Governance reform in context: Welfare sector professionals’ working and employment conditions

Abstract

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.

Whither employment protections? Deregulation and the flexibilisation of the teaching workforce in the state-funded sector

“…These reforms, similarly to the English academies programme, have given significant autonomy to schools, and have increased the role of non-state actors in delivering education. Parding, McGrath-Champ, and Stacey (2020) note that, in Sweden, these reforms have had important, though geographically mediated, effects on teachers' working conditions. Importantly, the authors mention that these reforms could affect teachers' working time and salaries-aspects of internal flexibilisation that we address here.…”

Teacher autonomy in the age of performance-based accountability: A review based on teaching profession regulatory models (2017-2020)

“…Accountability policies, together with other outcomes-based, incentivist and data-intensive policy instruments have been widely adopted in education, usually under the auspices of new public management (NPM). In the last two decades, much has been written about the effects of performance-based accountability (PBA) policies in the governance of education and the teaching profession in particular (Parding et al, 2012(Parding et al, , 2020. Most of this literature has been produced in countries that can be labelled as 'early NPM adopters' such as the United States, England and Chile.…”

Adult Education at Auction : On Tendering-Based Procurement and Valuation in Swedish Municipal Adult Education

“…By creating direct competition between providers, the free-choice, voucher-based market, for example, has been shown to discourage schools and teachers from cooperating or collaborating with each other (Carvalho & Correia, 2018;Forsberg & Palme, 2019). Teachers in marketised education systems experience precarity (Breshears, 2019;Parding et al, 2021), decreased professional autonomy (Ball, 2003;Dovemark & Holm, 2017), a shift in work towards more administration and documentation (Fitzgerald et al, 2019;Holm & Lundahl, 2019), and forced changes in their relationships with learners and colleagues (Samuelsson, 2018;Stacey, 2020). These issues affect teachers to various degrees, depending on where they are employed (Mirra & Rogers, 2016).…”

“…Boffo et al, 2016;Breshears, 2019;Rushbrook et al, 2014) and those of other professions (cf. Parding et al, 2021;Rosenkranz, 2018).…”

“…Thus, the differentiation that currently exists in MAE between geographical locations -which stands in tension with the Education Act's (2010, ch 1 §8-9) mandate for education equity throughout all the country's regions -is not ameliorated by a transition from procurement to authorisation. Importing practices or principles from one system into another will not result in the same effects because the local social and geographical landscapes shape institutions, governance, and policies in various ways (Parding et al, 2021;Verdier, 2018). Furthermore, and perhaps most crucially, the move to a free-choice market -which is firmly based in the market convention of worth and "implies a transfer from collective resources to the individual" (Arnesen & Lundahl, 2006, p. 295) -places discretion over the welfare service with the market (providers and students).…”