There are 60 million health care workers globally and most of this workforce consists of nurses, as they are key providers of primary health care. Historically, the global nurse occupation has been predominately female and segregated along gendered, racialised and classed hierarchies. In the last decade, new actors have emerged in the management of health care human resources, specifically from the corporate sector, which has created new interactions, networks, and organisational practices.
This book urgently calls for the reconceptualisation in the theoretical framing of the globalised nurse occupation from International Human Resource Management (IHRM) to Transnational Human Resource Management (THRM). Specifically, the book draws on critical human resource management literature and transnational feminist theories to frame the strategies and practices used to manage nurses across geographical sites of knowledge production and power, which centralise on how and by whom nurses are managed. In its current managerial form, the author argues that the nurses are constructed and produced as resources to be packaged for clients in public and private organisations.
TRANSNATIONAL MANAGEMENT OF GLOBALISED WORKERS: NURSES BEYOND HUMAN RESOURCES Introduction Transnational human resource management of nurse labour Aim of the book The structure of the book FRAMING: PART ONE PERSPECTIVES ON TRANSNATIONALISATION OF CARE AND THE NURSE LABOUR MARKET Transnational nurse labour migration: a macro overview Regional and global flows of transnational nurse migration Traditional nurse-migration patterns Gendered migration of labour Global care economies Global care chains Global Nurse Care Chains Transnationalisation of care and producer-based care networks Nurse work as gendered and racialised labour in work organisations Coping management of nurse work Inequality regimes in work organisations Neoliberalism governance within the transnationalisation of care Summary and concluding thoughts FRAMING TRANSNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT OF NURSE LABOUR Critical engagement within international human resource management Critical theorists in HRM and IHRM Transnational Feminisms Organisations and institutional barriers to equality in a globalised world: the work of Joan Acker Postmodernism and transnational organising: the work of Marta B. Calás and Linda Smircich Outside organisations and outside the ‘international’: the work of Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan Outside organisations and neocolonial structural controls: the work of Chandra Mohanty Working with transnational feminism(s) Transnational human resource management: the case of producer-based care networks Summary and concluding thoughts SITUATING: PART TWO REPRESENTATIVES AND SOCIAL WORLDS IN TRANSNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT OF NURSE LABOUR A situated approach to mapping transnational human resource management of nurses Collecting data on the conditions of the situated story Representative entrepreneurs, implicated actors, and social worlds Interviews: gaining access to social worlds Documentary method: material presence of social relations and actions Participatory observations: maps, memos, and reflection of the situation and its social worlds/arenas Research diary entries and personal reflection/self-analysis Research interest situated in lived experience Summary and concluding thoughts MAPPING SOCIAL WORLDS THROUGH DISCOURSE, TEXT, AND MATERIALITY What is discourse and why analyse it? Varieties of discourse analysis Core dimensions of discourse analysis Theoretical approaches to discourse analysis The material-discursive and multi-domains approach to discourse Discourse analysis of this research: some comments about linguistic language use and situated knowledge Situational analysis as approach to discourse, power and materiality Ordered situational maps Social worlds/Arena Maps Positions in discourses Summary and concluding thoughts A SITUATION: PART 3 TRANSNATIONAL MANAGEMENT OF NURSES IN PRODUCER-BASED CARE NETWORKS IN FINLAND Establishing the arena of producer-based care networks Preparing for import: making a case out of the recruitment of nurses from the Philippines Pioneering the supply practice of transnational nursing labour Making Finland attractive to recruit immigrant professional workers public representatives asserting more dominance The legitimisation of nurse imports during economic recession Situating transnational management of nurses Summary and concluding thoughts DISCURSIVE POSITIONS AND STRUCTURAL BARRIERS TO EQUALITY IN TRANSNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT The Philippines as a source for nurse human capital and the warm, optimistic Filipino nurse Standardised work requirements of Filipino nurses and the use of Finnish language in the workplace Organising the general requirements Class hierarchies Recruitment and hiring Wage setting and supervisory practices Informal interactions while ‘doing work’ Discursive positions on ethical recruitment Structural inequality barriers through transnational human resource practices Summary and concluding thoughts CONCLUSIONS Mapping the social worlds of transnational human resource management Transnational human resource management: a theoretical contribution Transnational human resource management of nurses: an empirical contribution Mapping social worlds in the arena of producer-based care networks: a methodological contribution Policy implications Not the end of the journey: future research possibilities
Tricia Cleland Silva is a Lecturer and Post Doctoral Researcher at Hanken School of Economics, Finland. She is the co-founder of Metaphora International, a consultancy that works with finding meaning in management and strategy through stories and metaphors.
