INTEGRATE

Anurajee Rasalingam defended her PhD dissertation ”Emerging adults living with long-term health challenges” December 13. 2023. Her three published articles are:

Rasalingam, Anurajee; Brekke, Idunn ; Stenberg, Una; Haaland-Øverby, Mette ; Helseth, Sølvi (2023). ‘Struggling to participate in everyday life’: emerging adults’ experiences of living with long-term health challenges. BMC Public Health. Vol. 23.
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-023-16291-6

Rasalingam, Anurajee; Brekke, Idunn ; Dahl, Espen ; Helseth, Sølvi (2021). Impact of growing up with somatic long-term health challenges on school completion, NEET status and disability pension: a population-based longitudinal study. BMC Public Health. Vol. 21.
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-10538-w

Rasalingam, Anurajee; Fegran, Liv; Brekke, Idunn ; Helseth, Sølvi (2020). Young people with long-term health challenges experiences in transition to adulthood: A qualitative metasynthesis. Journal of Advanced Nursing. Vol. 77.
https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.14641

Eric Martin Alexander Berit, Tone Alm Andreassen and Knut Fossestøl has published a new article in Public Management Review.

Development of hybrid professionalism: street-level managers’ work and the enabling conditions of public reform

Breit, Eric Martin Alexander; Andreassen, Tone Alm; Fossestøl, Knut

https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2022.2095004

Abstract

This paper examines the role of street-level managers in the development of hybrid professionalism. Based on a longitudinal analysis of an organisational reform, we highlight the work of street-level managers in promoting a hybrid ‘social work-like’ professionalism to reconcile social work professionalism with managerial bureaucracy. We highlight four managerial activities—organisational design, discursive reconstruction, R&D project mobilisation and legitimisation in reform documents—and connect these to enabling and constraining conditions in the reform. Overall, we found that the development of hybrid professionalism is contingent on enabling conditions providing material and discursive resources that proactive managers can employ to transform professionalism.

https://www.cappelendamm.no/_samhandling-og-inkludering-i-arbeidslivet-9788202740528

Antologien Samhandling og inkludering i arbeidslivet (Therese Saltkjel , Chris Rønningstad og Mette Sønderskov red.) har sprunget ut av INTEGRATEs kjernemiljø.

«Hvorfor er det så vanskelig å få til samhandling på tvers av ulike sektorer og aktører? For å hjelpe mennesker med sammensatte behov inn i arbeidslivet, trenger man å koble ulike adskilte deler av hjelpeapparatet sammen til tjenester som er mindre fragmenterte. Samhandling og inkludering i arbeidslivet omhandler muligheter og utfordringer knyttet til samhandling i det norske arbeidsinkluderingsfeltet. Samhandling dreier seg både om samhandling i og mellom ulike offentlige tjenester, men også om samhandling mellom offentlige tjenester og andre ikke-offentlige aktører som for eksempel brukere av tjenestene, arbeidsgivere, tiltaksleverandører og sosiale entreprenører.

Del 1 av boken ser nærmere på ulike tilnærminger til inkludering i arbeidslivet og samhandling i politikk og forskning. Del 2 er særlig rettet mot målgruppene for arbeidsinkludering: mennesker med sammensatte utfordringer, som ofte lever i sårbare livssituasjoner. Siste del, del 3, omhandler samhandling på tvers av aktører, tjenester og nivåer. Dette inkluderer temaene helhetlig oppfølging av lavinntektsfamilier, inkluderingskompetanse, ledelse, organisasjonskultur og sosialt entreprenørskap.

Samhandling og inkludering i arbeidslivet henvender seg til studenter, praktikere og forskere. Den er ment som et bidrag til tverrfaglig kunnskapsutvikling ved å oppsamle kunnskap og forskning om samhandling i og mellom tjenester. Boken gir også lesere relevant empirisk innblikk i ulike former for samhandling som gjøres i det norske arbeidsinkluderingsfeltet.»

INTEGRATE’s Mette Sønderskov, Rolf Rønning and Siv Magnussen have published a new article on public service innovation in Public Policy and Administration.

Abstract

Innovation has been highlighted as a magic formula that can solve deep-seated, emerging complex social and economic problems in the public service sector. However, public innovation efforts face both drivers and barriers. Innovation depends on context, and currently different competing governance paradigms’ influence has attracted growing academic and political interest regarding the potential of public service innovation. Today, new public governance (NPG) has been suggested as an alternative paradigm to classic public administration (CPA) and new public management (NPM), as the focus of attention has shifted from traditional hierarchical forms of government and market-based competition strategies to interactive- and collaborative-based governance. In this paper, we discuss how elements from different governance paradigms interact, support and undermine one another in terms of innovation in hybrid organisations. Although hybridisation has been described in extant studies on administrative welfare reforms, it barely has been examined in the public innovation literature. This is a theoretical paper based on a scoping review; however, we use the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV) as an illustrative case to explain how hybridisation may lead to both stimulations and perversions regarding the development, implementation and spread of public service innovation. Finally, the paper reflects on how public leaders can handle hybridity within their organisational units.

Flemming Larsen, member of our expert panel, has written an article in Journal of Social Policy with Dorte Caswell about co-creation in Danish municipalities titled «Co-Creation in an era of Welfare Conditionality – Lessons from Denmark». You can read the article HERE

Eric Breit together with Cathrine Egeland, Ida B. Løberg, and Maria T. Røhnebæk have published the article Digital coping: How frontline workers cope with digital service encounters in Social Policy & Administration. You can read the full article HERE. Abstract below:

This article addresses how frontline workers cope when dealing with digitally mediated service encounters. It draws on a qualitative study of frontline workers’ experiences in an increasingly digitalised work environment in the context of employment assistance services. The material shows that digitalising service encounters leads to two overall types of change for frontline employees, and the article explores related coping responses. First, the technology leads to an increased availability of the frontline workers to the clients. This is coped with by handing over, or ‘outsourcing’, responsibilities to clients through digital platforms, and by reducing what is experienced as ‘noise’ related to incoming enquiries. Second, the technology leads to increased transparency of the service interactions, which is coped with by being careful about the content of client communications. The analysis of these changes and their related coping responses contributes to the research on digital public service encounters and highlights avenues for empirical studies and theoretical development within a topical, yet little studied, field.

Our members keep publishing! Espen Dahl has just published and article with Thomas Lorentzen titled: «Social assistance dynamics in Norway revisited: A two‐decade prospective study of trajectories of young social assistance recipients«

The juicy title leads to an article revisiting earlier research on social assistance dynamics with a holistic life-course approach. You can read the full article HERE.

Abstract:

This article revisits earlier research on social assistance (SA) dynamics by applying a holistic life‐course approach, made possible by sequence analysis. We followed the life‐course over 20 years of young recipients of SA in Norway. The data material was derived from administrative data collected and linked by Statistics Norway. The study population was first‐time SA recipients aged 18–24 years in 1995. In addition to SA, spells of social security, schooling, work and earnings were examined. We found that SA plays a minor role over time, but that social security receipt constitutes an important trajectory for more than a quarter of the SA population. Education and work with medium earnings make up distinctly different and rather successful trajectories for about half of the SA population. Gender and early school‐leaving matter for trajectory affiliation. Women’s trajectories are to a greater extent than men’s characterised by unstable employment and low‐paid work.