Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=wasw21
Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership
& Governance
ISSN: 2330-3131 (Print) 2330-314X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wasw21
How Unstandardized Work Tasks Create Arenas for
Leadership
Chris Rønningstad
To cite this article: Chris Rønningstad (2019) How Unstandardized Work Tasks Create Arenas
for Leadership, Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance, 43:2,
111-124, DOI: 10.1080/23303131.2019.1610130
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/23303131.2019.1610130
Published online: 06 May 2019.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 207
View related articles
View Crossmark data
How Unstandardized Work Tasks Create Arenas for Leadership
Chris Rønningstad
Oslo Business School, Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway
ABSTRACT
Interviews with 41 employees and managers in the Norwegian public
welfare services identify characteristics and behaviors experienced as leadership. The study identifies how management behaviors such as deciding,
controlling, and structuring the work create arenas for leadership and how
these arenas vary with the standardization of work tasks. The findings
connect employees leadership experiences to their need for management,
and thus challenge the assumption that management tasks are a hindrance
to leadership in the public welfare sector.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 05 Apr 2018
Accepted 17 Apr 2019
Revised 11 Feb 2019
KEYWORDS
Management; leadership
and organizational change;
workforce/workplace issues
in human service
organizations
Introduction
Leadership is an elusive term with many forms – transformational, emotional, or servant – that can
be challenging to demarcate accurately. The research aim of this study was to identify how managers
and employees within public human service organizations experience leadership, how leadership
integrates with management behaviors, and how this integration may vary with different work tasks.
Inspired by Alvesson, Blom, and Sveningsson (2016), I define leadership as an interpersonal process
in which an employee voluntarily accepts a manager’s meaning or reality influencing acts. Thus,
leadership is a set of behaviors that are experienced as influential. With this definition, we avoid falling
prey to the “romance of leadership,” which views leadership as solely contingent on the characteristics of
a “natural leader” (Collinson, Smolović Jones, & Grint, 2018), or to any limitations that may restrict
leadership to certain aims, such as being a “servant” (Neubert, Hunter, & Tolentino, 2016).
This research identifies employees’ and managers’ perceptions and experiences of leadership
characteristics and behaviors, and thus falls within the tradition of implicit leadership theory
(Offermann & Coats, 2017). The study presents a conceptual framework of implicit leadership in
public human services, an important contribution because of an identified lack of research concerning how leadership improves human service organizations (Castro, 2017; Peters, 2017; Sullivan,
2016). The study includes frontline managers and their employees. A leader is a frontline manager
who influences employees; a follower is a full-time public welfare employee accepting this influence.
Perceptions as used here describe informants’ understandings of leadership characteristics and
behaviors which informants experience as leadership. Work tasks describe the nature of the work
performed by the informants, emphasizing the degree of standardization.
As the public provider of social and welfare services in Norway, the local offices of the
Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (Nav) perform a wide set of services, ranging
from supporting job seekers and providing welfare services to assessing eligibility for welfare
benefits. The state government is responsible for most of these services with caseworkers deciding
eligibility and access to services; however, service delivery occurs at the municipal level by
counselors. Despite these two different levels of responsibility, clients interact with Nav as
a singular office. Previous studies on Nav have been concerned with the governance of
a complex public welfare organization (Christensen & Lægreid, 2011) or with the relationship
CONTACT Chris Rønningstad [email protected] Oslo Business School, Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway
© 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
HUMAN SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS: MANAGEMENT, LEADERSHIP & GOVERNANCE
2019, VOL. 43, NO. 2, 111–124
https://doi.org/10.1080/23303131.2019.1610130
between clients and the welfare state at the social policy level (Carnochan & Austin, 2015). In
contrast with such research, this study concerns the relationship between employees and managers as followers and leaders at the frontline of Nav.
Although we know that contextual elements such as work tasks can influence managers’ and
employees’ leadership perceptions (Oc, 2017), we lack specific knowledge on how variation of work
tasks may influence employees’ experiences of leadership within public human service organizations.
Considering the diversity of work tasks within these organizations, it is essential to understand how
leadership might diverge between highly standardized tasks (caseworkers’ assessing applications) and
less standardized ones (counselors following up with clients). Such variation makes Nav an especially
suitable organization in which to study how different work tasks may influence leadership experiences. With this contrast between caseworkers and counselors, the study sheds light on how work
tasks influence perceptions of leadership – a second important contribution to the literature.
