Styrket faglig ledelse som strategi for rekruttering og fastholdelse i Sundheds- og Omsorgsforvaltningen, Københavns Kommune

Abstract

In this paper, I have investigated the meaning of a certain effort, Strengthened professional leadership, and its importance for recruitment and retention difficulties in the welfare admin- istration, Sundheds- og Omsorgsforvaltningen (SUF), in the municipality of Copenhagen, Den- mark. I have specifically been interested in whether the effort shows to have any importance, when it comes to retention of first- and second line leaders. My main conclusion is, that Strengthened professional leadership does not seem to have any influence regarding whether first- or secondline leaders tend to stay working as leaders in SUF. In order to unfold my prob- lem, I have performed analysis of the organization’s internal documents concerning the sub- ject as well of individual qualitative interviews with six persons. I used a constructivist ap- proach in my data collection and my question guides where semi structured. The analysis is based on different theories that have helped me to shed light on my problem. The theory of management paradigm by Lerborg, the theory of new professional leadership (Ny faglig ledelse) by Rander and Weinreich, the theory on narratives by Schnoor, and, finally, the theory of intrinsic an extrinsic motivation and self-determination theory by Ryan and Deci. The analysis has led to several findings: Firstly, SUF instead of subscribing to a certain defini- tion of professional leadership, have left it up to organization members to decide, why the di- rection of SUF initiated the effort in the first place due to SUF’s trust-based value in its basis for management (ledelsesgrundlag). Secondly, organization members see the effort as a tool, if applied the right way, to maintain employees as leaders in the organization. Thirdly, narratives about the way to cure the “wicked problem”, recruitment and retention difficulties in SUF, dif- fers due to who is asked. Additional to this, the analysis also showed that some first-line lead- ers In SUF need to develop their competences to be able to perform as so-called willing hy- brids and that leaders of the organization felt a lack of motivation for implementing Strength- ened professional leadership. The analysis further indicates, that SUF could profit by providing leaders education in how to secure psychological safety, to help them stay motivated in their job, and in that manner being able to keep them working in SUF. Writing this paper, with help from theory mentioned before, and with knowledge achieved from empirically data, has extended my understanding of SUF when it comes to why the effort Strengthened professional leadership was initiated in the first place.