Taking a managerial position involves not only taking on managerial tasks and responsibilities but also developing an identity as manager. Recent work on manager learning thus proposes that identity ...work is a significant part of learning to become manager. This work has, however, rarely focused on first-time managers and, despite the emphasis on process, has rarely examined identity work over time. Against this background, we present a longitudinal study of six newly appointed managers. Adopting a Ricoeurian perspective, we construct “small stories” to explore how they made sense of themselves and how to relate to others in light of new experiences in their everyday lives as nascent managers. The study provides insight into the process through which they were learning to become managers. Specifically, it highlights how the manager’s identity work oscillated over time by pointing to the ongoing dialectic between continuity and change, progress and stand-still, knowing and not-knowing, and excitement and despair.
Purpose - This paper seeks to explore critical factors that may obstruct or advance integration efforts initiated by the clinical management following a hospital merger. The aim is to increase the ...understanding of why clinical integration succeeds or fails.Design methodology approach - The authors compare two cases of clinical integration efforts following the Karolinska University Hospital merger in Sweden. Each case represents two merged clinical departments of the same specialty from each hospital site. In total, 53 interviews were conducted with individuals representing various staff categories and documents were collected to check data consistency.Findings - The study identifies three critical factors that seem to be instrumental for the process and outcome of integration efforts and these are clinical management's interpretation of the mandate; design of the management constellation; and approach to integration. Obstructive factors are: a sole focus on the formal assignment from the top; individual leadership; and the use of a classic, planned, top-down management approach. Supportive factors are: paying attention to multiple stakeholders; shared leadership; and the use of an emergent, bottom-up management approach within planned boundaries. These findings are basically consistent with the literature's prescriptions for managing professional organisations.Practical implications - Managers need to understand that public healthcare organisations are based on competing institutional logics that need to be handled in a balanced way if clinical integration is to be achieved - especially the tension between managerialism and professionalism.Originality value - By focusing on the merger consequences for clinical units, this paper addresses an important gap in the healthcare merger literature.
This article examines leadership in practice through an investigation of how 62 managers (including project leaders), competing in a cutting-edge environment, perceive and describe the ...characteristics of everyday leadership. Based on the common notion of fragmentation in managerial work, as well as the unfortunate lack of understanding of how managerial work relates to the overall work processes of the organization, the article addresses the integrated job of managing (e.g., see Barley and Kunda, 1992; Hales, 1986, 1999; Mintzberg, 1994). In this study, everyday leadership is uncovered as a sense-making process consisting of three sets of activities — interpretations, constant adjustments and formulations of temporary solutions. Another striking feature of everyday leadership is that, to a considerable extent, it is event-driven. We therefore suggest that everyday leadership, as an event-driven activity rather than an intention-driven activity, should focus on skills such as improvisation and the ability to tune in.
The premise of this article is that brands help people create their identities. When institutions of higher education engage in explicit branding activities, an appearance-focused brand culture, in ...which a coherent system of symbols, actions, and meaning, may emerge. This article explores how students in a Swedish business school use the school's brand for self-branding. The branding processes have implications for student postures toward their university education and the development of their self-conceptualizations. The article presents a theoretical framework for branding and for student self-branding at the studied school, demonstrates how the school is the focal point for this self-branding, identifies the branding vocabulary used at the school, and analyzes how students develop self-conceptualizations in a meaning system infused by branding. The article concludes by posing questions on the significance of self-branding in higher education.
This paper investigates Swedish data on implicit leadership theories in comparison with data from 61 other nationalities, testing the identification of a Swedish leadership style in light of ...globalization and possible converging value-formation processes. Global questionnaire data from 17,310 (900 Swedish) middle-managers constitute the basis for our analyses, using both a within-country perspective and a between-country perspective. While acknowledging the presence of almost universally endorsed leadership attributes, such as being inspirational and visionary, “typical” Swedish leadership attributes are possible to identify. Thus we challenge the simplified version of global convergence regarding leadership ideals and management ideology. On a basis of this study, we conclude that the notion of a Swedish leadership style is still meaningful and valid as a device for a better understanding of leadership efforts and cross-cultural interaction.
