashes of meaning. If you, for instance, take a managerial concept that origi-
nates from a culture in which the group is the smallest foundational social unit
(e.g. Japan) and transfer this to a cultural setting in which the smallest social
unit is the individual (e.g. the United States or the Nordic countries), the
actual practice is likely to have very different processual outcomes. Likewise,
taking a concept that represents a coherent meaning system founded on specific
Management concepts meeting Nordic life 99
to explore the relationship between Lean and the work environment. Here, we
broaden our scope from the Nordic to an international perspective but reflect
on the findings’ possible implication for Lean and the work environment in the
Nordic countries. Last, we follow the idea of Translation and enquire into cases
that can be seen as expressions of translation in order to understand possible
strengths and weaknesses of such creative involvement.
efficiency that have been creatively translated into several other languages to
keep the 5S’s (in English, the words are translated as Sort, Set In Order, Shine,
Standardize and Sustain); and the 5 Whys is a technique applied to find the root
cause of a problem.
But what does Lean not include? In the general philosophy, among the
fundamental principles and known tools of Lean, there is no mention of democ-
racy, quality of working life, meaningfulness, autonomy, whole tasks, balanced
job demands, learning, or other themes that we met within the sociotechnical
thinking and the principles and characteristics that were institutionalized his-
torically in the emergence of NWM. In the Nordic countries, vast investments
in programmes have been made to reform working life. As a consequence, as
Björkman and Lundqvist point out (2013, p. 33), role models should be chosen
carefully; the authors emphasize that Japan has never invested in the humaniza-
tion of working life to institutionalize it in the same way that Nordic countries
have. Likewise, Sandberg emphasizes that Lean production can never “be the
ultimate goal and form for human productive activity. Some ‘fat’ is needed to
make the workplace a decent place for human activity, a place where you can
unfold as a human being” (Sandberg, 2007, p. vii). The “fat” includes an inclu-
sive orientation towards some characteristics, principles and practices that have
been institutionalized historically. Learning is important for the experience of
balancing job demands with an experienced control (Thorsrud & Emery, 1970;
Gustavsen, 1990; Hagedorn-Rasmussen & Elsborg, 2016) and is a necessary
“fat” mark of a resilient, inclusive organization.
with important insights into the relationship between Lean and its travel into
organizations, from which we can make inferences about Nordic working life.
In 1999, Landsbergis et al. published a survey of the literature on the impact
on worker health of Lean production and related new systems of work organiza-
tion. They identified 38 studies, of which 20 were published in peer-reviewed
journals covering mostly the United States, Canada and England, with one in
Finland. Of these, 13 were in the auto industry, 13 in other manufacturing
industries, 11 in the health care industry and 1 in telecommunication. They
concluded that, in general, the introduction of Lean production does cause
some challenges in terms of the work environment: “Increases in decision
authority and skill are very modest or temporary, and decision latitude remains
low. Thus, such work can be considered to have job strain” (Landsbergis et al.,
1999, p. 122). But they also emphasize exceptions to these deteriorating influ-
ences: “The exceptions to these general conclusions tend to appear in groups
of workers who participated in the implementation of new work systems, or
in which worker influence was secured through a collective bargaining agree-
ment” (Landsbergis et al., 1999, p. 122). Toivanen together with Landsbergis
(2013) conducted a literature survey covering the period from 2000 until 2011.
They identified 15 relevant studies, 14 in peer-reviewed journals and 1 book
covering 9 different countries. Although ambiguous, the studies documented
an increase in work pace as well as an increase in work intensity. In line with the
prior literature study, this literature study documented higher levels of stress,
as well as a deterioration in wellbeing, fatigue and tension among employees
within Lean production with manual work (Toivanen & Landsbergis, 2013,
p. 97). Their study shows that “Lean production practices are often related to
intensification of work pace and job demands, relatively low influence and only
modest or temporary increase of influence in work” (Toivanen & Landsbergis,
2013, p. 97, our translation). Some of the studies accounted for the role of
unions, and two of those suggested that the involvement of unions lessens the
risk of stress on the job.
Almost simultaneously, Hasle et al. (2012) published a literature study which
overlaps with Toivanen and Landsbergis (2013). In contrast to Landsbergis
et al.’s (1999) study, Hasle et al. make greater efforts to consider the scope
and context of Lean more clearly. The review likewise predominantly sug-
gests evidence for negative effects on work environment, employee health
and wellbeing when we look into manual work with low complexity. But
it is also argued that the assumed causal relationship inherent in the research
design is overemphasized and needs to be revised, because Lean takes many
forms in terms of context, implementation and practice. These differences,
they concluded, will have different effects: “In order to understand the effects
of Lean on the working environment, we must examine the workings of Lean
as a socio-technical system where the causal relations with the working envi-
ronment are a matter of contextual and practical interpretation” (Hasle et al.,
2012, pp. 845–846).
Management concepts meeting Nordic life 103
in conflict with the NWM. Working life researchers and companies went
together to explore opportunities for a Norwegian translation. Lean influ-
enced the way researchers, companies and social parties worked together
across sectors. Working life researchers actively explored ways of transforming
the management concept and “adapting” aspects of the concept to the insti-
tutional context within Norway. The intention was to develop knowledge
on the functioning of Lean within Norwegian working life, as well as making
a research-based contribution to the participating companies. The case stud-
ies from the project show that Lean could both conflict with NWM or be
a useful tool for improvement based on broad participation. It also showed
that the effects of Lean could differ over time within the same organization,
as exemplified by Bygdås and Falkum (2012). They conducted a case study,
Lean in the Sunset, in which they investigated the role of Lean during a period
of economic success as well as decline. The case study presented two distinct
approaches to Lean applied at REC Herøya.1 In the first version, up until
2008, management introduced an instrumental version of 5S that enforced
a top-down, rule-oriented approach with a strict interpretation of creating
order (Bygdås & Falkum, 2012, pp. 5, 23). The implementation of Lean was
met with significant resistance and had limited or no results. A combination of
the financial crisis and increased competition from China created a “burning
platform”. The factory was at risk of going out of business, and a restructuring
took place. The executive group was replaced, and new initiatives were taken.
A second, and very different, approach to Lean was presented, although still
decided by management. The new plant manager had a long history of pro-
ducing results in collaboration with workers from the process industry. A new
trade union representative was also elected, also with process industry experi-
ence in both fighting and collaborating with management in crisis situations.2
The innovative approach was far more inclusive and cooperative. Employee
representatives were included in:
This led to a quite distinct process that supported and engaged employees;
for instance, absence caused by injuries decreased by 88%, complaints about
inferior quality reduced by 95% and production cost per wafer reduced by
44% (Bygdås & Falkum, 2012, p. 11). Comparing the two approaches of
Lean shows how “diferences seem far more striking than the resemblances”
(Bygdås & Falkum, 2012, p. 29, our translation). While management decided
both initiatives, they difered in terms of creating an inclusive and cooperative
approach with employees. Bygdås & Falkum conclude that:
106 Peter Hagedorn-Rasmussen and Pål Klethagen
They conclude that REC Herøya succeeded in reaching their goals, precisely
because they spent time creating a mutual understanding of what they needed
to do, how and by whom. The study documents the importance of translation
and draws attention to the need for participation by employees and the poten-
tially devastating efects of a narrow, control-oriented approach.
In general, the results reflected a large diversity across companies. The com-
panies took very distinct approaches to adopting the Lean practices, partly
given their primary tasks but also because of other institutional settings. The
researchers suggested that the companies differed with regard to two axes in
their approach to the practice of Lean: pragmatic vs dogmatic approach, and
shortsighted vs longsighted approach, creating Sporadic-Lean, Tool(based)-Lean,
Standard-Lean and Transformation-Lean (Edwards et al., 2010, pp. 53ff).
The Transformation-Lean approach (pragmatic/longsighted) included a more
learning-oriented approach that also implied continuous translation of tools,
etc. The more dogmatic came close to a fundamentally tool-based approach
(Edwards et al., 2010, pp. 53 ff). The researchers also emphasize how Lean may
be apprehended as a process of learning (Edwards et al., 2010, p. 157), implying
a longsighted pragmatic perspective and emphasizing the translational process.
The researchers concluded that there is no straightforward way to judge the
influence of Lean on the work environment: it is possible to have a positive
work environment with Lean and even improve, but they rush to state that
the question is too simple. It is necessary to look behind how employees and
managers interact with Lean and how they transform it (Edwards et al., 2010,
p. 183). The research project created a foundation for the companies, together
with the researchers, to explore strengths and weaknesses, and possible clashes
between distinct institutional logics of Lean meeting variants of the Nordic
working life, and also enlighten some opportunities and barriers for translating
Lean with regard to work environment, involvement, etc.
team thinking, but that it also works in reverse (Voxted, 2017). Strengthening
the vocational training within specific areas will provide processes of translation
that contextualize the managerial ideas.
Based on an analysis of how six industrial companies adopted Lean and
Performance Management, the project explored how the ideas travelled into
each company. In particular, the project focused on how industrial employees
interacted in the processes of adopting and translating the managerial con-
cept, including how the organizations created room for participation, levels of
autonomy and so on. The six qualitative case studies included interviews with
skilled and semi-skilled employees, managers with responsibility for training
and development, and production managers and shop stewards. The employees
were interviewed in focus groups in which their approach to adopting Lean
and Performance Management was explored. By means of a literature survey,
an interview guide was developed to explore distinct approaches to Lean and
other management concepts. Themes explored in the interviews included: To
what degree does the company emphasize employee involvement? To what
degree is Lean practised as a cultural, processual change or as a more tool-
oriented approach? To what degree are Lean practices and tools performed by
the employees as part of the ongoing work, or are Lean practices and tools a
matter for experts and managers?
The results showed a high degree of variety in ways of translating Lean.
Three ideal typical configurations were presented in the study, here labelled
ManagingLean, ApplianceLean and CulturLean. In ManagingLean, the company
worked in a very tool-oriented way with selected Lean tools. It was managers,
above all, who enacted Lean roles, and employee involvement was relatively
slight. ApplianceLean was much like ManagingLean, although employees had a
high degree of involvement. The involvement was focused on applying their
knowledge, feeding it in to make continuous improvements. The involvement
did not transgress those process improvement initiatives selected by manage-
ment. In the last configuration, CulturLean, Lean tools were seen as important
in order to make process improvements. However, the tools were selected
cooperatively by employees and management, while the selected tools reflected
the opportunity of sense-making, given the context. Employees enacted the
Lean roles, and employee involvement was, in general, high. This included
what to adopt from Lean, how to adapt the Lean tools to make sense within the
context and how to actually perform the tools in everyday practice.
Based on the analyses, skills which were important in working with and
confronting the production and management concepts were identified: 24 skills
in 7 different areas, such as technical-professional, methodological, organiza-
tional, communicative, IT, numeracy and personal competencies. These were
skills and competencies that may be important when employees are introduced
to new managerial ideas and concepts that will benefit from a constructive
critical examination by professional and knowledgeable employees. The com-
mittees related to each of the distinct industrial educational areas within IU
Management concepts meeting Nordic life 109
adopted these insights and systematically reviewed teaching plans and curricula
to see if improvements were needed.
This project illustrates not only how the social parties within IU enacted a
translational strategy but also how the employers and employees enact various
aspects given the opportunities for translation, e.g. in work councils. It also
directs attention towards the role of vocational training as a potentially valuable
resource for translation.
The three examples show different cases of translation in which the social
parties, employees, employers and managers at company level, as well as
researchers, enact roles as translators implying some degree of co-authorship.
The cases do give – although not in depth – ideas on how this co-
authorship may include principles and characteristics otherwise externalized
by the agenda provided by Lean. While this is no guarantee of a positive
outcome, it does stress the interpretive flexibility of Lean that is open to
some degree of translation.
Conclusion
In this chapter, we have explored what happens when decontextualized
knowledge travels into Nordic working life; specifically, the extent to which
international management concepts challenge the work environment and
transform inherent principles in the NWM. First, it is important to stress that
the NWM is a social construction – a model; second, it is in an ongoing process
of becoming; and third, it is to some degree normative, insofar as the principles
and characteristics that signify it are far from permeating all the institutions
that constitute everyday working life in the Nordic countries. Moreover, it is
a model that reflects a historical process of institutionalization which is open
for translation. However, these reservations considered, we would argue that
it is possible to speak of a loosely coupled NWM even in its becoming. This,
in particular, is characterized by an institutionalization that – to a larger extent
than represented among mainstream management in general and manage-
rial concepts specifically – emphasizes what we have labelled principles and
characteristics of the NWM, such as, for instance, democracy, participation,
responsible autonomy, together with a reasonably demanding job content and
the availability of learning opportunities at work.
Most managerial concepts in general, and Lean more specifically, tend to
externalize these at the expense of a narrower, instrumental focus on organi-
zational goals and the related core in the managerial concept. As such, our
findings suggest that Lean does challenge the work environment and the NWM. It
is documented that Lean within specific contextual circumstances is likely to exter-
nalize important issues with regard to the work environment and the NWM.
However, the degree and appearance of influence are ambiguous. Context
matters. In general, the causal idea that to some extent is implied in the research
question – and propagated by both proponents and critics of management
110 Peter Hagedorn-Rasmussen and Pål Klethagen
concepts – has inherent flaws that need to be considered. The practice of Lean
(like other management concepts) is very diverse. This emphasizes the need
for sensitivity towards the translational and contextual aspects of managerial
concepts and the transformation of organizations. Strategies of active transla-
tion are likely to pave the way for more positive outcomes. Furthermore, it is
concluded that, historically, the social parties, together with researchers within
the field of work environment in the Nordic countries, have been engaged
in such processes of translation, and that this is an inherent part of the model.
This calls for continued strategies of active translation. However, likewise
it is stressed that there is a need for balancing this with a continuous critical
examination of the outcome of the introduction of international management
in the work environment and the principles and characteristics implied in the
NWM. When relating to managerial concepts, researchers, as well as social
parties and actors at company level, may take on at least two distinct roles:
the critical role and the translational role. It is important to balance those two
roles in a continuation of strategies for developing a sustainable future work
environment.
Notes
1 REC Herøya produces wafers, and the market changed dramatically during this
period. However, the case emphasizes the distinct transformations that Lean under-
took during this period. In the period of success up until 2008, the price of wafers
increased. However, the fnancial crisis and increasing competition from China chal-
lenged the company (Bygdås & Falkum, 2012, p. 7).
2 The change of trade union representative is not mentioned in the report.
3 One of the authors participated in the project, conducting a literature review, case
studies and analysis.
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Chapter 6
day was fixed at 10 hours and included in a revision of the 1909 legislation.
In Denmark, working hours were regulated in collective agreements rather
than legislation.
was explicitly exempted from the legislation. The act, adopted in 1975 and
effected in 1977, was named “The Working Environment Act”. It signalled a
shift from individual protection from harm to a concern to make the general
workplace environment risk-free. All Nordic countries adopted this new term,
working environment, as a substitute for OHS during the 1970s.
In Norway, the development of the working environment legislation was
partly influenced by the cooperation experiments in Norwegian industry,
which began in the late 1960s and continued into the next decade. In these
experiments, the main employers’ association and the largest labour union
agreed on field experiments in different sectors, including an iron plant, a
paper and pulp factory, a factory making electric ovens and a large Norwegian
process industry company (Thorsrud & Emery, 1970). The experiments were
later expanded to the hotel and restaurant, offshore and shipping industries.
The experiments took place with the participation of the workers, in order to
improve work processes and maintenance work and routines.
The field experiments showed interesting results, improving both produc-
tivity and the working environment. Important questions were also raised, e.g.
who will benefit from the productivity increase: the owners, the management,
workers who took part in the experiments or all workers? Such questions are
also relevant today. The field experiments also created an important training
ground for industrial democracy, e.g. allowing for the organization of work
in self-governed groups as alternatives to assembly line work. To disseminate
the experiences from these experiments to other workplaces and the industrial
sector in general was a challenge (Gustavsen, 1992). One important follow-up
activity was the introduction of self-governed groups in the Swedish Volvo car
factory. In fact, Swedish employers were very active in reforming industrial
work in this period (Agurén & Edgren, 1979). In Norway, the dissemination
effect was smaller than hoped for, although the idea of worker participation
was followed up in many sectors. However, the potential of involving workers
in improvement of production processes was also relevant for the improvement
of the working environment. This insight was brought into new Norwegian
legislation in 1977.
Until 1977, working environment legislation was based on factory inspection
and workers’ protection laws. The basic elements of these laws were contin-
ued in the new 1977 legislation. However, several new elements were also
included. While the former legislation was protective (and thus reactive), the
new law focused also on the development of a sound working environment,
which enabled a higher quality of work combined with increased productivity.
The Norwegian 1977 legislation included five new characteristics (Karlsen,
2018, pp. 174–179):
The legislation in Denmark presented some of the same features, but not
all of them. It had a holistic perspective. Indeed the name, the Working
Environment Act, signalled a shift away from individual environmental risk
factors towards the all-encompassing situation in which work was taking place.
Further, worker participation in activities initiated to mitigate OHS problems
and improve the working environment was in focus in the Danish legislation.
However, despite the proclamation in the first paragraph of the act that the aim
was to create “a safe and healthy working environment which is at all times to
be in accordance with the technical and social development of society” (The
Danish Working Environment Act, 1975), the notion of continuous improvement
is not a very prominent feature of the Danish legislation.
The distinct difference between the countries is, however, the rules con-
cerning the psychological and social environment. In principle, the psychosocial
working environment has been included in the Danish legislation since the
1970s, due to the general aim of the act cited here and due to other general
references in the act and underlying executive orders. Nevertheless, not until a
2012 amendment to the act were there specific references to the psychosocial
working environment in the paragraphs of the act, and even today, there is no
particular executive order relating to these aspects of work in Denmark.
Table 6.1 Major working environment indicators for Denmark, Norway and EU28,
2015, percentages
Working environment factors Denmark Norway EU28
Work–life balance; working hours decided 37 39 61 (EU15)
by the company (in %)
Psychosocial and organizational working 91 94 86
environment; overall satisfaction with
working conditions
Work autonomy; decide or change:
Ordering of job tasks 85 82 68
Work methods/applications 83 84 69
Work pace 84 83 71
Participation in health, safety and 90 91 73
environment
Health and safety at risk 19 15 23
Quality of work:
positively challenging working environment 39 38 21
poor quality job 10 8 20
Source: Aagestad et al. (2017, various tables).
120 Jan Erik Karlsen et al.
and repetitive hand or arm movements. Norwegian and Danish workers are
less likely than the EU average to experience exposure to chemical risk fac-
tors in the workplace, although they report being more exposed to biological
hazards. Norway and Denmark perform well on almost every quality of work
factor compared with the EU. Almost two in five workers in Norway (38%)
and Denmark (39%) find themselves in the “‘high flying’ job quality profile”
(Parent-Thirion et al., 2016, pp. 130–131), translated in Aagestad et al. (2017,
p. 16) as a “positively challenging working environment”. In the EU, the
figure is 21%. Conversely, the relative number of people in the “poor quality
job” profile in the EU generally is 20%, whereas in Norway and Denmark the
figures are around 10%.
Parent-Thirion et al. (2016) conclude that working conditions for EU workers
have generally improved. However, as Aagestad et al. (2017, p. 13) summarize:
The main conclusion of Aagestad et al. (2017, p. 13) is that working conditions
in Norway are good compared with the EU, although in Norway, too, some
challenges exist in certain occupations and sectors. As the various fgures above
indicate, the situation in Denmark shows similar characteristics.
A closer look at working environment changes and trends since the late
1990s in Norway reveals some improvements and some challenges, as sum-
marized in Table 6.2.
These figures are probably too positive. Norway also has a grey and black
labour market in the hotel and restaurant sector, construction work and
services such as car washing, cleaning, etc. These workers have temporary
jobs, often without any written contract. They are at risk of losing their job
and will often hesitate to take part in surveys and are therefore underrepre-
sented in these tables.
The chosen physical working environment measures show a promising
trend. In 2016, 85% often or always felt that they were motivated and engaged
in their own work, a slight decrease since 2006. It is interesting to notice that
the percentage of employees who weekly feel mentally weary when they return
home from work decreased from 1996 to 2006 but rose again in 2016. The
relationship between employer and employee has (according to the employees)
been nearly stable during the 1996–2016 period.
We see a similar picture in Denmark. However, in Denmark an official
working environment strategy adopted in 2011 by the government did set
three reduction goals to be met in 2020: 25% fewer serious accidents, 20%
fewer employees with excessive psychosocial stress and 20% fewer with
excessive musculoskeletal stress. When measured in 2016, the figures were
approaching the target for accidents, but in the other two areas, the figures had
gone up rather than down. Excessive psychosocial stress showed an increase
from 14.5% (2012) to 16.9% (2016), while for musculoskeletal problems the
figures rose from 9.7% to 11.1% (same years) (Det Nationale Forskningscenter
for Arbejdsmiljø, 2017).
The overall picture is one of better working conditions in Norway and
Denmark than in most other countries. The situation varies with the sector and
the particular aspect of the working environment. Perhaps there is a challeng-
ing lack of overall progress, especially when stipulated goals are moving further
away rather than being approached.
The regulatory institutional settings, more specifically the legal regula-
tion and the labour inspection authorities, are far from the only important
contextual factors to take into account when discussing this status and these
developments. Nevertheless, the rosy picture painted suggests we should take
a closer look at some of the specificities of working environment regulation in
Norway and Denmark, as we shall do in the rest of this chapter.
The most symbolic element was the 2012 reformulation of the Working
Environment Act to include the following paragraph:
§ 1a. This Act shall cover the physical and psychological working
environment.
At the turn of the century, a new model has emerged, based on market principles
rather than on refexive practices. We can see this fourth regulatory model with
the introduction of internal controls in Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE)
work in companies in Norway from 1992, which gained further momentum
with the phasing in of these HSE requirements into the Working Life Act of
2005 and subsequent Working Environment Act of 2006. In Denmark, the
primary manifestation of this model is the introduction from 2004 of a scheme
whereby companies can exempt themselves from regular labour inspection
if they become certifed according to an OHS management standard. In the
international arena, the emergence of this model is visible in the literature (e.g.
Frick et al., 2000). This model we may term a “market model”.
In Norway in particular, new regulations on working hours and more lee-
way for precarious employment contracts indicate a change towards market
regulation rather than institutional arrangements. Firstly, the market model sig-
nals stronger management-based internal control than previous legislation.
Secondly, the government’s motivation is to develop an inspection-regime-
based second-order inspection – a regime anticipated to be both cost-saving
and deregulating. Thirdly, the companies themselves need to identify the
actors among their stakeholders (shareholders, suppliers, customers and inter-
est organizations) that will influence HSE work in addition to the company’s
own employees.
In Denmark, the market model is synonymous with the phasing out of a
compulsory occupational health service that applied to certain sectors, repre-
senting about 40% of the labour market. At first, this was accompanied by a
Working environment in Norway and Denmark 125
In Norway, internal control has been a dominant strategy. At first, this was seen
by some as an overly bureaucratic way of dealing with the problems (Skaar et al.,
1994), more tailored to the oil industry than ordinary land-based workplaces.
Indeed, both Sweden and Denmark were inclined to follow similar strategies
but finally chose to do it differently. In Denmark, there is very little that resem-
bles the internal control regime, perhaps with the exception of those companies
that chosen to have a certified OHS management system. Sweden chose what
could be seen as a middle road between the Norwegian and the Danish strategy:
Systematic Work Environment Management (Walters et al., 2011, chapter 6).
The Danish case is a transformation of the EU requirement of risk assess-
ment by management in relation to OHS. In Denmark, this has become the
workplace assessment that in most cases is not performed by management but
by the local working environment committee, which includes both managers
and employee representatives.
Because the capacity for the labour inspectorate to actually inspect workplaces
is always relatively limited, the work necessary to create and maintain a safe and
sound working environment needs to be performed by people at the work-
place. Based on this assertion, the labour inspection should focus on the quality
of the system or organization dealing with working environment issues in the
workplace rather than the quality of the working environment in itself. This is
the core thinking behind internal control.
The system, i.e. rules and procedures, put in place by management has to
be documented and made easily accessible for management and workers. It
should identify health, environment and safety problems and produce an action
plan for improvements. Companies are requested to follow up with an annual
review of the OHS status, based on a written procedure.
The implementation and follow-up of an internal control varies consider-
ably between companies. The largest companies, especially in the petroleum
Working environment in Norway and Denmark 127
The first trend we can observe is that working environment efforts are
increasingly being tailored to the character of the individual. The threat is that
certain companies will ignore both short-term and long-term workplace threats
and fail to invest in preventative, health-promoting and inclusive working envi-
ronment measures. On the other hand, some companies will use their working
environment to create a reputation that also serves their business interests.
The second trend is that the working environment concept is gaining
ground and is gradually expanding. This may mean that the working environ-
ment’s traditional priority in the overall HSE work is becoming weakened,
and new challenges such as resource management and external environmental
conditions are receiving the most attention. On the other hand, the possibility
opens for HSE (including working environment) to be more closely integrated
into the overall business development of a company.
A third trend is that safety delegates and working environment committees
are again becoming a kind of “empty democracy”. This means that the work-
ing environment loses its competent spokespersons because their contribution
becomes irrelevant to the company’s operation and strategy. However, if the
HSE work is linked to daily work, i.e. everyone is engaged in HSE improve-
ments, this trend can promote a more sustainable production system.
The fourth trend is linked to the very idea that companies should have
more rights to control themselves in the HSE field. There is a risk of creating
a new corporate bureaucracy. HSE work will then become a clearer part of
the employer’s governance, and internal control will be a management tool
130 Jan Erik Karlsen et al.
in line with other models and tools the company uses. The optimistic side is
that internal control of HSE is actually perceived as the most promising model
for modern and effective management and that this gives rise to a new under-
standing of the connection between optimal and safe production and the HSE
threats that the production can lead to. Changes in the tasks and duties of the
safety delegate system will enhance the link between elected and professional
involvement in the operations of a company, to the benefit of HSE quality.
Denmark has also started to deal with these issues, but much later, and in a
situation where the problems just seem to grow rather than being contained
by policy interventions.
In relation to company motivation, Norway has followed a formal high road
with its internal controls that make the Labour Inspection Authorities take a
step back by inspecting how companies deal with their problems rather than
inspecting the results of the companies’ efforts. At the same time, the working
environment in Norway has been integrated with a number of other issues,
such as fire prevention and the external environment. In Denmark, a low road
was deliberately taken, but a road with a strong emphasis on employee repre-
sentatives, as workplace assessments are performed by working environment
groups and committees, which are cooperative organs in the companies. More
recently, many employers in Denmark seem to be shifting their preferences by
moving in the direction of more integrated management systems that take the
working environment more seriously and at the same time tend to squeeze out
the participatory aspects of the “low road”.
Frustratingly, neither of the different national models seems to have found
the direct road to serious continuous improvements in the working environ-
ment. It is more like continuously counteracting, what Jens Rasmussen (1997)
has termed a “migrating toward accidents”. A migration that is due to man-
agement’s continuous strive for effectivity and competitiveness, which often
pushes the working environment in a negative direction.
This leaves us with some open-ended questions: Is counteracting the nega-
tive trends enough? Or do we have the wrong focus or the wrong model in
Norwegian and Danish working life? Can we optimize the strategies we have
adopted, or perhaps learn from each other?
Perhaps, we should focus on the reasons why most of our daily work opera-
tions in fact are going well, rather than on deviations, mishaps and accidents.
Should we shift our focus from non-compliance and minimizing risks to the
ability to respond, monitor, learn and anticipate reasons for adjustments, in
order to achieve a safer workplace? Is organizing for resilience a more viable
and sustainable model than organizing for safety (Hollnagel, 2014)?
Alternatively, is the opposite approach more reasonable? After all, two
recent systematic reviews (performed in Denmark and Norway, but referring
primarily to US studies: Andersen et al., 2017; Johannessen et al., 2017) find
stronger effects of legislation and inspection with sanctions compared with
measures like guidance, training, campaigns, etc. Should the present working
environment regulation leave its “soft” and supervisory position and move into
a harder regime where companies are constricted by tougher regulation and
stricter control?
In short, does the conceptual opacity of our current understanding of work-
place safety, in combination with the “discursive blindness” fuelled by the
current organizational safety literature, distract our attention away from the fact
that “we are not improving health and safety” as we would like to?
132 Jan Erik Karlsen et al.
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Working environment in Norway and Denmark 133
Introduction
The overall aim of this chapter is to identify some of the advantages and
disadvantages of working time flexibility. This is done by pursuing three
underlying purposes.
The first purpose of this chapter is to contextualize the way in which ques-
tions of working time manifest themselves when working hours are shaped
in accordance with the Nordic industrial relations model and the Nordic
model of working environment traditions. This is necessary to understand
why the chapter’s illustrative case deviates, including how it differs from the
Nordic model approach and from the recent tendency to give employees
more autonomy. It provides a basis for understanding the ability of the Nordic
model to create quality in working life but also a number of challenges and
paradoxes. One of the challenges is that trade unions are entering into collec-
tive agreements with employers’ associations about flexible work hours that
can create new workloads that are difficult to find solutions for in the collec-
tive agreements and in general. In addition, a lack of solutions in the collective
agreements must be seen in light of the fact that daily work is subject to the
right of employers to direct and distribute work. However, this is not unam-
biguous. These rights can be challenged, e.g. through demands for autonomy
related to structuring working hours or through local agreements to manage
flexible hours to suit the specific work in question.
The second purpose of the chapter is to identify some of the new types of
psychosocial stressors that arise when flexible work hours erode the rhythms of
everyday life at work. Here, a qualitative perspective on time at work is used,
inspired by the sociology of time. We look into the time-related conditions
and circumstances in work that go beyond the linear clock measurement of
time in minutes, hours and days.
The third objective of this chapter is to include an illustrative case study that
captures the challenges and dilemmas of psychosocial stressors when long hours
of work with high autonomy are changed to a fixed organization of working
hours. Further case studies conducted with colleagues and other researchers
will also be used to identify relevant concepts and state of the art knowledge.
New working time and new temporalities 135
previous approaches taken in this area (Thomas, 2006). One of the problems is
that flexible working hours in self-organized work are associated with longer
working days (Albertsen et al., 2007).
The main difference between the Nordic working week and that of other
EU countries is not the number of hours but the flexibility of working time.
Parallel with the development of flexible organizational forms, employees gain
more influence on scheduling working hours and have more autonomy to
adjust hours in response to their own needs and the needs of the work. This
Nordic design of working hours has been created in a relation between agree-
ments on working time and influence and participation at work in accordance
with the sociotechnical tradition (see Chapter 3). Flexible working time has
been seen as potentially creating more autonomy in work. Workers are not
forced to follow certain management-based divisions of work and daily rou-
tines; rather, they can adapt their work to what makes sense in relation to the
overall workflow. In addition, they can adapt their work to reduce strain.
