The goal to include unemployed and often vulnerable people to the labor market has since the 1980s been a continuous ambition for Danish politics. A tendency in research has been to mainly focus on the relation between the employment centers and the unemployed. This thesis focus instead on how social work and private companies are interdependent on this matter.
To examine this field, four qualitative interviews were conducted with selected HR professionals with the purpose to gain insight into their judgment, and how this affects their attitude towards hiring and retaining vulnerable people. The companies represent industries within information, manufacturing, and finance. The focus is kept on the HR employees, due to their usual function in managing recruitment and retention.
To analyze how the HR employee's use of judgment, impact their attitude towards hiring and retaining vulnerable people, different theories have been selected. First, the three different types of judgment found in Høilund and Juul's theory on recognition and judgment will form the basis for understanding the conflicts HR employees experience in their efforts to hire or retain vulnerable people. Secondly, Liebst and Monrad’s perspective on coping will be used to analyze the stress field between HR employees' personal will and judgment and the corporate framework and requirements. Lastly, different theories on the individualized and accelerated human will be used to analyze if these values are reflected in the HR employees use of judgment. This thesis is conducted with a hermeneutic approach, meaning that above theories are interpreted and used in the way argued most sensible and meaningful. In this way, each chapter is formed by expansion of existing understandings.
It is found that the HR employees use of judgment, particularly reflect the companies’ requirements and values, which can be summarized to requirements and values of the individualized and accelerated human. This excludes vulnerable people, who do not match the requirements and values of individualization and acceleration, from being recognized as valuable to the labor market. Further, it is found that the HR employees face a conflict between their personal judgment and considerations of the institutional requirements and values of the company. Lastly, recognition is disused in relation to its terms and consequences in the modern society.