Consequently, I ask the following research questions:
● What characteristics and behaviors do employees and managers in Nav experience as
leadership?
● How does the standardization of work tasks influence these experiences?
Leadership and management
Because leadership is a complicated theoretical field with competing and diverging definitions
(Stogdill, 1974; Zhu, Song, Zhu, & Johnson, 2018), any empirical effort to understand leadership
must build on a solid theoretical foundation of what “it” is. This foundation must be clearly
demarcated from other organizational functions to avoid the categorical mistake of naming everything leadership. Drawing on a common definition of leadership as a process of influence (Yukl,
1989), I lean on Alvesson et al. (2016) to define leadership as a specified voluntary, interpersonal
process in which an actor influences the meaning-making and reality of a recipient.
This understanding differs from previous efforts in human services research which have emphasized leaders at the organizational level as setting the “direction and tone of their organization[s]”
(Hurst & Hurst, 2017, p. 440), reaching certain goals such as change or client service (see Peters,
2018; Sullivan, 2016), portraying values (see Peters, 2017, 2018; Rank & Hutchison, 2000), or as
being distributed within the organization (McKitterick, 2015). Instead, my understanding builds on
the identified prevalence and effectiveness of interpersonal leadership in social work (Peters, 2018;
Rønningstad, 2018) and the influence of positive emotions in nonprofit organizations (Silard, 2018).
Interpersonal leadership includes a wide variety of behaviors centering on the relationship between
a manager and an employee, such as listening, talking, and providing feedback.
As a demarcated process of interpersonal influence, leadership differs from management. While
both are acts performed between a superior and a subordinate actor, they differ in their experienced
influence. Leadership acts influence reality-definition and meaning making through interpersonal
behaviors, while management concerns acts such as planning, controlling, and coordinating which
do not influence reality-definition and meaning making (Alvesson et al., 2016, p. 95). In practice,
this definition of leadership allows for overlap between management and leadership behaviors, which
occurs when employees experience management behaviors as influential. For example, delegation of
a challenging task may be influential by serving to motivate an employee, or increasing controls
could lead to feelings of alienation.
The potential for this overlap or integration is distinct for formal managers because informal or
distributed leaders have fewer opportunities to combine management and leadership behaviors.
Theories on the integration of management and leadership are limited, attributing the process to
contextual contingencies best described empirically (Alvesson et al., 2016; Yukl, 1989). For the
purpose of understanding how management and leadership integrate in experiences of leadership,
112 C. RØNNINGSTAD
it is thus of interest to draw on leadership and management as theoretical frameworks to categorize
characteristics and behaviors individually before asserting how they integrate.
According to implicit leadership theories, followers’ perceptions of leadership have two sources: the
behaviors and functions that leaders perform (“inference-based” perceptions) and the correspondence
between the leader’s characteristics and the follower’s understanding of what a leader should be
(“recognition-based” perceptions) (Lord, Foti, & De Vader, 1984; Offermann & Coats, 2017). This
study draws on both perspectives to identify experiences of leadership behaviors and characteristics.
I use the term characteristics broadly to include traits and competencies comprising the manager’s
“foundational traits and leadership capacities” (Zaccaro, Green, Dubrow, & Kolze, 2018, p. 6).
The connection between leadership and work tasks is interesting because employees with less
standardized work tasks tend to need more managerial guidance (Mintzberg, 1979) than those
performing standardized tasks. Some work tasks themselves are standardized or may become so
through a manager’s direction. In addition, a “professional habitus” acquired through education can
standardize the work (Freidson, 1986; Witman, Smid, Meurs, & Willems, 2011), which limits the
need for managers to intervene as employees lean on the collegium, their own education, or
experience (Noordegraaf, 2015; Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2016). In this latter case, managers
are expected to lead through influence rather than decision making because employees rely on their
own knowledge to make decisions (Empson & Langley, 2015; Noordegraaf, 2015). Therefore, we can
expect Nav counselors, who perform less standardized work tasks, to require more managerial
guidance to structure their work than caseworkers. Considering the influence of work tasks on
leadership perceptions (Oc, 2017), there is reason to believe that their different management needs
will lead caseworkers and counselors to have divergent experiences of leadership.
Previous research
As a public human service organization, Nav itself can be expected to influence how leadership is
experienced. Nav has been described as having a tension between employees who perform knowledge-intensive work and an organization that limits their use of knowledge (Sagatun & Smith, 2012),
which makes it an interesting case study for the contextual influence on experiences of leadership.