Sociotechnical methods created the basis for the spread of autonomy in the
workplace and are now influencing the development of flexible working hours.
According to the European Working Conditions Survey database,1
Denmark is the EU country where employees have greatest influence on their
working hours, followed by Norway, Sweden and Finland. In Denmark, 65%
of employees have a say in how their working hours are set. In particular,
many workers in the Nordic countries state that they can adapt their working
hours within certain limits, e.g. different types of flexible working arrange-
ments. For Danish workers, the figure is 40% and in Norway it is 44%. For
comparable countries like Germany and Hungary, the figures are only 20% and
15%, respectively. Denmark and Norway are also the countries where most
employees report being very satisfied with their working hours. In Denmark,
the figure is 47%, in Norway 44%, while the EU average is 26%. Almost
all employees in Denmark (91%) and in Norway (94%) are either very satis-
fied or satisfied with their working hours. Some 76% of Danish and 82% of
Norwegian employees find it easy to take care of personal or family matters
during working hours. However, in relation to this, there are still groups of
workers in Denmark who do not have any influence on their working hours.
In today’s society there are still people who have no possibility to make choices
on how to spend their time (Goodin et al., 2008).
time each day. Often, they can also save up hours to get more time off, either
in their daily work or as longer holidays. The working day can be organized
according to domestic and family needs and provide greater opportunity to
pursue leisure activities. Workers may have other reasons for choosing flexi-
time, such as sleep, finances, health, personal capacity, opportunity to study,
etc. They may wish to control their working hours to enhance the timing
of individual duties and activities. Collective agreements on flexible working
time may give employers certain rights to apply more working hours in peak
periods and to decrease worker capacity when there is less work. Flexibility
thus gives employers the opportunity to optimize the use of working time.
For employees, it can prevent them having to waste time waiting for tasks.
It can be emancipatory for employees to have working time governed
by tasks rather than an obligation to clock in and out. For employees, it is
primarily about temporal freedom, i.e. being able to perform their work inde-
pendently of time and place, and thus having control over where and when
they work. For instance, this may allow employees to work when they feel
most energetic. Many of those who work with self-managed flexibility are
often driven by a conviction that they themselves can find the most suitable
temporal framework for their work. Work is less governed by external con-
trols, measures, rules and trivial working days, and more by the tasks at hand
and tasks that appear, thus creating meaningful utilization of time. In this way,
work released from time and space also mitigates the time discipline of early
industrialization. For employers, flexible solutions allow for better handling
of unpredictable situations and less disturbance of the flow of products or
services. One solution might be that employees themselves choose what tasks
they want to solve. Flexible working time also implies that employees need
not wait for each other. If a task meets temporary barriers in the organization,
the employee can switch to another task. For employers, it also can provide
flexible access to labour.
Turning now to shift work, we must consider its influence on working
hours in the light of its problematic nature in relation to work–life balance and
leisure time activities. Its harmful effect on health is also a key factor (Albertsen
et al., 2007). A previous project focused on 13 workplaces in the health sec-
tor where changes had been made to the shift work structure in an attempt to
give employees greater influence over their own working hours. The project
was conducted in collaboration between Roskilde University and the Danish
National Research Centre for the Working Environment. It was a qualitative
and quantitative longitudinal intervention study over three years (Hvid et al.,
2011; Nabe-Nielsen et al., 2013; Albertsen et al., 2014; Hansen et al., 2015).
Each workplace tested an IT system for scheduling. The main purpose of these
IT systems was to make working hours more flexible while giving employees
more say in setting their own working hours, prioritizing when they wanted
to work and when they wanted time off. The benefit for the employees was
that they experienced an improvement in work–life balance. The benefits for
New working time and new temporalities 139
employers were that they could create improved working conditions and a
more attractive workplace, thus maintaining and recruiting sufficiently quali-
fied labour. The schedules were generally set without management having to
intervene. These benefits made the companies choose to continue using the IT
systems after the end of the research project.
However, autonomy related to working hours can be illusive because of
high demands, performance standards, workload, obligations, collaboration, etc.
immerse oneself. Thus, flexible working time does not necessarily result in a
better balance and less strain (Grönlund & Gro, 2007). This is also described as
24/7 work where employees are always available for work needs that may arise.
Hence working time is not measured in hours.
The above-mentioned European Working Conditions Survey shows that
approximately a fifth of employees in Denmark decide on their working time
without demands on time and place. To illustrate the possible disadvantages of
flexible working hours, I will draw on a case study by the Finns Oili-Helena
Ylijoki and Hans Mäntylä (2003) and re-interpret their results. They conducted
a study on self-management of time among university academics, presented in
their article ‘Conflicting Time Perspectives in Academic Work’.
The two researchers found that the university employees have a utopian
pursuit of ‘timeless time’ (Ylijoki & Mäntylä, 2003) marked by immersion, and
slow time where they forget time and place and experience smooth workflow.
Teaching duties, development projects, dissemination of knowledge in society,
administration, meetings and interaction with colleagues and managers all frag-
ment the research and thus obstruct the necessary immersion.
Immersion and the state of ‘timeless time’ require slow time for longer
periods, which is made difficult when employees are expected to engage in
university organizational processes. In this way, organizational tasks, teach-
ing and research often become a time-consuming chaos without rhythm and
with daily time conflicts both relationally and between different types of task.
Researchers are expected to be passionate about their work, which can be
translated into high performance requirements. Work is assignment-controlled
time where employees’ time-based practice is often so individual that there is
limited common experience with co-workers’ working hours.
Work is usually done in individualized and weak rhythms, with nobody
knowing how much and when others work, or how busy they are, all of
which makes it difficult to help each other. Such employees are thus left with
a very personal choice about the place of work in their life. Demands in this
kind of work are diffuse and complex, which in turn increases the workload
and makes it difficult to prioritize time spent on the various tasks. Some tasks
will be poorly executed, while others will be over-performed, depending on
the employee’s allocation of time for each task. This can make it difficult to
develop a temporal practice with common rhythms.
During periods of writing and immersion, which may take place at home and
are usually not fragmented by meetings, teaching and administration, research-
ers can establish their own rhythms and experience timeless time. But these
rhythms are vulnerable because they are personal and not embedded in col-
lective rhythms. Self-managing researchers tend to intervene in each other’s
rhythms because they are rarely at the same stage in their work processes. There
is temporal disorganization between academic staff in their everyday work,
creating many disturbances and interruptions, even though work immersion
is a prerequisite for achieving results (Spurling, 2015). The above-mentioned
142 Henrik Lambrecht Lund
played out within the Nordic negotiation model. Then I investigate the way
in which changed working hours have influenced temporal autonomy and thus
also the Nordic tradition of influence on an employee’s work.
of the 2013 collective agreement failed to create a result before the existing
agreement expired. The longest labour market conflict ever seen in the public
sector arose. The core of the conflict was the allocation and timing of teach-
ers’ working hours. The conflict lasted 25 days and was nationwide. It was an
‘employer lockout’. Local Government Denmark represented the employers
(the local authorities in charge of the schools), and since the teachers’ union
is considered to be the strongest public-sector union and union density was
at that time 96% of the workforce, all schools were effectively shut down
during this period. There was widespread union activism. The media was
filled with accusations about who was to blame: employer, teachers’ union
or government? The problem for the government was that, in parallel with
the negotiations, it wanted to introduce a new reform of public schools that
included longer school days. Within the existing collective agreement, it
meant a considerable supply of new labour to schools, which should be seen
in conjunction with general public-sector cutbacks. After the 25 days of con-
flict, the government intervened and forced the new working time through
by law, since there was no indication that the labour market partners were
going to reach a solution. This was considered unacceptable political inter-
ference in the collective bargaining negotiations in relation to the Nordic
model. Historically, intervention by the government is seen as problematic
because it can destabilize the Nordic model of industrial relations. This could
mean that labour unions and employers’ associations would consider whether
there are benefits in creating a breakdown in the negotiations, if they think
government intervention will be to their advantage. It could also make it
legitimate for the government to indicate a desired result of the negotiations.
Implementation of an agreement through legislative intervention has histori-
cally been handled by the already existing collective agreement or a proposal
by a mediator being passed as law. Even these cases have historically been
very rare. In the case of the teachers, the government decided to follow the
employers’ demands. As stated, this is a remarkable intervention in the Danish
context and has been criticized from all sides by supporters of the Nordic
negotiation model.
A distinctive feature of the conflict was that it was very emotional. It was not
a classical labour market conflict about working hours, salary or other benefits.
Teachers felt mistreated in relation to their professional integrity, and there was
deep mistrust and massive demonstrations both during and after the conflict.
The Nordic model is based on compromise and consensus where nobody is
entirely happy but both parties are equally satisfied. After the final negotia-
tions with the government and the employer, the chairman of the teachers’
union declared: ‘Friends, we lost’. They were furious about the mistrust associ-
ated with the indication that teachers were incapable of managing their own
working time. The result was complete managerial control over working time
and a demand that teachers spend all working hours at the school, including
preparation time.
New working time and new temporalities 145
Findings
We examined the rhythms of teachers’ work and how they were affected by
the new WTA organization of work time. We sought insights into how teachers
146 Henrik Lambrecht Lund
are trying to create more rhythms in their daily work and the barriers to estab-
lishing those rhythms. The WTA has made it more difficult for teachers to time
their work. Based on the studies before the WTA, it could be assumed that at
least some fixed working hours would make it easier to establish rhythms, but
this was not the case in relation to the WTA.
The WTA challenged the timing of work. Teachers in the workshops used
the example of preparing a lesson. Before the WTA, they would do it as close
to the lesson as possible. They found that this reduced their mental workload
and provided a more natural order of work. For example, in one workshop, a
teacher talked about sometimes being obliged to prepare on Monday for a les-
son to be given on Thursday. The reason could be that Monday has an opening
in the schedule, but if the opening is one hour and the preparation only takes
half an hour, time is wasted. In addition, if preparation takes longer than one
hour, the teacher will have to wait until a new opening appears in the sched-
ule before going back to it. Often there are no more scheduled gaps before
the class, which results in poorly prepared teaching. Since the WTA, work
is characterized by a lack of processes with time allotted for every purpose,
which disrupts rhythm and flow. Before the WTA, this attempt to follow the
principle of one task at a time often resulted in days with long hours and often
team meetings in the late afternoons, evenings, weekends and vacations. On
other days, teachers had short but very intense hours at school. They found it
difficult to find time for concentration and preparation at school and therefore
took work home. They reported that they worked many more hours than was
expected of them before the WTA and that too many teachers suffered from
stress and chronic fatigue. It was difficult to find rhythms in work, family life
and social activities.
Structuring of time for preparation and teaching was disturbed by the
WTA. It created a rigid scheme where every activity is compressed into an
8 a.m. to 4 p.m. working day. After the first study, we brought up the problem
of the long working days and lack of time structures. The consequence of the
WTA was that the shorter working days did not reduce the strain. Working in
the evening when it can be avoided is difficult to recommend from a work-
ing environment perspective, but with teachers’ work, it was actually a way
of organizing tasks in a logical progression. It was a process that moved for-
ward, often fragmented by disturbances and changes, but nevertheless with a
timely logical and chronological process. This at least created cognitive mean-
ing despite the chaos. Since the WTA, the timing of work is determined not
by the work content but by the fixed working hours. The result is compressed
workdays with high pace and intensity. There could sometimes be a reason-
able time allocation for a task, but the teachers said that their work was all
about timing, and a lack of timing led to exhaustion and inferior teaching. In
the workshops it was often said that it is a daily struggle not to deviate from a
good standard of teaching and not to give poorly prepared lessons. Before the
WTA was implemented, teachers could decide when to do their preparation,
New working time and new temporalities 147
I told my family, I’m not here this weekend. I’ll be up to eat, but apart
from that, I’ll be in the basement. And that was simply to be allowed to
concentrate and get fnished. . . I ended up not really seeing anyone else.
My daughter in year 7 replied at the time, ‘What? Again? So you’re not
home today either?’ And that’s the point where I stop up and think, that’s
actually true. How many times have I said to her, I’m going to be home
late tonight, and when I come home, I will need to sit down and work.
The fuid boundaries between working life and leisure time were seen as
a problem by most participants in the study. The rest saw it as a way of
life they chose when becoming a teacher. It would seem natural to see the
WTA as an advantage for one’s work–life balance. However, it is not so
straightforward, because teachers report being more mentally and emotion-
ally drained after work since the WTA because of the many hours spent in a
very intensive environment. They are also more concerned about upcoming
poor teaching after work hours. This should be seen in light of the more
compressed time spent at school. It is obvious that if tasks are not removed
in a shortened working day, work will become more compressed. It had
become difcult to time one’s work and led to fragmentation of rhythms,
desynchronization with colleagues and accelerated work. In the workshops,
148 Henrik Lambrecht Lund
the teachers constantly reminded each other that they should not work out-
side the school or exceed weekly hours. Since the WTA, the workday is
over when one goes home, no matter how much work is unfnished. As
time passed, more and more teachers in the workshops stated that they were
doing extra work at home.
There are many types of task for teachers. Each requires a certain mind-
set that can only be achieved if time has suitable characteristics and quality.
A particular task can be so different that it takes time to prepare mentally for
it. It is especially hard to move back and forth between teaching and prepa-
ration. Many teachers experiencing rapid transitions between tasks found it
cognitively demanding, leading to an experience of fragmented, unproduc-
tive and wasted time. This is putting pressure on teachers, because since the
WTA, teachers have to finish preparation within fixed timeframes, instead
of juggling with time until they are professionally satisfied with the outcome
or happy that they are meeting the needs of the team. As one teacher com-
mented: ‘We often allocate things between us and then you just have to
finish the work. You need to continue until the work is done. If you don’t,
someone else is going to miss it in their work’. It was therefore easier for
teachers to create a rhythmic relationship between instant effort and slow
time when the tasks and the end of the working day were fluid. One reason
why the WTA cannot bring about rhythms can be traced back to the rigid
time structures within a chaotic working day. Plans of when and where to
do tasks outside teaching often fail. There is a teaching deadline, but the day
is unpredictable. The temporalities are brutal in the sense that a teacher can-
not create a connection between the necessary quality of time and the task
within the new time regime. This is not just due to lack of time but also due
to poor timing between tasks, including preparation, planning and coordina-
tion. Finding time and space for immersion is difficult and was so even before
the WTA. Teachers saw the WTA as an opportunity to structure common
breaks, but it did not happen. The breaks are increasingly used for preparation
and acute ad hoc tasks.
WTA is based on the principle that it is the school manager who allocates
time for each teacher’s work. In practice, this was impossible and therefore
different standards developed locally contrary to the intention of the WTA.
The WTA did not allow for this possibility. Before the WTA, teachers had
substantial control over their time because the time to do tasks was allocated
to the teams beforehand. It was important that this time was allocated as time
norms, not clock time, i.e. time had an elastic form managed through col-
lectively professional priorities. This enabled teachers to make decisions on
schedules and timing of work more easily. Some teachers used these oppor-
tunities to make work-related decisions on a daily basis. Following the WTA,
each teacher typically already has scheduled time standards for tasks before the
team becomes involved. As mentioned earlier, one would think that such time
structures would help to sustain rhythms. This is true in relation to limiting
New working time and new temporalities 149
the time spent on boundaryless, ongoing and never-ending tasks, such as extra
care for special needs pupils or improving aspects of one’s teaching or the
school in general. Teachers generally report that they work fewer hours since
the WTA but that does not change the fact that work is still highly compli-
cated. The WTA gives a false impression of reduced complexity. Its demand
for more interesting teaching for pupils combined with fixed working time
has become a double bind for teachers and, according to the teachers in the
workshops, at the cost of innovative teaching.
In the interviews, it became clear that the ideal type of teacher is self-
managing, competent, passionate, enthusiastic and dignified. These values came
from management, but even more from the employees themselves. Being that
kind of teacher is therefore not a matter of choice; it is a requirement and one
that is linked to the trust of being able to manage working time without man-
agement control. It is also a self-accelerating culture. Before the WTA, there
were values and a culture of passionate participation, which meant that teachers
put pressure on themselves. As one teacher said:
You need to get involved. You can’t allow yourself to sit back and take
orders, just saying, ‘Yes, fne, it doesn’t really worry me’. The way that
teacher team meetings work, you just need to get involved and give
something. You can’t sit back and relax.
Eforts to divide work often failed and led to increased workloads. Plans and
the ideal of cross-disciplinary teaching led to drained energy and long hours,
including many additional tasks and team meetings. Down to the last minute
there was ad hoc planning as teachers coincidentally collided. Breaks were
often flled with work-related activities, such as brief meetings, coordina-
tion, appointments, planning, extra activities and dealing with pupils’ social
problems. Cross-disciplinary teaching is naturally more unpredictable than
traditional blackboard teaching.
Conclusion
High autonomy associated with flexible working time and workers’ man-
agement of time is particularly common in the Nordic countries. It is also a
phenomenon that demands that the Nordic model must be able to mediate
opposing interests when working time becomes more flexible. When there
is a common interest in improving the working environment, for example
because that will facilitate recruitment of labour, autonomy over time man-
agement appears to be a factor that improves working life quality. Common
interests focusing on a better working environment and labour optimization
show more ambiguous results, as does flexible working time in boundaryless
work. This chapter shows that in general it can be problematic to argue that
flexible working time arrangements are positive or negative for the working
150 Henrik Lambrecht Lund
environment. Our previous research project in the field of shift work shows
the most benefits of flexible working hours and that it enhances quality of life.
The Finnish studies show that the problem of excessive demands cannot be
solved with far-reaching autonomy in relation to flexible working hours. The
case of the teachers shows that flexible working hours are necessary to succeed
in teaching work. Here, fluctuating temporality and situational working time
seems preferable.
If we ignore the project about shift work, much of the empirical evidence
suggests that acceleration of work, time conflicts between tasks, fragmenta-
tion, increased intensity and unpredictability are not solved by flexible working
hours. The changes in work brought about by many forms of flexibility create
new temporalities that subsequently need to be handled.
The WTA in the teachers’ case is unfavourable to the working environ-
ment. Fixed working hours are not suitable for hyper-flexible schools with
constant changes in work and often chaotic everyday situations. The quality
of work and the psychosocial working environment were negatively affected.
Teachers seem to need flexible working time to shape their work, as for them
job-crafting is a daily necessity.
The WTA contradicts the earlier description of Denmark as a place with
the ideal aim to give employees maximum autonomy over their working
time, to the extent that the work allows it. The cases of the teachers and the
researchers both indicate that employees, to a large degree, accept long hours
as long as professional autonomy is maintained at work. This means that
autonomy related to flexible working time supports their professional ideals
but does not protect them from the stressors of flexibility. Work has changed,
and it is now no longer meaningful to organize work based on regular work-
ing hours, but limits must be established that support rhythms and stability in
working life and elsewhere. All studies in this chapter show that when flexible
working time is applied in specific work situations, mechanisms and dynamics
arise that lead to dilemmas and paradoxes that can cause mental strain. One
of the ways to enhance the working environment would be by establishing
routines, habits and synchronization in everyday work, i.e. creating more
rhythms in work.
The research has studied work and flexible working time from a temporal
perspective. It is argued that lack of rhythms is a good predictor for mental
stress in contemporary work. It is necessary to seek new theoretical grounds
and empirical knowledge to understand this. There is a need for studies on
various types of work where rhythms potentially can create a less stressful work
environment. On the basis of this chapter, it is suggested that future research
on working time attempts to involve the interaction between working time
and qualitative perspectives of time. In this way, it should be possible to capture
all the most important temporal relationships in work that create new stressors
in the psychosocial working environment and provide new opportunities for
quality in working life.
New working time and new temporalities 151
Note
1 www.eurofound.europa.eu/data/european-working-conditions-survey.
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Part III
Minimum wages are relatively high in the Nordic countries. In spite of that,
the employment rate is also high, including among young people. At the same
time, mobility in the labour market and social mobility are quite high. The
educational system plays a crucial role in making this possible. However, learn-
ing opportunities at work and opportunities for further education and training
also play an important role.
All the Nordic countries have a comprehensive education sector. Education
is free, and universal student grants partially cover living costs while studying.
Much of the education and training system is managed in close cooperation
between the state and the social parties.
It has to some extent been possible to create a positive feedback circle
between high-quality production, jobs with autonomy and learning opportu-
nities and continuous upgrading of skills. There are, however, many dilemmas
related to education, training and learning, which are dealt with in the following
chapters. Courses that are directed at the immediate needs of workplaces cre-
ate relevance but reduce mobility and flexibility. Should inclusion be ensured
by adapting the education of students to the demand, or should companies be
encouraged to adapt their work organization and job designs to the supply?
These dilemmas are handled differently in the Nordic countries.
Chapter 8: Young people’s access to working life in three Nordic countries: what is the
role of vocational education and training? By Christian Helms Jørgensen.
This chapter contains a general discussion of the importance of the Nordic
education system for the quality of work and for social mobility, based on liter-
ature studies. In addition, vocational education and training are investigated in
three Nordic countries, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Dilemmas in the field
are presented. The major differences between the systems are described, and
ongoing initiatives are identified that may overcome some of the dilemmas.
Chapter 9: Bargaining for continuing education: a Norwegian case of ‘lifelong learning
unionism’. By Anders Underthun and Ida Drange.
Unions and governments initiated lifelong learning and continuing education
programmes after the recessions in the late 1980s. ‘Lifelong learning unionism’
154 Helge Hvid and Eivind Falkum
was created. The chapter presents a case study of a new way to establish and
provide continuing education to members of a union. The aim is twofold:
firstly, to improve the employability of the individual members, and secondly,
to strengthen the position of the union in collectively oriented bargaining and
negotiations.
Chapter 10: Tackling increasing marginalization: can support-side approaches contribute to
work inclusion? By Kjetil Frøyland, Angelika Schafft and Øystein Spjelkavik.
Some citizens find it hard to find employment. This is especially true for citi-
zens with serious learning disabilities and mental health issues. The chapter
examines different approaches to bringing this group into work. It is pointed
out that the most effective one is a support-side approach, where efforts are
made to qualify citizens, to create appropriate working conditions and to provide
support to companies.
Chapter 8
Introduction
The high quality of working life in the Nordic countries is closely associ-
ated with their well-educated working populations. A highly and broadly
skilled labour force has been essential for the Scandinavian development path,
based on high-quality production in small open economies (Kristensen et al.,
2015; Senghaas, 1985). The Nordic universal welfare states provide free and
public education at all levels, which contributes to the low levels of educational
inequality. Their comprehensive compulsory school systems reduce social and
gender selection in education, promote social mobility and contribute to high
female employment rates. The high level of female employment is also sup-
ported by the universal provision of public welfare services in the fields of
education, health, childcare and eldercare. The expansion of education for
these welfare sectors has opened up educational opportunities for women,
whose average level of education now exceeds that of men. Therefore, the
high quality of working life and the low levels of inequality in the Nordic
labour markets can partly be attributed to the organization of education as a key
element in the Nordic welfare states. However, this model of the welfare state
and labour market is under increasing pressure from globalization, neo-liberal
deregulation and technological change. Social inequalities are increasing, and
indications of social polarization and labour-market dualization are emerging
(Melin, 2014).
In the Nordic labour markets, young people constitute a vulnerable group
that generally experiences higher levels of unemployment than adults and older
workers, particularly in periods of economic downturn (Albæk et al., 2015;
Halvorsen et al., 2013). Compared to adults, young workers face consider-
ably higher risks of being in part-time and/or temporary jobs and have lower
earnings and labour-market security (Segendorf, 2013). This situation draws
attention to the issue of how young people gain access to working life in the
Nordic countries. This chapter focuses on the role of initial vocational educa-
tion and training (VET) at upper-secondary level in Denmark, Norway and
Sweden. In these countries, VET includes between one-third and one-half of
156 Christian Helms Jørgensen
the members of every youth cohort. VET at this level aims mainly at 16- to
19-year-olds, but in Norway and Denmark it also includes adults. The ques-
tion examined here is how VET provides access to working life for young
people. This includes a broader investigation of the links between VET and
the world of work.
VET is important because the effects of globalization, outsourcing of pro-
duction, labour migration and automation/informatization are particularly
strong for jobs at the lower end of the skills’ hierarchy. A strong VET system
with high standards is essential in order to counteract the increasing dualization
of the labour markets. However, VET in the Nordic countries increasingly
relies on school-based training that is organized separately from the world of
work. A crucial question to be examined in this chapter is how VET con-
nects with the labour market in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The chapter
starts with a discussion of different ideas on the relationships between educa-
tion and work, including the concept of a Nordic transition system. Next, it
examines young people’s transition into working life and examines how the
tensions between the social demands of young people and the requirements
of the labour market are managed. In particular, it examines young people’s
transition into working life in two selected industries: health care and construc-
tion. Finally, it examines three new, innovative institutions set up to mediate
between VET and working life.
The chapter draws on the results from a comparative research project on
VET in the Nordic countries, which includes analyses of the historical and
current development (Jørgensen et al., 2018; Jørgensen & Tønder, 2018;
Michelsen & Stenström, 2018). For each of the four Nordic countries included
in the project, five different research reports were published (www.Nord-
VET.dk); these provide the empirical basis for this chapter. Two of the reports
compare the development of VET for the health sector and the construction
sector, based on a common design and research questions.
skills’ formation. In this respect, the VET systems of the Nordic countries
come out differently from each other. While the Swedish and Norwegian sys-
tems are seen as state-led models, the Danish system is categorized as a model
of collective skill formation with high employer engagement. Although this
categorization correctly points to the diversity of the Nordic VET systems, it is
questionable. The Swedish VET system has been strongly marketized since the
early 1990s, and the Norwegian system is based on apprenticeships with strong
employer involvement, similar to the Danish VET system.
Comparative research on VET systems offers another conceptualization of
their links with working life. The concepts of standardization, stratification and
vocational specificity proposed by Jutta Allmendinger (1989) have been widely
used. High standardization is associated with strong regulation and with uni-
formly high standards of training. All the Nordic VET systems are classified as
highly standardized in international comparisons (Pfeffer, 2008). In Denmark,
the setting of the standards is left to the labour-market organizations, while this
is mainly the responsibility of the state in Sweden. Strong national standardi-
zation of vocational qualifications enables their high portability in the labour
market. Occupational standardization promotes the matching of VET pro-
grammes to job profiles in occupational labour markets. This matching smooths
students’ transition to work. However, since the late 1980s, the three Nordic
countries have decentralized the regulation of VET to make the programmes
more flexible and adaptable to local labour markets. This has tended to weaken
the matching of VET with the national standards for occupational work set by
the labour-market organizations.
The level of stratification concerns the extent of tracking, division and selec-
tion of students in the VET system. While the Nordic education systems and
labour markets have generally low levels of stratification, the Nordic VET
systems differ significantly. In Sweden, VET was integrated into a unified
school system with the reforms in 1971 and 1991. In contrast, Denmark has
maintained a strong division between the gymnasiums (academically oriented
upper-secondary institutions), which prepare youngsters for higher education,
and the VET system, which is based on apprenticeships that prepare them for
occupational work. Norway represents a mixed system, with a unified school
for the first two years, followed by a division of students into two tracks:
either one year of higher-education preparatory programmes or two years of
apprenticeships. The higher level of tracking and stratification in Denmark
is associated with a higher level of inequality in educational attainment. The
strong integration of VET with general education in Sweden is associated with
VET’s weak links to working life.
Last, in relation to the specificity of the qualifications provided, the Nordic
countries have given priority to broad and general skills in order to improve
the subsequent flexibility and mobility in working life and to prepare for
lifelong learning. However, the three Nordic VET systems also differ signifi-
cantly in this respect. The Danish apprenticeship system emphasizes specific
158 Christian Helms Jørgensen
vocational skills, and the school-based Swedish system gives priority to gen-
eral and generic qualifications. While specific qualifications are expected to
have only short-term value in the labour market, they are known to promote
fast and direct transition to skilled work (Bol & Van de Werfhorst, 2013).
Therefore, this involves a trade-off that has been managed differently in the
Nordic countries. All Nordic VET systems have limited the specificity of
qualifications and emphasized the role of general qualifications. The number
of programmes and specializations has been diminished in order to reduce
the risk of locking the students into a specific job or occupation (Jørgensen &
Tønder, 2018).
To sum up, the research emphasizes many similarities between the Nordic
countries regarding welfare-state and labour-market models – but differentiates
between their VET systems, especially with respect to their links to the world
of work.
is also generally believed that young people should be allowed to make their
own choices regarding education and work. Thus, the relationship between
the VET systems and working life is about balancing young people’s demands
for education with the labour-market requirements for skilled labour. Due
to differences in the governance of the Nordic VET systems, each has given
priority to one or the other side of this relationship. In the statist VET sys-
tem in Sweden, the main priority for upper-secondary school is to provide
educational opportunities for all young people. The supply of education by
the municipalities is not dependent on training placements provided by the
companies. Meanwhile, the Danish and Norwegian apprenticeship systems
are more sensitive to the requirements in the labour market, and the labour-
market organizations have a stronger role in the governance of VET. In addi-
tion, the capacity of the apprenticeship systems depends on the supply of
training placements offered by employers. Students in these systems spend more
time searching for an apprenticeship, dropping out, or shifting into another
form of education. A much higher proportion of 21-year-olds in Sweden have
completed upper-secondary education compared to the two countries with
apprenticeships (Albæk et al., 2015).
The supply of training placements depends on the employment situation of
the training companies and the industries. This close link between the situation
in the training market and that in the labour market tends to reduce the risk
of mismatch. However, while the apprenticeship system balances the supply of
and demand for skilled labour, these systems also generate mismatches. During
a recession, companies typically stop taking on new apprentices, and an upturn
is often followed by a shortage of skilled labour. This can last for years, as the
training of new apprentices typically takes four years.
In all three countries, students’ transition to the world of work has been
postponed. Before the reforms in the 1970s to 1990s, young people went
straight into apprenticeships after completing compulsory school. Today, they
must attend school-based training before they can take up an apprenticeship.
In Denmark, the school-based course lasts one year and in Norway two years.
In Sweden, students must complete a three-year gymnasium programme before
they can gain access to the post-secondary apprenticeships that are organized
by the labour-market organizations in some industries.
In Denmark, many of the most popular VET programmes limit access to
the first school-based courses using quotas in order to match the number of
students to the number of apprenticeships available. If apprenticeships are not
available, the vocational schools in Denmark and Norway offer school-based
training. In Norway, the county councils (fylkeskommunene) are responsible for
all upper-secondary education. The extent to which they adjust the number of
students they enrol to fit the demand in the labour market is quite minimal, as
the size of the programmes is more dependent on the capacity of the schools
(Høst, 2012). As a result, mismatches between students’ chosen forms of edu-
cation and the demand for labour are common. In Norway, the unsuccessful
Young people’s access to working life 161
search for apprenticeships is a common reason why students drop out of voca-
tional programmes or shift to general programmes in the third year. In Sweden,
until the early 1990s, the capacity of the vocational programmes was deter-
mined by the government’s assessment of the future demand for labour. Since
the introduction of free school choice and the decentralization of regulation,
the capacity of VET programmes has mainly been determined by the demand
of the students, which increases the risk of mismatch in the labour market
(Olofsson & Panican, 2012). This examination has focused on the matching
of VET to the requirements of working life. The next section turns to young
people’s transition from education to work in the three Nordic countries.
