Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies

Being Active in Working Life at Age 60, 66, and 72

Marie Bjuhr — 2024-05-16

This study examines associations between participation in working life and sociodemographic, health, and work environment factors among people aged 60, 66, and 72 years. The agestratified logistic regression analysis used data from 2001–2003 (T1) and 2013–2015 (T2) derived from The Swedish National Study on Ageing and Care. Further, interaction variables with time*independent variables explored differences in those associations over time. We found positive associations between being active in working life and male gender (age 66 and 72), higher education (all age groups), higher professional level (age 60 and 66), better health (age 60 and 66), less negative work experiences (mainly age 60), light level of physical activity at work (age 60 and 66), higher work satisfaction (age 60 and 66), and time: that is,T2 vs.T1 (all age groups). Not only health status but also work environment factors were shown to play a significant role in being active in working life at older ages. Our findings verify that authorities need to develop reforms aiming at keeping older people active in working life from a heterogeneous perspective.

Daily Habits and Work-life Boundary Control: Telework in the Era of COVID-19

Calle Rosengren — 2024-06-01

Telework has had a dramatic increase worldwide, especially in the Nordic countries. When work is conducted in the domestic area, the boundaries between work and private life easily become blurred. In this paper, we investigate the daily habits of Swedish municipal office workers as they worked from home during the pandemic with the aim to understand the role of habits in upholding boundaries between work and non-work. Our results indicate that habits from the workplace were sometimes disrupted, and other times transferred to the domestic area. We also saw examples of the establishment of new habits that helped to facilitate role transitions between work and non-work roles, so-called ‘transitional habits’. Our main contribution is to show how the establishment of daily transitional habits can alleviate role shifts and thus help to keep work and non-work roles boundaries separate and distinct.

Complexity, Resilience, and Human Resource Management: Illustration from Nordic Higher Education

Jouni Kekäle — 2024-06-20

We explore increasing complexity, resilience (how a system adapts and responds to increasing complexity and radical change), and potential human resource management (HRM) responses to change in higher education at a Nordic institution. HRM is seen as a shared function. As an empirical illustration, we interviewed nine leading academics in dominant and leading administrative positions in one Nordic university. Responses to a major change (CoARA) were discussed. We analyze the possible HRM responses in the context of major but fuzzy changes: How do leading academics forming the HRM policy perceive expectations of role change and how do the respon- dents demonstrate resilience when interpreting the early signs of a major change? The overall initial reactions to the change (CoARA) were hesitant. We propose the concept of emergent resilience and a model to describe its dynamics. Potential implications for HRM in the face of complexity and change are discussed.

Path Reinforcer or Policy Accelerator? COVID-19 and Scandinavian Social Protection Reform Trajectories

Mattias Bengtsson — 2024-05-23

A pandemic may change the use of social protection systems. In this article, we compare Scandinavian reform trajectories of unemployment benefits and sickness benefits following the COVID-19 pandemic. From an institutional theory perspective, we have analyzed official documents on regulations proposed in government bills, public inquiries, reports, and secondary literature published between March 2020 and December 2023, as well as interview data from key actors representing the state, the social partners, and related stakeholder organizations. The findings show that Denmark and Norway implemented mostly provisional reforms and thus ended in path reinforcement. In Sweden, on the contrary, numerous provisional reforms during the pandemic turned out to become permanent in the post-pandemic period. As the pandemic legitimized permanent changes that in some cases had been debated for a long time in Sweden, it thus came to act as a path-clearing policy accelerator.

Introduction to NJWS 2024-4

Anders Buch — 2024-12-04

Welcome to the fourth and final issue of Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies for 2024. This edition features four research articles authored by scholars from Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.