Stefan Sveningsson

Managing Managerial Identities: Organizational Fragmentation, Discourse and Identity Struggle

This is a case study of managerial identity work, based on an in-depth case of a senior manager and the organizational context in which she works. The article addresses the interplay between organizational discourses, role expectations, narrative self-identity and identity work. Identity is conceptualized in processual terms as identity work and struggle. The article illuminates fragmentation as well as integration in the interplay between organizational discourses and identity. It aims to contribute to a processual oriented identity theory and to the methodology of identity studies through showing the advantage of a multi-level intensive study.

The great disappearing act: difficulties in doing “leadership”

We address ideas and talk about leadership in a research and development (R&D) company. The meaning that middle and senior managers ascribe to leadership is explored. We show how initial claims about leadership values and style tend to break down when managers are asked to expand on how they perceive their leadership and account for what they actually do in this respect. We raise strong doubts about leadership as a construct saying something valuable and valid about what managers do in this kind of setting. We also argue that thinking about leadership needs to take seriously the possibility of the nonexistence of leadership as a distinct phenomenon with great relevance for understanding organizations and relations in workplaces.

Managers Doing Leadership: The Extra-Ordinarization of the Mundane

Based on a case study of managers in a large, international knowledge-intensive company this article suggests a rethinking of leadership, taking the mundane, almost trivial, aspects of what managers/leaders actually do seriously. In the study, the managers interviewed emphasized the importance of listening and informal chatting. Managers listening to subordinates are assumed to have various positive effects, e.g. people feel more respected, visible and less anonymous, and included in teamwork. Rather than certain acts being significant in themselves, it is their being done by managers that gives them a special, emotional value beyond their everyday significance. Leadership is conceptualized as the extra-ordinarization of the mundane.

Fantasies of leadership - identity work

This article explores middle managerial talk and practice connected to expectations of leadership in a planned corporate cultural change programme. Here we explore how a middle manager positions him or herself in relation to contemporary discourse on leadership. We discuss how managerial claims of leadership in practice seem inconsistent with the actual practice. Based on these findings we suggest that leadership ideas could be seen as a kind of fantasy related to identity work, rather than actual practice. We investigate this fantasy in terms of its various sources and relate the fantasy construction to management education and to the planned cultural change in particular.

The return of the machine bureaucracy? – Management control and knowledge work

Knowledge-intensive firms are frequently believed to operate under conditions that invalidate industrial-bureaucratic forms of managerial control. The nature of work, the professionalism of the workers makes traditional organizational structures and managerial techniques archaic and inefficient. However, empirical material from recent studies in two major knowledge-intensive firms indicates that traditional managerial forms of control have maintained and even reclaimed a seemingly vital space in organizational practice. The two cases belong to different branches, thus possibly prefiguring an emergent trend toward the industrialization of at least parts of knowledge work, involving standardization of tasks and methods of working, reinforcing the exchangeability of individuals and units, and increased efforts to manage by numbers and other criteria from the past.Knowledge-intensive firms are frequently believed to operate under conditions that invalidate industrial-bureaucratic forms of managerial control. The nature of work, the professionalism of the workers makes traditional organizational structures and managerial techniques archaic and inefficient. However, empirical material from recent studies in two major knowledge-intensive firms indicates that traditional managerial forms of control have maintained and even reclaimed a seemingly vital space in organizational practice. The two cases belong to different branches, thus possibly prefiguring an emergent trend toward the industrialization of at least parts of knowledge work, involving standardization of tasks and methods of working, reinforcing the exchangeability of individuals and units, and increased efforts to manage by numbers and other criteria from the past.