(Walther, 2006). In the Nordic countries, young people move away from their
parents and become financially independent at an earlier age than in other
European countries. A high proportion of young people are engaged in part-
time work while they are in education. More than half of the age group of
15- to 19-year-olds are in part-time employment; in Denmark, this figure
exceeds 80% (Segendorf, 2013). The Nordic transition regime is often charac-
terized as a collectivist system. However, the universal rights to welfare benefits
encourage individual independence and release young people from depend-
ency on the family and the market. Since the late 1990s, neo-liberal reforms
have affected the Nordic transition regimes. In all three countries, access to
social benefits has been restricted and tied more closely to work obligations
(Lorentzen et al., 2014). In Denmark and Sweden, the level and duration of
welfare benefits have been reduced for young people, and financial benefits
have been made contingent on participation in activation measures (Bengtsson,
2014; Kananen, 2016).
The well-organized Nordic labour markets and the low rates of youth
unemployment have constrained the growth of a secondary, low-wage youth
labour market (Jensen, 2015). Studies indicate that it has become more dif-
ficult for young people to gain access to employment in the Nordic labour
markets since the financial crisis, with the exception of Norway (Albæk et al.,
2015). Low-skilled jobs that used to be accessible for early school-leavers have
disappeared due to the outsourcing of labour-intensive production, new tech-
nologies and immigration (Segendorf, 2013). Researchers find that, in most
European countries, the transition from education to a stable position in the
labour market has become more demanding, prolonged and less transparent
(Walther & Plug, 2006). In Denmark, Norway and Sweden, the average age of
establishment in the labour market had increased from around 20 years in the
early 1990s to 28 years by 2016 (OECD, 2016).
International comparison shows that the employment rates of young people
in the Nordic countries are high and that youth unemployment is low (when
excluding students, see Albæk et al., 2015). However, youth unemployment
rates have been growing since 1998 – except in Norway, due to its continual
high growth rates. Young people’s opportunities for getting full-time, perma-
nent jobs without any post-compulsory education have been reduced (Madsen
et al., 2013). Almost all young people continue in upper-secondary education
after completing compulsory schooling. More than half of young people enrol
in general education that prepares for higher education, and between one-third
and one-half of the members of each cohort enrol in VET with the aim of
gaining access to a meaningful working life of high quality. The VET system
in general is in a key position to prepare young people for working life and to
support their access to the world of work. However, the Nordic VET systems
and their linkages to working life differ considerably. In addition, we find sig-
nificant differences in each country between sectors and industries; two such
examples are examined in the next section.
Young people’s access to working life 163
an apprenticeship after the second year but instead utilize the opportunity to
shift into a third year that gives them access to higher education. In the school-
based Swedish VET system, the health-care worker programme is broad and
preparatory, and does not award final occupational competence, which makes
the transition to work difficult. The adult education programme for health-care
workers attracts more students than does the programme for young people. In
Sweden, the transition from VET to working life is also difficult. As employers
prefer adults with work experience over newly educated health-care workers,
less than half of all students are established in the labour market three years
after graduation (SCB, 2012). In Denmark, a reform in 2015 made education
for health-care workers more age-homogeneous – similar to the situations in
the two other Nordic countries – and adults above the age of 25 years are now
referred to separate courses. In spite of this, adults still make up two-thirds of
the students in Danish health-care worker education.
Despite their educational upgrade, health-care workers remain a low-
waged, subordinate female field of staff at the lower rungs of the educational
hierarchy. And VET for health-care workers still contributes to reproducing
the highly gender-segregated working life in the health-care sector. However,
the differences between Denmark and Norway demonstrate the scope for pol-
icy to improve the status and quality of health-care work by securing full-time,
permanent employment and job autonomy for this group of skilled employees.
The development in Norway demonstrates the limits of public educational
policy for the upgrading of health-care work. In general, the transition to
working life from the VET programme for health-care workers represents a
paradox. Forecasts of the demand for labour predict a long-term shortage of
health-care workers due to the demographic shift, but newly educated health-
care workers in Norway and Sweden today find it difficult to gain access to
full-time permanent jobs.
and working life. These links are strongest in Denmark and Norway, where the
apprenticeship programmes are closely linked to occupational job profiles. In
the school-based Swedish VET system, the programmes are broader and leave
more of the specific skills to be acquired in post-secondary apprenticeship train-
ing. In Denmark, a strong tradition of craft unionism – rather than industrial
unionism – has reinforced the occupational organization of work.
The construction industry in the three Nordic countries has been strongly
affected by the opening of the labour markets to migrant labour from the ten
new member states of the EU since 2004. The migrant workers have more
precarious and insecure working conditions and lower wages, and they are less
often unionized or covered by collective agreements than are native workers
(Friberg & Eldring, 2013). Particularly in the construction industry, where the
employment of posted and temporary workers is very high, this constitutes a
serious challenge for the Nordic model of labour relations.
The consequences of this situation have been most pronounced in Norway,
which has received by far the highest share of Central and Eastern European
labour migrants. Norway has been a preferred target for migrant labour because
of high wages, low unemployment and somewhat weaker regulation than the
two other Nordic countries. In Norway, temporary staffing agencies have
organized a ‘migration industry’ that provides flexible, low-wage migrant
labour, which undermines organized labour relations (Friberg & Eldring,
2013). As an effect of the influx of migrant labour with low skill levels, the
organization of work has changed to become more segregated, with separate
fields of work for migrant labour and with reduced autonomy and stronger
hierarchies (Haakestad & Friberg, 2017).
Young people’s transition from VET to the world of work in the con-
struction sector has been affected by this development. First, employers’
engagement in apprenticeship training has declined as a result of their access to
flexible, low-wage migrant labour. Employers have shifted recruitment policy
so that skilled, native workers and apprentices are replaced by migrant work-
ers. In addition, the foreign subcontractors and temporary staffing agencies that
allocate a significant part of the migrant labour force do not take responsibil-
ity for apprenticeship training. Second, the employment of migrant labour
tends to change the organization of work in a neo-Taylorist direction, which
reduces the demand for skilled workers (Haakestad & Friberg, 2017). Third,
the quality and conditions of work – and the wages – are affected negatively
by the migrant labour, which reduces the attractiveness of VET for this sector
among young people. This contributes to a shortage of skilled labour, which
stimulates the vicious circle of hiring migrant labour and Taylorization of the
work organization. The construction industry in Norway has been affected
much more strongly by this development than its counterpart in Denmark,
where the collective agreements are stronger and the financial crisis was more
severe. In Sweden, the temporary staffing agencies are subject to stronger
regulation, and the higher unemployment rates among native young people
Young people’s access to working life 167
and settled immigrants have reduced employers’ demand for foreign labour
(Friberg & Eldring, 2013). The construction sector is one of the largest in the
VET system. It has provided opportunities for occupational employment that
is highly respected for a large group of young men. In all three countries, the
liberalization of labour regulation, together with the import and exploitation
of foreign labour, threatens a traditionally important pathway to the world of
work for young people who do not opt for higher education.
and the delivery schedules are being made tighter. Work processes are under
constant pressure to improve intensity, efficiency and quality, which leaves less
room for young people learning from experimentation, trying things out and
making mistakes. In addition, volatile markets reduce the planning horizon of
companies and limit the possibility of engaging in three-year apprenticeship
contracts. Companies increasingly focus on short-term shareholder values that
reduce their propensity to make long-term investment in a skilled workforce
(Casey, 2012). The strength of these changes and their effects differs between
industries, but they indicate that the role of companies in providing work-
based training in VET is becoming more restricted.
These challenges are in conflict with the growing political interest in the
Nordic countries of strengthening work-based learning in VET and improv-
ing the transition to the labour market. These countries do, however, offer
interesting examples of institutional innovations to improve the connection
between VET and the world of work. The next section explores some new
institutions that mediate between VET and working life in Denmark, Norway
and Sweden.
has remained steady – at over 10% of all students – since the crisis in 2008
(according to 2017 figures: www.uvm.dk).
The fact that individual students have responsibility for obtaining appren-
ticeships, and that there is a recurring lack of training placements, have been
weaknesses of the apprenticeship system for decades. The training centres take
over some of the responsibility for students’ successful transition to working
life. The centres have a coordinating function for multisite firm-based training
and for supplementary training that they provide themselves. They also shift
the problem of securing apprenticeships from being an individual responsibility
to being an institutional task for the training centres. This role has similarities
with that of the Norwegian LTAs, though the Danish training centres are
engaged only weakly in supervising the quality of in-company training.
Colleges has exceeded 100. The colleges are primarily engaged in improving
the quality of training and the supply of skilled labour. Training in the colleges
is organized in accordance with the vocational curricula defined by the state
in collaboration with the labour-market organizations. Due to the extensive
decentralization of Swedish upper-secondary schools, the colleges can adapt
VET programmes to the requirements of local companies. Like the Norwegian
training agencies, the colleges are employer-driven, but – in contrast to these –
rely on formal cooperation with the vocational schools and public authorities.
The colleges represent a shift in the Swedish VET system from being state-
led towards a collectivist system of skill formation (Olofsson, 2015). Although
research on the results of the colleges is limited, there are indications that
these institutions have contributed considerably to improving the connections
between vocational schools and employers, and to smoothing students’ transi-
tion from VET to working life (Olofsson & Persson Thunqvist, 2018).
Conclusion
The VET systems in Denmark, Norway and Sweden are important elements in
the configuration of institutions that have resulted in a high quality of working
life for people in those countries. Positive interaction effects between VET,
working life and public policies have contributed to producing high levels
of autonomy at work and low levels of insecurity and labour-market duali-
zation. By providing high-quality intermediary skills for young people who
are not opting for higher education, VET is important for the high level of
social equality in these countries. Youth employment rates are high, and youth
unemployment rates are low in the three countries examined. They can be
seen as representatives of a universal transition regime due to the common
qualities of their welfare states and their shared policies for social inclusion and
support for young people. However, the opportunities for young people to
gain access to working life differ between the three countries.
All three VET systems are highly standardized, which improves the match-
ing of qualifications with jobs and the portability of VET qualifications to and
within the labour market. In the Norwegian and Danish apprenticeship systems,
the specificity of qualifications is high, which improves the students’ transition
to employment. Sweden has most consistently implemented the Nordic model
of education, with the state prioritizing equal access for all to education, in the
spirit of democratic citizenship. This is in conflict with entrusting the training of
students in upper secondary education to private employers. In all three coun-
tries, the extent of work-based training in VET has been reduced since the 1970s.
The Swedish VET system developed into a state-led and mainly school-based
system, which made students’ transition to working life difficult and prolonged.
In the Norwegian and Danish apprenticeship systems, students’ transition to
working life is quite smooth, because it takes place as an integral part of vocational
education. However, not all students gain access to apprenticeships.
Young people’s access to working life 173
for the future. The Norwegian and Swedish institutions are especially remark-
able, because they have developed in a period of neo-liberal deregulation and
weakening of collectivist institutions in the labour market.
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Young people’s access to working life 177
Introduction
The principle of universal access to higher education has a strong position in
the Nordic countries (Ahola et al., 2014) and is often combined with the prin-
ciple of lifelong learning, understood as how adults continue to seek skill and
education upgrading throughout their careers. Rubenson (2006) emphasizes
that the Nordic countries combine these two elements, since they demonstrate
high participation in lifelong learning and a lower degree of inequality in access
to lifelong learning than in many other countries. This implies that adults can
quite easily upgrade skills and qualifications throughout their careers. Figures
for Norwegian adult learning indicate that much learning occurs after individu-
als have entered working life (Aspøy & Tønder, 2012; Bjørkeng, 2013). At
the same time, Statistics Norway shows in its latest review of the ‘Learning
Monitor’ that fewer adults participated in formal education in 2016 than in 2008
(Zachrisen & Bjugstad, 2016), which echoes Rubenson’s (2006) concern about
weakening institutions for lifelong learning in the Nordic countries.
A key objective of lifelong learning is to improve the worker’s position in
the labour market by strengthening the employability needed in a more mobile
and flexible labour market. For the individual, employability is about the pros-
pect of gaining and maintaining stable employment, for instance by getting a
new job if the current employment relationship ceases, or making it easier to
reach higher career goals (Drange et al., 2018). The literature also highlights
that higher employability can make it easier to cope in a more uncertain job
market because of increased confidence in finding a different job (Wittekind
et al., 2010; Berglund et al., 2014). Employability may be a more appropriate
goal for the individual than the more traditional goal of keeping the current
job (job security). In one way, this entails that the responsibility of maintain-
ing labour market involvement is more individualized. However, the shift
towards employability also has a collective dimension, and trade unions across
the world have become more involved in policy developments and bargain-
ing measures that seek to improve members’ access to skill upgrading (Jason
& Mark, 1998; Winterton, 2006). The idea of empowering union members
Bargaining for continuing education 179
incorporate a learning agenda. However, these authors assert that the learning
agenda is more associated with a mutual gains perspective (with employers) and
is not an oppositional kind of unionism. Moreover, Rainbird and Stuart (2011)
point out that the learning agenda in the UK has not been a union initiative
as such, but rather a response to state initiatives for promoting skill upgrading.
In the same vein, Rainbird and Stuart assert that other formal collective agree-
ments related to lifelong learning remain uncommon in the UK.
limited to courses that are ‘in accordance with company needs’ (NHO &
LO, 2014, Section 18–3) and not necessarily CE that is in the broader inter-
est of the employee. In an employability perspective, the Basic Agreement
is thus oriented towards internal employability by securing skill enhancement
that decreases the risk of redundancy for employees. It also stipulates that the
employer has the power to choose who will receive CE and the type of CE
required. In this way, Section 18–3 of the Basic Agreement does not express
an explicit need for concrete union initiatives for CE.
In the mid-1990s, there were also examples of education as a reason for
industrial action. In 1996, the Electrician and IT workers union went on strike
for 56 days to achieve better rights to any training, to be paid for by employers
(Hagen & Skule, 2008). However, the strike was unsuccessful, as the employ-
ers refused to accept the premise that the individual worker could choose the
type of training/CE (Stuart & Teige, 2010). The employers rather insisted
that the training/CE had to meet the concrete needs of the employer. Teige
and Stuart point out that the strike showed how difficult it would be to get
employers to fund CE. The strike also illustrates the dilemmas of CE as a way
of securing external employability. At the same time, the strike showed the
potential for lifelong learning unionism within the LO.
A crucial bottleneck for lifelong learning as part of a union agenda in the
late 1990s was the issue of co-funding of CE that would grant more power to
the employee (Payne, 2006). Who would pay for CE, and was there a place for
funding mechanisms in concrete bargaining deals where both employers and
employees would have to concede other priorities? As part of the competence
reform in the late 1990s, the Government recommended shared funding solu-
tions between the social partners, the state and the individual (Payne, 2006).
Even though the LO was positive to the idea of putting lifelong learning on
bargaining agendas, the former leader of LO, Yngve Hågensen (2005), has
described the disputes between sectoral unions on this issue. Stuart and Teige
(2010) also claim that the greatest challenge for the competence reform was the
trickling down of the idea of lifelong learning as a union strategy to the sectoral
level. For example, the Norwegian Chemical Workers’ Association and the
Norwegian Iron and Metal Workers Union did not want to prioritize funding
mechanisms for CE at the expense of the wage struggle. Other unions, such
as the Electricians and IT Workers’ Union, the Norwegian Graphic Workers’
Federation and the FLT were more sympathetic to the idea of making CE a top
priority in bargaining. Given the discrepancies between its federations, the LO
had to give priority to wage struggle and demands for a fifth holiday week in
their negotiations with the NHO in the late 1990s and early 2000s (Hågensen,
2005). After many years of wage moderation, the majority of federations in the
LO were against the idea that education would be set against wages.
Partly as a response to the disputes between sectoral unions, the framework
negotiations between the LO and the NHO placed more emphasis on work-
related learning than formal education in the period following the competence
184 Anders Underthun and Ida Drange
[i]t’s difcult for the LO to dictate what the federations should prior-
itize . . . giving priority to CE in collective agreements is interesting . . . but
ultimately it’s about priorities . . . it’s about diferent ways to ensure
income and employment.3
However, some federations within the LO system have given high priority to
CE. In the next section, we argue that the FLT can be seen as an example of
lifelong learning unionism.
rights. Previous to this, these workers had been organized outside the LO, as
the idea of organizing management was controversial in a union perspective.
At the same time, it was important for managers in intermediate positions to
fight for their rights as workers, and they therefore found it appropriate to be
part of the LO. However, Wilhelmsen (2011, p. 13) argues that education
became an important organizational principle for the FLT from the 1970s
onwards, as higher qualifications often implied a transfer from a different
union in the workplace to the FLT. At the same time, vertical agreements
made it difficult for the FLT to organize some of the highly educated groups
of workers, including engineers.
However, it was not only organizing principles that made education an
important policy area for the FLT. The members often found themselves in an
‘educational dilemma’ because they did not necessarily have the formal qualifi-
cations considered sufficient to fill the role of a foreman or mid-level manager.
For example, a typical career step would be from skilled operator to foreman,
which involved work that required higher organizational or managerial skills.
It is therefore not surprising that the FLT has been one of the federations in the
LO which has emphasized the need for adult learning (Wilhelmsen, 2011). In
addition to promoting social mobility among members, the federation has also
been a proponent of strong social partnerships and strong workplace interac-
tion and co-determination between employers and employees in a way that
reflects the ‘Nordic’ model of work organization (Gustavsen, 2007).
Wilhelmsen (2011) writes that the former FLT leader, Magnus Midtbø,
was almost alone in pursuing CE while other federations chose different union
priorities. As part of the difficult 1992 negotiations, Midtbø managed to secure
a deal with the NHO where NOK 0.30 per hour was allocated to a fund for
CE. Wilhelmsen (2011, p. 69) refers to the conclusion from the negotiations:
‘The parties agree that the future of the companies will depend on maintenance
and renewal of employee skills’. It is also stated that: ‘the fund implies that an
amount per hour will go to an education fund meant to be available for FLT
members that are covered by this agreement’. In the negotiations, the FLT
was granted responsibility to administer the fund, despite the fact that it was
co-funded by the concessions made by both the employer and the employee
side. The lawyer who represented the NHO at the time4 points out that the
FLT was given this role because the scheme was controversial within the NHO
system.
The FLT education fund has been renewed as an item in the collective
agreement between the FLT and the NHO in bargaining rounds for 25 years
and amounted to NOK 1.10 per hour for each FLT member in 2016 (NHO
et al., 2016). This amounts to NOK 2,145 per year per member and a total
of about NOK 20 million per year. Grants from the fund can be as large as
NOK 50,0005 per year, and members can receive grants several times. In fact,
the FLT encourages members to apply several times for different courses that
they can combine as diplomas or university degrees. By 2017, close to 7,600
186 Anders Underthun and Ida Drange
grants from the FLT/NHO CE fund had been awarded. In 2016, 499 out of
775 applicants received grants.6 FLT officials state that most members have
received a grant as long as the applications have been in accordance with
the guidelines. A typical reason for rejection is that a member applies for a
type of course that the employer has to cover because of Section 18–3 of the
Basic Agreement between the LO and the NHO. As such, the FLT/NHO
CE Fund is more important for external employability as the aim of the fund
is to improve general qualifications. According to the statutes,7 the aims of
the FLT/NHO CE fund include:
Unlike a situation where the employer chooses the person that will receive
support for CE, the FLT/NHO CE fund supports education according to the
preferences of the members. Although access to the fund is limited to members
with a collective agreement at their workplace, support can also be granted to
those who have lost their job/collective agreement within the last two years.
The scheme remains unique in Norway and the Nordic countries in general
(Olberg et al., 2017). It is also unique in international terms, as co-funding
of substantial CE grants has not been a typical feature of the learning agenda
in industrial relations (Winterton, 2006; Stuart, 2007). The only parallel in
Norway is the Norwegian Organization of Managers and Executives (Lederne),
a union that negotiated the same bargaining deal with the NHO as the FLT did
in 1992 (Wilhelmsen, 2011).8
Addisco but also to those who prefer to enrol in courses outside the Addisco
system. Addisco currently owns the education in collaboration with higher
education institutions, as well as the ‘AddiscoLearning’ platform. Addisco’s
principles are very much in line with the overall statutes of the CE fund, and it
places a particular emphasis on the importance of formal qualifications through
obtaining higher education credits. Moreover, as part of its servicing strategy,
Addisco helps FLT members with all the administrative chores of combining
CE with full-time jobs. Teaching is largely based on intensive weekends, and
Addisco takes care of all travel arrangements, university enrolment and read-
ing lists. Addisco also promotes collaboration between students. Wilhelmsen
(2011) argues that an important premise for establishing Addisco was that this
would build a stronger ‘knowledge’ brand, which would be important in both
a political sense and as an organizing strategy. We agree with this and would
add that the establishment of Addisco as an organizational extension of the FLT
represents a revitalizing step towards lifelong learning unionism.
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
20–24 25–29 30–34 35–39 40–44 45–49 50–59 60–64 65–69
Figure 9.1 The most important reasons for joining the FLT union (Bergene et al.,
2013) (N=3250)11
The strategy of conceding wages for an education fund clearly also requires a
constant legitimization strategy, and the building of a lifelong learning move-
ment has obviously been an important means of legitimizing the wage concession
within the FLT and the LO. The FLT has also managed to retain the CE fund
in the collective agreement with the NHO despite a lack of enthusiasm from
the NHO for a broader co-funding scheme for CE (Underthun et al., 2017).
But what about the efects on social mobility and employability? Based on a
survey of FLT members, Underthun et al. (2017) show that those who take CE
courses generally score higher on upward employability and external employ-
ability. In other words, members who have completed CE courses think it
is easier to fnd work elsewhere, at least in a similar kind of job. Although
important in the internal legitimization of the lifelong learning union strategy,
this fnding also explains some of the scepticism from employers. To them,
CE represents a risk of losing employees, although it could also imply higher
productivity and important skills for the frm (cf. Becker, 1994). Underthun
et al. also fnd that the CE fund and Addisco as a service mechanism for CE
seem to attract workers with lower levels of education compared to those
that have funded CE from other sources. In other words, those with lower
educational backgrounds are more likely to complete CE courses through the
FLT/Addisco than other funding sources and higher education institutions.
Although the efect is moderate, we would argue that it is important in a union
revitalization perspective, as union initiatives can counter patterns of unequal
access to lifelong learning.
Bargaining for continuing education 189
Concluding discussion
In this chapter, we have discussed the prospects of a type of union revitaliza-
tion that heralds the importance of lifelong learning as a way of ensuring the
employability of workers in more flexible labour markets. Lifelong learning
can be integrated in union strategies and priorities in different ways (cf. Frege
& Kelly, 2003). As an organizing strategy, lifelong learning unionism can be a
way of building awareness and identities around how CE can empower mem-
bers. Enhancing qualifications is of course a way of formal empowerment, but
the lifelong learning agenda can also be about building a movement based
on the emancipatory power of education. By building this kind of move-
ment, the members of a union also become responsible for carrying the ideals
and principles related to why lifelong learning is important, and the idea of
a movement is also a way of legitimizing lifelong learning as a union prior-
ity. As a servicing strategy, lifelong learning unionism implies a union that
builds robust systems for facilitating education in a way that makes member-
ship attractive to existing and new members. As such, this corresponds to the
organizational restructuring necessary to transform a union to include a more
integrated lifelong learning agenda. Lifelong learning unionism can also be
expressed through promoting education in collective bargaining agreements,
and in this chapter, we have shown that this can be achieved through conces-
sions from both sides of the negotiating table. A somewhat less risky form of
lifelong learning unionism is political action, understood as ways in which trade
unions promote political change to support adult education. It is neverthe-
less an important strategy for initiating change. The Norwegian competence
reform was dependent on this kind of initiative from the LO. Finally, lifelong
learning unionism typically also includes coalition building, both in a political
sense and in the sense of building partnerships with higher education insti-
tutions in order to create new spaces for lifelong learning. International links
include networks with other unions in other contexts that also promote life-
long learning, as well as links to higher education institutions abroad.
Although lifelong learning unionism may include all these different forms
of union strategy, they do not necessarily exist at the same time. The strategies
can also vary from simply being responsive, for instance by responding to legal
changes at the national level (cf. Winterton, 2006), or proactive, as exemplified
by the FLT’s initiative to include the funding of CE in the collective agree-
ment with the NHO in 1992. In a Nordic perspective, it is also interesting
to see initiatives for lifelong learning as an example of compromise in industrial
relations. The FLT/NHO CE fund was established in the middle of an eco-
nomic crisis with limited prospects for wage increases. The social parties were
willing to make concessions within a bargaining context that was known as
the solidarity alternative (Hågensen, 2005). However, only the FLT and the
Norwegian Organization of Managers and Executives took advantage of the
bargaining that led to the establishment of sizeable funding mechanisms for CE
in collective agreements. The accord was an important spark in transforming
190 Anders Underthun and Ida Drange
Notes
1 www.lo.no/Om-LO/Artikler-om-LO/LOs-utdanningsfond/.
2 Interview with LO ofcial, 1 February 2016.
3 Interview with LO ofcial, 2 February 2016.
4 Interview with NHO Lawyer, March 2016.
5 Corresponds to about EUR 5,200 per year.
6 Data from the FLT administration, personal communication in January 2017.
7 The guidelines are available at www.ft.no.
8 Like FLT/Addisco, Lederne has also taken initiatives to build coalitions with higher
education institutions, for instance with Oslo Metropolitan University.
9 Addisco also admits non-FLT members to CE courses, but the bulk of the students
enrolled in Addisco courses are FLT members.
10 See https://ft.no/artikler/personal-benefts/ for a description of membership benefts.
11 ‘Education’ is based on the question ‘How important was the access to continuing
education schemes to your decision to join FLT?’
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Bargaining for continuing education 193
Tackling increasing
marginalization
Can support-side approaches
contribute to work inclusion?
Kjetil Frøyland, Angelika Schafft and
Øystein Spjelkavik
Introduction
Labour market participation, self-sufficiency and a small population passively
receiving welfare benefits have long been key policy goals across the Nordic
welfare states. These states are characterized by an active labour market policy
as one major ideology, high levels of employment among women and the
elderly, and a large proportion of people working part-time. Public authori-
ties have had a more active and responsible role than social parties and the
labour market in promoting work inclusion, but formal agreements between
the social parties such as “Inclusive working life”1 in Norway and its Danish
counterpart “The accommodating labour market”2 also commit them to
promoting and increasing work participation. Although the Nordic welfare
states are particularly generous with social security and rights-based benefit
schemes (Esping-Andersen, 1990; Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, 2017),
increasing levels of motivation and work ethics still prevail. There is a strong
consensus among the social parties that the maintenance of the Nordic model
presupposes a population actively involved in all aspects of societal processes,
not least in working life. Nordic Active Labour Market Policies (ALMP) are
grounded in a belief that work participation reduces poverty and inequality,
increases the welfare level of society as a whole and that everybody who is
capable ought to participate in work and contribute to the value production
of society (Hvinden, 2008; Halvorsen & Hvinden, 2009; Stjernø & Øverbye,
2012). As such, active citizenship through work participation is the norm in
the Nordic countries (Ministry of Labour, 2012).
However, despite the presence of ALMPs, commitments by the social par-
ties and a strong work ethos, the percentage of the working age population
outside the labour market has grown. From 1995 to 2010, the proportion
of the Norwegian working age population who received various forms of
incapacity benefits increased from 13 to 20% (Ministry of Finance, 2010).
Whereas the disability rates among the elderly decreased slightly, there was
a clear increase within the age group 18–24. An increasing number of young
people with mental health issues drop out of school and become marginalized
Tackling increasing marginalization 195
(Anvik & Gustavsen, 2012), and this trend is shared across the other Nordic
countries (Wulf-Andersen et al., 2016). Even though many people with men-
tal illness want to work and unemployment rates have been comparatively
low,3 an increasing number are offered disability benefits (Berge & Falkum,
2013; Kinn et al., 2016). The various Welfare and Employment Services
across the Nordic countries are now facing problems in helping clients with
comprehensive support needs into employment (Spjelkavik et al., 2011a). In
Norway this situation is further backed up by OECD data (2009) showing that
the Norwegian disability employment rate is mediocre compared to OECD
countries and below other Nordic countries. Thus, the Nordic welfare states –
characterized by dialogue, collaboration between the social parties and an
active welfare state – are now facing increased difficulties achieving work par-
ticipation and citizenship for all.
Can the Nordic welfare states perform better? In this chapter we discuss pre-
requisites, conditions and opportunities for improved quality of work inclusion.
We start out with the supply-side oriented model of Vocational Rehabilitation
(VR) that has dominated the Nordic countries, where the idea is to train and
prepare people with reduced work capacity to be job-ready before entering the
labour market. We then focus on demand-side approaches that pay attention
to the role of employers and their needs for compensation and support. We
argue that neither of these approaches have so far been successful. Instead we
point towards a “support-side approach” that seems to be emerging within the
employment and welfare services. This support-side approach is characterized
by public services that more proactively support clients and collaborate closer
with employers. We discuss possible advantages and challenges related to this
approach, as well as its potential to contribute to a more inclusive working life
in the Nordic countries.
Observations and analyses in this chapter are based on data and findings
from various evaluations and research and development projects from the last
decades, exploring approaches to improve work inclusion of vulnerable citizens
(carried out by the public employment and welfare services in Norway and
other Nordic countries). Several findings from these studies were summed up
by a group of researchers and practitioners in 2014, coining the concept “inclu-
sion skills competence” (Frøyland & Spjelkavik, 2014). This concept implies
increased attention to the role of the support system in the use of ordinary
workplaces as a means to achieve work inclusion for the more disadvantaged
and vulnerable jobless citizens.
One example of such measures is a personal IA contact officer who “is assigned
at the respective local workplace centre to build a working relationship through
which helpful information can be made available in a timely way to employers”
(OECD, 2009, p. 24). Evaluations of the Norwegian tripartite agreement have
shown that although some companies work actively to reduce sick leave and
exclusion of employees with acquired impairments, there are hardly any activi-
ties aimed at recruitment of people with disabilities (Ose et al., 2009, 2015;
Ingebrigtsen & Moe, 2015).