According to Gjersøe (2016), counselors in Nav experience their professional discretion as limited by
organizational demands. Other research on leadership in Nav also emphasized a limited managerial
role, dealing mostly with “running tasks,” as “structural contingencies” such as standardization,
control measures, and IT systems restrict leadership opportunities (Fossestøl, Breit, & Borg, 2016b,
p. 10–12). Similarly, Swedish public welfare managers were found to work reactively and with
a heavy workload, keeping them from performing strategic work and leadership (Shanks, 2016).
Despite these hindrances, research has found a prevalence of interpersonal leadership in social
work (Rønningstad, 2018). Gunnarsdóttir (2016) found that emotional management was an essential
leadership function in times of change among managers in child welfare services, and Belgian social
workers found empowered management behaviors to be supportive (Raeymaeckers & Dierckx,
2013). Castro (2017) identified four types of managers – formal, professional, entrepreneurial, and
informal – in Italian social work who lead interpersonally to varying degrees. Others have found
leadership in social work to be about performing important intermediary functions, such as
supporting employees emotionally and through supervision (Hafford-Letchfield, Lambley,
Spolander, & Cocker, 2014). Taken together, and despite divergent views, existing research and
theory suggest that leadership in human service organizations is often associated with various types
of interpersonal interactions.
Method
The empirical data for this study consists of interviews with 41 counselors, caseworkers, and their
frontline managers in Nav. I conducted these interviews to gather the experiences of employees and
HUMAN SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS: MANAGEMENT, LEADERSHIP & GOVERNANCE 113
managers on leadership characteristics and behaviors; therefore, the study is phenomenological in
that informants described their experiences of the underlying reality of leadership behaviors.
Interviewing both managers and employees treats leadership as co-constructed between leaders
and followers (Uhl-Bien, Riggio, Lowe, & Carsten, 2014), an epistemological approach that is
essential to implicit leadership theory and avoids an introspective leader-centric view. Coconstruction accounts for leadership as acted by the potential leader, but perceived and interpreted
by the potential follower (Zaccaro et al., 2018, p. 4). Thus, in the tradition of Schutz (1962),
leadership is a social product of shared experiences. Subsequent research also has supported this
understanding, showing that employees react differently to the same manager (Martin, Thomas,
Charles, Epitropaki, & McNamara, 2005) and that leaders and followers may assess the same
situation differently (Cogliser, Schriesheim, Scandura, & Gardner, 2009).
Nav caseworkers and counselors provide good data for comparison of different types of work.
Although they share some similar tasks, such as completing a considerable amount of paperwork,
counselors have more personal interactions with clients. By its nature, counselors’ work is less
standardized because of these direct meetings with clients of different backgrounds and needs.
Casework, on the other hand, is easier to standardize. Caseworkers evaluate data against rules and
regulations to determine each applicant’s eligibility for benefits and produce a written decision
following a schematic form. Although caseworkers are not devoid of discretion as they evaluate,
interpret, and make decisions, they follow a more schematic evaluation than is possible for
counselors.
In other research (Author, In-review), I emphasized the how ambiguous tasks influence how
employees appreciate their manager as knowledgeable. This study builds on the same data to
describe characteristics and behaviors experienced as leadership and how different work tasks
influence these perceptions.
Data collection
I recruited participants from Nav departments of similar size (between 10 and 20 employees) to avoid the
influence of very small or large departments. The departments were geographically spread and included
both caseworkers and counselors. Across departments, I sought workers who performed similar types of
casework or counseling to avoid responses based on the nature of the services rather than the work tasks.
I identified possible available departments through Nav’s research and development department and the
governance division of the municipal and state services, an approach that avoided challenges in securing
interviews from busy offices. Working from the list of departments that fit my requirements, I then
recruited directly through the managers.
Table 1 summarizes the key characteristics of the informants. I recruited these individuals
through mass emails to the departments and through visits. Managers did not handpick informants,
and all participation was voluntary. Only three male managers were interviewed, and to preserve
anonymity, I refer to all managers as “she.”
The interviews were between 45 and 60 minutes and “semi-structured,” following a list of
topics and questions that allowed me to change the order of questions and pose follow-ups based
on responses. Rather than introduce the integration of management and leadership during the
interviews, I constructed the interview guide with naïve questions, such as: “How does your
manager support you in your work?” and “What kind of leadership do you need to do your job?”
I followed up ambiguous and conflicting responses with clarifying questions to elicit clear,
trustworthy answers.
