This article is written as an invitation to sociologists to rethink the concept of voluntary social work. Rather than comprehensive theory, it is an essay seeking to explore new ways of perceiving voluntary social effort. Voluntary work has traditionally been defined according to whether or not the subject of the study is organized and unpaid. However, these formal measures overlook the fact that much voluntary work is provided by people who do not fit the categories, and they fail to recognize the special nature of voluntary social work. In this article, we employ the works of the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann to examine what happens when voluntary social work is constructed as a particular form of care work. In this perspective, all care work is formed in the context of opposing expectation structures, and voluntary work is no exception. On the one hand, we have the expectation structures of the persons involved in care; on the other, the expectations of the administrative system and the political, juridical and economic layers of organization. Our assertion is that voluntary social work is fundamentally paradoxical in nature, and is formed as an impossible compromise between interactional and organizational logic. The question is not how to resolve or dissolve this paradox, but how to render it productive as a certain tension in the opportunity for voluntary work. Before we elaborate this thesis further, however, we briefly outline the background of social work and the reason why, today, it is followed especially closely by the state. This means looking at the way in which the couplings between welfare practice and voluntary work have traditionally been defined. While the article refers only to Danish social policy, very similar tendencies can be observed in many other Western welfare societies (see, for example, Wolch

Over the last decade, fundamental changes have occurred in Denmark with regard to welfare structures. These changes have taken place in the sectors of social care and health where decision-making structures have been reformed to become more consumer-oriented. This article examines elderly-care services specifically in order to explore how changes in decision making have altered structures of inclusion. The analysis is based on systems theory, which allows an exploration of how each of three decision-making systems has particular conditions for participation and inclusion. The article argues that inclusion has assumed a hybrid form.

I de senere år er frit valg blevet præsenteret som den foretrukne vej til markedsgørelse af den offentlige sektor. Frit valg er samtidig præsenteret som borgernes mulighed for at blive involveret i velfærden beslutningstagning. En nærmere analyse af en lovreform på ældreområdet viser, at frit valg åbner for modsatrettede tendenser i rolleforventningerne til ældregruppen. Det handler om betingelserne for inklusion af de ældre samt om præmisserne for de interne differentieringer på området. Med afsæt i den organisatoriske del af systemteorien vil artiklen undersøge, hvordan frit valg skaber spændinger i velfærdens beslutningsgrundlag. Som det vigtigste mellem beslutninger i hverdagens konkrete velfærdsudøvelse og beslutninger i de administrative systemer omkring velfærden.

Welfare technologies are introduced to increase the quality and efficiency of the delivery of welfare services, due to its ‘time-saving’ capacities.This study will examine that even though this might be the case, new technologies such as electronic floors, intelligent beds and electronic diapers, do more than this, they also introduce a time perspective of their own. New welfare technologies do not only change the rhythm and tempo of the nursing home, but they also contribute to the temporal complexity of the nursing homes. As a consequence, professional competence becomes increasingly a matter of how the individual care worker manage to coordinate the different tempo- ral perspectives that are simultaneously at play within the nursing home.The article will argue that it is precisely the care workers ability to manage the increased temporal complexity of the nursing homes that decides what kind of care that are delivered at the nursing homes.

This article explores the adoption of new technology in organisations that provide senior citizen care. Inspired by Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory, we study how technology reduces complexity by identifying client needs and ensuring predictability in service delivery. However, how technologies are adopted in practice is not determined by technology since it is also structured by care‐workers' continuous decision‐making. Against this backdrop, we explore how technologies alter the conditions for decision‐making in two settings of elderly care, and we describe how care workers seek to adapt technologies to their practical needs as well as conception of care ethics. Developing a systems theory approach, the article eschews a priori assumptions of technological constraint on care‐workers’ professional autonomy, offering a more open‐ended exploration of diversified strategies for coping with new technology. Our case studies show that employees develop diversified strategies for technology adoption, including both non‐usage, heated resistance, excessive embrace, and creative adaption.