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Global workers have long contended with the challenges of working across geographical, temporal, and cultural boundaries enabled by communication technologies. However, the global work research has rarely intersected with the literature on work–home boundary management—which has been brought to the forefront due to the forced move to remote work during the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing on a qualitative field study of 55 in-depth interviews with global workers from a large organization headquartered in the Nordics, we found that global workers drew on sociomaterial affordances to manage both global work and work–home boundaries through strategies of boundary support and boundary collapse. Although the shift to remote work created challenges due to boundary collapse, it presented new spatiotemporal affordances that led to unexpected benefits for both global work and work–life boundary management. The findings have implications for global work, remote work, and the future of work more broadly. peerReviewed

This edited book brings together contributions by some of the top work-life researchers from Finland and abroad. It offers a series of short essay-type chapters covering a broad variety of topics related to how labour markets, work and working life are continuously changing. The book has a strong cross-national approach and stresses the importance of studying both microlevel changes within macrolevel contexts as well as the microlevel mechanisms of changes at the macrolevel. The chapters are grouped in four parts. Part I deals with how life courses have changed, with special focus on the entry of women to the labour market and the determinants of their economic contribution. Part II discusses two circuits of labour migration: that of mostly high-skilled and regulated work and that of mostly low-skilled and unregulated work. However, it also shows that the boundaries between those two are not always clear. Part III focuses on how work itself is changing, using the examples of women attorneys’ pro-bono work in Finland and Poland and the use of lean management in the Nordic public sector. Finally, in Part IV the authors explore the power of institutions and ideas in reshaping the way we work while labour markets are under pressure. Available in print from online bookstores e.g. Booky.fi and Adlibris. Contents: Preface / Pertti Koistinen 1. Shaping and reshaping boundaries of work: A framework for analysing complex and multifaceted change / Aart-Jan Riekhoff PART I: THE LIFE COURSE AND GENDER IN THE LABOUR MARKET 2. Welfare state entry and exit over the life course: Employment and the sustainability of the welfare state in different worlds of welfare / Olli Kangas, Joakim Palme & Markus Kainu 3. Cross-national analysis of women’s economic contribution / Saki Kudo PART II: VARIETIES OF MIGRATION AND WORK 4. Crossing the boundary to Europe: Finns on transnational careers in the European Union / Saara Koikkalainen 5. Examining the role of institutions in shaping migrant reproductive labour / Merita Jokela 6. Polish posted workers in the transnational space of subcontracting: Making ethnographic sense of new employment relations / Anna Matyska PART III: NEW WAYS OF WORKING 7. “It is also about helping people”: Women attorneys’ commitment to public service and incentives for pro bono work in Finland and Poland / Marta Choroszewicz 8. The rise of lean organisations in Nordic countries: How recent changes in public sector management are shaping working life / Armi Mustosmäki, Tomi Oinas & Timo Anttila PART IV: THE POLITICS AND POSSIBILITIES OF CHANGING WORK 9. Labour market reforms in times of globalisation / Aart-Jan Riekhoff 10. Decentralisation in the context of the competitiveness discourse: The Finnish labour market relations system since 2008 / Paul Jonker-Hoffrén 11. Alternative for work, low-income supplement or investment? Exploring the idea of basic income in the Finnish public debate / Johanna Perkiö

Nordic countries stand out from the rest of the Europe in terms of job quality. Comparative research literature sought to explain the distinctiveness of Nordic countries with diverse sets of institutional frameworks. However, global competition, technological revolution and deregulation are common developments throughout the industrial world – processes which are seen to erode the meaning of institutions and nation states as protective mechanisms. This dissertation discusses the question on the existence and persistence of the Nordic working life model through the concept of job quality, which are investigated using surveys on working conditions. The study draws from both universal and institutional theories to examine changes in work life comparatively. The results lend support to a persistence of high quality of work life in Nordic countries: the Nordic countries stood out as the only group where employees’ possibilities to influence their work and use and develop skills were high and continued to increase. Furthermore, as institutional theory expects, the risk of class polarization was found to be low as inequalities in job quality have decreased between manual and professional employees. The findings partly challenge, partly support the claims concerning the gender equality paradox in work life in Nordic countries: gender gap in job quality was decreasing in all regimes, and had disappeared between upper white-collar women and men in Finland. However, gender gap in job quality remained the widest in Nordic countries, and was found to be especially persistent among lower white collar female and male employees in Finland. Several seepages of institutions were pointed out: intensification of work has increased significantly, especially for women. Perceived job insecurity has increased and become common experience regardless of class. Low class inequality was in fact partly due to the degradation of job quality of male professionals and managers. In addition, the study found that benchmarked managerial practices, interpreted as institutional avoidance, demand attention to sectoral and managerial logics in rapidly emerging service industries. These practices challenge the functioning of institutions as protecting mechanisms. Consequently, the study concludes that the capability of institutions to resist the pressures for change and insulate the consequent deterioration of job quality becomes debatable.