I sought responses that were the individual participants’ subjective understanding of leadership,
rather than a complete model of what a manager does or how a leader supports a worker. I aimed for
insights into what informants experienced as leadership, from which I could glean leadership
characteristics and behaviors that defined these experiences.
114 C. RØNNINGSTAD
I performed and analyzed the interviews in Norwegian and translated the selected quotes. In
everyday speech in Norwegian, the concepts of “leadership” and “management” are not distinct;
however, in work settings, we distinguish between the neutral word for “leader” (leder) and the more
hierarchical word for “boss” (sjef). Therefore, I asked respondents about their experiences with their
leader. This approach was a strength for the study as the answers provided information on the
respondents’ perceptions, allowing me to analyze and categorize them as either management or
leadership behaviors according to the theoretical concepts. Hence, I based my decision to use
management or leadership in the translations on the informant’s answers. I transcribed and coded
interviews in the spring of 2017 using Nvivo11 Pro for Windows. The Norwegian Centre for
Research Data (NSD) approved the study.
Data analysis
From the transcribed interviews, I coded responses thematically with the theoretical frameworks of
management and leadership as sensitizing concepts, which guide an analysis and help categorize the
findings (Bowen, 2006). In this way, I was not limited in my ability to capture emerging themes, such
as the integration between management and leadership. With a close reading and a thematic
comparison of responses, I analyzed differences between caseworkers and counselors. I drew upon
the coding to identify sections for close reading, but I did not base my analysis on counts of
keywords or other quantitative approaches. My analysis followed a phenomenological approach
focusing on the informants’ descriptions of characteristics and behaviors, rather than a discourselevel identification of converging and diverging language structures among informants. Quotations
were selected to illustrate the differences between caseworkers’ and counselors’ ideal leadership
perceptions (Weber, 1904/2012).
In the first round, I coded responses based on characteristics, such as a trait or skill a leader
possessed or a behavior performed for the individual or organization. At this stage, I used descriptive
codes such as “listening” and “delegating.” If in doubt, I coded responses in multiple categories. In
the second round of coding, I analyzed characteristics and behaviors separately, applying broader
codes such as “feedback” and “administrating.” I reviewed all coding in this round and sorted
elements into categories of management or leadership. In the third round, I identified characteristics
as belonging to one of three categories (see Table 2). A fourth category, creativity, is not included
here because it lacked support in actual behaviors. The integration between leadership and management became apparent in the fourth round of coding as I further refined and categorized behaviors
as management or leadership. For example, I moved some behaviors coded as management to
leadership, such as “decision making,” when informants described the behavior as a process that
Table 1. Characteristics of informants.
Caseworker Counselor
Type of work Assessing eligibility to services Direct counseling w. clients
Organizational level State Municipality
Departments visited 3 4
Managers 4 5
Social work professionals 0 1
Jurist professionals 2 0
Average age 47.5 45
Self-identifying females 2 4
Years of experience 13.75 15
Employees 15 17
Social work professionals 0 8
Jurist professionals 9 0
Average age 40.1 36.1
Self-identifying females 10 16
Years of experience 10.8 4.3
HUMAN SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS: MANAGEMENT, LEADERSHIP & GOVERNANCE 115
influenced their meaning making or reality. The findings present the characteristics and behaviors
from the fourth round of coding.
Findings
The findings identify how managers and employees experienced managers’ characteristics and
behaviors as leadership (see examples in Table 2). Managers, caseworkers, and counselors alike
viewed leadership in relational terms, characterized as personable, emphatic, and showing engagement. These characteristics linked to interpersonal behaviors such as chatting and answering
questions.
Work experience, gender, or age did not indicate differences between counselors and caseworkers,
nor did professional education seem to influence experiences of leadership, a finding that may be
explained by strong internal training, adoption of internal logics, and the lack of standardized
professional education in Nav (Øvrelid, 2018). Work tasks were a more obvious factor in differences
between perceptions than professional education.
First, I present the main finding that management behaviors provided an arena for leadership
characteristics, and then show how the experiences of these characteristics differed between managers and employees, caseworkers and counselors. Finally, I discuss counselors’ increased need for
managers to standardize their work tasks as an explanation for their differing experiences of
leadership.
Management behaviors as arenas for leadership
Employees experienced managers who supervised their work as leaders, indicating an integration
between management behaviors and leadership characteristics. Leadership characteristics, such as
possessing knowledge, were integrated with management behaviors, such as evaluating work quality.