In Denmark, employment policies and the delivery of ALMPs have been
delegated to public job centres at the municipal level since 2007. Whereas
Norway strengthened the role of the social parties through the Inclusive
Working Life agreement, in Denmark the role of the social parties in the
formulation and administration of employment services was marginalized
through this process (Ingold & Valizade, 2017, p. 532). Still, recent Danish
employment policy reforms have turned towards more employer-oriented
measures rather than qualification and guidance as a part of training courses
for clients. Companies are expected to play a greater role in helping disadvan-
taged people towards employment (Jakobsen et al., 2015, p. 34). This means
that Danish ALMPs as well have added an increasing interest in demand-
side approaches to the dominating supply-side focus. Danish employers are
apparently more likely to participate actively in the delivery of ALMPs than
employers in other countries (Bredgaard & Halkjær, 2016, p. 50). However,
Ingold and Valizade (2017) found that although the literature suggests that
Danish ALMP agencies have the potential to increase employers’ recruitment
of disadvantaged groups, they mainly provide information about jobseek-
ers to companies and about job vacancies to jobseekers instead of acting as
“matchmakers”. The study also found that the effect of ALMPs on recruiting
disadvantaged groups was rather marginal.
financial burden on the employer. Around a third believe that the employment
of people with a mental disorder means poorer quality of work. At the same
time, analyses show that over half of the businesses have some sort of objection
to recruiting persons with mental disorders (Holt et al., 2013, p. 22).
Andreassen (2009) shows that Norwegian employers consider it to be their
responsibility to facilitate employees who acquire a disability while being
employed, but they do so to a much lesser degree when it comes to the
recruitment of new employees. Falkum (2012) found that employers were
afraid of difficulties maintaining production goals because of a possible lack
of capability among disabled employees to manage tasks and remain stable at
work. Employers also had worries about social and emotional issues, and about
costs associated with hiring persons with such challenges. Some employers fear
that hiring an employee with a disability will affect the work environment in
a negative way by placing high demands on colleagues and contributing to
dissatisfaction and stigma (Schafft & Spjelkavik, 2014).
Several studies have shown that companies’ “own positive experiences” and
“needs of their work force” are among the circumstances that lead them to
consider employing (more) people with reduced workability (Unger, 2002;
Lauveng, 2008; Jakobsen et al., 2015). Jakobsen et al. found that businesses
that already had employees with reduced work ability expressed that they
considered hiring persons with reduced work ability more often than other
companies did. A majority of businesses expressed that public financial sup-
port for employing a person with reduced work ability also made a difference.
However, lack of financial support did not explain why some companies failed
to hire people with reduced work capacity. According to Jakobsen et al., the
main reasons given were the insufficiency of required qualifications, the need
for extra adjustments and follow up, or that employers were unsure whether
persons with reduced capacity would perform well. Lauveng (2008) found that
leaders (or managers) that have personal relationships with employees, friends
or relatives with mental illness are more willing to hire persons with such
diagnoses. Employers who have previously employed persons with disabilities
are also less likely to view such engagements as risky (Unger, 2002; Svalund &
Hansen, 2013; Falkum & Solberg, 2015).
Holt et al. (2013) revealed that more than 50% of small Danish private busi-
nesses had never been contacted by a job centre, and many had no knowledge
of applicable support schemes, such as the financing of in-house resources in
terms of a mentor for a person with reduced work ability. They also found a
positive correlation between whether the company had been contacted by a
job centre and whether they had a person employed with public support.
Other research has shown that jobseekers with high support needs are more
likely to find jobs in companies characterized by a culture of inclusion and
diversity, and an atmosphere characterized by recognition and concern (Kirsh,
2000a, 2000b). Gilbride et al. (2003) reported that employers who are open to
hiring people with disabilities are characterized by openness to diversity and
Tackling increasing marginalization 199
as a means for trying out different kinds of work and tasks, and/or for deter-
mining the right workplace for the individual. A tailor-made job can involve
developing work tasks that take into account the individuals’ needs for facilita-
tion and follow-up, and will contribute to mastery, participation and inclusion.
By trying different kinds of work and work environments, even an individual
without any work history can access opportunities to gain valuable work train-
ing, experience and competence that he or she would otherwise not have
gained. One of the strengths of work experience placement is that the job-
seeker is placed within a real work setting in a relationship with colleagues at
a workplace. For some young adults in particular, a placement like this might
be their first encounter with working life (Frøyland, 2016, 2018). Taking in
jobseekers to train in real job settings by working for free for a period of time
represents an opportunity for the employer and jobseeker to get to know each
other. Such relationships can serve as “door openers” that may lead to employ-
ment for jobseekers.
However, a placement in itself does not necessarily lead to employment.
Research shows that even though employers are often positive towards giv-
ing people with mental health or social challenges the opportunity for work
experience practice, they seldom hire them in paid jobs (Schafft & Spjelkavik,
2014; Ekspertgruppen, 2015; Spjelkavik, 2016; Hyggen, 2017). Most employ-
ers cannot facilitate successful learning processes on their own. In order for
placements to be successful and eventually lead to a job for vulnerable, disad-
vantaged or less productive citizens, the support-side approach focuses on the
need for well-functioning and accessible support services to make sure that
placements take the form of “place then train” and not just “place and pray”.
Comprehensive support is essential to avoid experiences of defeat for both client
and workplace.
that the person they hired was not that useful to the company in terms of
productivity, and that the company needed to spend extra resources on super-
vision and follow-up. Most companies, however, considered the benefits large
enough to keep them employed. The majority of these employers also had
observed that the employees themselves benefitted from being in the company
in terms of wellbeing, quality of life and personal development. The employers
felt that frequent visits to the workplace was an important prerequisite for the
employment specialist in order to be able to provide relevant advice, under-
stand the employee and the company, and to find out what actions could be
taken to solve practical problems.
In a Swedish study, Gustafsson et al. (2013) found that the employment
specialist played three important roles: a broker, a supervisor and a problem
solver. They also found that specialist effort in the follow-up work influenced
an employer’s willingness to cooperate. The approaches that employers per-
ceived as most successful were the creation of security, responsibility for the
workforce being conveyed and the pursuit of trust with employers.
Key concepts in Norwegian ALMP are recruitment assistance to employers
and employment assistance to jobseekers, and traditional ALMP is characterized
by matching jobseekers to available jobs, accompanied by limited follow-up
(Ekspertgruppen, 2015). Such assistance, which we have labelled “promotion
of job opportunities”, is better suited for jobseekers with minor support needs
and is insufficient when the jobseeker needs high levels of social follow-up and
practical adjustments, and/or when it is unclear what the appropriate work
tasks may be or how much the individual can work (Spjelkavik & Thingbø-
Støldal, 2014). Follow-up from this perspective means providing support
and time for the development of coping strategies and job matching in the
workplace. Table 10.1 illustrates the difference between the type of support
traditionally provided by the employment services and the kind of job devel-
opment that appears to be required for persons with substantial support needs
(Spjelkavik et al., 2016).
Job development in this perspective is about developing coping strategies as
well as working conditions so that the tasks are adapted to the individual, rather
than the individual being adapted to the tasks. The aim is to allow the individu-
als to develop on their own terms and to adjust the tasks in such a way that the
work relationship meets the needs of both employer and employee. Inclusion
is understood as individual learning and development in a relational process
that takes place in the interactions between employees in the workplace. An
inclusion process in a “place then train” perspective should not be under-
stood in terms of arranging job opportunities or competing for available jobs,
but rather as a development process where interpersonal relationships among
all employees in the workplace are important for the process of inclusion,
not just the relationship between the jobseeker and the employment specialist
(Folkenborg, 2014). The role of the employment specialist is not only to find
the right place for the individual but also to find job openings and recruit-
ment strategies in cooperation with employers. A primary aim is to find ways
of organizing work and tasks in order to secure both individual and structural
diversity. Work tasks may need to be customized to the individual – they may
even need to be individually carved out. The result might be a “non-normal
job” in a “normal work environment”. From this perspective it is insufficient
to look for individual qualifications that match the given job requirements;
instead, more flexible job requirements are necessary that respond to the indi-
vidual prerequisites.
Within the support-side approach the employment specialist is a vital
“matchmaker” in the facilitation of such inclusionary processes, by collaborat-
ing both with the employer and the client while at the same time ensuring other
necessary professional and financial support. However, individualized support
from an external employment specialist in a workplace can be stigmatizing and
as such contribute to social exclusion instead of inclusion (Frøyland, 2016). An
important issue is therefore to develop support in ways that minimize stigma.
The ability of employment specialists to contribute to the facilitation of natural
supports – meaning support activated among co-workers at the workplace –
can be vital (Murphy et al., 2005; Drake et al., 2012; Corbière et al., 2014;
Frøyland & Kvåle, 2014; Klethagen & Spjelkavik, 2018).
support for employers. After the project, the annual state budgets for similar
follow-up approaches to be performed at the NAV offices have been increased.
These recent “insourcing” experiences may indicate the development of a new
follow-up approach in the NAV offices and a change of perspective within the
public Welfare and Labour administration. In Denmark various agencies are
responsible for delivering ALMPs and “modifying companies’ HRM policies
and practice, in order to facilitate the labour market inclusion of vulnerable
groups” (Van Berkel et al., 2017b, p. 507). The Norwegian experiences have
demonstrated that this facilitating role, as well as the responsibility and perfor-
mance of work inclusion measures for even the most vulnerable citizens, could
very well (and perhaps preferably) be a routine task undertaken by the public
employment and welfare services.
SUPPORT SYSTEM
FOLLOW-UP
has the psychosocial requirements needed to meet the individual’s needs for
adaptation and facilitation.
Support givers need to be available and able to provide information about
schemes, as grants are often offered to reduce perceived risks among employers
as well as individual jobseekers. They need to follow the development of the
working relationship closely and be ready to act when needed, or make sure
that others do. These may include actors located outside the workplace that
can affect the work ability.
The crucial element is illustrated in Figure 10.1 by the arrow in the middle:
“Follow-up”. This kind of follow-up is what distinguishes inclusion skills compe-
tence from other forms of work-oriented rehabilitation in ordinary workplaces.
This means making an effort to establish and strengthen a work relationship in
situations where the individual or job candidate is not “the perfect employee”.
Performing inclusion skills competence means facilitating learning through expe-
riences for employers, employees and jobseekers. This means exploring needs
and opportunities for facilitation, relevant support schemes, employment con-
ditions, job carving or creation in order to match work tasks to the particular
individual and to identify and support natural supporters at the workplace. For
some individuals long-term support is needed. Such follow-up can involve
insight or disclosure of a disability or other conditions that may affect employ-
ability. It can mean advising employers and colleagues as to how they should deal
with the employee in case of problems and/or how to talk about and discuss dif-
ficult issues, as well as how to create social support, tolerance and understanding.
1 Despite the fact that many marginalized jobseekers are in need of upgrad-
ing and qualifcation, supply-side approaches have not had a sufciently
positive efect on work inclusion in the Nordic countries. Some have
found jobs, but these are primarily individuals with minor support needs,
and the long-term efect has been poor.
Tackling increasing marginalization 209
Notes
1 Intensjonsavtalen om et mer inkluderende arbeidsliv (IA).
2 Det rummelige arbeidsmarked (DRAM).
3 The unemployment rate in Norway in 2015 was 3% according to NAV (2015).
4 LOV 2006-06-16 nr 20: Lov om arbeids- og velferdsforvaltningen.
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Part IV
Nordic approaches to
New Public Management
Professions in transition
Introduction
Annette Kamp, Agnete Meldgaard Hansen and
Christin Thea Wathne
This section focuses on working life in the public sector and tells the story of
the dramatic transformations that have taken place since the early 1980s.
The public sector in Norway and Denmark comprises a relatively large
part of the total labour market. In both countries, around 30% of the labour
force work in the public sector. Concomitant with the spread of neoliberal
ideas, this sector has been subject to wide-reaching reforms inspired by New
Public Management (NPM). As in most other Western countries, reforms have
aimed at rationalization, marketization and retrenchment of the public sector.
However, in the Nordic countries this development has been shaped in par-
ticular ways, influenced by the participation of organized labour, resulting in
what we call a negotiated modernization of the public sector. The public sector
has been and still is the most unionized sector in both Norway and Denmark.
Public sector workers in frontline jobs make up an important and large part
of this sector in both numbers and salary expenses. Furthermore, they are also
the groups most affected by NPM-inspired developments. These groups have
experienced dramatic changes in the course of the prolonged modernization
of the public sector; changes that aim at transforming their work and identi-
ties profoundly. NPM reforms focusing on marketization and standardization
of public services have been criticized for leading to a loss of autonomy and
discretion, and a higher workload and work intensification for public sector
workers. In this respect, the Nordic countries resemble most other Western
countries subject to NPM reforms. However, as part of this negotiated mod-
ernization, many public sector frontline workers have simultaneously acquired
higher levels of formal education and have become what in the Nordic context
are termed ‘welfare professionals’ (see elaboration of this concept in the follow-
ing chapters). This development reflects the influence of trade union strategies
of professionalization and strengthening of the professional status of groups in
frontline jobs. In consequence, when addressing NPM and implications for
218 Annette Kamp et al.
Elderly care is one of the largest and most costly areas of the Danish public
sector and is the field where NPM has been most systematically implemented.
The chapter illuminates how both shifts in the view of elderly people and
their needs towards discourses of self-sufficiency and active ageing, as well as
NPM and later NPG-inspired reforms play an important role in transforming
working life. These shifts and reforms have influenced the development of
core tasks, autonomy, care relations and professional identity in elderly care
work profoundly. On the one hand, this development can be described as a
movement away from holistic care ideals towards a narrower focus on provi-
sion of marketized, standardized care services, and towards reduced autonomy
and discretion in work. On the other hand, Danish elderly care workers have
also experienced a strengthening of professional and workplace communi-
ties, which supports collective action and care workers’ exercise of responsible
autonomy in everyday care interactions. Recent developments in the sector
focusing on active ageing, rehabilitation and user involvement introduce new
core tasks and represent new possibilities to develop the exercise of autonomy
and professionalism in the sector.
Chapter 13: Welfare professionals in transformation: the case of police officers in Norway.
By Christin Thea Wathne.
Similarly to Chapter 12 on elderly care, this chapter shows how the work-
ing lives of police officers have been transformed under the influence of both
NPM-inspired reforms and broad shifts in the view of their core tasks and role
in society. The chapter illuminates how institutional logics of police work in
Norway are under transformation, moving from a humanist tradition focused
on help and prevention of crime (community policing), towards a more mili-
tarist tradition focused on control and elimination of threats. This militarist
tradition has proved to resonate well with NPM reforms, and in this complex
dynamic, police work is transformed. Norwegian police officers have thus
experienced an increased focus on efficiency and resource use, changes in the
character of their interaction with the public, and centralization and increased
distance to the public. Further changes include outsourcing of ‘softer’ police
tasks to private security firms, stronger control and prioritization of tasks,
standardization of frontline work and a shift in the professional knowledge base
towards measurability and evidence-based approaches. As a result, the core
tasks of the police have narrowed, and the space for professional autonomy
and discretion has been reduced with the movement away from community
policing based on situational assessments and professional discretion.
These latter two chapters make clear that NPM is not the only central influ-
ence on the working lives of welfare professionals. Both police officers and
elderly care workers are affected by broader societal shifts in understandings of
the object and focus of their work. We see changes in the understandings of
crime and proper law enforcement, and of ageing and good care for elderly people.
Attention to such shifts in broader societal discourses, and their entanglement
220 Annette Kamp et al.
with NPM and other governance reforms, is crucial when seeking to understand
the transformation of welfare professionals’ working lives.
Furthermore, the NPM hallmark of marketization has been influential for
both welfare professions, and the dissemination of a logic of numbers and
resource containment has had a considerable effect on working conditions.
However, there are significant differences in both the timing and effects of
these developments for the two professions. Where frontline elderly care work
has been subject to extensive and pervasive standardization of tasks and work
processes since the 1990s, frontline police work has only recently appeared
to be moving in this direction. So far they seem to have maintained higher
levels of professional autonomy and discretion in the execution of their daily
tasks. Regarding outsourcing of tasks, police officers have experienced a loss of
‘softer’ tasks to private providers, underlining their movement towards a more
controlling role and lowering the frequency of interaction with the public. In
elderly care, mainly practical tasks have been outsourced to private provid-
ers, and public sector elderly care workers have largely retained the social and
health care tasks that are most central to their professional identity and role
perception. Attention to the timing, extent and character of marketization and
standardization efforts thus appears crucial when assessing the effects of NPM
on the working lives and identities of welfare professionals.
Moreover, both groups have experienced a transformation of their rela-
tionship with clients and the public. In both cases, we find a paradox with an
emphasis on increased client/citizen-centredness in services, while profession-
als are also supposed to withdraw and have less contact with clients/the public.
However, the character of this withdrawal from clients/the public differs and
has different roots. Where elderly care workers are to withdraw from the lives
of elderly clients to facilitate the clients’ empowerment and increased self-
sufficiency, the distancing of police work from the public seems to be more
the result of an increasingly centralized organization of work and the shift from
community policing towards a more militarist model. The paradox of simul-
taneous citizen-centredness and professional withdrawal may thus have quite
different expressions in practice.
Against this background, the following three chapters may be read as
attempts to open a window into the complex dynamics and transformations of
working life and professionalism taking place in the Nordic welfare states in the
wake of decades of NPM reforms.
Chapter 11
Introduction
The establishment of universal welfare states is often seen as one of the most
outstanding features of the Nordic societies. The existence of large and highly
developed welfare states plays a key role in sustaining other important Nordic
labour market characteristics such as gender equality and flexicurity. A large
care sector providing care for children, the elderly and others in need has paved
the way for a very high degree of labour market participation for both women
and men. In the same vein, the security part of the flexicurity model implies
the work of a large body of institutions and professional social workers. In this
chapter, we focus our attention on the welfare state as a large employment sec-
tor with specific characteristics and implications for employees’ working life.
We focus on the Danish public sector and the transformations of work and
working conditions occasioned by the diverse NPM-inspired reforms intro-
duced since the early 1980s. The reforms seen in the Danish public sector are
in many cases similar to developments seen in the other Nordic countries,
although variations and differences of course also appear (see e.g. Foss Hansen,
2011 for a comparative analysis). The insights presented can thus to a great
extent be considered relevant to the other Nordic countries, but national vari-
ations and their specific implications for working life in the public sector are
important to take into account.
Infused with neo-classical economic ideas of marketization, NPM (Hood,
1991) paved the way for new forms of management and governance in both
the private and public sector, eventually spreading to most of the Western
world. In Denmark, such NPM reforms have been discussed under the head-
ing of ‘public sector modernization’ since 1983 (Danish Ministry of Finance,
1983). This chapter illuminates how these ideas entered the Danish welfare
state through several waves of modernization, and how they have influenced
working life in this sector.
Importantly, NPM reforms have been shaped in particular ways in the
Danish context, reflecting the influence of the Nordic labour market model and
the labour market parties. While NPM is often associated with trends towards
222 Annette Kamp and Agnete Meldgaard Hansen
professionals, and how these groups have collectively and individually resisted
and negotiated them. We end the chapter with a concluding discussion.
In line with this, the NPM reforms in Denmark have been met with a profes-
sionalization strategy from many unions in the social, educational and health
sectors. Many of the occupations involved are not professions in a tradi-
tional understanding of the concept, which assumes a long education and
a monopoly in a well-defned area of practice (see e.g. Abbott, 2001), but
the workers involved are what the Danes call ‘welfare professionals’. The
concept of ‘welfare professionals’ in Denmark covers the large groups of
professionals, with varying educational levels, who work in frontline welfare
state services, implying that their work involves interactions with users (cli-
ents, patients, pupils, citizens, consumers) in e.g. education, social and health
care, social work, prisons, police work and others (Hjort, 2004; Järvinen &
Mik-Meyer, 2012).
The professionalization strategies of these groups in relation to public sector
reforms can be seen as attempts to expand their knowledge base and legitimacy
in a period of change. For example, in the 1980s in the social and health sector,
where many workers had few or no formal qualifications, one- and three-year
Nordic New Public Management 225
courses were established. Workers in this field now gained formal qualifica-
tions in elementary nursing and gerontology, and could, if they wished, build
on these qualifications to study for a full nursing degree (Dahl, 2000, 2005).
The level of education for this type of work is comparably high, as most other
European countries require no or very little vocational training to work in the
sector (Genet et al., 2012).
Furthermore, the trade unions have entered into agreements on systematic
and strategic competence development with the aim of ensuring flexibility
through the softening of professional boundaries and creation of new job pro-
files, in return for more professional and personal development by employees
(Hjort, 2004). Employees thus have access to continuing education, which is
influenced by local management and trade union representatives.
The expanded knowledge base and increasingly formalized education of
these groups brings them closer to the image of traditional professions. However,
these developments have not resulted in actual monopolies of practice. Some
groups (e.g. social and health-care assistants and nurses) obtain certifications
and authorizations that secure their right to monopolize the practice of cer-
tain tasks. But generally, hiring policies and priorities, and divisions of labour
between professional groups, are negotiated locally, and this can be a bone of
contention between local management and employees as well as between pro-
fessional groups. For example, professional social workers increasingly compete
with non-social workers for jobs in social services (Fagbladet 3F, 2016), and the
roles and divisions of labour between teachers and social educators in primary
schools have since a 2013 school reform been the subject of extensive discus-
sion and struggle (Kampmann, 2014).
The Danish version of negotiated modernization is therefore a moderni-
zation that involves local adaptations, where the labour market parties have
sought and gained influence, especially in relation to the education and com-
petence development of their members. The development-oriented version of
human resource management (HRM) that is typical of the management aspect
of NPM (see later) must therefore also be seen as a result of this dialogue and
negotiation, which have continued from the 1980s until today.
In the search for efficiency and rationalization, new ideas have gained
a foothold. New Public Governance (NPG) is a collective term for these
new trends; it involves a focus on creating new forms of collaboration and
‘co-production’ (Torfing & Triantafillou, 2013). Public–private partnerships
are an important element in this development. These are primarily based on
understandings of network regulation (Klijn & Koppenjan, 2000; Rhodes,
2007), rather than market-based competition. Another key element is user
involvement, which implies that the self-reliant, responsible user is placed
in the centre and is encouraged to perform parts of the work traditionally
performed by professionals (Vrangbaek, 2015). At the same time, efforts are
being directed towards enabling users to take responsibility for aspects of pre-
vention, care and treatment. In this way, we see a redistribution of tasks and
responsibilities, and changes in the roles of users and professionals and in the
relationship between them (Holen, 2011; Barnes & Cotterell, 2012).
However, we cannot say that the basic NPM-inspired way of organizing
and managing the public sector is disappearing. Researchers in public govern-
ance view the tendency towards new public governance as overlaying and
co-existing with NPM rather than replacing it (Torfing & Triantafillou, 2013).
A number of other areas of welfare work have revealed how the contrast
between the professional logics and the NPM logic creates tension in the work-
place. In social work, the neoliberal approach has meant that social policy has
become increasingly subordinate to employment policy. It becomes a tool for
bringing people into work, known as a transition from ‘welfare to workfare’
in the literature, combined with a ‘work frst’ logic. The social work-based
and resource-building perspectives that were previously the focus of the social
work profession have given way to a unilateral policy of getting clients into
(any) work as soon as possible (Torfng, 2004; Villadsen, 2007).
Furthermore, regulatory management and standardization have restricted
professionals’ scope for social work-based assessments. The move towards
the work-first logic and an increasing burden of documentation has pres-
surized social workers. Researchers such as Caswell and Larsen (2015) have
pointed out how the new forms of management and the work-first ori-
entation that have been introduced since the late 2000s have significantly
changed social work and led to an increasing sense of de-professionalization
Nordic New Public Management 231
is embraced by some nurses with enthusiasm; while for other nurses, the new
situation creates tension and stress.
In the same vein, a recent study (Kamp & Dybbroe, 2016) illustrates how
the burden of documentation takes more and more time away from work
with patients, resulting in time pressure and work intensification. For several
years, psychiatric care has been subject to considerable rationalization, based
on performance measurements and standardization of methods in the form of
standardized treatment packages. Kamp and Dybbroe (2016), in their ethno-
graphic study of diagnosis and treatment in an outpatient department, show
how this development supports the medicalization of the field. Professionals
with a humanistic orientation, such as nurses, teachers, psychologists and social
workers, find their professional identity under pressure and interprofessional
cooperation is threatened with fragmentation (Kamp & Dybbroe, 2016).
As mentioned in our previous section, standardization does not stand
alone as a means of governance. Rather, standardization co-exists with stra-
tegic management based on principles of soft HRM, like trust, motivation
and responsibilization. This phenomenon has until now received very little
attention in Danish research. A few case studies in elderly care could however
add some important points. Kamp and Ryberg (2016) point out how strategic
management has acquired a prominent status in debates on the future of elderly
care. A quote from a debate report written in cooperation between the labour
market parties Local Government Denmark and FOA may illustrate this:
Kamp and Ryberg show how this increased emphasis on management may
imply that professionals must negotiate diferent rationales of governance e.g.
when increased control and documentation practices co-exist with employee
involvement processes. This may widen the scope for autonomy but often in
contradictory ways. A study (Rasmussen, 2012) on middle managers in elderly
care underlines how these contradictory management rationales also impact
this group. She illustrates how middle managers may follow diferent strategies
in order to meet contradictory demands, but also how they often experience
stressful working conditions.
A representative survey among Danish employees, the APL-III survey from
2015 (Caraker et al., 2015), suggests that the experiences described here cannot
be seen as isolated cases confined to individual qualitative studies or particular
fields of work. The survey reveals that 75% of public sector employees find that
more documentation requirements have been introduced into their work and
Nordic New Public Management 233
that 79% experience an increased workload without any increase in the number
of staff in their workplace. Some 57% of FTF members state that their work
causes mental stress and that they often have to work under severe time pressure.
In addition, 60% of public employees want more influence on the organization
of their daily work. A 2018 study of the working environment as reported by
over 9,000 FTF members similarly concluded: ‘FTF members have a heavy
workload. 36% have a heavy or very heavy workload, and 22% have a high &
very high pace of work. This is significantly higher than among wage earners in
general’ (Anker & Grundtvig, 2018, p. 9). Furthermore, 22% of FTF members
reported being always or often stressed, and only 49% (as compared to 63% of
wage earners in general) found that their opportunity to deliver quality in work
was high or very high (Anker & Grundtvig, 2018).
These studies and examples from different kinds of welfare work point to
a number of challenges for welfare professions related to the increased stand-
ardization and market orientation of their work. With the NPM reforms,
new management logics, expressed differently in different areas, gain a
foothold in the work and often put pressure on welfare professionals’ care
orientation, ethics and professional logics. In addition, the research indi-
cates widespread experiences of work stress and intensification, greater time
pressure, increased documentation and control, decreased autonomy, and
invisibility and devaluation of certain aspects of professional work.
for recognition of their work and professional skills over and above the NPM
reforms (Dahl, 2010; Gleerup, 2010). Dahl (2010), in a study in the health and
social care sector, points out that welfare professionals’ experience of stand-
ardization and devaluation of their work under NPM is particularly frustrating
and taken as a clear lack of respect, because the government at the same time
was supporting professionalization of the field (cf. negotiated modernization).
In Dahl’s words, the state is Janus-faced in simultaneously supporting the
professionalization and de-professionalization of work.
When the Danish government later implemented the so-called ‘trust reform’
(Danish Government et al., 2013), it was also a reaction to the many protests
that, then and later, arose from professionals and unions due to the difficulty
of using their professional skills and judgement, and the sense of distrust and
bureaucracy created by this regime. Former experts on ministerial governance
also warned about the new proliferation of bureaucracy that took time away
from actual work with clients (Gjørup & Hjortdal, 2007). The trust reform fol-
lowed the Nordic labour market model in being based on a tripartite agreement
between the (then centre-left) government and public employers and employ-
ees. It had the official title: ‘Principles for Collaboration on Modernization
between the Parties in the Public Sector’. The text of the agreement empha-
sized concepts such as dialogue, openness, meaningful work and professional
scope for action, and stated: ‘Leadership and governance should be based on
trust and responsibility’ (Danish Government et al., 2013), thus meeting much
of the criticism that welfare professionals and their organizations had raised over
the years. At the same time, however, key NPM principles regarding goal and
performance management and documentation were also maintained, and the
agreement was accompanied by a goal to improve efficiency in the public sec-
tor by 2020 and cut costs by EUR1.6 billion (DKK12 billion) (Møller, 2013).
The trust reform has subsequently had little influence, except in some local and
regional projects (see e.g. Middelboe, 2016), and the right-wing government
that came to power in 2015 has not picked up the threads. Recent research has
also shown that the changes resulting from NPM are quite stable (Torfing &
Triantafillou, 2013; Greve & Ejersbo, 2014). Thus, the trust reform does not
appear to have fundamentally addressed the criticism of the consequences of
NPM for the work of welfare professionals.
The critiques of working conditions in the public sector have also led to
action in the field of working environment interventions. The psychosocial
working environment in the public sector has become an object of concern
and joint action among the labour market parties. For example, in 2007
a tripartite agreement between the government, local authorities and the
central trade union federations instituted obligatory job satisfaction measure-
ments every third year in all public sector workplaces (Danish Government
et al., 2007). Furthermore, collective agreements in the public sector have in
recent years included funding of different forms of expert support for coop-
erative projects between employers and employees in local workplaces to
Nordic New Public Management 235
Concluding discussion
In this chapter, we have shown how NPM has been adopted in the Danish
public sector and the main impacts it has on working life for welfare profession-
als. The Danish case can be considered similar to the other Nordic countries,
but attention must of course be given to national variations in reform history
and adaptation when considering the consequences of NPM for working life
in the public sector.
Drawing on existing research, we have shown how NPM reforms in
Denmark have taken shape as a negotiated modernization of the public sector
in which welfare professions and their organizations have played an active role.
The public sector collective bargaining system has undergone changes, includ-
ing becoming more decentralized and allowing for more flexibility in wage
determination. But industrial relations and collective bargaining traditions have
not been eroded with NPM as expected by some scholars (Pedersen, 1998).
Furthermore, many unions in the health, social and educational sectors have
pursued professionalization strategies in relation to NPM reforms, emphasizing
education and competence development of their members in correspondence
with the HRM dimension of NPM.
The Nordic tradition of social dialogue and negotiation with the labour
market parties has thus had an influence on the adaptation of NPM reforms in
Denmark. However, this does not mean that NPM reforms have not had sig-
nificant impacts on the working lives of welfare professionals. Standardization
and marketization efforts have transformed their work and put pressure on
welfare professionals’ care orientations, ethics and professional logics. In rela-
tion to this, the cited research shows widespread experiences of work stress and
intensification, greater time pressure, increased documentation and control,
decreased autonomy, and invisibility and devaluation of certain aspects of pro-
fessional work. Similar experiences are reported in the international literature
on the working life of welfare professionals under NPM, though of course
Nordic New Public Management 237
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ledelsesudfordring [Teacher–Social Educator Cooperation: A Political Construction
and Management Challenge], Tidsskrift for Arbejdsliv, 16(1): 25–38.
Kirchhof, J. W. & Karlsson, J. C. (2013) Expansion of Output: Organizational
Misbehaviour in Public Enterprises, Economic and Industrial Democracy, 34(1): 107–122.
