Ledernes påvirkning af forankringen af netværksstrukturen i Albertslund kommune

Abstract

The following thesis is built upon a case about Albertslund municipality. They have introduced a new organizational structure that is supposed to coexist with the old hierarchical structure. This has been done as a way of optimizing the organization due to a savings plan. The new structure is sup-posed to secure interdisciplinary work in the organization via networks consisting of a network-leader and employees from different parts of the organization, though the network is also supposed to be able to include other people whom might have an interest in the project that is being dealt with by the network. The main focus for the thesis is three of the leaders in the top positions and their opinions on the new structure and how their opinions affect the anchoring of the structure. The theoreticians chosen for the thesis is Weick with his ‘Sensemaking theory’ and Harré and Langenhove with their ‘Posi-tioning theory’. The theories are used to analyze and discuss the opinions of the leaders and also how the leaders position themselves against the network-leaders. The analysis finds that the leaders in theory are quite pleased with the new network-structure and they state the many possibilities they see for the organizations future. They tend to find that this structure enables the employees to become more innovative and they see it as a great tool for having new people collaborate on the pending projects. The leaders also find negative aspects of the struc-ture though and are concerned about how they ought to create knowledge sharing between the net-works and the departments. They are also worried about the economic resources as the new struc-ture lacks a clear plan on which department that is supposed to pay for the work that is being done in a network. The largest problem that is revealed in the analyses though is the fact that the leaders have trouble trusting the network-leaders and they are essentially worried that they don’t have the necessary abilities to lead larger projects and therefor the leaders are restraining from using the new structure for the larger projects. A lot of the same troubles are revealed in the discussion where also the construction of the mean-ings and relations are explained by the theory from Weick and Harré and Langenhove. The discussion also reveals new aspects though and in the end the conclusion shows that the leaders have ambivalent opinions about the network-structure, which is problematic now but won’t have an effect on the anchoring in the long hall as long as they keep maintaining and using the structure.