The Role of Cultural Consciousness and Knowledge Development in Managing Multicultural Staff in Norwegian Nursing Homes
Year: 2021
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This PhD thesis draws attention to multicultural staffing leadership of multicultural staff in Norwegian nursing homes. Studies on the implication of multicultural staffing on leadership practices in nursing homes is scarce. The study is set within the thematic areas of care work, migration, and the welfare state. The overall aim is to explore the ways forms of leadership and staff work-practices in nursing homes are negotiated in relation to diversities in the workforce, focusing on cultural background and migrancy. The thesis is an ethnographic study of everyday work practices as they unfold at the intersection of immigrant inclusion in care work, leadership practices and the organizational context of nursing homes. The thesis focuses on two main questions: (1) What are the tensions that characterize organization and everyday work practices of multicultural staff in nursing homes, and how do these tensions influence leadership practices and immigrant inclusion in work? (2) How do leaders organize and strategize to manage a multicultural staff? Data collection was qualitative based on ethnographic methods: participant observation (during daily work at the nursing homes), semi-structured individual interviews, focus group interviews, and informal discussions and conversations, from eight wards of three nursing homes for four months. Data analysis draws on theoretical perspectives of agency, intersectionality and implicit leadership, while employing specific concepts of habitus, social stock of knowledge, and identity, to enable an in-depth analysis of the relevance of context, culture and communication in work practices and in order to understand such processes within the broader spheres of immigration/integration policy of the Norwegian welfare state. The analysis brings out three key aspects: (1) Structural and contextual factors shaping agency and work practices in nursing homes; in which factors that mediate, enable or constrain immigrant inclusion in work and influencing work processes are presented and analysed. (2) Language competency, communication and the social stock of knowledge among nursing home staff; whereby situated communication and interaction processes are explored to establish factors that facilitate or inhibit inclusionary practices in work beyond competency in Norwegian language; and (3) Norwegianness and the organization of a multicultural workforce in nursing homes; whereby aspects of Norwegian culture and the taken for grantedness in organizing and providing care are examined to establish identity formation and negotiation processes among the immigrant staff, as well as the way these identities intersect to influence and contribute to immigrants unfavourable experiences at work.
Author: Patience Nelson Kawamala
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3193178331