Klijn, E. H. & Koppenjan, J. F. M. (2000) Public Management and Policy Networks,
Public Management: An International Journal of Research and Theory, 2(2): 135–158.
Legge, K. (2005) Human Resource Management. Rhetorics and Realities, New York:
Macmillan International Higher Education.
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New Professionalism across Nations and Contexts, Current Sociology, 57(4): 581–605.
Liebst, L. S. & Monrad, M. (2008) Imellem empati og depersonalisering: En følelsessoci-
ologisk analyse af tayloriseringens konsekvenser for hjemmeplejere [Between Empathy
and Depersonalization: A Sociology of Feelings-Based Analysis of the Consequences
of Taylorization for Home Care Workers], Tidsskrift for arbejdsliv, 10(1): 56–71.
Limborg, H. J., Albertsen, K. & Flensborg Jensen, M. (2012) Dokumentationskrav i
folkeskolen: tidspres, kraenkelse eller faglig udfordring? [Documentation Requirements
in Primary School: Time Pressure, Ofence or Professional Challenge?], Tidsskrift for
Arbejdsliv, 14(4): 10–29.
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Authority Labour Market in Numbers], Copenhagen.
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Management of the Elderly Care Sector], Copenhagen.
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Organisations (2015) Samarbejde om Psykisk Arbejdsmiljø i Kommunerne (SPARK) [Coopera-
tion on the Psychosocial Working Environment in Local Authorities]. http://vpt.dk/spark.
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medarbejdere i staten [New Forms of Cooperation between Management and
Employees in the State], Tidsskrift for Arbejdsliv, 3: 31–46.
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242 Annette Kamp and Agnete Meldgaard Hansen
Welfare professionals in
transformation
The case of elderly care
Agnete Meldgaard Hansen and Annette Kamp
Introduction
With marketization and consumerism as its main principles, New Public
Management (NPM) is often described as an approach that implies an attack
on professionals’ position in society (Freidson, 2001; see e.g. Dahl, 2005b) and
a process towards de-professionalization (Dybbroe, 2008; Dalsgaard, 2013).
Professions are generally characterized by their specific and demarcated knowl-
edge domain, their wide autonomy in performance of their professional tasks
and their adherence to a common code of professional ethics (Abbott, 1988).
In principle, NPM implies that professions are confronted with market-based
or utilitarian ethics, and aims at centralizing knowledge so that it rests with
management, for example through standardization and contracting. In that
respect, this development somewhat resembles Taylorist principles of work
organization aiming to secure management control.
Indeed, mistrust of professionals and their altruism was one of the core
arguments for NPM. With reference to new institutional economics and
principal-agent theory, bringing governance back to the ‘principals’ by intro-
ducing means of controlling the professionals has been central (Hood, 1991).
Therefore, although other arguments e.g. ensuring citizens’ rights to equal
services were also stressed, NPM was strongly associated with taming profes-
sionals’ autonomy and identity (Dahl & Rasmussen, 2012).
A key question here is to what extent this aim has actually been accom-
plished. First, the negotiated character of these changes must be taken into
account. As we have shown in Chapter 11, recent studies show that, at least in
a Nordic context, different forms of new professionalization are taking place
which transform professional identities and autonomy, as well as roles and rela-
tionships between professionals and citizens/clients (Hansen, 2015; Wathne,
2015; Hansen & Kamp, 2018). Second, NPM must, as explained in the previ-
ous chapter, be seen as a miscellany of different forms of governance rather than
a monolith where the forms will vary between different empirical fields. Other
discourses than that of marketization may play an important role in shaping the
understanding of professionalism in specific fields e.g. discourses on old age and
244 Agnete Meldgaard Hansen and Annette Kamp
ageing in elderly care, on childhood and pedagogy in daycare work, and on the
criminal subject and crime in police work. Thus, we see public sector profes-
sionalism not simply as under threat from NPM but as something achieved
through historical processes and struggles, as well as under continuous transfor-
mation, and sometimes challenge, in close connection with developments in
public sector governance and policy ideals. In some ways, NPM has contributed
to weakening professionalization, but in other ways, NPM has actually been a
vehicle of professionalization for some groups, such as elderly care workers and
kindergarten teachers (Dahl, 2005c; Hjort, 2005).
Against this background, we would argue that there may be great differences
in the way modernization and NPM have affected work in different sectors.
Thus, when answering questions as to how NPM and other forms of public
governance affect working life, we have to be sensitive to the specific contexts.
The focus for this chapter is elderly care. This is an area that has been
emblematic for the development of NPM in the Danish public sector. As this
is one of the largest and most costly parts of the public sector, it was the field
where NPM-inspired reforms were most intensely and systematically imple-
mented. Moreover, the reforms have had a significant impact on working
conditions in elderly care, with the result that this field has played a prominent
role in critical debates on NPM (Kamp & Hvid, 2012a).
In terms of its characteristics, elderly care is also a sector which is very ‘Nordic’:
it is based on universalistic principles regarding the coverage of its services, and
in fact it covers a quite large percentage of elderly Danish people. Further, care
workers in this sector have since the 1990s been professionalized, with their
own vocational education qualifications. However, they are, as explained in
Chapter 11, not professionals in a classical sense; they are welfare professionals,
frontline workers in welfare state services, whose work involves interactions
with users (Hjort, 2004; Järvinen & Mik-Meyer, 2012). They are thus examples
of the professionalization that has accompanied the introduction of NPM. At
the same time, contemporary conceptions of ageing and the implied discourses
of active ageing (Katz, 2000; Walker, 2009) play an important role in changing
care work and professionalism in this field. This development has also had a
great impact on the way new forms of governance, in terms of citizen-centred
care and co-production, are designed.
The aim of this chapter is to explore the transformation of professionals’
working life that has resulted from the introduction of NPM and newer forms
of public governance, often dubbed New Public Governance (NPG), in a
specific field: Danish elderly care. More specifically, we ask how professional
autonomy, meaning and identity at work have been transformed during the period of
modernization since the early 1980s.
In order to illuminate this development, our starting point is our over ten
years of research in this field. We also include contributions from other Danish
and Nordic researchers belonging to the rich tradition of Nordic care research
(see e.g. Dahl & Eriksen, 2005; Szebehely, 2005). This chapter thus takes the
The case of elderly care 245
performing tasks for clients, instead is to enable them to care for themselves
(Swane, 2003).
Another important development in the articulation of care needs and care
tasks is that the social, cognitive and emotional aspects of care work, such as
the relief of loneliness and the provision of social contact to elderly clients,
have disappeared from politico-administrative discourses on publicly provided
elderly care. These tasks are instead seen as belonging to ‘civil society’ or ‘the
community’ (Dahl, 2005a). These tasks and needs were written out of official
documents on elderly care as early as the 1960s, which must also be seen as
part of an effort towards professionalization, emphasizing unique qualifications
and distancing from care dispositions that are assumed to be a basic human (or
female) quality (Dahl, 2000). However, the question of whether or not social
contact should be a central task and aspect of elderly care work is still highly
contested in the Danish elderly care field (Kamp, 2012; Hansen, 2015). The
tasks of elderly care work and the needs to be met have thus changed and been
delimited over time.
The delimitation of tasks was formalized and extended with NPM and the
implementation of the purchaser–provider model in elderly care. This devel-
opment for example implied a separation of ‘practical tasks’ and ‘care tasks’, a
separation that paved the way for marketization of the practical part of the job,
such as shopping, cleaning, cooking, etc. where nearly 50% is now provided
by private firms (Kamp, 2013). But it also implied a fragmentation of work into
small tasks that could be distributed in different ways to optimize work organi-
zation and efficiency (Szebehely, 1995). In this way, classic ideals of holistic
care became increasingly difficult to practise (Dybbroe, 2008).
However, the new paradigm of rehabilitation has changed the field and was
initially received with enthusiasm by care workers (Rostgaard & Matthiessen,
2016). Physical training and motivation for self-development and independ-
ence from help are central aspects of these programmes and have thus become
new tasks for elderly care workers. Basically, they are now tasked with train-
ing clients, physically and mentally, to take care of themselves. In most local
authorities, rehabilitation takes place in close cooperation with a physiotherapist
or occupational therapist, who establishes an action plan, stating the aims of
the clients and the milestones to be achieved. The division of labour between
therapists and care workers may be subject to negotiation; however, the care
workers often remain with the task to execute the plan (Flensborg Jensen,
2017). This implies that new pedagogical and motivational tasks are becoming
part of care work (Hansen & Kamp, 2018)
This development is accompanied by an increasing use of new technologies
(in the Danish context labelled ‘welfare technologies’), which are to enhance
the client’s independence from help. However, welfare technologies also imply
other tasks, often termed articulation and inclusion work (Star & Strauss, 1999;
Oudshoorn, 2008). Care workers are involved in developing the use of the
technologies, determining which clients are eligible to use them and making
The case of elderly care 249
them work in practice by adjusting them to the individual client (see e.g. IDA
& LGDK, 2008; Nickelsen, 2013; Kamp & Ballegaard, 2018; Hansen and
Grosen, 2019).
To sum up, the ideals of care, the professional orientation and the tasks of
elderly care have changed dramatically over time. Exclusion of tasks has con-
stricted the field, whereas the fragmentation of tasks introduced by NPM has
narrowed the scope for holistic care. The turn towards rehabilitation seems to
have brought some new areas for development. However, it is important to note
that the ideals and practices involved do not simply replace each other. What we
find in this field is a complex co-existence of different ideals and practices, which
are often hierarchized, as illustrated by e.g. Kamp (2012) and Hansen (2015).
interviews that were also part of this study showed how the new temporal
order tended to fragment work; this hampered the establishment of trustful
relationships with elderly people, which are crucial for the meaning of the
work and for creating a good workflow in practice. This development led to
an overall experience of deskilling among care workers (Dybbroe, 2008) and
a crisis of recognition, which surfaced most clearly in the large strike by care
workers in 2008 (Dahl, 2009; Gleerup, 2010).
This development has often been called neo-Taylorism, and following this line
of thought, an instrumentalist approach to work might have been expected to
ensue. However, several studies point out that this is far from the case. They show
how care workers develop different strategies in order to maintain a quality of
care that lives up to their own ethical standards, implying that extra work is done,
standards are creatively reinterpreted or work is informally reorganized, in order
to take the shifting needs of elderly people into account (Liebst & Monrad, 2008;
Dahl, 2009; Tufte, 2013). In this way, we see that care workers exercise what is
often termed responsible autonomy (Friedman, 1977), implying that autonomy in
work does not perish but lives on. It should be noted that responsible autonomy
is a collective phenomenon, and while NPM caused fragmentation and stand-
ardization of tasks, large public workplaces with communities of well-organized
professionals were retained in Denmark, allowing for the development of such
strategies. This is in stark contrast to more individualized working conditions
existing in e.g. the UK (Hayes & Moore, 2017). The practice of responsible
autonomy is, however, not without costs. For example, Liebst and Monrad
(2008) highlight the emotional strain involved, while others such as Tufte (2013)
reveal the self-intensification at play. These tendencies are echoed in Norwegian
research into elderly care (Rasmussen, 2004; Kirchhoff & Karlsson, 2013).
New trends in elderly care focusing on active ageing and self-sufficiency
may, however, pave the way for a revitalization of autonomy (Kamp, 2013;
Hansen, 2015). As mentioned in the section above, new tasks like physical
training and motivation for self-development have been introduced. This does
not mean that the standardization and time scheduling of work introduced as
part of NPM have been abandoned. However, making rehabilitation happen
implies adjusting activities to the individual person. In the study by Hansen and
Kamp (2018) care workers describe how rehabilitative care implies that they
have become more observant, analytical and able to see the physical and men-
tal potentials of clients to develop and participate in care and practical tasks, as
illustrated by the following quote:
I think you see a bigger picture. Before, you would come and clean –
fne . . . Now, you see other possibilities and think: . . . ‘you [the client]
could maybe take the duster?’ In that way – get people involved, right?
Where I might have been more inclined to do more things before, with-
out questioning.
(Laura, home trainer; Hansen & Kamp, 2018)
The case of elderly care 251
providers of care services. Clients are positioned as rational market actors in charge
of their own care provision, with the power to choose between the services on
offer by different providers, and thus as empowered to exit a care relationship if
it is not satisfactory (Eskelinen et al., 2006; Rostgaard, 2006). However, studies
have shown that clients are reluctant to become the envisioned freely choosing
care consumer, giving continuity in the care relationship higher priority than
the free choice of care provider (Rostgaard, 2011). As a counterpart to this (not
fully realized) care customer, care workers are positioned as providers of stand-
ardized services and given a low degree of professional discretion and influence
on services. On the one hand, as Eskelinen et al. (2006) have pointed out, this
development stands in stark contrast to attempts to professionalize elderly care
work, creating a contradictory position for care workers. On the other hand,
as described earlier, the standardization and marketization of tasks involved an
outsourcing of many of the practical care tasks, such as cooking, shopping and
cleaning. These tasks are often devalued and not considered central to profes-
sional identity in the elderly care profession, and care workers thus do not
tend to see their outsourcing as a threat to their professionalism (Kamp, 2012).
Standardization and marketization thus not only offer a challenge to professional
autonomy but also an opportunity to strengthen professional identity as tasks
that are considered non-professional are toned down.
Later developments have introduced other articulations of the care relation-
ship, adding to its complexity and to the complexity of care worker and client
identities. With the described activation and rehabilitation efforts that have
become widespread in the Danish elderly care sector, the care relationship is by
some care workers described as becoming more equal and cooperative, allow-
ing them to exit the service role articulated in marketized care relationships. As
a care worker in a study of homecare rehabilitation efforts commented:
It becomes less like ‘masters and servants’, you see? . . . Previously, you
rushed in and did all kinds of things . . . and now it’s just become more
equal, I think. So we help each other out, or: ‘so you can do that, and
then I’ll do this’.
(Rita, social and healthcare assistant, Hansen, 2015)
With rehabilitation and activation eforts, clients are given a more active role
and are encouraged and trained to perform as many care tasks as possible them-
selves. Care workers disassociate themselves from the image of ‘the maid’ and
take on an identity as coaches, sometimes helping out, but primarily motivating
and training clients to care for themselves (Hansen, 2015; Hansen & Kamp,
2018). The care relationship in this manner becomes a joint project to achieve
goals of self-sufciency and independence from help for clients.
However, the care relationship as a ‘joint project’ between equal partners
seems to be an ideal not always attainable in practice. The care worker’s pro-
fessional identity as a motivating coach and partner is dependent on the client
The case of elderly care 253
Concluding discussion
This chapter has focused on the specific field of elderly care in order to provide
a nuanced picture of how NPM and later reforms have influenced the working
lives of welfare professionals. We argue that NPM, at least in a Nordic version,
does not simply lead to de-professionalization and loss of autonomy.
254 Agnete Meldgaard Hansen and Annette Kamp
Danish elderly care has actually been subject to quite classical NPM reforms
(Hood, 1991), creating internal markets through contractualization and lead-
ing to standardization and fragmentation of work. However, it has remained
a largely public area of employment, employing well-organized welfare
professionals.
As we point out, much research in the area does indeed show how NPM
has implied fragmentation of tasks, loss of autonomy, recognition and profes-
sionalism, which are the effects usually associated with NPM reforms. But as
we also show, this is not the whole story. Various tasks have been included in
and excluded from elderly care over a long period of time, reflecting shifting
discourses that frame the conception of the needs of elderly people, but no
doubt also in intimate interaction with reforms aiming at rationalization and
retrenchment in the sector. Also involved are the continuous efforts to enhance
professionalization.
At the same time, although autonomy has been attacked by reforms, we
point out how the large and well-organized communities of workers in elderly
care have also been a site for resistance, misbehaviour and responsible auton-
omy, implying that although work has formally been standardized, it is seldom
carried out by the book. Many studies included in our chapter underline how
standardized work routines often fall short when addressing the shifting needs
and tasks in work with frail elderly people. We also demonstrate how new
conceptions of ageing and elderly people have paved the way for other forms
of care based on principles of rehabilitation. These forms of care offer more
autonomy and have formed a basis for a renewal of professionalism. That is also
true of the influx of new so-called welfare technologies that aim to sustain the
process of rehabilitation. New tasks and new possibilities for increasing discre-
tion in care work seem to be the result, and these possibilities are embraced by
welfare professionals.
We can thus observe how the process of professionalization is ongoing.
There are times where autonomy is weakened and the core tasks shift over
time, but there are also times when the profession can be reshaped and trans-
formed. This may be seen as characteristic of this type of profession. As a form
of historically achieved institutionalization, elderly care functions as a site for
shaping and influencing the different types of reforms introduced, thus reflect-
ing Nordic negotiated modernization.
However, welfare professions are not as strong and independent insti-
tutions as classical professions. Rather, they resemble occupations and are
much more dependent on and interconnected with the state with its shift-
ing demands on the profession and the policy trends that evolve. So they
must as institutions be more flexible in adapting and renegotiating knowledge
domains and professional identities (Jørgensen, 2009).
As we have underlined, professional identities are not simply shifted over
the course of time; different orientations co-exist in the field which may lead
to tensions and conflicts among professionals. Here, the plural and shifting role
The case of elderly care 255
of the client poses a major challenge. Care relations are traditionally conceived
as central to professional identity, but developments in the field of elderly care
in many ways challenge the classical conception of care relations based on
empathy and continuous contact. While NPM introduced marketized relations
in the form of consumerism, NPG encourages the self-reliant and empowered
partner. Researchers in the field agree that these policy goals are not easily
accomplished, as all clients do not necessarily take on the new roles. However,
we show how this development implies that welfare professionals must negotiate
possibly contradictory relations.
In our introduction to this chapter, we raised the broader question of
how public sector modernization in the Nordic countries has evolved and its
implications for welfare professions. Taking elderly care as a case, we would
argue that Nordic NPM may provide possibilities to retain autonomy and
professionalism, but we also show that it may not be without costs in terms
of struggles, emotional strain and self-intensification. New reforms aiming at
changing roles and relations between professionals and clients may, however,
more radically change the scene and possibly provide new opportunities for
building autonomy and professionalism.
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258 Agnete Meldgaard Hansen and Annette Kamp
Welfare professionals in
transformation
The case of police officers in Norway
Christin Thea Wathne
Introduction
The Norwegian Ministry of Justice and Public Security and the National Police
Directorate constitute the central leadership of the Norwegian Police Service
(Politi- og lensmannsetaten), which is one of the oldest government agencies
in Norway. The police districts are divided into police station districts and rural
police station districts. Each police district is led by a chief of police, who is
responsible for all police services, the budget and the results. The Norwegian
Police Service currently has approximately 13,000 employees. When women
were given the equal right to enter the police force in 1958, the police force
had a masculine air about it, and the police corps consisted almost entirely of
men. Today, 46% of all employees in the police force are women, while 31%
of those trained as police officers are women. In total, 32% of the managerial
positions are held by women (Politiet, 2018a).
The Norwegian Police has been a national police force since 1937. In addi-
tion to performing the usual police tasks in rural areas, the Norwegian rural chief
of police has had a number of public and civil tasks that have helped give the
police a civil image (Støkken, 1981, p. 36). Although the government estab-
lished and ran a three-month police academy in 1919, there were no formal
educational requirements for being employed as a police officer in Norway
until far into the 1950s. Before 1920, any training in upholding public order
was largely carried out in the day-to-day police work. After the war, a two-
year educational programme was established at the Norwegian Police Academy,
and from 1992 it was changed to a three-year degree-level programme. This
development contrasts sharply with that in Denmark, where the police are still
to this day trained in a two-year police academy for its national police, called
Politiskolen (Politiskolen, 2018). Since 2004, the Norwegian police educa-
tion programme has been accredited as a Bachelor’s degree (Hove, 2012).
Today, the Norwegian Police University College offers two Master’s pro-
grammes (The Norwegian Police University College, 2018). In other words,
the Norwegian Police University College safeguards the professional standards
of the Norwegian police by developing and communicating the knowledge,
The case of police officers in Norway 261
skills and attitudes that the police need to have in order to ensure security,
law and order. Knowledge from the legal courses and investigation classes
have held a dominant position in the training programme all the way up to
the present day. It was only from the 1980s onwards that the focus on broad,
knowledge-based maintenance of public order and a service directed at the pub-
lic was formally included in the programme. With the university college project
(Høgskoleprosjektet), this became even more prevalent (Hove, 2012). In the
1990s, the idea was that this study programme would qualify the candidates for
a broader police role, which is expressed in the emphasis on prevention and the
social sciences. The programme was now geared at the generalist and would
provide a broad qualification for operative police work, investigation and pre-
ventative work, alongside certain administrative tasks (Hove, 2012). In sum, it
can be said that this modern police has been more public, more specialized and
more professional than the pre-modern police forces were (Bayley, 1985).
logics are reflected in two different police traditions, which can roughly be
divided into two historical lines: a tradition of restraint and a militaristic tradi-
tion (NOU, 2017, p. 28). The tradition of restraint is characterized by the view
that the police shall be restrained in their use of force, be focused on regulation
by law and aim to avoid shooting or killing people. In this tradition, political
and practical discretion in the day-to-day police work are both emphasized,
and it is to this tradition that the Norwegian police belongs. By contrast, the
militaristic tradition is characterized by secrecy, hierarchic lines of command,
risk management and military solutions that involve weapons and uncompro-
mising tactics. The goal is to eliminate threats, and there is little emphasis on
practical discretion in the day-to-day work. This tradition has its roots in the
continental parts of Europe and other parts of the world (NOU, 2017, p. 28).
With its strong emphasis on efficiency and quantifiable results, the instrumental
logic of the NPM reforms can be seen to have helped to change the societal
view of crime and what the police’s tasks are and how to solve them. In this
way, the reforms have also opened up a possibility for the Norwegian police
tradition to move in a more militaristic direction.
To create a clearer context for this line of thinking, we shall look at soci-
ety’s understanding of the core tasks of the police from a perspective of
historical reform.
police professionalism meant a more self-regulated police that was less affected
by bureaucratic management structures (Sklansky, 2014). The humanistic logic
of the community policing model states that police should be generalists and act
in cooperation with the public (Ministry of Justice and the Police, 1981, p. 35).
The fact that it was only in the 1990s that police education started to emphasize
prevention and social sciences demonstrates how slowly the police education
adapted to this model. The humanistic professional logic was in line with official
police documents about how the police should work. However, during the
1990s this humanistic professional logic was challenged by the tougher tone of
justice policy and the stronger orientation towards the situation of victims rather
than towards the marginalized groups in the streets (Ministry of Justice and
Public Security, 2009, p. 249). At the same time, a number of NPM-inspired
reforms in Europe caused a movement away from the traditional Weberian
bureaucratic model in the public sector (Meyer et al., 2014).
The reforms were rooted in a criticism that the welfare state project had
turned local authorities into unresponsive bureaucratic organizations (Hansen,
2013, p. 120). One consequence of this criticism is that confidence in the
professions has been weakened and that the professions have become more
vulnerable to market, profitability and bureaucracy management (Freidson,
2001, here in Døving et al., 2015, p. 33). The professions have also reduced
the use of discretion in their work (Døving et al., 2015).
Since the turn of the millennium, we find clear signs in society at large of a
pendulum movement away from decentralized management towards central-
ized management with an emphasis on management by objectives (Røvik,
2009). Since it is difficult to quantify the effects of broad, preventive police
work, the idea that humanistic good intentions were sufficient for guiding
allocation of police resources was headed for a fall in Norway as well (Larsson,
2012). The traditional broad prevention methods lost their legitimacy in favour
of more targeted and quantifiable approaches (Hough, 2010; Reiner, 2013).
The changes must be seen in light of the introduction of management by
objectives and results as a general principle for organizing tasks in the govern-
ment since 1991. The focus on reporting goal achievement implied that the
concept of “responsibility” changed its meaning from being about controlling
the power of the police over citizens and protecting their legal rights to being
accountable for how the police spend their resources1 (Walker, 2005). Whereas
community policing emerged as society in general became more humanistic,
NPM logic also came through the door along with NPM reforms and man-
agement by objectives. This may be one of the reasons that several police
studies show that policy culture mobilizes resistance to organizational changes
inspired by NPM reforms (Finstad, 2000; Holgersson, 2005; Gundhus, 2006;
Andersson & Tengblad, 2009).
NPM reforms have a clear ideological-political dimension where the logic
of economism, its concepts and approaches dominate (Røvik, 2009, p. 34).
Traces of how NPM trickled into the police can be found in the rhetoric
264 Christin Thea Wathne
of police management; whereas the police in the 1990s discovered crimes and
solved them, today they “produce” cases. These changes must be seen in light
of how language can reinforce logics that rub off on cultural values and the way
employees think (Ferraro et al., 2005, p. 20). Founded on a view of knowl-
edge that is based on tracking effects using statistics as a tool, this management
by objectives promotes an evidence-oriented understanding of knowledge-
based police work, which has an effect on the police profession as a whole.
Although neither “evidence” nor “what works” (which are key terms of the
evidence movement) play any role in NPM (Johansson et al., 2015, p. 71),
both NPM and the evidence movement are connected to the same institu-
tional logic. In this context, the opportunity of the police employees to choose
what tasks to perform and how to perform them is diminished. In other words,
the profession-based freedom to exercise discretion is changing. In practice,
the introduction of management by objectives meant a new structural instru-
ment for political and administrative leadership (Christensen & Lægreid, 2006,
p. 155). In line with new ideals about how organizations should be put together,
the NPM reforms can also be seen to contribute to changing management roles
in the direction of business managers (Røvik, 2009, p. 161). I will come back
to this issue at the end of my chapter dealing with change in social identity.
The legitimacy of the NPM principles is based on the fact that these methods
work well in the private sector, that they are supported by economic research
(Ferraro et al., 2005) and that the evidence wave is being driven by the pub-
lic sector (Skaftnesmo, 2012, p. 351). The strong support for management by
objectives in public administration can be seen in the context of the stricter
requirements for professional practice set by governments in Western countries
and that the professions respond by providing documentation of “what works”
(Ekeland, 2012). However, this evidence-based tradition can also be driven by
the professions themselves and may affect the organization in various ways. For
instance, part of the motivation for the Danish police federations to fight for a gen-
eral qualification for police training was that the federations were not politically
recognized and did not have a right to be consulted or represented (Christensen,
2012, p. 99). One reason that everyone wants to be part of the evidence wave
may be linked to the fact that the evidence-oriented understanding of knowl-
edge reigns supreme in the knowledge hierarchy (Lumsden & Goode, 2016). It
is then easy to forget that evidence-based knowledge work is also shaped by the
data obtained and how these are understood, and that even empirical bases must
be established and assessed with contextual insight (Skaftnesmo, 2012, p. 350).
2000 (Politidirektoratet, 2006) was that new criminal policy challenges and the
increasing public demand for public service provision required an organiza-
tional shift to make more effective use of the available resources (Report No 22
to the Storting, 2000–2001). This reform involved centralization, whereby the
number of police districts was reduced from 54 to 27 in 2002. The final evalu-
ation of Police Reform 2000 showed a positive effect with regard to fighting
serious crime; however, it also revealed that one of the main challenges of the
police service going forward was to be accessible and oriented towards the
general public (Sæveraas & Alexandersen, 2006).
The police reform adopted in 2015, the so-called “Community Policing
Reform” (Nærpolitireformen), can be seen as a continuation of Police Reform
2000. The main objective of this most recent reform was to build a commu-
nity police that is operative, visible and accessible, and that has the capacity
and expertise to prevent, investigate and prosecute crimes as well as ensure the
safety of residents. The reasoning for this is that the police are under significant
pressure to change, and that organized crime is challenging the Norwegian
policing model and setting new requirements for what constitutes a good
police service (NOU, 2013, p. 9).
Here we see how society’s view of crime affects the structure of the police
organization as well as its focus and methodology. In line with the emphasis on
serious crime, the police’s core tasks are redefined as tasks which directly help
to prevent and fight crime and preserve the safety and security of citizens, and
in which the police is the only agency with the authority and means to carry
out these tasks. This means that the core tasks of the police are narrowed to
concern events and tasks in which the police has the right and duty to exercise
power. In other words, the pendulum is swinging from assistive tasks towards
controlling tasks. Considering that the police have traditionally spent most of
their time on events not related to crime, and that cases in which the police
on patrol only take action at the scene are found to make up over 80% of cases
(Finstad, 2000, p. 170), this redefinition represents a clear shift. An important
difference is that while the key element of the original community policing
model was proximity between the police and the public before anything hap-
pened, the key element of this ongoing community policing reform is that new
technology and mobility are giving us a police force that is present when we
need it i.e. after something has happened.
The Community Policing Reform also implies a relatively strong centraliza-
tion with a reduction in the number of police districts, police stations and rural
police station districts, and thus falls in line with how the Scandinavian nations
are reforming their police forces into more centralized units. The purpose of
this centralization was also to reduce the size of management and achieve good
management and leadership of the police (NOU, 2013, pp. 9, 30). Here we
see a reflection of the control-oriented NPM reform element borrowed from
various types of recent institutional economic theory in which one seeks to
“make the manager manage” (Christensen et al., 2012, p. 216).
266 Christin Thea Wathne
deliver (Hochschild, 1983). This has also been part of the Norwegian welfare
state’s services in a broader perspective.
In Britain, a combination of NPM reforms and emphasis on law and order
have omitted certain aspects of policing, and the emphasis on quantifiable
police tasks has been at the expense of work on minor public order issues
(Hough, 2010, pp. 71, 75). Additionally, the police’s handling of terrorism
and terrorist threats have changed their firearms policy and practice (Finstad,
2015, p. 241) and can collectively be understood to have formed the basis for
a development in a more militaristic direction.
Like the Norwegian police, the British police have belonged to the tradition
of restraint marked by limited use of power and by cooperation with the public
(Finstad, 2015). Finstad believes that “the great cooperation project” between
the police and the public (including the criminal public) can be explained by
noting that the public in various ways recognize the presence and actions of
the police (Finstad, 2000, p. 178). This cooperation is founded on the com-
munity policing logic in which the entire population shall regard the police
as “theirs”, regardless of political divisions in society. Unlike encounters with
other bureaucratic organizations, the first encounter that members of the public
have with the police is often verbal and in person (Støkken, 1981). However,
redefining the core tasks in the direction of focusing on serious crime and ter-
rorism, centralizing the police and new technological solutions imply that the
police’s professional practice may not necessarily be taken for granted in the
future. In the following section, we will examine how resource prioritization
and outsourcing of certain tasks have laid the foundation for narrowing the
core tasks of the police.
for uniformed police when it comes to responding to the more direct enquiries
from the public. A majority of the police employees feel that a lack of resources
causes them to not be able to carry out their work tasks in the way they would
like to, and nearly as many managers (90%) as non-managers (87%) are of this
opinion (Wathne, 2015). It is the uniformed police (92%) who experienced hav-
ing inadequate resources to fulfil their tasks in the way they would like to the
greatest degree – 80% of these have a reduced feeling of mastery due to lack of
resources. This must be seen in light of the fact that it is the police specialists who
have benefitted most from the increased budgets in terms of number of full-time
equivalents (FTEs) (Gjørv, 2012, p. 312; Botheim et al., 2013, p. 11). In other
words, an increased prioritization of the more specialized police force, which
is not as directly visible to the public, has been occurring over time. However,
the traditional distribution in which the uniformed police are largely out on the
streets while the investigators work inside an office is undergoing rapid change.
