Abstract:Drawing on ethnography in the Swedish Public Employment Service, this article compares caseworkers' and local managers' perceptions of changes towards increasing digital self-services for clients. Findings reflect a conflict of interest between different service ideals: vulnerable subjects in need of personalized guidance (caseworkers) versus competent subjects ready to manage their own unemployment via digital self-services (local managers). As we argue, the dislocation of responsibility via digital self-serv… Show more
“…Some caseworkers feared that the organisational reform would mean that complex problems would become reduced to standardised solutions (Wallinder & Seing, 2022), and thus they perceived a clash between a holistic client approach and specialising on one task:In my opinion, the tendency is that we're developing towards this partly because of this digitalisation within the agency, for example, but also through the governance: ‘You can be a specialist, just do this task’, and then your colleagues, especially younger university graduates, tend to say ‘Great, then I can specialise on one task’. This is probably good in one way.…”
Section: Resultsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Then my manager explains that I should not give out any business cards because we should think about the case and not the caseworker. (Caseworker) Some caseworkers feared that the organisational reform would mean that complex problems would become reduced to standardised solutions (Wallinder & Seing, 2022), and thus they perceived a clash between a holistic client approach and specialising on one task:…”
Section: Responsibilisation Of the Caseworker: A New Caseworker's Jou...mentioning
The article analyses a new culture of responsibilisation implicated in a recent management reform in the Swedish Public Employment Service. Based on an interview study and organisational documents, it is shown that the reform entails a new form of responsibilisation of jobseekers as well as caseworkers. As jobseekers are expected to ‘carry their own case’ through the administrative job‐search process, they are obliged to manage tasks that used to be in the caseworker's area of responsibility. Furthermore, caseworkers are expected to regulate themselves in new ways and change their mind‐set according to new organisational values and behavioural norms, requiring a restraining of their availability to clients. It is argued that the employment agency is increasingly turned into the agency of the active and responsible jobseeker, which entails one further shift towards individual responsibility in Swedish labour market policy and one further step towards the breakup of a personal caseworker–jobseeker relationship.
“…Some caseworkers feared that the organisational reform would mean that complex problems would become reduced to standardised solutions (Wallinder & Seing, 2022), and thus they perceived a clash between a holistic client approach and specialising on one task:In my opinion, the tendency is that we're developing towards this partly because of this digitalisation within the agency, for example, but also through the governance: ‘You can be a specialist, just do this task’, and then your colleagues, especially younger university graduates, tend to say ‘Great, then I can specialise on one task’. This is probably good in one way.…”
Section: Resultsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Then my manager explains that I should not give out any business cards because we should think about the case and not the caseworker. (Caseworker) Some caseworkers feared that the organisational reform would mean that complex problems would become reduced to standardised solutions (Wallinder & Seing, 2022), and thus they perceived a clash between a holistic client approach and specialising on one task:…”
Section: Responsibilisation Of the Caseworker: A New Caseworker's Jou...mentioning
The article analyses a new culture of responsibilisation implicated in a recent management reform in the Swedish Public Employment Service. Based on an interview study and organisational documents, it is shown that the reform entails a new form of responsibilisation of jobseekers as well as caseworkers. As jobseekers are expected to ‘carry their own case’ through the administrative job‐search process, they are obliged to manage tasks that used to be in the caseworker's area of responsibility. Furthermore, caseworkers are expected to regulate themselves in new ways and change their mind‐set according to new organisational values and behavioural norms, requiring a restraining of their availability to clients. It is argued that the employment agency is increasingly turned into the agency of the active and responsible jobseeker, which entails one further shift towards individual responsibility in Swedish labour market policy and one further step towards the breakup of a personal caseworker–jobseeker relationship.
“…The PES is an agency that has been under pressure to reform for a long timeand is often criticised in public media and by politicians. It has also been subject to extensive changes in governance and management control (Jacobsson, Wallinder & Seing 2020;Wallinder & Seing 2022). In 2014, the organisational programme of the "Renewal journey" was introduced by the top-management of PES, aimed to "create a more efficient employment agency that contributes to increased customer and societal benefit" (Arbetsförmedingen 2019b:4).…”
Section: Self-leadership -A Mobilising Narrativementioning
This article draws on theories of normative control and critical management studies to investigate caseworkers’ strategies in correspondence to a new leadership philosophy in the Swedish Public Employment Service called self-leadership. Based on 43 interviews and observations at two local offices, we find that managerial models are arbitrary and cause uncertainty at the local level as caseworkers both comply and resist managerial talk of self-leadership. Based on a distinction between types of and grounds for strategic responses, we identify four subject positions defined as “personal embracement”, “personal detachment”, “professional recognition” and “professional dismissal”. The study shows that newly employed comply through practices of personal embracement, while senior employees resist based on professional dismissal. The article concludes that caseworkers are not docile bodies, who adjust to managerial talk, but derive their identity, engagement and esteem linked to a shared-work identity as organisational professionals. This demonstrates the relevance of closing the gap between street-level bureaucracy and critical management studies to further explore the tension between governing “employees” or “professionals” in contemporary public welfare governance.
The modern labor market faces complex challenges stemming from various factors, such as demographic shifts, the far-reaching impacts of digital and technological evolution, changing job profiles, and job losses due to automation and the green-economy transition. As labor market challenges escalate, it becomes increasingly vital for public employment services (PES) to gain a deeper understanding of their clients and the specific labor markets in which they operate. Although, in their current form, these services often help only unemployed people, implementing AI technologies has the potential to significantly broaden PES support for the wider public. Unfortunately, the EU’s PES sector has been slow to implement AI technologies to support clients with services such as skills extraction from CVs and job offers, jobseeker matching, and recommending relevant jobs or training. This study examines the perspectives of a PES’ external user groups and internal stakeholders to establish a baseline for implementing such technologies into existing self-services. The findings emphasize that while AI has transformative potential, deploying it effectively necessitates a holistic understanding of the existing PES ecosystem and a strategic approach to requirement gathering.
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