Thus, a manager’s leadership characteristics appeared integrated with management behaviors when
managers combined administrating and decision making with some kind of meaning- or realitymaking influence. Leadership also was found in managers who structured employees’ work and
created frameworks within which to operate. From the employees’ perspective, management behaviors such as structuring and controlling were experienced as leadership when these behaviors
motivated workers, acknowledged their contributions, or provided feelings of security:
There is also something about, that a leader should create – some clear frames, some clear guidelines. To have
such a clear leader is very simple and easy, then you have a frame to relate to, and should you go outside it there
is also a clarity around that being wrong – I do not need a manager to follow me closely in any way, but there is
something about – knowing: Here is the framework. [Counselor]
Table 2. Examples of leadership characteristics and corresponding behaviors.
Manager behaviors
Leadership characteristics Managers Counselors Caseworkers
RELATIONAL
Personable Answers questions Chats Chats
Empathy Keeps an “open door” Establishes good
relationships
Establishes good
relationships
Engagement Acknowledges
contributions
Acknowledges contributions Acknowledges contributions
COMMUNICATION
Clarity Speaks with clarity Speaks with clarity Speaks with clarity
KNOWLEDGE
Knows the profession/
organization
Provides answers/
Administers
Assesses work quality/
Standardizes work
Assesses work quality/
Ensures performance
116 C. RØNNINGSTAD
Workers experienced management behaviors such as supporting their work and structuring and
defining work tasks as motivating. These behaviors allowed employees to work with freedom and
provided them with opportunities to demonstrate their skills, suggesting that leadership occurred
through management behaviors that made employees feel important and capable. Thus, managers
exercised influence by defining individual discretion and acknowledging its importance:
I think that – what becomes the manager’s, what the manager must do. Is that – they must give the employees –
discretionary room, because if we do not have that, if I had no room for discretion, then – I would not have
been able to work, anywhere. Because then I would have felt that I could be exchanged with anyone. Because
everyone can just do what they are told. I think that the manager must be clear about the discretionary room,
how big is it? What can and what can you not do within it? [Counselor]
The way in which managers communicated was also important to how employees perceived
leadership. Employees viewed unambiguous, clear, authoritative communication as characteristic of
leadership. They found managers who clearly stated their expectations and willingness to help when
necessary to be motivational as in the example above praising a manager who communicated clear
frames and guidelines.
The integration of leadership characteristics and management behaviors was strongly connected
to managers’ role of being in charge of the office and having decision-making capability.
Management behaviors such as quality control or handling employee inquiries were arenas for
leadership, providing opportunities to influence employees. The ability to exercise influence was
contingent not only on the managerial role, but also on the individual manager’s leadership
characteristics. Therefore, integration of management and leadership depended on the formal
position to create an arena for leadership in combination with managers’ leadership ability, such
as knowing about the work:
[A manager] must know what’s going on, know what it’s all about – to see when things go wrong. Or enter
a situation if I’m out of office a day, that my manager can go in and do that conversation, which has happened
many times. For her to do it (laughter), as good as myself, right? That she knows what it‘s all about. Eh – but at
the same time – you must have that freedom, and the opportunity, that you are able to, if the confidence is
there, to be able to do your job without feeling monitored. The follow-up that I experience in the office, I feel is
to my own best and to the best of the clients. I want that security. [Counselor]
Management behaviors such as decision making could be arenas for leadership if the managers
used them as such, which makes it interesting that managers and employees had diverging perceptions of leadership from mundane management tasks.
Diverging perceptions on the importance of chatting
Management behaviors often originated in ad-hoc interactions in which employees needed clarifications, answers, or someone to talk with. Managers believed employees expected them to possess
these relational characteristics, an expectation the employees demonstrated by constantly asking
questions. Despite acknowledging the need, one manager found it dreadful to have to be always
accessible for such interactions. She could see no upside to just talking about things all day, and
found such chatting to be mostly a waste of time and a burden of leadership. Nonetheless, she
remained available for these interactions because employees wanted them:
I do not think it’s because they need clarifications and such, they come to me to solve big and small problems
and – inform maybe, perhaps say: “It’s like this, and now it’s like this, and how should we? Can we do it like
this?” So mostly, my working day goes mostly to chatting. Then it’s the paperwork, forms and all those
things … Yes, we have to do it, but the paperwork is not the most important part of my job. [Manager,
Counselor]
Although this manager experienced the ad-hoc nature of these interactions as tiresome, unnecessary, and largely an excuse for employees to be acknowledged, employees found these management clarifications to be motivational and influential, in other words, characteristics of leadership.