Paradoxes of authentic leadership: Leader identity struggles

Using in-depth interview material, this article explores the socially constructed and locally mediated nature of authentic leadership. The findings illustrate an irony of authentic leadership: while leaders claim that it is their true and natural selves that make them good leaders; simultaneously, they must restrain their claimed authenticity in order to be perceived as good leaders. This generates tensions that undermine the construction of a more stable and coherent leader identity. The study finds that in order to resolve these tensions, the managers develop metaphorical selves—Mother Teresa, messiah and coach—as a way of trying to accommodate conflicting identity claims while remaining true to the idea of themselves as authentic leaders exercising good leadership. These findings contribute to a constructed, situational and contested notion of leadership by showing how authenticity is an existential project of ‘essentialising’ fragmented and conflicting selves.

Identity work in consultancy projects: Ambiguity and distribution of credit and blame

The consultancy industry — broadly defined — has boomed significantly over recent decades. A large and increasing proportion of the welleducated parts of the workforce are employed as management, IT and engineering consultants, communication advisors, etc. Large accounting firms employing hundred of thousands of employees also work with advice-giving on a consultancy (or consultancy-like) basis. So do law, advertising, architecture and many other kinds of firms. Consultancy work means coming from the outside, adding advice and/or expertise, helping client firms. In principle, the external professional is supposed to enter with objectivity, neutrality and supplementary or superior knowledge and increases the rationality and efficiency of client organisations. Client-orientation is an espoused dominating value and most consultants have a strong material incentive to satisfy their clients. Prompted by the prestige, high fees and attractiveness of consultancy jobs, talented and hard-working employees are often recruited and many consultancy firms make huge efforts in recruiting, retaining and developing talented people (and ‘letting go’ those viewed as less competent). All this could imply that relations between consultants and their clients are on the whole consensual and positive.

Leadership and identity in an imperfect world

Organizations are often complex and unwieldy, and many managers have difficulty in combining ideals and positive identities with the complexities and imperfections of life. They are expected to be strategic and competent, while at the same time human and empathetic. This engaging book takes a fresh look at managerial work as experienced and understood by managers. It examines the central tenets of managerial life, such as the work expectations that managers have, the significance they assign to different activities and the difficulties that they face. It also takes a wider view of working life by looking at subordination in themanagerial context. The theoretical material is supported by in-depth interviews with a number of managers from different organizations. This book will appeal to those with an interest in management, and leadership and identity questions in modern working life.

Feedback, ignorance and self-esteem: the ironic elements of managerial life

In the first chapter of the book, we talked about the diversity of managerial life. It is seen as attractive and influential, but also as complex, hard work, difficult to interpret and at times boring. The complexity and diversity have often been attributed to the large number of activities with often tenuous links, which generally creates a fairly fragmented managerial existence (see, for example, Carlson 1951; Mintzberg 1973; Tengblad 2012a). In contrast to this focus on the “exterior” aspects of the managerial work (functions, tasks), in this book we have taken an identity perspective and focused on the managers’ “inner world”: experiences, interpretations and creation of meaning. Above all, our aim has been to understand how managers in a changing, complex and diverse world attempt to shape a coherent self-view – identity – which can act as a relatively stable platform for their management and managerial work. Much of this has centred on two overall themes: on the one hand, strategy, cultural influence and other “big” questions, and on the other, relations-oriented questions to do with encouragement, confirmation and support. Both these themes are potential points of departure in the creation of a managerial identity, but in the book we have shown that these sources are unreliable and unstable. It is difficult to create and sustain a stable, well-functioning managerial identity. The discrepancy between the ideal and the reality is, as has been shown, often striking. Managers’ relationships with co-workers are frequently complicated. Simple, clear-cut ideals and solutions rarely have the expected effect. On countless occasions in this book, we have pointed out that managers’ identities are strongly relational. Traits, competence and performance mean relatively little in comparison with the ability to relate to other people. One important question is how important the relationships and the strong sensitivity are in making it possible to sustain a coherent managerial identity. What part do other people and conditions in their near environment really play in how people see themselves as managers? What importance do they attach to feedback from other people about what they say and do as managers, and what role does this feedback play in identity confirmation? What is the significance for the individuals managerial identity of leading complex work operations without fully understanding them?