Kan övergången till tillitsbaserad styrning och ledning utläsas i platsannonser? - En analys av platsannonser från två decennier

Abstract

In recent years, Swedish public sector has undergone a change in its governance and management model, from the so called New Public Management to a model where trust plays a key role. In comparison to the more heroic vision of a strong leader within New Public Management, Trust-leadership attaches importance to the leader being humble and trusting his or her employees, which achieves mutual trust between the manager and the employees. Trust-leadership also puts more emphasis on the employees. The purpose of this report is to investigate whether, and if so, how the shift from New Public Management to Trust-leadership in the public sector is reflected in the recruitment of managers. More specifically, our aim is to investigate and compare job advertisements from two different time periods to find out whether this change is noticeable. Our study is designed as a document analysis of job advertisements aimed at managers in the public sector, in particular within municipalities. We have selected three different professions; Chief Financial Officer, Principal and Head of Unit. In total, we have reviewed 30 advertisements from the years 2005/2006 and 2020. Our analysis revealed five themes that reoccured in the advertisements. Our central findings are that Trust-leadership is, to a relative large extent, evident in today’s work advertisements and that we can see a transition from New Public Management to Trustleadership over time. The most evident is that employeeship (Sw. “medarbetarskap”), relationships and communication have a larger scope in the ads from 2020, which is in line with what the literature describes about Trust-leadership. However, it differs between the three professions and the transition is more evident for two of them. The conclusions drawn from the study are that today’s work advertisements reflect Trust-leadership to a great extent and that the type of leaders that are in demand has changed over time.