Today, investigators also work “outdoors”, and uniformed police carry out
investigations as the first police patrol on site. This new way of organizing the
work must be seen in the context of the development of new concepts such as
“police work at site” (politiarbeid på stedet, PAS). In PAS, the patrol that responds
to an event takes the first investigative steps at the scene. By taking photographs
with their phones and recording interrogations, they secure documentation and
evidence far more quickly (Gundhus et al., forthcoming, 2018). Such hybrid
police tasks are emerging as a result of reforms and affect the degree and manner
of each police employee’s contact with the public.
a meeting with a police employee at the police districts, and in this way the
public face of the police is somewhat altered. This development can be seen as
a market-inspired NPM measure borrowed from the private sector, in which
parts of business operations are outsourced (Allvin et al., 2006). This measure
has become increasingly common following a more liberalistic working life
and labour market, and has also spread from the private to the public sector.
Furthermore, civilian employees are now responsible for a large part of the
police’s interaction with the public. The police also purchase a number of
other private services that may not be easy to distinguish from ordinary police
work, for instance offices, custody facilities and prisoner transport services
(Larsson & Gundhus, 2007, p. 23). Not only do these changes narrow the role
of the police towards control tasks but they may also contribute to making the
role of the police less clear in the eyes of the general public. This development
may further accelerate through measures incorporated in the ongoing police
reform in which the police will cooperate even more with other parties, at
the same time as the needs of more users will be met through digital services
to the public such as online police reports etc. The idea is to facilitate “back-
stage” the experience of a better police service among the public, though
this does not always involve more face-to-face encounters with the public
(Gundhus et al., forthcoming, 2018).
In the following section we shall examine how the centralization measures
of the NPM reforms, along with new technological solutions, form the basis of
a stronger management of patrols and less freedom of action for general work
with the public.
shows that having to say no to members of the public felt more difficult than
experiencing threats and violence: while 58% found having to say no to people
who asked for help difficult, 53% found experiencing violence equally difficult
(Wathne, 2015). More employees in the rural police service than other police
employees reported finding it difficult to say no to members of the public; this
indicates that the relational proximity here may make it more difficult to reject
requests for help even if they are not in line with the overall priorities. In the same
way, the public in more rural areas are also seen by the police more as individuals
rather than one large mass. The public’s demand to understand or reverse a rejec-
tion from the police may require time and patience from the police employee.
change cultural norms and values (Christensen & Lægreid, 1997, p. 392) and
that NPM reforms can contribute to moving the manager’s role in the direc-
tion of a business manager (Røvik, 2009, p. 161).
In line with this, a Norwegian study has found that police managers adopt
elements from management logic to a greater degree compared to non-managers.
Police managers are motivated more by management by objectives than non-
managers, which can be partly explained by the fact that managers tend to think
that management by objectives better captures the most important aspects of
police work than do the front-line employees (Wathne, 2015). Increasingly,
non-managers feel that management by objectives does not capture important
aspects of the police work.
The facts that police managers are recruited from the ranks of ordinary
policemen and that well over 90% of all police employees are motivated by
a desire to make a difference for others, strengthens the hypothesis that the
managers’ hierarchical position pushes the motivation towards external incen-
tives, rather than the assumption that externally motivated managers seek or
are recruited to management positions (Wathne, 2015). When managers are
measured by results in the management by objectives system, and to a lesser
degree provide services directly to the public, the instrumental logic that gov-
erns the management system gets stronger motivational force, and the police
manager’s motivation shifts outwards. This is a paradox in light of a study that
shows that the motivation of police employees for their work is in line with
“public service motivation” (Wathne, 2015), where individuals are motivated
by tasks in the public sector because they have internalized values that are
embodied in these organizations (Perry & Wise, 1990, p. 372; Vandenabeele,
2011, p. 90). In this way, the erroneous assumption from the field of econom-
ics that man is an economic actor can become self-fulfilling (Ferraro et al.,
2005). Measures that aim to increase internal competition and reward employ-
ees who act in accordance with set goals can over time lead to an organization
that consists of employees who pursue their own interests rather than the best
interests of the organization (Ferraro et al., 2005).2 In other words, the profes-
sional social identity changes when the logic of the management system rubs
off on the cultural values and the employees’ thinking. In this way, NPM
reforms can function as an identity project where new professional roles and
social identities emerge: “from a servant of the state, its interests and its people
to a manager of organizations and scarce resources” (Meyer & Hammerschmid,
2006, pp. 1001, 1011). Even if specific groups of employees can be associated
with a specific institutional logic, one cannot assume that all members of the
group will always relate to the same logic: “They may be influenced by the
nature of the issues at hand – how they characterize it, or how important
they think it is” (Pollitt, 2013, p. 348). This means that even if these logics
may have contributed to developing different ideas of what constitutes good
practices among managers and non-managers, it is not necessarily the case that
The case of police officers in Norway 277
managers and front-line officers have two distinctly separate professional iden-
tities. When police employees relate to competing institutional logics, they
can construct new and hybrid identities that draw on several types of logic
by mixing new orientations with old ideas (Meyer & Hammerschmid, 2006,
p. 1013). It is reasonable to assume that the new police identity does not
emerge as a clear transition from one identity to another, but as the develop-
ment of a hybrid identity.
Conclusion
As I have shown in this chapter, NPM is transforming the Norwegian police
in several ways. The NPM reforms’ focus on efficiency and quantifiable polic-
ing tasks has, along with the construction of a more dystopic risk assessment,
narrowed the police’s core tasks towards control tasks. This narrowing of tasks
is reinforced by the standardization made possible and assisted by digitaliza-
tion and transports the logic behind the evidence-based knowledge basis of
management by objectives from management level to the operational level.
In practical terms, this means a weakening of the close, dialogue-based polic-
ing represented by the community policing model and the university college
project (Høgskoleprosjektet). Standardization must be seen in relation to the
fact that the professions were from the 1970s subjected to criticism about their
privileges and powers, which diminished trust and contributed to an emphasis
on more control (Døving et al., 2015, p. 33). Previous studies have shown
that the front-line has exhibited strong resistance to the changes brought by
reforms and to stronger control, a resistance which has strengthened traditional
assumptions and work practices rather than challenging the police officers’
objective and identity (Gundhus, 2006; Chan, 2007; Andersson & Tengblad
2009). However, the technological measures in the police reform contribute to
a partial standardization of front-line work by reducing the freedom of choice
of tasks and solution methods. This is a significant difference which also makes
it more challenging to mobilize resistance to the changes. In this way, NPM,
together with the digitization wave, has weakened the police profession in
new ways. What will happen to police identity and public relations over time
remains to be seen.
Notes
1 At the end of the 1980s, the concept of “audits” became increasingly common and
more and more entities were required to provide detailed accounts of their activities
(Walker, 2005, p. 3).
2 This does not mean that police employees who follow the NPM logic are necessarily
more concerned with their own careers than the organization’s interests. It may be a
question of loyalty based on the belief that a police employee, as part of that state’s politi-
cal power, must conform loyally to the demands which management puts on them.
278 Christin Thea Wathne
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Part V
Terms of employment
Precarious work in a Nordic setting
Introduction
Helge Hvid and Eivind Falkum
Introduction
Precarious work, understood as work conditioned by a lack of security and
predictability (Standing, 2014), is not a new phenomenon in the history of
capitalism. However, according to Isabell Lorey (2015 [2012]), our experience
of precarity is relative, always mediated by the social and political institutions
shaping societal life. Lorey argues that contemporary precarious work is char-
acterized by new and specific dynamics following the rapid globalization of
the world economy since the 1980s. Kalleberg (2009, p. 1) emphasizes that
“uncertain and unpredictable work contrasts with the relative security that
characterized the three decades following World War II”, while Beck (2000)
describes a “new political economy of insecurity”. With reference to Karl
Polanyi’s classic work from 1944, The Great Transformation, we also see signs
of a new “big transformation” of society suggesting that precarization mirrors
new forms of crises in global developments in capitalism. Processes of flexibi-
lization, polarization and degradation of work have all been associated with
precarious work (Kalleberg, 2003; Sennett, 2006; Munck, 2013; Paret, 2016).
Despite critical voices warning against the transition to an age of insecurity
and social instability at the turn of the millennium (Sennett, 1998; Beck, 2000),
the norm of the standard employment relationship (SER), understood as full-
time, continuous employment with one employer (Vosko, 2009, p. 396) still
dominates Nordic working life. Is then precarization in the Nordic countries a
relevant theme for research?
Two main questions guide this chapter: (1) “How is the precarization of
employment expressed in Norway and Denmark?” and (2) “Is the Nordic
model resilient to precarization?” We start by analysing the relationship
between flexibilization and precarization in a brief literature review. Here, we
pay particular attention to how processes of flexibilization, polarization and
work degradation are related to precarization and insecurity. We then give a
short account of how Norway and Denmark fare on some measures associated
with precarity. The challenge of measuring precarization with standardized
quantitative instruments is a point that we will touch upon, also considering
relevant results from qualitative studies.
286 Mari Holm Ingelsrud et al.
To answer the second question, we will describe how legal, normative and
economic boundaries govern the employment relationship in Norway and
Denmark. We also discuss how standard employment is challenged by pro-
cesses of flexibilization, increasing polarization and decreasing union density.
We conclude the chapter by summing up the discussions and relating them to
issues dealt with in the three following chapters in this Part of the book.
good society they would like to create. The precariat is a floating labour sup-
ply moving in and out of jobs and is characterized by a lack of occupational
identity around which their lives can be generatively structured. The precariat
often enjoy fewer rights than full citizens and sometimes lose rights along the
way. Standing has defined seven forms of labour insecurity that are related to
precarity as a phenomenon: labour market insecurity, employment insecurity,
job insecurity, work insecurity, skill reproduction insecurity, income insecurity
and representation insecurity. According to Standing, it is the breakdown of
security into one or more of these dimensions that constitutes precarity. Labour
insecurity in one or more forms also leads to a more heterogeneous labour
force. Perhaps most importantly, class divisions have been supplemented by
(im)migrant divisions and hierarchies (McDowell et al., 2009).
Sennett (2006) argues that organizational changes in firms at the cutting
edge of the economy have a cultural influence on broad aspects of life, from
the valuation of skills to consumption and politics. The economic logic of the
stock market favours short-term thinking, creating volatile businesses run by
consultants who are in it for quick gains. The ability of businesses to adapt rap-
idly is seen as a prerequisite for success. The ethos of flexibility is increasingly
guiding working life, changing how we are valued as workers, how we work
and how we live. For employees, flexibility is linked to increased risk and inse-
curity in work through the shift towards more precarious employment (Allen
& Henry, 1997). Also taking the standpoint of the workers, Kalleberg (2009)
defines precarious work as “employment that is uncertain, unpredictable and
risky from the point of view of the worker” (Kalleberg, 2009, p. 2).
Different forms of labour flexibility have expanded and become core
elements in the development of post-Fordist and neoliberal labour market
(de)regulations and state policies (Castel & Dörre, 2009). A recent review
(Spreitzer et al., 2017) identifies three dimensions of flexibility that underlie
research on alternative work arrangements: the employment relationship, the
scheduling of work and where work is done. Flexibility on these dimensions
offers possibilities for both employers and employees, albeit sometimes in con-
flicting ways. Flexible employment relationships include direct non-standard
employment (on-call work, part-time work and seasonal employees), agency
work and contract work. Flexibility in the employment relationship is posi-
tive from the vantage point of the firm, minimizing risks involved in hiring.
Standing (2014) states that numerical flexibility related to growth in temporary
and part-time jobs and outsourcing is an important rationale for precarization.
He also points to increased wage flexibility in moving from fixed to flexible
pay and how what he calls “social income” (the sum of income needed) is
becoming more insecure. Finally, functional flexibility is related to manage-
ment control over work and the ability to shift employees between tasks,
positions and workplaces. It involves potential de-professionalization and
reduction of the influence of occupations and professions and their unions,
thus resulting in growing insecurity and individualization.
288 Mari Holm Ingelsrud et al.
The individualization of risk through increased flexibility does not have the
same consequences for all employees. For some groups of high-skilled workers,
increasing flexibility offers the possibility of tailoring one’s working life according
to one’s own preferences. Contract work for this category of workers might rep-
resent great possibilities, while the perceived risk and insecurity remain low. At
the other end of the labour market, low-skilled workers who are easily replaceable
might find themselves struggling to find a job that offers continuity of employ-
ment and adequate payment (Spreitzer et al., 2017). For these workers, flexibility
is synonymous with unpredictability and insecurity. As such, the flexibilization of
employment contributes to the polarization of work as discussed earlier.
Precarity has previously been associated with the deterioration of work and
employment relationships among unskilled and skilled workers in the private
sector (Kalleberg, 2009; McKay et al., 2012). However, there is an increasing
awareness of how precarity is spreading to public employees and highly edu-
cated workers. According to Isabell Lorey (2015 [2012]), the increasing focus
on precarity reflects the fact that we are currently undergoing a change towards
“governmental precarization”. She separates the common existential condi-
tion of precariousness from the historically specific feelings of precarity that
result from institutional attempts to mediate precariousness. What constitutes
the current neoliberal governmentalization is the increasing individualization
of the processing of precariousness and the creation of security. Through flexi-
bilization, economic risks are shifted from employers to employees.
Other scholars, however, challenge the widespread idea that precarious
work is exclusively linked to recent processes of neoliberal politics and flexibi-
lization. According to Betti (2016), a gendered historical approach shows that
women and migrants experienced a “significant level of precariousness” even
during the period regarded as the heyday of the standard employment relation-
ship and the “golden age” of capitalism (Hobsbawm, 1994), i.e. the first three
decades or so after World War II. In this perspective, precariousness is not a
new phenomenon, rather it is embedded in industrial capitalism. Thus, it is not
the existence of precarious work in itself, but the level of precariousness and
how precariousness spreads across the work force that have changed.
The theories reviewed in this section cover various aspects of precarization:
polarization, flexibilization and work degradation. The next section inves-
tigates how precarization is expressed in Norway and Denmark, specifically
with respect to increasing polarization through flexibilization and increasing
job insecurity. We also argue that the most used statistical measures of precar-
ity might conceal significant developments in Nordic working life that only
appear when we focus on specific sectors.
late 2000s has hardly shown any increase in different types of “atypical” work.
The term atypical work simply describes deviations from what is regarded as
typical, i.e. the standard employment relationship. Hence, it is not identical
to precarious work. As Vosko (2010, p. 2) has pointed out, there is clearly
a relationship between the two concepts, but some non-standard or atypical
employment can be relatively secure, and precariousness may apply to all kinds
of work for remuneration. In this chapter, however, we find it relevant to base
our discussion on statistics on atypical work, as we consider the scope of atypi-
cal work as a marker and prerequisite for the existence of precarious work.
The part-time employment rate is high in Norway (24% of total employ-
ment in 2015), while in Denmark it is closer to the level of the rest of the
EU28 (21% and 19%, respectively). Figures from Eurostat show an increase in
the part-time employment rate in Denmark and EU28 (from 18% and 17% in
2005) and a small decrease in Norway (from 26% in 2005). They show a stable
temporary employment rate at around 11% in EU28, and 7% in Denmark and
Norway. There is a small increase in the long-term unemployment rate in all
countries, from 1.1% in 2005 to 1.7% in 2015 in Denmark and from 0.8% to
1% in Norway. These figures are lower than those of EU28 at 4% in 2005
and 4.5% in 2015.1 However, the prevalence of precarious jobs is likely to be
underestimated in surveys such as the Labour Force Survey. For instance, those
workers holding the most precarious positions, such as immigrant workers, are
unlikely to be invited to answer the questionnaires.
The Nordic countries are, like the rest of the Western world, witnessing
increasing economic polarization (OECD, 2017). Research specifically on
migrant labour suggests that migrants tend to end up in non-standard employ-
ment arrangements to a greater extent than native citizens (Ødegaard, 2014;
Neergaard, 2015; Raess & Burgoon, 2015; Broughton et al., 2016, p. 50).
Migrant workers are often overrepresented in the temporary work agency
(TWA) industry, reflecting the TWA industry both as an entry point to the
labour market and the role the industry plays in terms of facilitating cross-
border mobility (Coe et al., 2009, 2010; Friberg, 2016).
For Norway, this both applies to short-term, circular migration and more
long-term migration (Nergaard et al., 2011). Approximately 40% of registered
employees in the staffing industry in Norway were non-Norwegian citizens in
2016 (Ellingsen et al., 2018) compared to approximately 25% just six years ear-
lier (Nergaard et al., 2011). Migrants are often in a less regulated space as posted
workers and are put under pressure from (foreign) employers that operate in
Norway to work for sub-standard wages and conditions, even though this is
deemed illegal by the Work Environment Act. Eldring and Schulten (2016)
point out that labour market regulations have little effect if not enforced or
monitored closely. However, studies show that working conditions for Eastern
European EU nationals in 2010 had improved from levels in the first years fol-
lowing the 2004 EU enlargement. For instance, Alsos and Eldring (2014) find
that the strengthened regulation on wages through the general applicability of
290 Mari Holm Ingelsrud et al.
the collective agreement had some positive effects. However, 38% of posted
Polish workers in Norway still received below the stipulated minimum wage
in 2010. Haakestad and Friberg (2017) conclude that large-scale migration has
had a degrading and deskilling effect on skilled work in the Norwegian con-
struction industry.
In addition, with reference to Denmark and Sweden, Refslund and
Thörnquist (2016) point out that migrants are often constrained to take on jobs
in comparatively unorganized sectors and therefore become “low-wage” com-
petitors. Refslund (2016) finds that labour migrants in certain industries such
as cleaning and agriculture are constrained by not knowing how to claim their
rights in the Danish agreement-based model of industrial relations. Hansen
and Hansen (2009) find that for instance very few East European construction
workers are organized, and attribute this to high wages and different cultures in
their home countries. Andersen and Felbo-Kolding (2013) show how migrant
workers are perceived as more willing to accept flexible jobs and are presented
with worse working conditions by employers. However, it is not only a lack
of knowledge of the capacity to enforce their rights that makes it difficult
for many migrants to decline temporary or flexible employment. It is also
due to a continuous decline in social security for migrants (Bredgaard et al.,
2009; Mailand & Larsen, 2011). As Rasmussen et al. (2016) point out, this
results in more regulation gaps, which means for migrants that: “The bound-
aries between forced labour and very exploitive conditions tend also to be
blurred” (Rasmussen et al., 2016, p. 82). In a comparison between Denmark
and Norway, Friberg et al. (2014) find that differences in institutional configu-
rations between the countries result in different outcomes for Polish migrant
workers. Due to higher levels of union organization, the majority of Polish
migrants in Denmark earn wages much closer to those of Danish workers than
Polish migrants in Norway.
At the other end of the labour market, surveys among highly educated
workers in Denmark show higher figures for temporary employment than the
labour force surveys, and the numbers have increased significantly in recent
years (Pedersen & Ribe, 2013; Scheuer, 2017). There are other uncertainties
connected to a precise quantification of precarious work. One example is the
attempt to measure the amount of involuntary part-time work, where what is
considered involuntary is debated. There is also the often confusing and mixed
use of the notions of atypical, contingent and precarious work. Atypical work
can be anything but precarious work, if one asks successful freelancers or inde-
pendent professionals. On the other hand, workers in standard employment
relationships may hold severely stressful jobs, be affected by insecurity and have
experienced periods of unemployment.
If we define precarity in line with Kalleberg (2012) and others, we have to
look beyond mere changes in the prevalence of atypical forms of employment
relationships and take several factors into account that identify changes in both
work and society at large. The societal and economic developments pointed
Precarity in Nordic working life? 291
This shows that the standard employment relationship retains its strong posi-
tion. However, point 6 was included in 2015 as part of a liberalization of
temporary employment. Temporary positions and the hiring of agency workers
are to be exceptions. There are quite strict laws governing the use of temporary
employees or agency workers, mainly allowing this when the work itself is
temporary, as replacements for permanent employees on leave of absence or in
the case of trainees. The Working Environment Act, granting employees both
the possibility to influence work and the duty to participate, also covers indus-
trial relations. Collective agreements may include exemptions to the Working
Environment Act to the extent that is covered by the act. For instance, while
the law states that normal working hours are 40 hours per week, unions with
more than 10,000 members may agree with employers or employers’ organi-
zations on working hours for their members that exceed these limitations.
There is no minimum wage in Norway. However, some sectors subject to
Precarity in Nordic working life? 293
relatively more labour migration, employees do not profit from the rights and
benefits associated with employee participation in the labour market.
Close to a third of the Danish workforce is employed in “atypical” work, and
although a fair amount of these workers are well-established and not relevant
to include in the precariat, being outside the formal agreements of the normal
full-time, permanent jobs that are the norms for regulation can have many con-
sequences. It can be difficult to obtain certain social benefits like unemployment
pay, occupational pension schemes, private health care insurance schemes and
paid maternity, paternity and parental leave (Mailand & Larsen, 2011, p. 27). Also,
formal rights to further training and education are difficult to obtain for work-
ers outside the standard employment relationship. Broader societal consequences
include difficulty in getting a home loan or establishing a family. Although the
flexicurity model builds on mutual agreements on providing security to employ-
ees, it primarily offers security to those in normal full-time, permanent jobs.
Workers outside the labour market or with contingent work might only expe-
rience the flexibility part of “flexicurity”, which makes the model a barrier to
creating a decent life. On a broader societal level, this is also the result of a move-
ment from welfare to workfare (Peck, 2001) where social benefits are dependent
on stable labour market affiliation. The transformation of the state to a “competi-
tion state” (Pedersen, 2013) with its focus on securing the best opportunities for
companies to compete in a global market is part of this development.
Although we have argued that the flexicurity model is not necessarily a
strong barrier to the spread of precarity, flexicurity can in principle be devel-
oped to deal with tendencies to more precarious work for a growing number
of groups in the labour market. The main question, however, is whether the
challenges imbedded in the capitalist economy, and not least the political
responses, are too substantial for flexicurity-related models to deal with. The
objective pressure on capital accumulation and probable continuous financial
crises will create pressure on collective agreements challenging the scope of
security offered to employees. Furthermore, the flexicurity model only exists
as long as there is strong support for unions, not least regarding the number of
potential members they are able to attract. Although membership is not declin-
ing dramatically, it is argued that if membership rates drop just slightly more,
employers will not automatically negotiate as enthusiastically with unions.
Finally, the policies of the unions are also an important factor to take into
account. Until recently unions have not paid much attention to issues of pre-
carity. However, they are now beginning to realize the necessity of developing
responses to precarity; it is necessary to ensure their support and participation
in finding both short-term and long-term solutions to deal with precarity.
Conclusion
Perspectives on the “precarization” of work have emerged as an important
approach to describe and explain structural changes in the labour market, the
296 Mari Holm Ingelsrud et al.
Notes
1 Tables can be found here: Part-time work: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=
table&init=1&plugin=1&language=en&pcode=tesem100; Temporary employment:
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&plugin=1&language=
en&pcode=tesem110; Long-term unemployment: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/
table.do?tab=table&init=1&plugin=1&language=en&pcode=tesem130.
2 www.arbeidstilsynet.no/contentassets/e54635c3d2e5415785a4f23f5b852849/
working-environment-act-october-web-2017.pdf.
3 http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=706&langId=en&intPageId=207.
4 www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/eurwork/comparative-information/
national-contributions/denmark/denmark-fexicurity-and-industrial-relations.
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Chapter 15
Introduction
The Nordic labour market systems are strongly regulated by collective agreements
and influential labour market organizations. This is also true of Denmark, where
the model is often described as the flexicurity model, combining a high level of
flexibility with a high level of social security. However, during recent decades,
the balance between flexibility and security has tipped in favour of flexibility,
and it is becoming increasingly difficult to access social benefits during periods
of unemployment (Ibsen, 2011; Madsen, 2011). In this context, the debate on
the spread of precarious work has recently taken off and received increasing
attention in current analyses of labour market changes in Denmark (Larsen,
2011; Mailand & Larsen, 2011; Rasmussen et al., 2017). The case of gradu-
ates in Denmark illustrates how the problem of precarious work is emerging
everywhere, not just among marginal groups in less developed welfare regimes.
Earlier, the term “precarious work” was primarily associated with increasingly
insecure wage and work conditions for unskilled or low-skilled workers, vul-
nerable groups and migrant workers (Kalleberg, 2009). Problems in these parts
of the labour market are still unsolved and tend to increase. However, now it
seems that highly skilled, well-educated groups in the labour market are also
experiencing changes towards more precarious work in terms of more tempo-
rary work contracts and generally more insecure work and wage conditions.
A university degree is no longer a guarantee of security; you cannot educate
yourself out of the risk zone any more.
Based on results from two related research projects, this chapter presents
empirical examples of how precarious work is experienced and dealt with
by graduates in the Danish labour market. The data consists of a series of
semi-structured qualitative interviews with a broad focus on the interviewees’
life situation and experiences with precarious work. This chapter starts out
by elaborating briefly on the specific forms and consequences of precarity in
Denmark. We reflect on the concept of precarious work, explaining how and
why we define it as we do. We argue that the complexity of the phenomenon
calls for an interdisciplinary approach, viewing subjective experiences in the
Precarious work among graduates 303
insiders and outsiders in the labour market, if not the rise of a whole new and
dangerous class, “the precariat”, as Standing (2011) argues. In continuation
of this, it is fair to expect that some groups will be more affected than others,
revealing differences among professions as well as divisions based on ethnicity,
gender and age. Secondly, technology may play a part in the process towards
precarization, with the rise of the platform economy (Rasmussen & Madsen,
2017). Thirdly, the spread of precarization is inextricably linked to processes
of globalization (Harvey, 2004, 2010) that affect structural conditions that will
shape Nordic working lives in the future. Finally, research on precarization
sheds light on changes related to the Nordic traditions of strong trade unions
operating at the institutional level in cooperation with employer organizations.
Can trade unions address the problem of precarious work in ways that maintain
their relevance in the Nordic model?
precarious work. Potential precarity also affects the not-yet precarious individuals,
as a “horizon” influencing their choices and experiences of security and insecurity.
By using the terms potential and actual precarity, we gain access to an
understanding of the processes that form the growth in precarious work as
related to broader societal and labour market transformations. In this way, it
is also possible to depict how precarity is spreading into the world of full-time
employment. In particular, the expansion of different forms of labour flex-
ibility that have become core elements in the development of post-Fordist
and neoliberal labour market regulations and state policies show us that pre-
carity must be seen in a continuum rather than as an “either-or” (Lambert &
Herod, 2016). When we explore the phenomenon of precarity in a broader
historical societal perspective, we find that the process reflects a gradual ero-
sion of the full-time permanent employment norm developed throughout
the era of Fordism (Castel & Dörre, 2009).
As working life researchers, we aim to explore the subjective dimension of
precarity. The focus on changed welfare systems and labour market regula-
tions must therefore be supplemented by interpretations of changes in worker
subjectivity. The classical image of the worker as a wage earner has been
undergoing transformations flavoured by new ideals of employees as bearers
of an “entrepreneurial mindset” with strong imperatives to the worker to be
passionately engaged in work as a means for self-realization or even emanci-
pation (Ekman, 2013). Understanding modern precarious worker subjectivity
calls for viewing precarious work as not only affecting people’s work but also
their entire lifeworld. It has strong effects on family life, feelings of exclusion
from core elements of society, guilt and shame, etc. Of course, precarity is
a phenomenon that affects people through their labour market participation
(or lack of it), but if we distinguish rigidly between labour market work and
leisure time, we may risk overlooking important dimensions of precarious
working life subjectivity. Living in precarity requires a lot of unpaid work
since those affected are constantly forced to spend time and effort on finding
the next job and thereby maintain their income and professional identity as
highly educated employees.
All these influential drivers of change make it impossible to operate with a
strict generic or decontextualized concept of precarity. Rather, we stress the
importance of defining precarity in the light of (and with sensitivity towards)
these trends, thus viewing precarity in an everyday life perspective.
specifically dealt with people with higher education This includes Sander’s
large study that includes the construction of four different typologies that
categorize ways graduates experience and handle precarity (Sander, 2012).
Sander’s results show major differences in how the challenges are met and how
far precarity affects the ability to act upon one’s own work and life situation.
Others have analysed how the prospect of a precarious working life can influ-
ence how young graduates plan family life (reproductive insecurity, Chan and
Tweedie, 2015), while Armano and Murgia (2013) discuss how knowledge
workers’ strong identification with their work can lead to self-exploitation. As
we will see, some of these findings are also reflected in our Danish material.
The empirical findings that we present in the following section derive from
two related current Danish research projects exploring how precarious work
conditions are beginning to emerge in the highly skilled part of the labour
market. The projects deal with the overall question of how precarious work is
experienced and raise questions as to how precarity affects professional identi-
ties and the meaning of work: how do those affected interpret and respond to
their situation and how do they cope with the growing insecurity and unpre-
dictability of their working life?
The first research project we draw on in this chapter is the PhD project
“Precarity and Professional Identity”, conducted by Anders Jakobsen (as yet
unpublished). The research focuses on the relationship between precarity
and meaning in work and contains a series of qualitative interviews with
graduates exploring how they interpret precarious work as both an opportu-
nity and a constraint to experiencing meaning in work. The second research
project “Precarity: Of Academic Work” is being conducted by Gleerup and
colleagues (2018) and funded by the Danish Association of Masters and PhDs
(Dansk Magisterforening). The research focuses on the socio-historical back-
ground to precarious work as a basis for a qualitative study including over 40
interviews exploring how precarity is experienced and dealt with by gradu-
ates in various highly skilled fields of work in the public and private sectors.
The participants are cultural workers, freelancers, university teachers and
employees in public administration.
The overall theoretical framework and research design of both projects are
inspired by the tradition of critical theory, combining an analysis of societal,
political and economic structures with a psychosocial analysis of subjec-
tive dynamics and orientations. When linking societal and subjective issues
through critical theory, we try to avoid approaches that understand subjec-
tive experience as a mirror of objective conditions. Subjective experience is
always more than that, and the patterns in the dialectic connection between
micro and macro levels are difficult to grasp making use of a single level
of perspective.
In our research as a whole, we draw on a variety of theoretical sources of
inspiration. In this chapter, we highlight the work of Regina Becker-Schmidt,
which we find relevant to the study of precarious work among graduates
308 Janne Gleerup et al.
On the other hand, freelance highly skilled work at least in some forms seems
to be associated with high commitment and identification, and thus presum-
ably high degrees of subjective meaning (Ekman, 2013). Due to the very
different professional fields and somewhat different degrees of work security
among the graduate precariat, differences in the relationship between precarious
work and the experience of meaning in work must be expected.
