Suchergebnisse

Using data collected as part of a larger, four country, international comparative study, the challenges and strengths of rapid ethnography (RE) are explored. To deepen and enhance the study, in each case study (nine completed to date) an insider is paired with an outsider researcher in order to draw on a comparative perspective from the researcher team involved in each individual case study, as well as across the four countries and nine studies. The article concludes that because of its strengths and rapid turnaround, RE provides a way for international comparative studies to continue despite sharp decreases in research funding and, in our case, produced important insights for those seeking to understand and derail the seemingly unstoppable impacts of neoliberalism and managerialism in social service delivery.

Abstract
Though the rationalisation of health care has been well documented, less is known about its impacts on mental health social workers. Drawing on qualitative data collected from 120 interviews and the qualitative comments on a Canadian four-province survey, the article explores the shifting labour process through profession-linked and organisational care strategies. The article argues that power is shifted from mental health social workers to management through stratagems including managerialism, biomedical hegemony and team-based care. These processes are complex and dynamic, travelling along professional divisions and logics, appearing neutral and scientific rather than as conduits reinforcing neoliberalised approaches to health care provision. Social workers' resistance to these models of care is similarly complex and professionally based, though with strong elements of gendered altruism and social justice themes. Though this article draws on Canadian data, the analysis is likely highly applicable to other managerialised contexts including the UK. The article contributes to the intersection of Labour Process Theory and moral economy theory by highlighting the operation of a unique form of engagement referred to here as resistance-as-engagement. Overall, mental health social workers revealed strong oppositional narratives and identities pivoting on their marginalised position within team-based care, medical professional hierarchies and narrow, neoliberal approaches.

Unpaid work has long been used in nonprofit/voluntary social services to extend paid work. Drawing on three case studies of nonprofit social services in Canada, this article argues that due to austerity policies, the conditions for 'pure' gift relationships in unpaid social service work are increasingly rare. Instead, employers have found various ways to 'fill the gaps' in funding through the extraction of unpaid work in various forms. Precarious workers are highly vulnerable to expectations that they will 'volunteer' at their places of employment, while expectations that students will undertake unpaid internships is increasing the norm for degree completion and procurement of employment, and full-time workers often use unpaid work as a form of resistance. This article contributes to theory by advancing a spectrum of unpaid nonprofit social service work as compelled and coerced to varying degrees in the context of austerity policies and funding cutbacks.

Summary The movement of men into care work in the predominantly female voluntary sector appears to be an unintended impact of welfare state contracting-out, managerialism and labour market restructuring. While not uniform, our comparative, international data (New Zealand and Scotland) show that some groups of men in nonprofit care work jobs embraced managerialism and used aspects of it to reshape and advance their work, while others undertook practices exemplifying a 'caring masculinity' more similar to practices currently associated with femininised ways of undertaking care activities. Findings Drawing on international comparative data collected as part of a larger study of restructuring in the nonprofit social services, this article suggests analytic clusters of masculinities operating in the voluntary sector and explores how the presence of men in care work may be changing it. The article also shows how hegemonic, masculinist-oriented practices in the workplace appear more amenable to managerialism than the expected feminine self-sacrificing, self-exploiting ethos of this highly gendered, female-majority sector. Applications These findings provide insights into the gendered and changing work in the nonprofit social services sector, and suggest ways the gender order is changing with the influx of male workers. The findings will be of interest to social work managers, supervisors, practitioners, policy analysts, students and educators.

The article provides a comparative exploration of New Public Management (NPM) funding models on the non‐profit sectors in the UK and Australia, and the implications for services, employment conditions, and worker commitment. A degree of convergence exists around the principles of NPM in the two case studies, creating employment regimes of low pay, casualization, and work intensification. Enhanced vulnerability to pay cuts in the UK, and insecurity in Australia are explained by national differences in exposure to recession, industrial relations institutions, and competition, leading to diminishing worker commitment and raising important concerns for policy‐makers as benefits gained from outsourcing to non‐profits are eroded.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to describe a distinctive strategy used in the Australian non‐profit community services sector to recruit and retain care workers. The paper argues that the implementation of salary sacrificing illuminates a wilful blindness to the interests and rights of paid care workers and the genesis of this blindness lies in the gendered nature of care work.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws on a brief review of relevant literature on the gendered nature of paid care work, Australian industry debates, interviews and data from a small case study to examine the context and paradoxical outcomes of salary sacrificing.FindingsThe findings illustrate the consequences of New Public Management models of funding and management in the non‐profit community sector, including how inadequate resourcing of agencies can work to pit the interests of clients against the interests of workers. The findings also suggest the limited impact of salary sacrificing as a retention strategy, while revealing the links between gender, domesticity and care that play out in the undervaluing of paid care work.Research limitations/implicationsThe research suggests that sustainable change to address the looming "crisis of care" in community services needs a rethinking by governments of funding and service models so that quality services are supported by properly valued and remunerated care workers.Originality/valueThe paper explores the paradoxical effects of an Australian industry recruitment and retention strategy.

PurposeThis paper aims to consider the impact of the European Union procurement regulations. It assesses the impact of the re‐tendering of services on the terms and conditions of employment and sense of well being, and commitment of employees in the social care sub‐sector of the voluntary sector.Design/methodology/approachThe study employs a qualitative study of three organisations utilising semi‐structured interviews with managers and employees.FindingsThe process of re‐tendering is creating intensified competition and the breakdown of co‐operation between voluntary sector organisations. Re‐tendering also has an impact on employee terms and conditions with related problems arising with regard to their morale and commitment.Research limitations/implicationsThis remains a relatively small‐scale piece of research and there is also scope to consider how these issues are played out in private, as well as voluntary sector organisations.Practical implicationsThe research highlights the potential tensions between creating greater competition and a search for value for money in the tendering and re‐tendering of services on voluntary organisations' raison d'être and the sense of commitment of employees.Originality/valueThere is little research examining the human resource aspects of re‐tendering and this research provides an important step in surfacing a number of emergent issues for how voluntary organisations manage the people dimension of the re‐tendering process.

PurposeThis paper seeks to examine the practice of human resource management (HRM) in the UK voluntary sector. In recent years many voluntary sector organisations have experienced a changing context, where they have become increasingly involved in contracting for the provision of publicly funded services. This paper examines the suggestion made by a number of commentators that as a result the government has exercised influence over the way in which human resources are managed in this sector.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses data from the Workplace Employment Relations Survey 2004 (WERS 2004) to examine HRM practice in the voluntary sector and compares this with the public and private sectors.FindingsThe findings show that most voluntary sector organisations have adopted performance‐oriented HR practices, communication and involvement schemes, and welfare‐oriented practices. This suggests a departure from the relatively unsophisticated HRM that has traditionally been found in the voluntary sector and which may be as a result of the influence of government on HRM standards in the sector.Research limitations/implicationsFuture research, which adopts a longitudinal approach, would allow the impact of government influence on HRM practices in the voluntary sector to be examined in more depth.Originality/valueThis paper represents a rare examination of HRM practice across a wide range of voluntary sector organisations and provides insight into the potential influence of government on HRM in the sector.