Like a Bridge over Troubled Water - en studie om ledarskap inom socialtjänsten vid organisationsförändringar

Abstract

A common experience is that leadership could be better handled during reorganizations within the social services. The purpose of this study is to examine how social welfare secretaries experience their managers during reorganizations. How do social welfare secretaries experience the manger’s role and actions? While developing the interview questions it became relevant to illustrate further aspects: To describe how social welfare secretaries experience the reorganizations that they have gone through and their experience of the everyday leadership around the managers’; openness, availability, clarity, trust and skills regarding managing stress among their staff. The study is built on qualitative interviews with six social welfare secretaries within units working with economical social assistance in different districts in the city of Gothenburg. The interviewees have been chosen through a snowball effect where colleagues have been asked if they know social welfare secretaries, working with economical social assistance in different districts, who have gone through a reorganization. The main research questions are: What do the social welfare secretaries consider to be good leadership? How do the social welfare secretaries experience the every day leadership? How do the social welfare secretaries experience the reorganizations they have gone through? Which role did the manager play during the reorganization? Visible, invisible, pursuing and/or passive? How shall the manager act during a reorganization?

The used theoretical perspectives are about: conflict, change, leadership and human service organizations. The analysis is divided in four themes where the interviews are presented and analyzed: the reorganizations, actual leadership, managing stress and sick-leave and desired leadership. The following conclusions are presented: The social welfare secretaries consider good leadership to be: sensitive, have clear, available, good in judgment, professionally experienced, secure and able to change ones mind, reflective, supportive, acknowledge, able to create a creative atmosphere, able to listen, able to figure out needs, able to show respect and give responsibility. The interviewees mostly give a negative image of the every day leadership. Most of the interviewees talk about an inability to communicate with their manager and who often is unavailable. The social welfare secretaries have not been sure who has initiated the reorganization, what the purpose of it was and have not been able to influence the reorganization. Many of the interviewees consider the managers to be pursuance and active if the managers themselves are behind the idea of the reorganization or if they can agree to it. Otherwise the managers tend to be invisible and passive. The social welfare secretaries want managers during a reorganization to: inform, listen, gain approval for the reorganization, process and watch over the staff’s well being during the reorganization. The study shows that there maybe are too high demands on the managers and that the manager’s role can be very complicated in a human service organization.