Contemporary leadership in healthcare organizations

Abstract

The paper describes how contemporary leadership in the healthcare sector is constituted through different strategies for meeting multiple logics.

Health-Promoting Managerial Work: A Theoretical Framework for a Leadership Program that Supports Knowledge and Capability to Craft Sustainable Work Practices in Daily Practice and During Organizational Change

“…Also, self-rated health and work attendance had increased among their employees, as measured by employee questionnaires [28]. However, the health and working conditions of the managers themselves had not improved, and there were several indications of more stress, and stressful work conditions among managers [17][18][19]29,30], in addition to high turnover rates [31] for managers in the public sector. These challenges were often associated with the demands of organizational restructurings and continuous workplace changes [17,30,32].…”

“…Moreover, managers' work and organization are the keys to bridging and handling the multiple components of risks and resource conditions for individuals and groups of workers over and within system levels [21][22][23]. In fact, managers who are actively bridging across organizational levels to integrate perspectives and serve core purposes (i.e., hybrid management) have had more success in sustainable organizational developments [17,18,32]. Besides, system theory on its own may not be enough to build leadership intervention programs, as it may fail to acknowledge the positive effect of interplays, bridgings, and crossings over systems boundaries.…”

“…Studies with this perspective have gained insights from ambiguous, emergent, and unexpected activities and methods, through, for example, shadowing and interviews. Results from such studies in Scandinavia have described managerial work in public human service organizations in ways that include fragmentation, uncertainties, conflicts of values and loyalties, high-performance pressures, and often a hectic work pace and long working hours [17,18,24,25,29]. Accordingly, the work of managers has importance not only for their employees and the business, but also for their own sustainability.…”

Organization of change agents during care process redesign in Swedish health care

“…[7] Operative managers who have been described as successful in managing change are so-called "hybrid managers" who can translate and bridge between managerialism and professionalism as well as between the strategic and operative levels. [17,18] However, several studies show that operative managers' working conditions are such that time for bringing about change is limited, [19] and they are in need of supportive functions such as CAs. [4] Following steps concern empowerment to act on the vision and develop enabling structures to make sure that the members of the organization are able to adapt to the vision.…”

Employees’ Conceptions of Coworkership in a Swedish Health Care Organization

“…However, the understanding of what coworkership means may differ, both between organizational levels within the same organization and between different organizations (Kilhammar, 2011). In addition, the understanding of coworkership and how it should be developed is often normative in terms of 'good employeeship', and is seen from a leader's perspective (Wikström & Dellve, 2009). However, the relevance and understanding of coworkership as a phenomenon are still largely unexplored.…”