The adoption of market-based practices within care for older people: is the work satisfaction of Nordic care workers at risk?

Abstract

Market-based practices, including privatization and the increased emphasis on managerialism, have entered Nordic social-and health

Struggles of Professionalism and Emotional Labour in Standardized Mental Health Care

“…They also point out how professionals struggle and partly resist this development toward a market-oriented rationality, in some cases by taking on extra work in order to satisfy profession norms an standards, thus leading to self-intensification (Kirschhoff & Karlsson, 2013;Rasmussen, 2004;Selberg, 2013), in other cases by reframing the new market-oriented ideas in order to make ends meet (Dahl, 2009). Also, the bureaucratic and tayloristic traits of the reforms are attended to, as they tend to undermine professional autonomy and meaningfulness (Dybbroe, 2012;Kamp, 2012;Kröger, 2011).…”

Quality reforms in Danish home care - balancing between standardisation and individualisation

“…As Kröger (2011) reports, Denmark appears to have been more eager than other Nordic countries to introduce NPM principles in elder care, including the introduction of customer choice, competitive tendering, quality‐control mechanisms, purchaser–provider split and market‐based care provision. As this article will outline, however, other procedural reforms have also been introduced.…”

“…It is also a sector which has seen the introduction of New Public Management (NPM) principles (Hood 1991), like no other public sector in Denmark, vastly exceeding the other Nordic countries in this regard. Among the Nordic countries, a considerably higher proportion of Danish care workers have experienced the introduction of market‐based practices such as quality control, the separation of the purchasing and provider functions, customer choice and competitive tendering (Kröger 2011). Consequently, many recent changes have been implemented to increase care quality, and this article addresses the main reforms of the home help service since the 1990s.…”

Outsourcing Equality: Migrant Care Worker Imaginary in Finnish Media

“…While complex welfare systems currently share the experience of a diversifying care work force, the restructuring of care has to be analyzed at the national and local levels, while remaining attached to specific political-institutional practices and local discourses (see also Kröger, 2011;Williams, 2012;. The contemporary local context of Finnish eldercare is featured by increasingly neoliberal governance and New Public Management (NPM) doctrines, characterized by an 'ambiguity of the welfare state and the competition state' (Kettunen, 2011: p. 38).…”