Inauthenticity at Work: Moral Conflicts in Marketoriented Welfare Organizations

Abstract

The number of employees who develop work-related problems due to stress and other mental tensions has increased in Europe during the last decades, especially among women. One explanation of the female dominance is that women more often than men work in the service and health care sector. Consequently, they are more involved in human relations at work, involving more “emotion work” or “interaction work”. Emotion researchers have described low well-being and mental disorders related to work stress in terms of inauthenticity, as suppressing one’s true emotions. In this article, a social constructivist and contextual perspective on the self is adopted. Based on case studies at Swedish work settings, the article explores the connection between authenticity and values attached to the self and the impact of the organizational setting for their realization in interaction work. Work-related stress is examined in the light of the implementation of new public management rationales and directives in welfare organizations, with particular focus on customer-orientated management. The main conclusion is that, regardless of gender, stress and mental problems could be seen as effects of feelings of inauthenticity, caused by experiences of being prevented from realizing interpersonal self-values in personal encounters at work. Women more often work in the welfare sector and are consequently more often subjected to these moral dilemmas, enhanced by customer orientation. These premises form the background for the article’s understanding of women’s more frequent development of mental stress symptoms. The article contributes to the understanding of women’s stress-related problems at work as a phenomenon in the intersection point between the individual and the organization and to the revealing of the interpersonal consequences of the increased customer orientation in the welfare area. Furthermore, by examining the contextual and situational dimensions of authenticity at work, the article adds to the knowledge about being authentic in today’s world.

Resistance-driven Innovation? Frontline Public Welfare Workers’ Coping with Top- down Implementation

“…In Nordic welfare organizations that are known to be complex with competing and even contradictory managerial principles and work instructions (Kamp et al 2013) and with the street-level bureaucrats' dilemma of never-ending demands from service recipients and constant restrictions in time and resources (Lipsky 1980), work-tasks need to be prioritized. Thunman (2013) examines the implementation of NPM-ideas with regard to the effects on welfare workers' feelings of work-related stress. She finds that being prevented from realizing ones self-value at work, in welfare services submerged in NPMideas, may lead to feelings of inauthenticity.…”

“…The innovation practices were motivated by the staff's need to stay true to their personal, professional, and what they considered organizational values. These thereby emerged as coping strategies to deal with their already overwhelming work situation of limited resources (Lipsky 1980), the feelings of inauthenticity (Thunman 2013), and lack of autonomy and dignity (Ackroyd & Thompson 1999;Karlsson 2012) inflicted upon them by contradicting managerial agendas. Where the first type of innovation had a function at the organizational level of improving services through adjusting instructions to tailor the services for the individual beneficiary, the resistance-driven type of innovation may be seen to have a function at the organizational level to potentially calibrating value-creation in the organization.…”

“…Frontline workers in welfare services are often inclined to abide by values and ethical standards of their profession (Kjørstad 2005;Thunman 2013;Tummers et al 2009). Frontline workers, in the field of social work, are for examples inclined to abide by the value of 'service' based upon the ethical principle that 'social workers' primary goal is to help people in need and to address social problems' (NASW 2017).…”

Exploring the Concept of Integrity—Toward a CraftInspired Interpretation

“…According to Allvin, this strategy, however, will also lead to poor health: 'What is interesting is that the individual, in an attempt to solve the situation, produces a strategy that undermines his or hers health' (Allvin, 2006, p. 166) 1 . As indicated in the Introduction to this article, the severe consequences for professional/semi-professional workers today can be seen as subtle consequences of organizational turbulence generated by the neoliberal governance (NPM) within public sector (Buch & Andersen, 2013;Kamp et al, 2013;Thunman, 2013). Vike et al (2002) has even explained public service workers' sense of inadequacy in their daily conduct of work, as an instantiation of a structural problem, and use the expression that nurses (as an example of a professional group) 'carries the organisational limits within their body' (Vike et al, 2002, p. 53).…”

“…A specific phenomenon described within a Scandinavian context is the increased tension between professional/semi-professional workers' own perceptions of standards in work, and the possibilities to act in accordance with these standards in the daily conduct of work. A general assumption is that this tension has severe consequences for health and wellbeing (Allvin, 2006;Corley, 2002;Glasberg, 2007;Hanna, 2004;Laabs, 2007;Sørensen, 2008;Taylor, 2005;Thunman 2013;Vike et al, 2002). Within the last decade, the concept of integrity has gained attention, especially in Norway, as a conceptual framing of the professional tension experienced by workers especially within public sector (Aagaard & Gavén, 2006;Sørensen, 2004).…”