Influence at Work tied to Materiality in Danish Care Work

Abstract

Influence at work is known to be an important factor for workers health. Researchers have called for studies on influence at work as a contextualized phenomenon. Based on individual interviews with managers and focus group interviews with employees in three care workplaces, the article shows how the materiality of the work setting ties employees’ influence to perform tasks in both hindering and enabling ways. We show that a work environment where employees’ influence is hindered produces negative experiences in the work environment, while an environment where employees’ influence is enabled produces positive experiences. Additionally, we study how employees influence the material aspects of their workplace.We present a view of influence at work as constituted by materiality and social organization in sociomaterial assemblages. This study reintroduces materiality as a concern in psychosocial work environment research and contributes a sociomaterial view on influence at work and materiality.