HUMAN SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS: MANAGEMENT, LEADERSHIP & GOVERNANCE 117
The importance of these interactions to employees suggest that leadership was mediated through
planned or ad-hoc chats during the day as employees needed them, thus providing an arena for
leadership. A manager’s ability to deliver leadership was also here contingent on the workers’ need
for such interactions and the manager’s possessing the necessary characteristics and ability.
Standardization of tasks and leadership
In the area of professional knowledge, counselors perceived managers as exercising leadership when
they standardized the work, whereas caseworkers perceived leadership as “ensuring performance”
and viewed structuring behaviors as controlling (see Table 2). This difference could be explained by
the fact that caseworkers’ tasks are already relatively standardized compared with those of counselors, and therefore, counselors appeared to exhibit a greater need for an intervening manager in their
work. Consequently, counselor-managers had more arenas for displaying leadership characteristics
through facilitating, developing, and providing feedback. Reflecting their need for structure, counselors clearly emphasized the importance of having a manager with the knowledge to make decisions
in cases of uncertainty or to assist with a heavy workload:
If there is a lot to do, I need [managers] who say: “I’ll take it, I can help with, I’m in” because managers who
cannot have no credibility with me. They should not know everything, but they have to get involved in it.
Otherwise, they do not have the opportunity to know where the issues are. As a result, they could be adding
many tasks on a department that may already have challenges from having too much to do. Being able to lean
on your manager is very important to me. To be able to ask for help, and that the manager can go in front and
just: “You know what, I’m doing this, I’ll take that.” I think it’s good, I think that’s leadership, to also be like
one of the staff. You must be clear, and you should be a leader, but being a leader is not to point your finger and
just “this is not good enough, this is not good enough, and this has to be done.” [Counselor]
Unstandardized tasks appeared to increase the counselors’ need for managers who could intervene with the work in some capacity. This increased need provided counselor managers with more
opportunities to display leadership behaviors, such as creating a feeling of security and a trust, and
may explain the differences in how employees experienced managers as leaders. Counselors
described their intervening managers as integrating management and leadership, which was markedly different from caseworkers, who described their managers as taking a more traditional, passive
management role in creating goals behind the scenes:
(Managers) should cut-through, let us see, when there is disagreement between colleagues. They should make
decisions on how we are to do things, and not, instead of making everyone happy. I had a very free position in
a previous job with very little contact with management, but with contact with a supervisor who were in charge
of me. Eh, but management were always present as we started projects, projects to finish cases [that] were
overdue, targeted projects were we, yes, accomplished to finish cases. Moreover, the manager was clear and
concise and – yes, more hidden behind the scenes, but entered when needed and governed us. [Caseworker]
In using the word for governed, “styring,” the caseworker clarified that he viewed the manager
not as a leader, but as an administrator who could intervene when needed, ensuring that employees
performed well. In contrast, the following quote illustrates how counselors perceived leadership
behaviors as connected to managers’ ability to handle challenges and questions actively and decisively but with caring and understanding:
This is relevant to some of what I miss. Eh – leadership for me is to – for me – what I need from a leader is that
it is a person who has that control, that awareness, who can pull us in the right directions if we are drifting. And
who can speak up if there is anything – who can challenge us a little too, but in a way – it is important for me
that the leader has my back and – eh – yes – I realize that leaders must make some decisions that are not
popular, that is the role – eh – but [manager] is at the least very understanding. That is important to me, to
have that. Because being a leader to me is that you – not looking down from above, but that you understand
each other. [Counselor]
Although caseworkers shared the understanding of leadership as an interpersonal activity performed through talking and interacting, they did not experience leadership as integrated with
118 C. RØNNINGSTAD
managerial aspects of the work. As illustration of this understanding, the following caseworker
indicated a distinction between the role of manager – to control and administer – and that of
caseworkers – to perform the work:
In the end, we do the job, not the managers. They control the budgets and look after the sick-leave rate, they
make sure to conduct employee appraisals. They look after such administrative things, but they do not do the
job in a way. [Caseworker]
This distinction between work tasks illustrates the understanding among caseworkers that
managers could only to do so much. In the end, caseworkers had to “deliver the goods.” They
coupled this understanding of a limited manager with a narrow view of their own capabilities,
emphasizing a heavily regulated organization with little room for leadership activities:
There are so many regulations and tariffs and, terribly many things that must be considered. They become
more of an administrator, not leaders. That is what I see when I look at the managers. They just walk around
and – manage. And that – yes, it’s safe and fine, but it’s going to be hard to take – to take your business further.
