Fra biologi til strategi – utvikling av en ledelsesgruppe

Abstract

From Biology to Strategy – the Development of a Management Team Research on gender equality projects emphasizes gender equality as a management responsibility, but not many studies focus on how management can organize and implement the process in order to achieve sustainable change. What should the team actually do? How does the team need to develop in order to be capable of doing what needs to be done? The analysis in this chapter is based mainly on qualitative material in the form of interviews and notes from five workshop days with the management team at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at Oslo University. The data show how the methods and tools that the management team acquired in the workshops have not only given the team members knowledge in the areas they addressed during the workshops, but also the confidence to determine how to proceed in new areas. The concept of sensegiving (cf. Weick & Quinn, 1999) is used to discuss their role in gender equality work. Since gender equality and inequality are done through everyday actions in the organization’s processes, the entire organization needs to be invested in any changes. The management team can approach sensegiving by legitimizing the perception of the organization as not being gender equal and by demonstrating how a gender equality perspective can be integrated in the organization’s structures and processes.