‘I do not want to be one of her favourites’. Emotional display and the co-production of frontline care services

Mortensen, Nanna Møller; Needham, Catherine

doi:10.1080/14719037.2021.2013071

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 92 publications

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“…The Danish context was chosen for this study because co-production is a prominent focus in Danish municipalities (Mortensen, 2020; Nielsen and Monrad, 2023). Co-production may have been adopted in the Danish setting more maturely than in other potential contexts, where it may offer more nascent insights (Mortensen and Needham, 2022). The Danish Center for Social Science Research (VIVE) has evinced considerable interest in co-production but observed the lack of knowledge about its practical implementation in municipalities.…”

Section: Methodology and Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable implementation of co-production: exploring conflicts and coping behavior employed by street-level professionals

Mortensen

2023

IJPSM

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PurposeThis study explores how street-level professionals translate and implement a co-production strategy, formulated by top management, in their professional practices, focusing on conflicts that arise during this process and the effectiveness of the coping strategies employed by these professionals to manage them.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is based on a lower-level inquiry into three care services in Denmark. It adopted the translation perspective in organizational research to analyze the consequences of street-level professionals' translation choices. Data were collected through interviews and observations.FindingsThis study found that street-level professionals' translation choices contribute to conflicts of varying forms and extents. The finding suggests that the way conflicts are managed makes the difference between the actual organizational change and the more symbolic acceptance of co-production.Originality/valueThis study contributes to discourses on challenges in co-production implementation by deepening knowledge about the role of coping behavior and translation in sustainable implementation of co-production.

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Section: Methodology and Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable implementation of co-production: exploring conflicts and coping behavior employed by street-level professionals

Mortensen

2023

IJPSM

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“…Second, a tension between bureaucratic distance to the client on one hand and personalized proximity on the other -e.g. depicted in the literature as tensions between standardization and individualization; between fairness and responsiveness; between formal and informal display rules or as a (de)coupling of the frontline worker and the bureaucratic organization (Hansen, L. S., 2021;Mortensen & Needham, 2022;Nordesjö et al, 2022;Røhnebaek & Breit, 2022).…”

Section: Part I Emotional Labour and Conflicting Normative Demandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is a well-established point from scholarly work focusing on emotional labour (Bolton, 2000a; e.g. Mortensen & Needham, 2022). Hochschild applied the term to stress how the requirements of a large range of different professionals -from cashiers and salespeople through doctors, lawyers and day-care providers to psychiatrists, social workers and ministers -are not only about accomplishing certain physical or technical tasks.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Balancing includes attempts to balance between the hopes and wishes of clients on one hand and the labor market-oriented ethos of the system on the other, while carefully sustaining clients' feelings of being motivated for pursuing the plan. Swapping includes attempts of the frontline worker to establish personalized and informal settings, characterized by a value of authenticity, when encountering clients (see Mortensen and Needham, 2022). Doing so in the context of an employment service system marked by bureaucratic logics and language, can prove quite a challenge.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Conflicting demands and emotional labour: Balancing and swapping at the front line of the welfare state

Herup Nielsen

2024

Current Sociology

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This article combines insights from the sociology of emotional labour with works on conflicting demands facing employees to analyse how frontline staff conduct emotional labour in contexts marked by multifaceted demands facing them. It demonstrates the usefulness of this combination through an analysis of group interviews with frontline staff within Danish job centres, who are currently explicitly instructed to display sincere belief in the job prospects of clients, while also representing a disciplining activation system marked by conditionality. The article contributes to existing literature through an elaboration of two concepts – ‘balancing’ and ‘swapping’ – describing forms of emotional labour conducted by frontline staff in a work setting characterized by conflicting demands. The former is about striking a balance between the wants of the client and the wants of the system while sustaining clients’ feelings of motivation. The latter is about enabling oneself to encounter clients in ways which are personalized and informal, within the contours of a system marked by bureaucratic logics and language.

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“…Some scholars describe frontline workers as “moral mediators” between the moral economies of the state and actual subjectivities of clients (Pors & Schou, 2020), and numerous studies have identified different strategies pursued by public officials to overcome tensions (Breit et al, 2018; Thomas & Davies, 2005; Trappenburg et al, 2022), which might be perceived as mere threats toward their professional identity (Langley et al, 2012; Shams, 2021). To implement ideas of coproduction, frontline workers must combine certain roles when approaching citizens (Vanleene et al, 2020)—as friends, leaders, representatives, and mediators—and establish the norms of emotional closeness between the informal and personalized and formal and depersonalized (Mortensen & Needham, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Client Participation and Conditionality: Navigating Conflicting Normative Demands in Employment Services

Nielsen

Monrad

2023

Administration & Society

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The further involvement of citizens in the processing of their own cases is attracting attention as a possible strategy for improving the quality of employment services across national borders. However, employment services are characterized by detailed regulation and strong elements of conditionality. This article utilizes Bernardo Zacka’s framework on morality at the street level, drawing on focus group interviews to analyze how caseworkers in Denmark experience and deal with such demands for increased client participation. (1) We map four normative considerations that are emphasized by our informants: legality, authenticity, realism, and resonance. (2) In doing so, we outline two central cross-pressures that arise as they strive to balance client participation with conditionality in practice, namely between legality and authenticity, on the one hand, and between realism and resonance, on the other hand. (3) Finally, we unfold three coping strategies pursued by caseworkers to dampen such tensions: dividing the self, dissolving contradictions, and disassembling clients’ wishes. We add to the literature by studying coping strategies from a perspective that carefully highlights the normative elements of employment service work—the values frontline workers attribute particular importance to and strive to actualize in their work.

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‘I do not want to be one of her favourites’. Emotional display and the co-production of frontline care services

Cited by 10 publications

References 92 publications

Sustainable implementation of co-production: exploring conflicts and coping behavior employed by street-level professionals

Sustainable implementation of co-production: exploring conflicts and coping behavior employed by street-level professionals

Conflicting demands and emotional labour: Balancing and swapping at the front line of the welfare state

Client Participation and Conditionality: Navigating Conflicting Normative Demands in Employment Services

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