It gets very rigid and static. Very little changes. [Caseworker]
A comparison of these quotations shows striking differences between how counselors and caseworkers experienced their managers as performing leadership. For caseworkers, managers performed
management – taking a more passive role in facilitating the work and controlling and ensuring
performance – and they did not perceive these behaviors as especially motivating or enabling. For
counselors, on the other hand, managers’ standardizing management activities were arenas for
enabling and motivating leadership behaviors.
Discussion
The findings indicate that both caseworkers and counselors viewed leadership as interpersonal, but
their differing job duties seemed to result in different views of their managers’ leadership activities.
Caseworkers did not perceive management and leadership as integrated to the same degree as
counselors, perhaps because caseworkers did not have a need for standardization, and therefore,
viewed their manager as an overseer and performance-enabler. Therefore, to answer my research
questions, these results indicate that (1) interpersonal characteristics and behaviors are an essential
part of leadership in public human service organizations such as Nav, and that (2) less standardized
work tasks tend to require more managerial input, influencing how leadership is experienced by
creating arenas for interpersonal leadership.
The first finding supports the importance of interpersonal leadership in non-profit human service
work (Silard, 2018) and social work (Peters, 2018; Rønningstad, 2018). As an addition to the
literature, this finding shows that interpersonal leadership is important in public welfare organizations where pressing managerial tasks can potentially limit leadership (Fossestøl, Breit, & Borg,
2016a; Shanks, 2016). Although managers may experience managerial tasks as taking time away from
leadership activities, this research from the employee’s perspective suggests that employees can
experience management behaviors as leadership. Therefore, management behaviors can be arenas
for leadership rather than hindrances to it. This finding could mean that employees are better able
than managers to withstand the perceived consequences of organizational limitations on leadership.
The interaction of needs, characteristics, and behaviors in workers’ experiences of leadership
challenges the importance of status in managing knowledge intensive workers. Previous research has
indicated that leadership in knowledge-intensive work is contingent on the status and authority
a manager receives as being the “best among equals” (Empson & Langley, 2015; Mintzberg, 1979).
However, my findings indicate that managers are perceived as leaders when they use their knowledge
to perform managerial behaviors that aid their employees in their work, especially among workers
with less standardized tasks, such as counselors. In other words, leadership is not solely contingent
HUMAN SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS: MANAGEMENT, LEADERSHIP & GOVERNANCE 119
on the status of being the most knowledgeable, but rather depends on the characteristics managers
exhibit as they provide support from their formal position, such as answering questions.
Leadership and work tasks
The second finding identifies how workers’ tasks and need for managerial support impact their
experience of leadership. The comparison between counselors and caseworkers suggests that workers
who depend on their managers in order to do their work are more likely to understand their
managers’ behaviors as leadership. Caseworkers, who performed more standardized tasks that
required less managerial input, perceived leadership as less integrated with management behaviors.
On the other hand, the nature of counselors’ work required more managerial input, and thus,
counselors experienced such management behaviors as leadership. This finding answers a call for
research on how contextual factors such as work tasks may influence leadership from the employee’s
perspective (Oc, 2017).
The greater integration between management and leadership behaviors that counselors experienced suggests that management and leadership are not necessarily a zero-sum game. Rather,
management could increase experiences of leadership. Unstandardized work tasks appear to create
a need for managerial intervention, which again, provides arenas for leadership. Managers, then, are
perceived as leaders through such behaviors as acknowledging the quality and contribution of
employees’ work, which aids development and motivation. For example, when managers commented
or made decisions on employees’ work, they had an opportunity to display leadership as they
demonstrated that they recognized their employees and cared about them.
However, counselors, who had a greater need for managers’ input, were more perceptive to
opportunities in which managers could display leadership than caseworkers, who had less need to
seek out their manager’s involvement. Thus, caseworkers experienced their managers as performing
less leadership in their management. This finding suggests that a need for management could affect
how workers perceive leadership. A high degree of standardization – such as with casework –
demands less from the manager in regard to standardizing and controlling the work (Mintzberg,
1979), and therefore, counselors, whose work is less standardized than casework and required more
managerial support, perceived their active managers as leaders.
