{"title":"Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner (2020). Learning to Make a Difference. Value Creation in Social Learning Spaces, Cambridge University Press, ix + 279 pages","authors":"A. Buch","doi":"10.18291/NJWLS.123734","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18291/NJWLS.123734","url":null,"abstract":"In their work, in their leisure time – yes, indeed in all walks of life – people interact with one another, have new experiences, come to know new things, and learn new things about their environment and the world they inhabit. But how? Philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, cognitive scientists, and many more have theorized this fundamental question and developed theories of learning. Thirty years ago, anthropology professor Jean Lave and cognitive scientist Etienne Wenger developed a social theory of learning that conceptualize learning as a process of situated cognition – legitimate peripheral participation – in communities of practice (Lave & Wenger 1991). This theory – and specifically the concept of communities of practice (CoP) that Etienne Wenger later explored in more detail (Wenger 1998) – have become an influential theoretical and analytical inspiration for researchers in education, organization studies, sociology, social-psychology, and the entire range of disciplines that are preoccupied with the study of social life and working life. (.....) \u0000 \u0000 \u0000 \u0000Now, 30 years after the introduction of the theory, one of its proponents and found- ers, Etienne Wenger-Trayner, together with his spouse Beverly Wenger-Trayner, propose a new – and in their view – more encompassing social learning theory.","PeriodicalId":45048,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies","volume":"11 1","pages":"129-132"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46743925","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Involuntary Childlessness at Work: Experiences of Emotion Work, Unfair Marginalization and Inadequacy","authors":"Mika Mård","doi":"10.18291/NJWLS.123623","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18291/NJWLS.123623","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents and analyzes experiences of involuntary childlessness at work and, through that, attempts to increase our understanding of emotional and silenced experiences in organizations. While primarily being an exploratory study with a purpose to get an initial glimpse into working life through involuntary childless individuals’ point of view, this article also engages with Arlie Hochschild’s (1979, 1983) conceptualization of emotion work to analyze experiences of involuntary childlessness at work. The empirical data used in this paper are mainly collected through an anonymous diary studies method in Finland, and thematically presented in this article in three segments where three categories of emotion work related to involuntary childlessness are analyzed and discussed. In addition to offering an initial glimpse of involuntary childlessness at work, this paper hence contributes with a demonstration and analysis of the multifaceted emotion work related to these experiences.","PeriodicalId":45048,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42643453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Transformation of the Ghent System in Sweden: Silent Institutionalization of Complementary Unemployment Benefits","authors":"Jayeon Lindellee","doi":"10.18291/NJWLS.123605","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18291/NJWLS.123605","url":null,"abstract":"The Swedish public unemployment insurance program is characterized by its governance structure involving union-linked insurance funds, famously known as the Ghent system. This paper argues that the unions’ strongly entrenched interest in the provision of unemployment benefits has continued to shape the establishment and expansion of complementary benefits for the unemployed in multiple forms, including bilateral Employment Transition Agreements between employers’ organizations and unions (occupational pillar) and privately provided complementary income insurance benefits mediated by unions (private pillar). The paper accounts for this multi-pillarization process of the Swedish unemployment benefit provision system and how the unions’ involvement has come to take multiple forms. The paper also discusses distributive implication of this union-led development of the complementary pillars, which reinforces the differences in risk protection between different occupational groups and sectors.","PeriodicalId":45048,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49281248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bridging the Dialectical Histories in Organizational Change: Hysteresis in Scandinavian Telecommunications Privatization","authors":"Henrik Koll","doi":"10.18291/NJWLS.123602","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18291/NJWLS.123602","url":null,"abstract":"Conventionally, organizational change research has viewed history as objective facts associated with path dependencies, making change difficult. However, started with the work of Suddaby et al. (2010), a different stance has emerged, viewing history as a subjective, narrative construction that can be utilized to facilitate change. This paper responds to calls for ways of bridging these two perceptions and increasing historical consciousness in organizational change studies. To these ends, the paper explores the capacity of Bourdieu’s construct of hysteresis as a bridging construct. Based on an ethnographic study, the paper operationalizes hysteresis to analyze the response strategies of technicians and shop stewards to organizational change following privatization in a Scandinavian telecommunications company. The paper argues that hysteresis constitutes a valuable alternative to bridging constructs available in extant literature and holds the potential to open new avenues for exploring the implications of history for organizational change.","PeriodicalId":45048,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46881058","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
L. Seppänen, C. Spinuzzi, Seppo Poutanen, T. Alasoini
