Open AccessGovernance reform in context: Welfare sector professionals’ working and employment conditions
Author(s) -
Karolina Parding,
Susan McGrathChamp,
Meghan Stacey
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
current sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.765
H-Index - 64
eISSN - 1461-7064
pISSN - 0011-3921
DOI - 10.1177/0011392120909859
Subject(s) - context (archaeology) , devolution (biology) , corporate governance , argument (complex analysis) , welfare , work (physics) , sociology , political science , public relations , economics , market economy , management , mechanical engineering , paleontology , biochemistry , chemistry , anthropology , engineering , biology , human evolution
This article addresses the relationship between profession, organisation and spatial (geographical) setting, more specifically the relationship between welfare sector professionals’ conditions for work amidst governance change. In previous research, the conditions for welfare sector professionals’ work have largely been studied without taking the employing organisations or the local and regional situation into consideration. In this article, the authors question and seek to counteract this de-contextualised approach. They do so by showing that the circumstances of the specific workplace context are essential in understanding welfare sector professionals’ working conditions, especially so in current governance contexts characterised to varying degrees by marketisation, via processes and structures which facilitate choice, competition, privatisation and devolution. This line of argument is illustrated in relation to how upper secondary teachers in Sweden experience their conditions for work and employment in eight schools across three different ‘market types’. The authors contend that whilst different conditions in different workplaces can to some extent always be expected, current governance agendas in the welfare sector seem to exacerbate these differences. The article’s theoretical contribution, therefore, is in the privileging of local contextual dynamics. The authors suggest a stronger emphasis on spatially-informed frames of reference in future studies of conditions for welfare sector professionals.