The Nordic Economic Policy Review – NEPR – is published by the Nordic Council of Ministers and addresses policy issues in a way that is useful for in-formed non-specialists as well as for professional economists. All articles are commissioned from leading professional economists and are subject to peer review prior to publication. The review appears twice a year. It is published electronically on the website of the Nordic Council of Ministers: www.norden.org/en. On that website, you can also order paper copies of the Review (enter the name of the Review in the search field, and you will find all the information you need). Managing Editor: Professor Torben M. Andersen, Department of Economics, University of Aarhus, Denmark. Special Editors for this volume: Research Professor Erling Barth, Institute for Social Research, Oslo, Norway and Professor Kalle O. Moene, Department of Economics, University of Oslo, Norway.

The Nordic welfare states are facing new challenges in an increasingly globalised world. Fiercer competition has underlined the need for the Nordics to enhance competitiveness – and to support and nurse growth in industry and businesses. This report presents the key findings and policy recommendations of the project “Nordic Growth Sectors.” Having identified growth companies in the Nordics, the project analyses growth drivers, the match between supply and demand of labour, the work environment in the companies, and growth and other companies’ perceptions of existing framework conditions and improvement needs. Based on the analyses and on a Nordic Policy Forum held in Copenhagen with participation of policymakers from the central administrations, labour market organisations, universities and growth companies, a set of policy reccommendations are developed, the most important of which are to Introduce more flexible retirement schemesDeminish international recruitment red tapePrepare graduates better for employmentCreate national work environment “barometers”Introduce more flexible child care facilitiesCarry out cost-benefit analysis of complex regulation

Den nordiske velferdsmodellen har vind i seilene i dagens Europa. I all velstanden er det likevel faresignaler. Et stort antall unge faller ut av skole og utdanning, og mange får dermed problemer med å komme inn på arbeidsmarkedet. Mennesker med nedsatt funksjonsevne har problemer med å få arbeid og mange seniorer går tidlig ut av arbeidslivet. Arbeidsinkluderingsprosjektet studerer hva som gjøres og hva som er oppnådd i de nordiske landene med å inkludere disse gruppene.

This report presents the results from a project that has aimed to generate new comparative knowledge about labour migration from Central and Eastern Europe to the Nordic countries, the factors that shape wage and working conditions for labour migrants and recruitment processes and practices. In the report we: • Describe and compare patterns of labour migration between Central and Eastern Europe and the Nordic countries. • Compare the working conditions of Polish labour migrants in in Oslo, Copenhagen and Reykjavik – and analyse how their labour market situation is shaped by variations in national regulations, systems of collective bargaining and local labour market structures. • Analyse the particular role of recruitment agencies in introducing new migrants to the Nordic labour markets. The research has been conducted by a team of researchers from Fafo (Norway), FAOS (Denmark), CIRRA/MIRRA (Iceland), CMR (Poland) and SOFI (Sweden).

Free access to pdf files and the Nordic statistical database below. Nordic Statistical Yearbook 2010 is published for the 48th time. It is a reference book containing comprehensive and easily accessible statistics of various aspects of social life in the five Nordic countries, i.e. Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. In addition data are also presented on the selfgoverning regions, i.e. the Faroe Islands, Greenland and the Åland Islands. The aim of the yearbook is, as far as possible, to present comparable data on the Nordic countries. Additional tables can be found free of charge on our homepage. Here It is also possible to read and download the Nordic Statistical Yearbook in pdf format free of charge. Nordisk statistisk årsbok utkommer nu för 48:e gången. Årsboken är en uppslagsbok, som avser vara en sammanfattande och överskådlig redovisning av statistik över samhällsförhållandena i de fem nordiska länderna Danmark, Finland, Island, Norge och Sverige. I många av tabellerna redovisas också uppgifter om de självstyrande områdena Färöarna, Grönland och Åland. Syftet med årsboken är att lägga fram sinsemellan jämförbara uppgifter om de nordiska länderna. Ytterligare tabeller finns tillgängliga gratis på vår hemsida. Här är det också möjligt att kostnadsfritt läsa och ladda ner boken i pdf-format