Mid Sweden University

Background and purpose: The purpose is to investigate whether regular and temporary staff differ in their per- ceptions of preconditions for learning and if there are some qualitative aspects that can be considered particularly significant in these differences. Design/Methodology/Approach: The approach consists of a case study based on both quantitative and qualitative data collected via an online questionnaire and individual interviews.

Results: The paper question the understanding of the organization as a singular and more or less cohesive unit. On an organizational level, the project owner who hires staff does not care for competence transfer between regulars and temps, or between different groups of staff. At the individual level, temps are more focused on their specific task compared to regulars. Regulars’ seems to safeguarding a community or an organizational perspective, while temps are looking for their own good.

Conclusions: There is a risk that one social unit differs, in attention payed to preconditions for learning, from an- other, when an organization use temporary staff. Therefore, the scientific value of this paper is that using temps may result in or be a consequence of a fragmented organization. The findings show no competence transfer in projects with both temps and regulars, and the project owner takes no active responsibility for human resource planning in terms of competence transfer between different groups of staff. The implications underline that long-term efficiency and rationality in an organization does not always have priority over organizational affiliation even with the hiring of expertise. When this happens, it may lead to a fragmented personnel group that is divided in thinkers/organizers and, performers/doers. When this happens, important practical skills fall outside of the organization, which in a metaphor- ical sense means that the hand is separated from the brain. Therefore, organizations with temporary staff need to plan for how to enable competence transfer between temporary and regular staff.

This paper studies leisure-time center staff (L-tCS) leadership based on the concepts of leadership perspective and leadership style. The purpose is to understand how L-tCS describe their work in terms of leadership in the didactic room by answering the following open-ended question in an online survey: How would you describe your leadership in the learning environment? The study was carried out through an analysis of 355 responses, and the analysis was based on previous research on the relationship of frame factors to the learning environment. The findings demonstrate, firstly, that there are often frame factors with negative effects on the work climate and that limit the L-tCS’s capacity to vary their leadership and, secondly, that the L-tCS use widely different leadership perspectives and leadership styles. The choice of a specific perspective or a possible shift between different perspectives helps the staff to define the current situation from a specific point of view.

Background: Work agencies that assign temporary jobs to doctors and nurses are becoming an increasing phenomenon. Aim: The purpose of this pilot study was to explore how consultant doctors (CDs) experience their competence as utilized in practice and what impact this has on their perceived psychosocial work environment. Methods: The findings are based on 11 interviews with CDs working on consultancy assignments in Norway. The CDs were all specialists in fields such as general practice, psychiatry, anesthesia, gynecology, orthopedics, and otolaryngology. Results: The competence that the CDs contributed to their hosting work organization was interpreted differently based on whether the consultant played an active role in the psychosocial work environment and also depended on the doctor’s specialty. Not being integrated into the hosting work organization enhanced the feeling of exclusion and the idea that little or no room was available to contribute one’s competence. Most of the CDs experienced their competence as being utilized to a certain extent, which strengthened their work satisfaction and feeling of playing an active role in the psychosocial work environment.

The purpose of this study is to describe and analyse how teachers perceive the internal learning environment at Swedish leisure-time centres and set it in relation to steering documents. The empirical data is based on a comprehensive web-survey of 4,043 leisure-time teachers in Sweden. The methodological approach is a qualitative directed content analysis. The results show large differences and inequalities in the quality of leisure-time centres’ premises, an educational form characterized by integration with school and therefore to some extent lost autonomy. Activities in leisure-time centres combine individuality and social community in creative forms of play and social relationships. Because of this there are complex requirements for premises and dysfunctional premises reduce the opportunities to create good learning environments. The existing conditions for the majority of leisure-time centres do not correspond to the intentions in the steering documents concerning good learning environments. Leisure time centres have started to reproduce the (environmental) logic of ‘traditional teaching premises’ and to ignore their own (environmental) potential, which is even prescribed in specific steering documents. These results have implications for policy decisions and educational development.