Enhetschef - en position mellan kvinnliga underordnade och manliga överordnade : En kvalitativ studie om kvinnliga mellanchefer och deras syn på sitt eget ledarskap inom den offentliga sektorn

This essay consists largely of a qualitative approach through interviews, four with managers in home care and four with managers in elderly care. The age of the respondents has been all from 30 to 60 years old, all of which are also women. It is often said that a middle manager is trapped from all sides, but on the other hand middle managers have the opportunity to see the business from the bottom up to the top so they get a pretty good handle on the business.The purpose of this study was to examine how female middle managers in home care service and at homes for the elderly look at their own leadership. These are my questions:1. How is it to be a so called middle manager in elderly care?2. What does these female middle managers’ have in common when it comes to how they lead their staff?3. How does the leadership change for these middle managers because of the current competitive situation?The result showed that all informants feel that they have a relatively free space to develop their own leadership after the guidelines and laws that exists. All informants believe that it is important to have an involved staff, that the staff gets to speak on issues related to them. They differ in how they describe themselves as leaders; they have described themselves as for example one that considers being an enabler and one who claims to be a secure leader. They also believe that it is important to praise the staff because praise is much more effective than criticism. Most of the informants do not seem to use leadership models, in that case they can be difficult to name.Keywords: female, middle manager, municipal, home care service and home for the elderly.Validerat; 20130618 (global_studentproject_submitter