This study examines the ideal of authenticity in leadership in the context of conflicts between middle managers and their superiors in the Danish public sector. Drawing on 37 in-depth interviews with Danish public middle managers conducted between 2023 and 2024, the study investigates how middle managers perceive their ability to act authentically in such conflictual situations. Using Goffman’s concept of facework, the analysis demonstrates how middle managers engage in preventive facework, suppress emotional reactions, and stay formal to protect themselves from losing face under conflicts with superiors. The findings indicate that managers experience a need to conceal their genuine emotions during these encounters with superiors and, in doing so, contribute to protecting the superior’s face, for instance by mitigating or accommodating the superior’s emotional outbursts. This means that the middle manager’s capacity for authenticity is conditioned by the situations in which the superior places them. This suggests that authenticity in conflictual situations appears to be a privilege primarily available to superiors, who may allow themselves emotional expressions such as anger and outburst, whereas subordinate middle managers cannot.
This article explores the role of middle managers in building innovation support within a Swedish municipality, focusing on how collaborative advantage across departmental silos contribute to innovation outcomes. Drawing on a five-year insider action research project, the study examines how middle managers created and maintained an informal innovation space that enabled cross-boundary collaboration, trust-based leadership, and employee-driven innovation. While top management provided initial support, the long-term responsibility for maintaining innovation support rested with middle managers, who acted as both implementers and strategic leaders. Through narrative analysis of meeting observations and interviews, the study highlights how middle managers developed a shared identity rooted in collaboration, enabling them to navigate organizational tensions and promote new ways of working. The findings show that innovation support in fragmented public organizations depends not only on structural conditions but also on relational work, strategic communication, and the ability to foster collaborative advantage. The study contributes to public sector innovation literature by emphasizing the importance of middle managers’ internal collaboration and their role in shaping innovation beyond formal mandates. It also underscores the need for stronger alignment between middle and top management to ensure the long-term integration of innovation support into organizational routines.
This study explores how resource allocation practices in healthcare have been applied and discussed under the governance logics of Public Administration (PA), New Public Management (NPM), and New Public Governance (NPG), and how these logics interact with and manage conflicting field-level logics, particularly the medical-professional and market-managerial logics. A systematic literature review (SLR) is performed, following the PRISMA framework, using the databases Web of Science Core Collection (WoS) and Scopus. 55 articles out of 816 potentially relevant studies published within a broad range of disciplines between 2005 and 2025 met the inclusion criteria. The SLR reveals that governance logics not only inspire new resource allocation practices but also embody distinct rationalities for managing field-level conflicts. Under PA, field-level logics are separated through layering, NPM attempts integration through blending of field-level logics, and NPG introduces bridging field-level logics to accommodate diversity. Despite extensive research, there is limited understanding of how governance logics manage co-existing and conflicting field-level logics. This knowledge gap undermines effective resource allocation policy design and implementation. The study contributes by clarifying the vertical interplay between governance and field-level logics and by offering insights into how healthcare resource allocation can improve by aligning new practices with institutional contexts.
This paper presents an investigative analysis of Freedom of Information (FOI) compliance among Norwegian municipalities, focusing specifically on requests for elderly care data. Norway presents a particularly intriguing case, ranking first globally on the World Press Freedom Index whilst achieving only moderate performance on citizen access to public data. Through systematic FOI requests to all Norwegian municipalities, seeking data on reported accidents in elderly care, we assess transparency levels and institutional willingness to share information under the FOI Act. Our findings reveal compliance gaps, with significant variations in data quality and format. While the results underscore the need to improve transparency and accountability in order to foster high-quality elderly care, the research additionally provides valuable insights for understanding the practical limitations of the FOI legislation in democratic governance.
The concept of hybrid professionals refers to individuals who acquire skills and knowledge beyond their core area of expertise to navigate institutional complexity. It is often applied to public-sector professionals who extend their roles into managerial areas, requiring them to complement their original expertise with additional management knowledge. Through a historical case study of the education and training of Swedish school principals, this article examines the role of such additional knowledge in professional development over time, aiming to deepen our understanding of how hybrid professionalism evolves. Data were drawn from extant research, archival documents, and testimonies, and analyzed using a historical case study approach focusing on conditions, actions, and effects. Findings show that the introduction and evolution of the additional knowledge base initially fostered hybridization but eventually contributed to the emergence of a new, distinct profession separate from the original group. Three conditions facilitating this transition are identified: (1) a weakened original profession, (2) societal recognition of additional knowledge as valuable, and (3) supportive but not overly controlling governmental actions. Policy implications suggest that an ambivalent governmental stance—oscillating between support and strict control—can perpetuate a perception of weakness in the new profession, necessitating ongoing external reinforcement.
