Måned: november 2020

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.