{"title":"Co-creation in Macrotask Knowledge Work on Online Labor Platforms","authors":"L. Seppänen, C. Spinuzzi, Seppo Poutanen, T. Alasoini","doi":"10.18291/NJWLS.123166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18291/NJWLS.123166","url":null,"abstract":"Nordic working life studies have mostly focused on the precarious aspects of work mediated via online labor platforms. We follow a different approach and examine the potential of such work to benefit professionals by enhancing their job quality and learning. This qualitative, practice-based study applies the concept ‘co-creation’ to examine how a social form of creating value takes place in Upwork macrotask projects. It then investigates how platform features shape opportunities for co-creation. The data comprise interviews of 15 freelancers residing in Finland. The findings suggest that co-creation is possible in macrotask projects, but the platform does not seem to actively support co-creation. This paper provides insights into the discussion of job quality at platform work and how co-creation on platforms might be developed to support the Nordic labor market model.","PeriodicalId":45048,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42312296","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Career Stability in 14 Finnish Industrial Employee Cohorts in 1988–2015","authors":"Satu Ojala, Pasi Pyöriä, Aart‐Jan Riekhoff","doi":"10.18291/NJWLS.123167","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18291/NJWLS.123167","url":null,"abstract":"It is often argued that global competition and technological development have made industrial jobs more unstable. In this article, we ask how career stability has evolved in the Finnish forest, metal, and chemical industries, comparing 14 cohorts (age groups) by gender and educational level. We focus on industrial employees born in 1958–1971 and compare their career stability at ages 30–44 using Statistics Finland’s linked employer-employee data from 1988 to 2015 and an application of sequence analysis. We analyze career stability over time by examining annual main labor market statuses (employed, unemployed, student, disabled, retired, out of the labor force), adding estimators for workplace and industry changes. The results show no evidence of career destabilization across the cohorts, but they do reveal persistent inequalities between industrial employees with low and high levels of education, and between men and women.","PeriodicalId":45048,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46078574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction to 2020-4","authors":"A. Buch","doi":"10.18291/NJWLS.123077","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18291/NJWLS.123077","url":null,"abstract":"This issue of Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies collects six research articles from the Nordic countries. The first article, Reconceptualizing Job Control in Participatory Interventions – Collective Sensemaking as a Missing Link, authored by Esben Langager Olsen, Christian Dyrlund Wahlin-Jacobsen, and Johan Simonsen Abildgaard, investigates the connection between participatory organizational-level interventions (POLIs) and job control. The literature on this topic leaves many uncertainties on the effectiveness of POLIs in increasing job control. Through a qualitative study of a POLI in a Danish pharmaceutical company, the authors focus on the collective sensemaking processes in relation to the POLI and demonstrate the intricate contingencies that appear as participants are engaged in sensemaking processes in arranged action-planning workshops. It is concluded that studying the link between POLIs and job control as a sensemaking process has advantages in highlighting the stable aspects of the job and the dynamic properties of the situations involved in enacting job control (...)","PeriodicalId":45048,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47478883","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Crowded out’? Immigration Surge and Residents’ Employment Outcomes in Norway","authors":"J. Elstad, Kristian Heggebø","doi":"10.18291/njwls.122596","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18291/njwls.122596","url":null,"abstract":"This study uses Norwegian public register data in a spatial correlation approach, and analyzes associations between regional variations in immigration and employment outcomes 2004–2015 in a cohort of adult residents (N = 1.3 million). A higher share of immigrants in the regional population and an immigrant population dominated by low-educated were associated with slightly negative work income trends and less employment opportunities for residents, in particular for low- educated natives and earlier immigrants. A steep increase in the immigrant share of the regional population was, on the other hand, associated with better employment outcomes for all analyzed resident categories. Overall, regional immigration differences were only modestly related to the out- comes. Findings indicate that the institutional context has limited the role of market mechanisms in the labor market, and a booming regional economy will tend to neutralize potentially negative effects of immigration on residents’ employment.","PeriodicalId":45048,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48071203","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Experience Qualities Approach to Leadership and Employee Well-being","authors":"Ilkka Salmi, Ville Pietiläinen, Antti Syväjärvi","doi":"10.18291/njwls.122593","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18291/njwls.122593","url":null,"abstract":"A phenomenological psychology approach in organizational studies has been somewhat overlooked, particularly in research on leadership and employee well-being. This study presents a new way of examining leadership and employee well-being. A novel experience qualities approach was utilized with the aim of revealing the authentic structure of human experiences, particularly experience qualities such as emotions, knowledge, and assumptions. This study investigated the role of leadership in creating employee well-being experiences in a professional organization. The data were collected from 23 in-depth interviews conducted with company leaders and employees in Finland and then analyzed using the phenomenological method. The results indicated affirmative similarities and differences (experience domains) in experience qualities of well-being between leaders and employees. By identifying different experience qualities of well-being, leaders can promote their own and employees’ well-being more precisely and effectively. Practical implications for leaders are discussed.","PeriodicalId":45048,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42358132","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Employees of Greatness: Signifying Values in Performance Appraisal Criteria","authors":"Y. Eriksson, Bengt Larsson, Petra Adolfsson","doi":"10.18291/njwls.122589","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18291/njwls.122589","url":null,"abstract":"The spread of performance-based and variable pay systems has affected expectations on employee contributions and remuneration, which have become increasingly personalized and individualized. Based on a theoretical valuation studies approach, this study of performance-based pay systems in Sweden shows that performance appraisals are (e)valuations of employees’ yearly performance in which they are prized and (ap)praised at the same time. Through a document analysis of performance criteria from four organizations, the study analyzes how values expressed refer to Boltanski and Thevenot’s six orders of worth. The analysis resulted in a theoretical construction of a joint ideal of Employees of Greatness, against which employees are measured and remunerated. The existence of the ideal of employee greatness is explained by the increasing congruence of organizational ideals in private and public sectors, as principles from emotional and cognitive forms of capitalist organization are superimposed on traditional industrial capitalist organizational ideals.","PeriodicalId":45048,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies","volume":"11 1","pages":"1-21"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46320180","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}