Based on the merger of two Swedish university hospitals, this paper examines top management's work in implementing radical change initiatives. Our case confirms the limitations of the classic ...top-down approach to radical change in professional organizations. We also identify an important paradox: contrary to contemporary change literature prescription, initial managerial success seems to impair the change process further down the organization. A key finding is that when mergers are used as tools to effect radical change in politically ambiguous environment, management appears to be limited to initiate change and to take the role of the scapegoat due to inherent factors in the change process. By elucidating management's difficult role vis-à-vis multiple stakeholders, this paper contributes to one aspect of managerial agency discourse that is rarely discussed in detail.
Managing clinical integration Choi, Soki; Holmberg, Ingalill; Löwstedt, Jan ...
Journal of health organization and management,
2012, Letnik:
26, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Purpose - This paper explores critical factors that may obstruct or advance integration efforts initiated by the clinical management following a hospital merger. The aim is to increase our ...understanding of why clinical integration succeeds or fails.
Design/methodology/approach - We compare two cases of integration efforts following the Karolinska University Hospital merger in Sweden. Each case represents two merged departments of the same specialty from each hospital site. We conducted 53 interviews with individuals representing various staff categories and collected documents to check data consistency.
Findings - The study identifies three critical factors that seem to be instrumental for the process and outcome of integration efforts – clinical management’s 1) interpretation of the mandate, 2) design of the management constellation and 3) approach to integration. Obstructive factors are: a sole focus on the formal assignment from the top; individual leadership; and the use of a classic, planned, top-down management approach. Supportive factors are: paying attention to multiple stakeholders; shared leadership; and the use of an emergent, bottom-up management approach within planned boundaries. These findings are basically consistent with the literature’s prescriptions for managing professional organisations.
Practical implications - Managers need to understand that public healthcare organisations are based on multiple logics that need to be handled in a balanced way if clinical integration is to be achieved – especially the tension between managerialism and professionalism.
Originality/value - By focusing on the merger consequences for clinical units, this paper addresses an important gap in the healthcare merger literature.
The aim of this cross-sectional exploratory study was to investigate destructive managerial leadership in the hotel industry in Sweden, Poland, and Italy in relation to psychological well-being among ...employees.
554 questionnaires were collected from employees in all occupational groups within hotels. The Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ) measured working conditions, particularly iso-strain or high work demands combined with low control and poor social support, and psychological well-being, defined in terms of mental health, vitality, and behavioural stress. Items adapted from the Global Leadership and Organisational Behaviour Effectiveness (GLOBE) research program questionnaire measured autocratic, malevolent, and self-centred leadership styles. Differences in ratings between countries were estimated, as well as the relationship between destructive managerial leadership on an organisation level and employee psychological well-being on an individual level. The relationship between destructive leadership and psychological well-being among employees was adjusted for employees' reported iso-strain.
Autocratic and malevolent leadership were at the organisation level related to low vitality among employees and self-centred leadership was significantly associated with poormental health, low vitality, and high behavioural stress. Autocratic and malevolent leadership were more strongly related to iso-strain than was self-centred leadership. Variations in leadership practice between countries were seen in autocratic and malevolent leadership.
This exploratory study suggests a significant association between destructive managerial leadership on the organisation level and poor psychological well-being among employees on an individual level. Interventions to decrease iso-strain and enhance psychological well-being among employees could be directed at an organisation level.
This study sets out to test the assumption that concepts of leadership differ as a function of cultural differences in Europe and to identify dimensions which describe differences in leadership ...concepts across European countries. Middle‐level managers (N = 6052) from 22 European countries rated 112 questionnaire items containing descriptions of leadership traits and behaviours. For each attribute respondents rated how well it fits their concept of an outstanding business leader. The findings support the assumption that leadership concepts are culturally endorsed. Specifically, clusters of European countries which share similar cultural values according to prior cross‐cultural research (Ronen & Shenkar, 1985), also share similar leadership concepts. The leadership prototypicality dimensions found are highly correlated with cultural dimensions reported in a comprehensive cross‐cultural study of contemporary Europe (Smith, Dugan, & Trompenaars, 1996). The ordering of countries on the leadership dimensions is considered a useful tool with which to model differences between leadership concepts of different cultural origin in Europe. Practical implications for cross‐cultural management, both in European and non‐European settings, are discussed.
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