“The demand for flexibility as a process of disenfranchisement”.

The purpose of this study is to examine the implications the increased demand for flexibility have for managers and staff at daycare centres. Flexibility means the ability to constantly bend and shape work conceptions and identity to ever changing demands such as adaptability, mobility and creativity. The main focus of the article is the problematic aspects of flexibility expressed by the child carers interviewed.

The study finds that demands for employees to be flexible can be analysed as a disenfranchisement process both professionally and more generally, as child carers find it difficult to level criticism against the ever changing demands. Internalisation of flexibility is difficult for child carers to deal with and at the same time puts them under severe psychological pressure.         This means that the demand for flexibility is not only accompanied by demands to break down work routines, but also by a sense of lacking the very same work routines.         In addition, employees refrain from criticising this development because they fear reprisal.  

The data material consists of 48 focus-group interviews with a total of 248 participants, including child carers, managers and trade union representatives. Each focus group comprised six to eight people, and none of the child carers were placed in the same focus group as their superior.

Petersen, A. & Willig, R. (2011). “The demand for flexibility as a process of disenfranchisement”. Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory, 12(3), 343-362.