CEO: 'We would never make it with full-timers. I don't think so' - A narrative study about the underpinning logic of a story behind nonstandard employment in the Swedish clothing retail industry

Abstract

This thesis, using a narrative approach, unfolds a story and hence questions its underpinning logic of nonstandard employment as expressed by representatives from the Swedish retail industry. As our mapping of the story indicates, the intertwined micro- and macrostories told by the interlocutors seem to function as to legitimise a logic that favours nonstandard contracts for the employees resulting in precarious circumstances for the same. Building upon Czarniawska’s narrative methodology (2004), we explicate this story using an antenarrative causality analysis. Further, we use an objectivist explanation and reach out to the Lacanian notion of fantasy as a means to explore our findings. Hence, the fundamental argument of this thesis is that there is a shared fantasy possessed by the employers that functions as a justification for them to act according to this nonstandard employment logic. Also, through its method, this thesis argues that this story has not ended yet.