Meaning is in our understanding rooted in a critical perspective, where
work is viewed as both socially constituted and as an important form of human
expression: a life activity. As such, work becomes on the one hand an impor-
tant potential source of meaning, but on the other, work may also be a source
of experiences of alienation and meaninglessness if instrumental or rigid (wage)
labour orientations gain the upper hand (Kamp, 2011; Gleerup et al., 2018). In
continuation of the critical perspective, the central research interest becomes
how these experiences may serve as a conserving or transformative potential for
the critique and development of precarious academic work.
In the above-mentioned study by Jakobsen, the majority of the participants
experience precarious work as both a possibility and a barrier to experiencing
meaning in work. On the one hand, precarious employment is experienced
by the participants as an opportunity for working within what they under-
stand as their professional field and which is not accessible to them (for reasons
of competition or otherwise) under normal full-time permanent employment
conditions. On the other, many participants emphasize the harsh price to pay
in terms of the unpredictable and insecure working conditions involved. The
majority of the experiences are thus to some degree ambivalent. The partici-
pants have to balance the two goals of income security and the opportunity
to do meaningful work. This implies yet another balancing and negotiation
as to whether a job opportunity is actually professionally meaningful enough.
Many participants find this constant balancing and negotiation of identity to
be a strain. All wage labour involves such compromises, but these participants
point out that it is the permanent state of these inner negotiations that they
find wearing.
However, the participants differ. One participant underlines how precari-
ous work allows her to work within what she understands as her professional
field, which would not be accessible to her otherwise. For her, precarious work
becomes a possibility for experiencing meaning in work:
Yes, I think I would call myself self-employed, and for instance not an
entrepreneur, in other words self-employed in the sense that I myself fnd
the work I want to do. Yes, like I decide myself which work I fnd attrac-
tive and which things I want to do, and if something comes along which I
think would be nice, then of course I say yes.
(Woman, humanities, in her thirties, currently self-employed)
But there are also just some things which the whole time make it a bit
negative, also where you can feel that the more years you have been in it,
the more it wears you down. We also don’t get a pension so in a way you
really cannot put it aside.
(Woman, natural sciences, in her forties,
currently in a temporary position)
This participant has for many years been working in temporary teaching posi-
tions at a university. She has been quite content with this, but is now increasingly
worried about her prospects, pointing out how the goal of professional mean-
ingfulness may lead to one staying “too long” in precarious working conditions.
At the other extreme, one participant underlines how lack of meaning in
precarious work has led him to quit a job:
Professionally, I wasn’t very happy with it. Because even though it was
interesting to work with these people, it wasn’t very interesting profes-
sionally to me and didn’t have much to do with my professional identity,
I thought, so I quit the job.
(Male, humanities, in his thirties, currently unemployed)
The participants thus experience precarious work very diferently, in some cases
as an opportunity and in others as a barrier to experiencing meaning in work.
It’s the sense of not. . . You’re just not important. It shows in so many
ways, we’re expected to do all sorts of things, but we don’t get paid for it.
I’d very much like to join a research group, but I know perfectly well that
when it comes to money and funding of new projects, I’m not included.
These examples show how the lack of social and professional recognition from
colleagues matters a great deal to the participants. When talking about the
inequality, many participants try to balance their analysis, often stressing that
permanent staf can be very friendly, and some participants even blame them-
selves, reasoning that they should have been more outreaching or explicit in
showing their qualifcations and eagerness to invest in the workplace. Others
state pragmatically that they do not expect to be treated as equals with per-
manent staf, as long as temporary staf are not ignored and their position as
co-producers is recognized at the workplace level. As we shall see, these prob-
lems are also interwoven with the participant’s relationship with management.
work often gives rise to doubts and ambivalence about strategy: “Shall I give up
on my professional identity or keep trying to get a full-time job suitable for a
graduate?” Participants tend to hold onto their professional identity by striving
for employment within their professional field. However, conditions for pro-
fessional development in their fields tend to weaken and become differentiated,
leaving the temporary employees with little or no access to further educa-
tion. Management invests educational effort in permanent staff, and interesting
development work is given to them, rather than to the temporary staff. Long-
term strategies of workplace development do not include the temporary staff,
and their individual qualifications are often not recognized as potentially useful
in future planning. In the end, these factors may lead to de-qualification of
temporary graduates.
Most temporary workers experience ambivalence related to their sense of
professional responsibility. They want to engage and take responsibility for the
quality of work, but their time-limited contracts and lack of inclusion in the
professional community at work stand in the way. The interview data show
different strategies to deal with such circumstances. Some engage even harder
when contracts are soon to run out. Others tend to let go of professional
standards in order to protect themselves from disillusionment because their
involvement goes unacknowledged. Some tell us that this is a very ambiguous
situation to be in, since they do not want to downgrade their involvement, but
they are forced by circumstances to let go of responsibility. Sometimes reasons
are practical: they need to spend increasingly more time and effort on finding a
new job when their contract is almost over. It can be an ambivalent challenge,
leaving unfinished business behind, when a contract runs out:
I was kept on illegally for four months. They don’t feel bad about it, and I
wanted to be kept on. Then they gave me the work nobody else wants. . .
But I write everything down in manuals for the next temporary employee.
It’s only fair to do that, when you know you’ll be out of here soon. But
I’m thinking: good luck! Being a temporary worker, you have to protect
yourself a little bit. You can’t get too emotionally involved, wondering
how they’re going to manage when I’m gone.
who aren’t here any more – perspectives on the project have vanished
with them. What a waste, it could have been so great, doing the project.
90% of all the work never done relates to the fact that there’s no structure,
people have just left.
permanent job to show up. They take the opportunities to improve their quali-
fications and CVs through a series of time-limited jobs. However, most of
them also fear that this is not just an initial phase but may instead reflect an
emerging structural change in the labour market whose full consequences they
as graduates are the first to experience. As one of the participants puts it:
Both my parents are graduates with full-time permanent jobs. I’ve got
good marks and I suppose I thought I could be like them. Now I’ve
had temporary work for more than fve years. Maybe this is how things
actually are! I hope not!
Other young participants argue that they have been cheated by “the edu-
cational promise”. They were advised to choose higher education and had
counted on this providing maximum security. Now they fnd that they apply
for jobs they cannot get, because they are overqualifed as graduates.
I’m so much against all the time-limited job ofers – we’re being exploited,
it should be forbidden! Still, every time I get a new ofer, I agree. Sometimes
I even ask my trade union to help me out on a formal level, so that my
contract can be extended once again.
This last quote provokes the question: are the precarious workers well supported
by their trade union, or does the trade union fail to grasp their specifc needs
and interests? Some participants do not believe that the trade union really cares
about them, while others argue that organizing precarious employment is the
most important current trade union challenge and provide practical ideas and
suggestions on how to improve work conditions through trade union initiatives.
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Introduction
The flexibilization of post-Fordist production, neoliberal governance and the
precarization of employment relations have typically been held as important
processes for shifting power structures in Western welfare states in recent dec-
ades (Allen & Henry, 1997). For instance, Peck and Tickell (2002) argue that
an emerging neoliberal order has put considerable pressure on the political
and economic functions of the state, while Jessop (2002) argues that Western
welfare states to various degrees have undergone a shift from the Keynesian,
redistributive welfare state to a neoliberal competition state.
One of the key organizing principles of the state in political-economic
terms is the regulation and status of employment relations, or more specifically:
What is the status of different forms of employment? The standard employment
relationship (SER), understood as permanent, open-ended, full-time employ-
ment in a bilateral employment relationship (Vosko, 2008), has been one of
the hallmarks of Western welfare states. However, the imperative of flexibility
(e.g. Atkinson, 1987) in a post-Fordist economic order has challenged the
dominant position of the SER. In complete contrast, precarious employment
(Standing, 2011) is characterized by insecurity, low income, often fixed-term
contractual employment and inferior social and statutory entitlements (Vosko,
2009). Often cited as a symbol of precarious employment, temporary work
agencies (TWA) rest their operations on mediating mostly fixed-term labour
to provide flexible, on-demand man-hours to a client organization (Vosko,
2009). The idea of labour as a commodity has been highly controversial, in
particular by labour interests which have highlighted the precarious nature
of such work arrangements. In a historical context, TWA work has also been
controversial for employers, as the SER supported capital interests that were
dependent on growing and predictable labour services.
The contested nature of the TWA industry has implied strict regulation
across Europe, in particular in welfare states where the SER has retained a
high status, such as the Nordic countries (Vosko, 2009; Thelen, 2012). In this
Standard employment relationship in Norway 321
chapter, we ask how the economic, legal and normative foundation of the SER
in comparison with temporary agency work has been debated, contested and
regulated in Norway from 1945 to 2018.
We argue that the concrete contestation of TWA employment has been
vital in shaping and reshaping the strong Norwegian version of the SER. The
norms for “standard” and “non-standard” employment relationships were for
a long time unspecified and have repeatedly been subject to change. However,
the research in this field largely relates to the changes in the regulation of
temporary work from the 1990s onwards,1 and in this way failed to recognize
the historical and dialectic process of co-constitution between the standard and
non-standard in employment relations. In our argument, we also emphasize
that it is important not to take the gradual fall of the SER for granted, but
rather to consider its more fluctuating status as an expression of a particular and
context-dependent balance of social forces. A further aim of this chapter is to
pay special attention to the role of employers as an organized class. Historical
research in this field has mainly focused on trade unions and workers, while
research on employers and their historical role has tended to focus on employers
as individual actors.2
Based on written sources from various archives and more recent documents
and academic publications, this chapter will discuss this topic from a historical
perspective. We will also reflect upon the current status of the SER in relation
to temporary agency work. We organize the chapter in the following man-
ner. First, we provide a theoretical background to the status of the SER in
Western welfare states. Second, we present four, relatively distinct, periods of
Norwegian employment history with a focus on how the economic, normative
and legal foundations of the SER both influenced and were influenced by the
contested negotiation of TWAs. We conclude by discussing the current debate
on temporary and precarious work in a Norwegian context, marked by the
remarkable lingering strength of the SER affected by the considerable changes
to how Western welfare states are organized and have been affected by a global,
neoliberal economic order.
Even though these institutional changes or fixes have had different expressions
in different national contexts (Esping-Andersen, 1999; Hall & Soskice, 2001),
the parameters for economic activity have changed quite dramatically follow-
ing processes such as economic globalization and supranational deregulation.
In this way, the struggle over the economic, normative and legal foundation of
the SER is very different today (2018) than it was in 1945.
The SER became the typical employment relationship in Western cap-
italist economies after World War II, both in quantitative terms and as a
political and legal norm. According to Vosko (2010), the SER rests on three
pillars: (1) a bilateral employment relationship between an employer and a
worker, where the worker performs work under the direct supervision of the
employer; (2) a full-time position; and (3) continuous employment. The SER
thus involved a relatively high degree of job security for workers.
In a historical perspective, the pillars of the SER have repeatedly been subject
to change and struggle. Thus, an analysis of the content and status of the SER
as an organizing principle of Norwegian working life must treat employment
norms as dynamic and dependent on changing historical circumstances and a
changing institutional, political and normative context. In this chapter, we argue
that the pillars of the SER are founded historically on legal, normative and eco-
nomic conditions or what we coin foundations (Hansen, 2018a). We argue that
the strength of these foundations constitutes and is constituted by the changing
balance of social forces and the varying opinions and interests of the actors in the
historical periods we cover.3 We concentrate our analysis of the foundations of
the SER on the pillars of continuous employment and the bilateral employment
relationship. The pillar of continuous employment serves as an example.
The legal foundation concerns permanent employment as a status that is
interwoven into a cluster of rights providing social protection based on the
asymmetric relationship between labour and capital. A central element is the
protection against unfair dismissal. The right to permanent employment can
be traced back to the late 19th century and the emergence of trade unions.
Unions challenged the management prerogative, which was practised in line
with the somewhat paradoxical slogan “freedom of work”. This implied
that decisions regarding hiring or firing workers were solely a matter for the
employer (Seierstad, 1986; Bjørnson, 2007). Through trade union mobiliza-
tion, the employment relationship changed from being an agreement entered
into in the name of “freedom of contract”, to a position with associated rights.
In other words, the employment contract was given a more formalized form
or status (Jacoby, 2004; Freedland, 2013).
The normative foundation concerns the extent to which permanent employment
is considered the ideal employment relationship. The concept of “job owner-
ship” is highly relevant for both the normative and legal foundations of the SER.
According to Selig Perlman (1928), unions have fought for the right to, so to
speak, own their positions in a company. In other words, unions have opposed
the view that the company and the job to be done solely belong to the capitalist,
Standard employment relationship in Norway 323
scope of the SER has been dependent on norms, legal regulations and eco-
nomic factors. However, the content of each of these and the balance between
them have changed considerably. The SER has rested with varying strength
at different times on these three foundations. In the first period, from 1945
to 1970, the legal foundation of the SER was relatively weak. This changed
dramatically in the 1970s, when the SER became enshrined in law. In the
third period (1980–1998), the strong normative support for an extensive SER
lost ground as the economy became more unpredictable compared to the dec-
ades preceding the mid-1970s. In the fourth period (2000 onwards), the legal
foundation of the SER was formally weakened through the liberalization of
temporary agency work. That said, the legal foundation has also had a fluctu-
ating tendency following trade union initiatives to extend the statutory status
of collective agreements in the mid-2000s, the implementation of the EU
Directive on Temporary Agency Work in 2013, new provisions on temporary
work in 2015, and consultations and propositions related to stricter regulation
of the TWA industry in 2017–2018.
In our historical account, we focus on the engineering industry and on how
employers and trade unions responded to the TWAs in this sector. From the
third period, we extend our focus to the national level and the legal regula-
tions and strategies of the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO)
and the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO). The main reason
for this is that the SER prior to the 1970s was largely a product of sector-level
negotiations. In that respect, the engineering industry is a case study of how
the Norwegian variant of the SER was shaped in a specific historical context
of labour shortage and economic growth in a specific sector where the posi-
tion of the SER was stronger than in most other sectors. Nevertheless, the
norms for typical and atypical employment had not been determined even in
the engineering industry. Further, this sector played a leading role in general
developments in Norwegian working life. The shift of focus from the sectoral
to the national level in the 1980s was primarily due to the increased involve-
ment of national level actors, as the SER was enshrined in law during the 1970s
(Hansen, 2018a).
[t]he case that frms that are doing human trafcking – to put it that way –
are able to operate, regardless of all guidelines, and I would like to ask
whether a proper campaign can be initiated to put a stop to this trafc . . .
Is it not possible to put an end to the piracy going on everywhere? Cannot
frms and organizations on both sides get together to exclude these frms
completely?5
Some employers probably opposed the TWAs not only for economic reasons
but also because they regarded permanent employment as the ideal employ-
ment relationship. As we shall see, employers in the engineering industry tried
to boycott the TWAs. According to one of the frms, the purpose was to
“bring the workers, who are now like vagabonds in the TWAs, back to their
home towns and back to their old frms”.6 The resistance may have been based
on a perception that the employees belonged to the employers. Unlike the per-
manent employees, the agency workers were regarded as agents of instability,
atypical or even suspicious.
The employers in the engineering industry aimed at strengthening the bilat-
eral employment relationship in order to maintain a permanent core of skilled
employees in each company. The ultimate motive was to gain control of the
labour force. How did the employers attempt to recover the permanent, bilat-
eral employment relationship? First, employers attempted to mobilize through
moralism, as shown in this example from a letter in 1956: “We have discov-
ered a new incidence of distasteful hijacking of people that causes great harm
to us”. In the letter, a firm was complaining about the loss of some employees
who started to work for a TWA. Second, employers attempted to define the
phenomenon and in that way discover a way to relate to it collectively. More
specifically, the employers tried to agree on the content of the concept of tem-
porary work agencies. The aim was to define the concept in such a way that it
326 Per Bonde Hansen and Anders Underthun
would not include activities which were related but still desirable.7 However,
the employers also adopted actions that were more forceful.
In 1955, the employers in the engineering industry decided to boycott the
agencies. In the beginning, the boycott was carried out silently and only by
a few members of the confederation. Later, the boycott extended to formal
agreements between larger groups of cooperating employers. In 1970, 37 firms
with a total of 20,000 employees signed an agreement that in general banned
the use of TWAs but at the same time accepted a strictly limited use of TWAs
for certain work assignments. An important provision in the agreement stipu-
lated that workers who resigned from one of the cooperating firms to join
a TWA were given six months’ suspension from working for a TWA if the
TWA was working for one of the cooperating firms (Hansen, 2018b).
The Iron and Metal Workers Union pursued a similar approach, but the
trade unions were not, it seems, as militant as the employers. The unions
rejected the agencies but accepted the agency workers as members. According
to the Iron and Metal Workers Union, the TWAs caused problems in different
ways, some of which may be illustrated by the following quote by a local union
representative in the Norwegian Iron and Metal Workers Union in 1965:
These frms are typical of what we call private employment bureaus. Their
activities to a large extent involve supply of labour to frms . . . Union
density is terrible; about 80 to 90% are not organized. We view the activi-
ties of these frms as very unfavourable in industrial development. They
weaken our fght to improve wages and working conditions. They pay
their employees randomly and they work overtime as long as they want.8
The criticism raised by local unions rested on two principles that both con-
cerned the question of solidarity: frst, the unions promoted the need for
equality between workers. According to several union representatives, tem-
porary agency workers earned more than permanent workers. The union
representatives also claimed that the temporary agency workers did not adhere
to working time regulations and worked longer hours. Second, local unions
promoted the need for stability among the workforce. The mobile character
of the TWAs made it difcult for trade unions to control their activities and to
include the agency workers in the union (Hansen, 2018a, chapter 3).
In their attempt to exclude the TWAs from the labour market, leading
unions and employers in the engineering industry pursued complementary
strategies to cope with them. The reasons for controlling the TWAs varied, but
the complementary strategies led to a common approach which implied that
the SER was maintained as the standard. The response of both trade unions
and employers in the engineering industry to the TWAs made it reasonable to
argue that exceptions to the SER should be strictly limited in this sector. The
resistance to the TWAs and the demand for labour were core ingredients of a
strong normative and economic foundation at a time when the legal foundation
Standard employment relationship in Norway 327
of the SER was weak (Hansen, 2018a, pp. 344–346). Above all, both employ-
ers and employees were interested in retaining control. In the period of strong
economic growth after World War II, it was believed that a lack of control
would increase wage drift and turnover between firms, industries and parts of
the country (Bull, 1981). The TWAs were in this perspective an “employer”
out of control, as were the workers who engaged in these enterprises.
company level, it was not always easy to subscribe to the collective interest of
excluding TWAs.
However, the continued use of TWAs can hardly be seen as an expression
of changed attitudes towards them among trade unions or members of the
confederation of employers in the engineering industry in general. The norma-
tive foundation of the permanent, bilateral employment relationship remained
intact during most of the 1970s. An important expression of this was an agree-
ment between the confederation of employers in the engineering industry and
the Iron and Metal Workers Union, which was signed in 1975. The pur-
pose of the agreement was to make the ban on the hiring out of labour work
as intended. According to the agreement, contracting and exceptional use of
TWAs had to be discussed and approved by union representatives. An impor-
tant reason for the employers to accept the involvement of trade unions was
the imminent threat of industrial action related to the use of TWAs. In other
words, the resistance of the employers, and thus the normative foundation of
the SER, seemed dependent on the ability of trade unions to mobilize workers
at their workplaces (Hansen, 2018a, pp. 187–198).
The employers’ demand for temporary employment in the 1990s went beyond
this enduring organizational principle. Thus, the demand represented a weak-
ening of the normative support for the SER, compared to the period prior to
the 1990s (Hansen, 2018a, pp. 276ff).
Internal discussions in LO show that the mobilization for flexibilization went
hand in hand with a change in the balance of the two sides of the labour market
and the creation of a new normative standard for the use of temporary employ-
ment. One expression of this was the design of a strategy to cope with what
were called “new developments in the labour market” in the early 1990s.13
The LO’s possible strategy to defend standards of working life in Norway was
to accept some unfavourable changes in order to gain the necessary strength to
counteract the deterioration of these standards in general. More specifically, the
LO agreed to accept some increase in the use of TWAs if certain conditions
were met (Hansen, 2018a, pp. 288ff).
The response of the LO, which may be called a way of strategic and condi-
tional resignation, was a clear sign that the relative balance had changed but still
not dissolved. If the employers were on the back foot when they accepted the
protection against unfair dismissal during the preliminary negotiations over the
Working Environment Act of 1977, the tables had turned in the early 1990s.
The consequence was that the normative foundation of the SER was weakened,
paving the way for a liberalization of temporary agency work.
In Norway, Alsos and Eldring argue that it was more to do with ensuring
wage levels and working conditions similar to Norwegian levels, given that
foreign workers’ wages and working conditions were inferior. In this way,
the struggle for statutory extensions of collective agreements and thus the
strengthening of the legal foundation of the SER was firmly based on the par-
ticularly strong normative foundation of the SER in Norway.
The disparity between workers in an SER and hired workers was not only
a matter of concern in Norway. The issue was raised by many EU countries
after the 2004 EU expansion, and in 2008 the EU launched its directive on
temporary agency work (Vosko, 2009). One of the most important provisions
in the directive was to ensure the equal treatment of temporary agency workers
with workers recruited directly to the client company (Countouris & Horton,
2009), which was prompted by a concern about a growing core and periphery
among European workers. The directive therefore included provisions related
to equal pay for the equivalent position that the agency worker was replacing,
equal working conditions and equal access to workplace amenities. The direc-
tive has nevertheless been implemented differently across Europe, reflecting
the variation of labour regulation in national contexts and the controversy
of labour hire as a challenge to the SER (Thelen, 2001; Bergene & Ewing,
2015). In Norway, the directive came into force on 1 January 2013, when new
provisions on the equal treatment of temporary agency workers and perma-
nent staff entered the Norwegian Working Environment Act (The Norwegian
Government, 2012; The Norwegian Working Environment Act, 2015). In
addition to these provisions, the implementation implied that the client or
hiring company was seen as responsible for discussing the extent and opera-
tion of hiring practices with union representatives. The client company is also
responsible for ensuring that the principle of equal treatment is respected by
the de facto employer of hired workers i.e. the TWA. However, as Eriksen
and Nesheim (2016) point out, the implementation of this regulation through
legislative provisions does not guarantee that actual hiring practices adhere to
the principles outlined here.
In some respects, the EU directive mirrored SER-centrism (Vosko, 2008)
because of the principle of equal treatment between agency workers and
the workers they were meant to (temporarily) replace. Combined with the
statutory extension of collective agreements in selected client industries, the
directive and its implementation through amendments to the Norwegian
Labour Act (Lovdata, 2012) would, in theory, minimize the gap in wages and
working conditions between workers in and outside an SER.
However, the directive also signalled a legitimization and strengthening of
the status of temporary agency work across the EU. The directive was partly
put in place to liberalize the TWA industry in terms of removing regulations
that prevented their operation in national contexts (Bergene & Ewing, 2015).
Although the normative foundation of the SER seems important in these
policy developments, the legal and economic status of the SER may in fact
Standard employment relationship in Norway 333
Concluding remarks
This chapter has discussed historical changes in the status of the SER in Norway
with a focus on the controversies surrounding the use of TWAs. In a period of
serious labour shortages in the 1950s and 1960s, the emergence of TWAs was
seen as a threat to labour stability by both employers and unions in the engi-
neering industry. As a result of joint campaigns, the mediation of workers by
third parties such as TWAs was prohibited by law in 1971 and was seen as an
alien phenomenon during the heyday of the SER in the 1970s. The prohibi-
tion of TWAs was grounded in a strong coalition that influenced the making of
the Norwegian variant of the SER. In simple terms, the need for job security
coincided with the need for control of the labour force. As a result, the eco-
nomic, normative and legal foundations of the SER were strengthened during
the first three decades or so after World War II. However, the SER was never
extended to include all workers, and the boundaries between permanent and
temporary employment were never removed. Due to pressure to allow more
flexibility in an economy marked by the crisis of Fordist production and a more
fluctuating demand for labour, the prohibition was contested in the 1980s and
1990s and finally lifted in 2000. In this way, organized employers mobilized
to reduce their share of the risk associated with operating in an unpredictable
market economy.
Lifting the ban was controversial at the time and became even more con-
troversial with the EU expansion in 2004. This sparked a debate about the
rapid precarization of the Norwegian and European labour markets, where
the TWA industry was a central part of the discussions as it was instrumental
in opening up European labour flows with limited regulation. Even after the
EU Directive on Temporary Agency Work was implemented as an attempt to
alleviate the polarizing effects (wages, working conditions) of labour hire and
labour externalization, the debate in Norway lingers to this day, particularly
due to the the fragmentation and precarization of the construction industry.
Prior to the 2017 general election, the opposition parties and the major labour
union confederation called for a new prohibition, and in 2018 a parliamentary
majority voted for stricter regulation of the right to hire in labour and for
obliging TWAs to adhere to the SER principles of permanent, full-time and
open-ended contracts.
The period since 2000 may be interpreted as a transformative phase in the
history of the SER. Attempts have been made to reconcile employers with
their access to and control of labour with renewed control of employment by
the labour movement in a new regime or “institutional fix” (Peck & Tickell,
1994), where TWAs have been legalized. However, the political developments
since 2016 suggest that the normative strength of the SER has demonstrated
Standard employment relationship in Norway 335
Notes
1 This is especially the case for Norway, with some exceptions. For example, Seierstad
(1982, 1986); Bull (1986). Internationally the situation is diferent. Some recent
contributions focus on precarious labour and the standard employment relationship
in a historical perspective. Examples include:Vosko (2010);Van Der Linden (2014);
Betti (2016); De Vito (2016).
2 This is particularly evident in the Norwegian context but is also debated in interna-
tional contributions such as Stone (1974) and Jacoby (2004).
3 The following paragraphs are based on Hansen (2018a, pp. 31–33).
4 The periods 1, 2 and 3 are based on Hansen (2018a). In this chapter, we only refer
to a small selection of relevant documents.
5 National Archives of Norway, PA-0886 Norwegian Confederation of Employers,
series Fdc. Box 47. Minutes from meeting, Central Board of the Norwegian
Confederation of Employers, 1.4.1970, pp. 62–63. Our translation.
6 National Archives of Norway, PA-1700 Federation of Norwegian Manufacturing
Industries, Series Dci (hereafter TBL). Box 6. Letter from Drammen Slip & Verksted
to the Confederation of Employers in the Engineering Industry, 9 September 1955.
Our translation.
7 TBL. Box 6.Transcript of circular letter from the Confederation of Employers in the
Engineering Industry to its members, 3.9.1955.
8 The Norwegian Labor Movement Archives and Library, ARK-1659, Norwegian
Iron and Metal Workers Union (NJ&MF), case archive, 1955–1988, File 50-44,
1965. Letter from NJ&MF, Branch 34 Sandefjord to NJ&MF, 12. januar 1965 (sic).
9 Ot. prp. nr. 53. (1970–71); Innstilling om arbeidsutleiefrmaenes virksomhet, vedlegg
til Ot. prp. nr. 53 (1970–71); Innst. O. nr. 61 (1970–71).
10 National Archives of Norway, PA-1700 Federation of Norwegian Manufacturing
Industries. Series F – Case Archive X. Box 512. Letter from NJ&MF og M.V.L. to
Kommunal- og arbeidsdepartementet, dated 15. oktober 1980. Our translation.
11 Minutes from meeting, Central Board of the Norwegian Confederation of
Employers, 26 October 1988, transcript of recording tape. Our translation.
12 Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO), case archive 1994–1999. File
261.0 Working Environment Act 1994. Circular letter from NHO to county and
national associations, dated 22 December 1994.
13 Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions, case archive 1988–2000, archive code.
414. Memo from Department for social policy (Samfunnspolitisk avdeling), Ny
trend i arbeidsmarkedet i regulerte former i LOs strategi, dated 25 January 1993.
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336 Per Bonde Hansen and Anders Underthun
of work are introduced, which forms a basis for the interest in the development
in the Nordic countries. Next, a case study of the relation between the devel-
opment of a labour platform and workers’ lives in the Nordic welfare regimes
is presented. The platform is studied in three interrelated analytical dimensions:
the technological development of the platform as a production system, the
organization of work on the platform and the workers’ attempts to manage the
work and their working lives. Following this, it is argued that the working life
problems depicted in the case study can be understood as an interplay between
the development of the labour platforms as a production system and the work-
ers’ relatively precarious positions in the Nordic labour markets. Finally, the
structural constraints and/or possibilities to address the presented problems in
the development trajectory of Nordic labour platforms are discussed.
further sustainability by ensuring autonomy and control in the work and the
quality of the work.
On the other hand, much empirical research highlights the abundant
contradictions between the ideals and practices connected to the use of the
technologies. As Dianne Dredge and Szilvia Gyimóthy succinctly note about
the ‘collaborative economy’, the development of platforms is often strongly
embedded in the competition of a market economy: ‘Exchange is most often
monetized, systematized in a business model and facilitated by technology’
(Dredge & Gyimóthy, 2015, p. 292). In continuation, many authors point out
how the developers of the platforms leverage the positive associations of the
sharing economy to legitimize competitive advantages (e.g. Hill, 2015; Rogers,
2016; Scholz, 2016). Some authors have suggested the adoption of the term
platform capitalism to highlight the fact that although the employment relation-
ship disappears, the capital aspect of the labour market remains. New forms of
exploitation are made possible through an erosion of the standard employment
relationship (Srnicek, 2017). In continuation, a growing body of international
literature points out the risk that the platforms will shift the balance of forces
in the labour market by accumulating capital to enforce a customer-oriented
profit extraction with highly precarious conditions for labour: low wages,
extremely flexibly organized one-off tasks and a lack of social benefits and
union representation (Huws et al., 2016; Standing, 2016; Schor et al., 2017).
The conceptual contrast between platform capitalism and sharing highlights
how the promising technologies can lead to a crisis in the labour market by dis-
continuing the existing institutionalized separation of labour and work. Overall,
these findings provoke scepticism of the concept of sharing as a designation of
the business models without an analytical differentiation between various forms
and functions of the technology-mediated interaction (Belk, 2013; Dredge &
Gyimóthy, 2015, 2017). Richardson (2015, p. 122) argues that the technologies
in the sharing economy are inherently paradoxical in that its new positive perfor-
mances are concurrently ‘masking new forms of inequality and polarisations of
ownership’. She argues that a continued critical engagement is in fact necessary
to support the potentials for alternative economies (Richardson, 2015).
In the Nordic countries, research on labour platforms mostly provides an
overview through descriptive categorizations of the developing platforms,
whereas engagement with subjective experiences of work on the platforms is
sparse. One important finding about work on the platforms is that economically
motivated, practical service labour might not provide the same work identity
and sociocultural gratification as knowledge-intensive work in the tourism
industry: there is a big difference between the ‘social lifestyle entrepreneurs’
establishing local businesses and Airbnb’s individualized ‘micro-competitive
platform capitalism’ (Meged & Christensen, 2017). But the conceptual field is
still open. The current controversies in the international literature can perhaps
be summarized in an ideal-typical conceptual contrast to categorize the use of
platforms in the Nordic countries (see Table 17.1).
342 Søren Salling Weber
Both platform capitalism and the sharing economy challenge the institu-
tionalized class compromise in the form of the employment relationship in
the Nordic countries. But the development of the platforms will most likely
be both exploitative and altruistic, and the conceptual contrast serves both as
an indication of the complexities of the development and a delimitation of the
following discussion of a case study (Yin, 2003) of Nordic platform capital-
ism. The case study was conducted to explore and understand the working life
ramifications of the digitized organization of labour without an employment
relationship in a Nordic context.
Given the limited empirical material, the case does not provide conclusive
answers to the questions raised here, but it offers a useful empirical starting point
to illustrate and discuss the development trajectory of platforms in the Nordic
countries. It also serves as a useful delimitation of the following discussion to
platforms utilized for the organization of wage labour, as it is an example of the
ideal-typical criteria for platform capitalism presented in Table 17.1. It appears to
be typical when compared to the developing platforms in the Nordic countries.
Most platforms organize service labour, provide a minimum wage, attempt to
standardize the work and do not recognize an employment relationship (Dølvik
& Jesnes, 2017; Rasmussen et al., 2017).
Workers on the case platform register on the platform to take on standard-
ized service tasks, mostly ‘regular’ or ‘extensive’ cleaning but also ‘handyman’
work or gardening. Spatio-temporally, the tasks are organized to meet cus-
tomers’ demands. Tasks typically take two to five hours, but in principle can
take up to eight hours and might be repeated if necessary. Prices are fixed,
and workers receive a minimum hourly wage of DKK120. Some workers
have obtained a higher salary due to their consistently good customer reviews.
The platform provides conflict mediation and security for the transaction. It
also protects workers from obvious discrimination by customers. As competing
platforms are not willing to provide transparency, and statistics are sparse, it is
difficult to tell whether the platform is a market leader. But the company has
undergone rapid growth in use, technological development, geographic cover-
age and financial investments, establishing itself in both Denmark and Sweden.
The development of the platform began in 2015 and the organization of work
in early 2016. At the time of the study (Weber, 2017), the platform offered
exclusively cleaning and handyman work for private persons, but today it also
provides cleaning to companies. In early autumn 2016, around 125 workers
were active on the platform, and the number had almost doubled by December
2016. By May 2017, the platform claimed to have registered around 3,000
workers. This indicates both the rapid growth and temporary engagement of
the workers.
an efficient exchange. The platform developers charge 20% of the cost of each
task arranged on the platform to extract value. According to the developers, the
low entry barriers optimize the use of time and will therefore prevail as a more
rational and efficient mode of organization of labour. This reflects a cultural
understanding that the institutional restrictions of the employment relationship
will inevitably be bypassed if they act as a barrier to acceleration (Rosa, 2013,
p. 192). Or, as expressed by the operations manager on the platform: ‘wouldn’t
you like to spend your time on something else?’
Their strategy is to rationalize the distribution and organization of labour
by accumulating capital in a digital tool with automated management of the
tasks. To do so, they attempt to realize a second value proposition: the platform
manages tasks automatically instead of through direct (human) supervision,
replacing management with an IT system.
The most evident and consequential shape that modern acceleration takes
is the intentional, technical, and above all technological (i.e. machine-
based) acceleration of goal-directed processes.
(Rosa, 2013, p. 71)
So now another investment is coming in the new year. And that investment
is going to be somewhat bigger, because in the meantime the company has
already increased in value. So the next investment will be used to develop
even more, you see? And again, Uber is constantly developing [their plat-
form]. Airbnb is too. So, you could say . . . I don’t ever think – and God
forbid we might even say! – that we’ll make it to a point where you think:
‘Oh, now everything’s working the way it’s supposed to’. That’s not how
it works, because if you sit down and think: ‘Oh, well then, that’s fne’,
then you’ll be overtaken on the inside, really.
(Operations manager)
Working life on Nordic labour platforms 345
This quote illustrates how the ‘economic motor of competition’ drives invest-
ments in the development of the patented platforms. The developers plan to
establish an efcient monopoly, but they are constantly forced to attract capi-
tal to develop their platform. The production system is referred to as their
‘core output’. There is a built-in aspiration for monopoly which is not unique
to, but is particularly pronounced in, the development of the ‘lean platforms’
(Srnicek, 2017). The developed technology is decisive for the functionality
and competitive position of the platform, which makes it possible to take on
entire markets by mobilizing external, ‘idle’ resources or users (Demary, 2014;
Standing, 2016, pp. 61, 216–217; Gyimóthy, 2017, p. 34). This pushes the
developers into continued investment in their digital tools and changes in the
organization of labour.
This is the way in which we, anyone, starts up a new company today: You
throw yourself of the edge of a clif.
(Operations manager)
This stage goes on and on. It is never ending. Technology changes day by
day, so if you want to exist in a market, you must change. As a rule, you
could say.
(Worker)
This refects that it is difcult to ensure the quality of the work without
embedding the labour into a relationship which permits an intersubjective
validation. The director notes that this might even be the reason that they
have the most success organizing cleaning, relative to other work: compared
to other forms of ‘gig work’, it favours ‘trust’ in the relation between customer
and worker. Paradoxically, the developers must undermine the embedding of
the labour into a continuous relationship between customers and workers to
maintain their monopoly to arrange the tasks. This entails a lack of control
and changes the organization of the work, not only for the workers but also
for the company:
For me, no, it’s not possible. And for these systems, it’s also difcult for the
company to change.
(Worker)
For the two workers who rely solely on labour on the platform, they must
engage immediately when they appear on the platform.
Worker: Maybe sometimes you didn’t see the phone, and two hours passed . . .
Interviewer: . . . and it’s gone?
Worker: It’s gone.
‘Travelling time, filling up your time and feedback. And the money is not too
much’ (Worker).
When workers take on tasks on the platforms, they establish a fragile com-
mon interest with the platform developers around the emerging technologies:
that of making the transaction work. But the case illustrates the risk that this
ideal of an efficient market for tasks between interchangeable parties employed
in the development of the platform, creates a new standard to meet an extreme
IT-mediated flexibility in the organization of everyday life. This tendency can
be contrasted with a normative ideal of the organization of work founded
in Nordic working life research: that the work must help to build sustain-
able rhythms in the workers’ working lives (Hvid, 2006; Kamp et al., 2011).
The extremely flexible spatio-temporal organization of what is nevertheless
extremely standardized labour is a management-controlled new Taylorization
which undermines control of the work and disrupts the formation of working
life rhythms (Hvid, 2006, p. 146). Despite their best intentions, the platform
developers cannot realize the accelerative effects of the technical innovation in
a competitive market without compromising the sustainability of the organiza-
tion of work for the involved workers.
Workers’ experiences of the poor quality of working time on the platforms
can thus be understood as an extreme case of broader societal development
trends towards changed temporality and heightened flexibility in the use of
modern technologies for the organization of work (Rosa & Scheuerman, 2009;
Rosa, 2013, 2015; Rosa et al., 2017). In the workers’ working lives, it creates
a ‘desynchronization’ of the rhythmic coordination between labour and other
spheres of activity in working life (Rosa, 2013, p. 186). This latently leads to
a loss of anticipatory power, a proliferation of time conflicts and introduces
a ‘situational logic’, both in everyday life and over a lifetime (Rosa, 2013,
pp. 76, 113, 231ff). Following Standing (2014) and Rosa (2013, pp. 144ff), it
seems pertinent to question whether this has consequences for the development
of one’s coherent work identity embedded in one’s long-term life aspirations.
For the less privileged, temporary work, precarious forms of employment and
fxed-term labour contracts both indicate and enforce this accommodation
to performance criteria and thus to permanent competition and existential
uncertainty.
(Rosa, 2015, p. 87, my italics)
For the workers who are in precarious positions in the Nordic labour markets,
the platforms lower the barriers of entry to labour but also change the condi-
tions for coordinating labour with working life. It therefore seems pertinent
to consider institutional resources that could create a divergent development
trajectory of Nordic labour platforms relative to the gloomy picture depicted
in the international literature and illustrated in the case study.
perhaps in part explain their engagement with the platforms, it also suggests a
differentiated impact of the platforms rather than the sweeping ‘disruption’ of
many already well-organized sectors of employment. An extrapolation from
the case study suggests that the societal division of labour will constrain the
platforms to impose a reorganization of labour in vulnerable sectors where
short-term engagement is viable and/or for workers in precarious situations.
In Denmark, private service labour, the strategic choice of the developers, is a
comparatively underorganized sector with both a higher prevalence of marginal
part-timers, students and labour migrants, and more regulation gaps reflect-
ing more undeclared and informal employment (Andersen & Felbo-Kolding,
2013; Rasmussen et al., 2016; Ilsøe et al., 2017; cf. Weber, 2017, p. 22). To
realize their envisioned market for standardizable tasks among interchangeable
parties, the platform developers must choose a sector of labour where workers
are willing to engage.
The containment to vulnerable sectors of work reflects the structural
features of the Nordic labour markets. Although data are sparse, the use of
platforms appears to be slightly less prevalent in the Nordic countries than in
comparable Western labour markets. The most extensive quantitative studies
of the Nordic countries indicate that only 1–2% of the population regularly
use digital platforms to find labour, and that many of these work on the plat-
forms as a supplement to other activities (Jesnes et al., 2016, pp. 22, 27; Ilsøe
& Madsen, 2017, pp. 40–42). This cannot only be understood in terms of the
low job quality of the platforms. For many workers, the low unemployment,
high organizational level, opportunities for education and relatively generous
social benefits of the Nordic welfare regimes provide the structural and institu-
tional power resources to disengage with the platforms. The lack of public and
institutional recognition of work on the platforms also means that organized
workers perceive the loss of employment benefits as insecure (Redder, 2016).
It is thus questionable whether the platforms will unilaterally create a large-
scale shift towards precarious work without an employment relationship in the
Nordic labour markets.
This also poses a dilemma for unions and regulators in the Nordic countries
as to whether to recognize the platforms’ business models. Whereas a quali-
tative improvement of the depicted problems would depend on some form
of recognition of the new platforms and probably increase their prevalence,
continued exclusion is likely to delimit the platforms but risks retaining the
relatively precarious working conditions.
Initially, in Denmark, the unions succeeded in utilizing communicative
power and the ideal of ‘the Danish model’ to delegitimize and thus exclude
the new business models which did not participate in organized negotiations
as employers. This strategy led to the rejection and exclusion of the Uber
platform, where the unions highlighted its incommensurability with the laws
for taxi fares and undermined public acceptability of the platform. Further,
the rejection of Uber is not limited to Nordic countries. It was also a result of
352 Søren Salling Weber
the developers’ lack of will or ability to comply with national legislation. This
strategy of delegitimization has been effective but might be specific to the Uber
platform and dependent on a remobilization with regard to each new platform
for state regulation and/or political consumption to become more generally
effective. Most importantly, it did not rely on a mobilization nor improve the
situation of the workers engaged on the platform. Furthermore, although other
platforms have also suffered from the polemics, they are still in business.
Another strategy increasingly used by labour market parties is to begin
organizing and cooperating with the platforms. This is in line with the institu-
tionalized class compromises of the Nordic countries and could potentially lead
to qualitatively different platforms that take on responsibilities as employers. As
recognized by the director of the case platform presented earlier, ‘you can make
some setbacks, some limitations, you can make it illegal, but it WILL emerge,
either in a new form or a limited or regulated form’. The case presented here
seems to exemplify a broader trend where the Nordic platforms take on more
responsibilities as employers to improve their brand by taking out insurance
schemes, setting minimum wages, setting standards for the work, establishing
long-term relationships with workers and mediating between customers and
workers (cf. also Dølvik & Jesnes, 2017, p. 30).
Within the sectors involved, the ‘capital arms race’ in the development of
technological infrastructure with effective management of labour will lead to
the selection of relatively few and well-known companies and position them as
‘gatekeepers’ for both workers and customers (Srnicek, 2017, p. 98). To illus-
trate this, two out of eight of the Danish platforms for task labour identified
as background research for this case study in 2016 have already closed (cf. also
Rasmussen et al., 2017, pp. 8–9). The selection of the few most competitive
platforms bodes for a politicization, where not only consumers and regulators but
also the labour market parties can influence their development by cooperating
with them as employers. The competitive advantage of capital concentration and
the rationality of systematization in the development of the digital infrastructure
illustrated in the case study could pave the way for transparency and homogeni-
zation of the working conditions for workers engaged on the platforms.
Under much public attention, the Danish unions have recently made a col-
lective agreement with the Hilfr platform. This provides a voluntary option
to join the agreement for workers active on the platform. In this way, Hilfr
is attempting to create a good brand for their platform to attract consumers.
Furthermore, unions not only point consumers towards the platforms with
relatively better working conditions but also attempt to demonstrate the con-
tinued ability of the labour market parties to regulate work through negotiated
cooperation. This could suggest an integration and an improvement of work-
ing conditions on the platforms. The agreement with Hilfr could be the first
of many to come.
However, if the unions do not in fact organize the workers engaged on
the platforms, it is a fragile agreement. The question is whether workers have
Working life on Nordic labour platforms 353
Conclusion
I have here engaged with the development of Nordic labour platforms. The
rationale has been twofold. Firstly, it is pertinent to explore the development
and working life consequences of the labour platforms in a Nordic context.
Secondly, problems related to labour platforms in the relatively well-functioning
Nordic labour markets can highlight global problems with such platforms and
potential institutional mechanisms to address them.
What makes the discussion of labour platforms difficult is both that the
phenomena are dynamic and politicized and that empirical knowledge is vul-
nerable to conceptual inconsistencies. In political discourse, the platforms are
often considered an opportunity to ensure taxation of undeclared labour and
national competitiveness through employment, better resource utilization
and economic growth (Danish Ministry of Taxation, 2016; Danish Ministry
of Industry, Business and Financial Affairs, 2017). To amplify the sensitivity
towards both risks and potentials of the technologies, I have drawn on inter-
national literature to separate the profit-oriented development of patented
labour platforms from the ideals and values advanced with open technologies
developed for sharing. An emerging literature highlights how the strategy of
platform capitalism is to accumulate capital in a technically superior solution,
Working life on Nordic labour platforms 355
attract demand and establish a monopoly for managing the conditions for
agreements on tasks in the relevant sectors. The risk is that this shifts the bal-
ance of power in the labour market.
Although empirically limited, the case study presented here illustrates the
emergence of platform capitalism in the Nordic labour markets. With an inter-
est in the characteristics of working life in Nordic platform capitalism, we can
interpret the case study as an illustration of the presence of the working life
problems depicted in the international literature. Even in Denmark, we can
find platforms where: ‘The rules of product and service development, as well as
marketplace interactions, are set by the platform owner’ (Srnicek, 2017, p. 29).
Taken together with the existing literature on platforms in the Nordic coun-
tries, the findings indicate that workers on the Nordic platforms rely neither on
the structural power of indispensable qualifications nor on the institutionalized
cooperation of the labour market parties. Further, not only do the platforms
disregard their responsibilities as employers, they potentially compartmental-
ize work into ‘gigs’ organized ‘just-in-time’ to meet customer demands. This
can have profound implications for the quality of working life, as it robs the
workers of control and undermines sustainable rhythms in their working lives.
The platforms’ utilization of a ‘well-known judicial grey-zone’ (Rasmussen
& Kongshøj Madsen, 2017, p. 56) with respect to the conditions of employ-
ment are also a substantive problem of the extreme flexibility in their everyday
organization of labour.
It is, however, important to emphasize that the low overall unemployment
and the relatively extensive welfare benefits seem to limit workers’ engagement
with the platforms in a Nordic context. They are thus unlikely to create a large
shift towards precarious working conditions in the Nordic labour markets.
Rather, the platforms seem to reinforce invisible working life problems of work-
ers who are already in precarious positions. These groups are supplemented by
a group that use it out of convenience and are not engaged in the development
of the platforms. The most likely result of the interplay between the platforms
and the welfare regimes thus seems to be a polarization. At this point, the
stronger position of workers in Nordic countries suggests a disengagement
with the platforms, rather than a completely different mode of organization of
labour on the platforms. But the extent of the platforms is likely to depend on
overall developments in the welfare regimes.
Therefore, the problems of working life in platform capitalism demand con-
tinuous innovation in the regulation of the labour market to ensure that the
rationalization of the organization of work with the technologies not only leads to
business models that are viable but also are sustainable for the workers. The uncer-
tainties of unions, politicians and employers reflect what Rosa (2013, pp. 251ff)
calls the ‘steering problems’ introduced by the accelerated rate of social change. As
the history of the Nordic labour markets shows, sustainability can be created not
only by changing the organization of work but also by improving the complex
interrelation of cooperation in the labour market and state-provided social security.
356 Søren Salling Weber
The enduring specificities of Nordic platforms have yet to appear clearly, and given
the limited data, they are difficult to foresee. In any case, it is imperative to engage
with the working life experience of the platforms, as this is key to understanding
and developing the broader institutional mediation of technological changes in
work. With an interest in the international development of platform capitalism,
we can perhaps understand the case studied here as a critical case of the working
life issues of the flexible organization of labour on the platforms (Flyvbjerg, 2006,
p. 230). Although the institutionalized regulation of the Nordic welfare regimes
provides comparatively more power resources to the workers, the problems of
unsustainable working life rhythms remain on a Danish platform. If these prob-
lems prove to persist in this context, we can hypothesize that they are a globally
prevalent consequence for workers in precarious positions engaging with the
customer-oriented flexibility in the organization of labour on the ‘just-in-time’
platforms. Depending on perspective and future developments, we might come
to emphasize the ‘threat’ of transnational business models backed by financialized
technological development or how their limited scope and differing character
illustrate the continued development in the provision of institutional power
resources to workers in the Nordic welfare regimes. In principle, the Nordic
countries’ high wages, low unemployment and extensive social security could
further the development of the sharing economy, which remains a potential for
work on the platforms.
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Closure
The end of the story?
Helge Hvid and Eivind Falkum
Nothing lasts forever. One day, each and every one of us will agree: the Nordic
model, or the Nordic approach, as we prefer to call it, is not with us anymore.
Will it be ten years before it passes away? 50 years? 100 years? Or longer? Will
we at that time still find enduring remnants from the Nordic approach, or
will it have all died out? Will the Nordic experience be relevant to work and
production in the future?
Will collective organization around common interests still be perceived as
relevant?
Will working life in the Nordics still be characterized by relatively high
levels of:
• equality
• employee infuence on management
• autonomy
• learning
• employment security.
Sustainable development
Humanity and the planet as a whole face enormous challenges. NGOs, business
organizations, politicians and companies are oriented towards sustainability.
Where do the collective labour organizations stand in that game?
Closure 361
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Index
free choice 226, 251–252 Gustavsen, Bjørn 53, 57, 58, 95, 97
freedom 2 Gyimóthy, Szilvia 341
Frege, C. M. 181
Freidson, E. 271 Haakesad, H. 290
Friberg, J. H. 290 Habermas, J. 54
Frøyland, Kjetil 154, 194–215 Hagedorn-Rasmussen, Peter 48, 92–114
funding 183, 185–186 Hagen, A. 182
Hagen, I. M. 67, 75
Gelef, Paul 31 Hågensen, Yngve 183
gender: elderly care 245; equality 221; Hall, P. 41
inequality 26; lifelong learning 186; Hammerschmid, G. 276
segregation 4, 19–20, 165, 223; standard Hansen, Agnete Meldgaard 217–220
employment relationship 323; working Hansen, J. A. 290
conditions 120; see also women Hansen, N. W. 290
Germany: democracy at work 53–54; GDP Hansen, Per Bonde 7, 30–46, 221–242,
23; neo-liberalism 41; union density 12; 243–259, 283, 285–301, 320–338
working time 137 happiness 1
gig economy 346, 347, 350, 355; see also harassment 122
platform economy Hartnett, H. P. 199
Gilbride, D. 198–199 Hasle, P. 102
Gleerup, Janne 283, 285–301, 302–319 hazards, exposure to 120
globalization 25, 58, 82, 155, 322; health 1, 14, 43, 102, 115, 138; see also
‘competitive solidarity’ 41–42; mental health problems; Occupational
democracy at work 60, 62; impact on Health and Safety
low-skilled jobs 156; insecurity 159; Health Colleges 171–172
precarious work 285, 296, 304 health, environment and safety (HES)
Gooderham, P. 292 59, 60, 77–78; co-determination 72;
governance 67–74, 75–76, 88–90; foreign or domestic ownership 81–82;
corporations and non-corporations multinational corporation case study 86;
80–81; elderly care 244; foreign regulation 124, 127, 128–130; working
or domestic ownership 81–82; environment 119; see also Occupational
multinational corporation case study Health and Safety; safety representatives
85–88; New Public Governance 218, health services: decentralization 245;
219, 228, 237, 244, 246–247, 255; democracy at work 77, 78–79; Denmark
new public management 232; 223; migrant workers 331; new public
privatization of state enterprises 83–85; management 218, 231–232, 235;
sectors and industries 77–79; ‘soft’ privatization 83, 84; professionalization
forms of 227 224–225; young people’s transition to
government enterprises 76–77, 78–79; work 163–165, 173
see also state-owned enterprises Heien, V.-A. A. 103
government intervention 13, 144 Heiret, J. 39
graduates 283, 302, 304–305, 306–316 Henriksen, Rein 325
grants 185–186 Herbst, P. G. 54
Graver, H. P. 124, 125 HES see health, environment and safety
green agenda 362, 363 Hilfr 352
Greve, C. 228 Hjort, K. 224
grey labour market 120–121 Høigård, C. 261
growth 362 holidays 15, 17, 135
Grundtvig, G. 233 Holt, H. 197, 198
guilt 314, 316, 317 Holter, H. 54
Gustafsson, J. 203 hotel and restaurant sector 120–121
Index 369
minimum wage 24, 153, 292–293, 331; Nordic approach 2–3, 44–45, 47, 359,
platforms 343, 352; vocational education 362, 363
and training 158, 161 Nordic model 2, 10, 194, 359; conficts 30,
mobility 18, 21, 22, 153, 180 44; constructive confict partnership 12;
Moene, K. O. 24 education 172; fundamental narrative 11;
Monrad, M. 250 governance 76; neo-liberalism 43; new
‘moral stress’ 236 public management 236–237; under
motivation 50, 71, 194; new public pressure 26; support-side approach to
management 232; police ofcers 270–271, inclusion 209; working time 134, 149
276; social support 122; working Nordic Working life Model (NWM)
environment 119, 121 76, 78–80, 89, 93–95, 101, 109–110;
Moum, J. V. 103 co-determination 72; compromise and
Murgia, A. 307 consensus 144; democracy at work 58;
mutual dependency 9–10 international management concepts 92;
Lean management concept 103,
NAV see Norwegian Labour and Welfare 104–105; under pressure 87–88;
Service vocational education and training 107,
‘negotiated modernization’ 222, 223–224, 158–159
225, 236, 254 Nordrik, Bitten 47, 67–91
negotiation 13, 181; democracy at work Norway 3–4; basic agreements 33, 35,
56; new public management 236; 50, 55–56, 58, 67, 72, 180, 182–183;
participation and involvement 70; collective agreements 12; competence
social-democratic era 37 reform 182–184; democracy at work
neo-institutional approach 98 49, 51, 52–60, 61, 67, 72, 73–85;
neo-liberalism 7, 30–31, 40–44, 88, 89, economic success 23–24; employers’
320; deregulation 155, 174, 287, 305; associations 12; employment security 3,
New Public Governance 218; new 18–19, 26n8; governance models 88–89;
public management 224, 227–228, 237; inclusion 194, 196–197, 198, 199, 200,
precarious work 288, 291, 305, 306; 203, 204–206; Industrial Democracy
reforms 159, 162; social work 230 research programme 94–95, 97;
neo-Taylorization 63, 166, 226, 230, 250, industrialization 31; institutionalization
345–346, 348 of class conficts 33–35; job satisfaction
Nesheim, T. 332 26n6; knowledge workers 11; Lean
Netherlands 16, 55, 119 management concept 101, 103,
New Public Governance (NPG) 218, 219, 104–106; lifelong learning 178, 179,
228, 237, 244, 246–247, 255 182–190; Marshall Plan 93; migrants
new public management (NPM) 4–5, 6, 43, 289–290; multinational corporation case
79, 81, 217–220, 221–242; elderly care study 85–88; neo-liberalism 43–44; new
219, 246–255; health-care sector 164; public management 82–85, 217; OECD
human resource management 226–227; Job Quality Framework 1; part-time
impact on working life 229–236, 237; work 289; pension funds 52; police
limited success 228–229; police ofcers ofcers 219, 260–282; political issues 50;
219, 262, 263–265, 267, 269, 272–277; precarious work 291, 296; psychosocial
principal-agent model 205; privatization working environment 121–122, 130;
of state enterprises 82–85; resistance to quality of daily work 14–17; regulation
233–235, 237; standardization 69 2, 13, 115–127, 130–131, 291–293;
NHO see Norwegian Confederation of social-democratic era 36, 38, 39–40;
Enterprise standard employment relationship 322,
Nielsen, B. S. 307 323–335; tax burden 20; temporary
Nielsen, Klaus T. 48, 115–133 work 283–284, 293; ‘top level
Nielsen, Peter 25 partnership’ 37; union density 12;
non-corporations 80–81, 90 vocational education and training
372 Index
187, 189; pension funds 52; platforms 36; solidarity wage policy 24; standard
351, 352–353, 354, 355; precarious employment relationship 332; wage drift
work 295, 296, 304, 315, 316–317; 325, 327; see also minimum wage
privatization of state enterprises 83; Warhurst, C. 181–182
professionalization 225; public sector Warring, Niels 283, 285–301, 302–319
217, 223, 224; skill upgrading 178–179; Wathne, Christin Thea 217–220, 260–282
social-democratic era 36, 38–39, 40; Weber, Søren Salling 283, 284, 285–301,
standard employment relationship 322, 339–358
323, 324; teachers 144; temporary work Wehman, P. 200
293, 324–325, 326, 328; wages 17, 18; welfare professionals 217–218, 222,
weakening of infuence 286; workfare 224–225, 229; adaptation of NPM by
42–43; working time 15, 134, 135, 136, 235, 237; elderly care 219, 244, 254;
143, 292; workplace assessment 127 police ofcers 219, 260–282; resistance
United Kingdom: coal mine studies 93–94; by 233–234, 237; responsible
democracy at work 53–54; elderly care autonomy 236
250; human resource management 227; welfare state 2, 7, 11, 17, 20–22, 30,
Lean production 102; lifelong learning 221; education 155; elderly care 245;
182; neo-liberalism 41; new public encouragement of labour market
management 82; police work 267; participation 194, 195; expansion of the
sociotechnical studies 93; union density 223; neo-liberal turn 305; new public
12; working time 136 management 218, 222, 226; platform
United States: democracy at work 51; workers 349, 355; retrenchment 253; shift
Lean production 102; management to competition state 320; support-side
consultants 97; neo-liberalism 41 approach to inclusion 209; uncertainty
universal social rights 20–21, 22 317; weakening of the 159; see also social
user involvement 228, 237 security; unemployment benefts
wellbeing 57, 116–117, 362
Vabø, M. 249 Wilhelmsen, L. S. 185, 187
Valizade, D. 197 Womack, J. P. 100, 106
values 70–71, 149, 340 women: active labour market policies
Van Berkel, R. 204, 206 195–196; education 155; elderly care
Vartiainen, Juha 24 245, 251; employment 194; gender
Vocational Colleges 171–172 segregation 19–20; health-care sector
vocational education and training (VET) 163; labour market participation 22;
104, 107–109, 153, 155–177 police ofcers 260; public sector workers
Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) 195, 196 223; work/life balance 119; see also
voluntary work 361 gender
Volvo 117 work experience placements 201–202
Vornholt, K. 199 work/life balance 48, 119, 138, 142, 147
Vosko, Leah 286, 289, 322, 323 Work Life Barometer 11, 26n1
VR see Vocational Rehabilitation Work Research Institute 53, 54, 95, 97
workers’ representatives 13, 15, 23, 25;
wages 1, 4, 9, 17–18; basic agreements autonomy 16–17; boards of directors 51,
35; co-determination 72; collective 52, 56, 67, 94; democracy at work 49,
agreements 12, 13, 42; concessions for 60–61, 75; global competition 42; Lean
lifelong learning 188; fexibility 287; Operations project 105; multinational
foreign or domestic ownership 82; high corporation case study 85, 86; workplace
23, 158, 356; impact of migration on assessment 126, 128
25, 166, 289–290; labour hire 331, workfare 21, 40, 42–43, 230, 295, 305
333, 334; Norway 34; platforms 341, working conditions 4–5, 10, 20, 21,
343, 350, 353, 356; polarization 286, 25–26; collective agreements 12, 13;
296; security 14; social-democratic era construction sector 166; democracy
Index 377
at work 50, 51, 54; elderly care 244; working hours 14–15, 23, 48, 134–152;
indicators 119–121; migrants 290; diferent forms of fexible 136–137;
neo-liberalism 41; new public knowledge workers 10–11; regulation
management 222, 234; Norway 34; 115–116, 124, 292; teachers’ working
platforms 352–353, 354, 355; precarious time 142–149, 150; temporary work
work 62, 309, 351; social-democratic 326; work/life balance 119; zero-hours
era 36, 40; sustainable 317; contracts 329
temporary work 333 Working Time Act (Denmark, 2013) 143,
working environment 1, 4, 13, 14, 145–149, 150
17, 99; expert-based management workload 4, 11, 233
359–360; indicators 119–121; Lean workplace assessment 126, 127–128, 131
management concept 102, 106–107; works councils 15, 94; co-determination
new public management 233, 237; 72; democracy at work 51, 52, 57, 60;
psychosocial 43, 61, 106, 118–119, foreign or domestic ownership 81–82
121–123, 128, 130–131, 150, World Happiness Report 1
234–235, 237; regulation 48, 57, World War I 34, 51, 52, 135
115–133 World War II 38, 51, 52, 93, 116, 323
Working Environment Act (Denmark,
1975) 118, 123 Ylijoki, Oili-Helena 141
Working Environment Act (Norway, young people: mental health problems
1977) 17, 39–40, 292–293; bullying and 194–195; unions 360; vocational
harassment 122; democracy at work 57; education and training 153, 155–177;
Occupational Health and Safety 116–118; wages 24; work experience
standard employment relationship 327, placements 202
328, 330; temporary work 329 Yugoslavia 53–54
working environment councils 60, 67;
see also works councils zero-hours contracts 329