A complementary explanation for the greater integration between management and leadership
among counselors could be the influence of their professional background. While not identified
directly in the interviews or reflected by the degree of professionals in the respective departments,
a stronger professional habitus among caseworkers (Freidson, 1986; Witman et al., 2011), the sum of
what they know and what they know to do in their work, could tend to standardize their tasks to
a greater degree than for counselors. Therefore, professional habitus could contribute to less need for
management and leadership. Another possible, but not observed explanation, is that caseworkers
believed themselves to be more competent than their managers. If so, they would not need to seek
out their managers for support to the same degree as counselors. The age and experience of
managers did not appear to impact the differences in experiences of leadership. Caseworker
managers with less experience or fewer competences could be viewed as showing less leadership.
However, as shown in Table 1, the percentage of professionally educated managers with considerable
years of experience in the organization was higher for casework.
Another difference between casework and counseling tasks could offer an explanation for
differences in experiences of leadership. Whereas caseworkers work in a “production environment,”
counselors work directly with clients, which could necessitate more follow-up with managers to
debrief and discuss experiences. Long-term follow-up with clients could create different managerial
and leadership needs than the short-term process of assessing eligibility. While related to standardization, this difference in the nature of tasks should be explored on its own in future studies.
120 C. RØNNINGSTAD
Practitioners should be aware that managers with knowledge of the field and a good relationship with their employees have great potential for being recognized as leaders. However, management as an arena for leadership describes an opportunity, not a necessity. Individuals who do not
have a need to seek out their managers, either because they already know what to do or they
experience such interactions as unnecessary or dreadful, would not be expected to perceive or
accept their managers as leaders. We also must bear in mind that employees’ seeking out their
manager for all kinds of questions can be inefficient, distracting for the manager, and an erosion
of the employees’ discretion. That being said, this study suggests that employees perceive knowledgeable managers as fruitful for delivering leadership, although achieving such a combination
can be challenging (Hurst & Hurst, 2017). As leadership can be unintentional, practitioners
should be aware of the potential for leadership that lies in mundane management tasks.
Caseworkers’ lesser need for management should not be confused with a lesser need for leadership. Caseworkers may want or need leadership, but because fewer direct interactions with
between caseworkers and managers occur, fewer arenas for leadership are available.
Employees appear to read situations differently from managers, and therefore, managers could
perform more leadership than they think, challenging previous findings that managers perform less
leadership than they believe (Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2003a; Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2003b).
Divergent views between managers and employees suggest that there is not necessarily a strong
connection between managers’ perceptions of performing leadership and employees’ experience of
being led. Because understandings of leadership differ within the diverse set of human services tasks,
employees and managers should be aware of how work tasks might create or reduce arenas for
leadership. When highly standardized work limits leadership opportunities, managers may need to
actively create other arenas to provide leadership. Consequently, managers could benefit as leaders
through supervision of the content of the work, allocation of time to provide comments, or
acknowledgment of the quality as well as the quantity of employees’ work.
Limitations
The Norwegian public welfare setting might not represent the majority of human service organizations, and therefore, this study’s generalizability could be limited outside the national and cultural
setting of the Scandinavian public welfare system. Future studies should aim to explore these
findings across the span of private, public, and nonprofit organizations globally. Also, this study
was limited to counselors and caseworkers, and future studies should consider the impact of various
work tasks performed across human service organizations. For instance, it would be interesting to
explore employees working with more or less demanding groups of clients over time which might
influence the degree of standardization and experiences of leadership. Researchers should be aware
that factors other than an organization’s status as private, public, or nonprofit can influence leadership. In addition to the overreaching organizational context as an important contingency, researchers should be concerned with the specific influence work tasks have on experiences of leadership.
Several factors that may influence results were beyond this study’s scope and remain unknown. This
research focused on perceptions of managers and employees, and the needs of other stakeholders, such as
clients and taxpayers, are unknown. Whether the identified experiences of leadership had an impact on
performance is also unknown. Although I did not identify any patterns regarding age, professional
degree, or work experience that might explain the differences between counselors’ and caseworkers’
experience, the lack of a pattern does not preclude the influence of these factors. Consequently, the study
does not refute the notion that the combination of less experienced and fewer professionally educated
managers may have influenced the counselors’ leadership experiences.
HUMAN SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS: MANAGEMENT, LEADERSHIP & GOVERNANCE 121
Conclusion
In conclusion, I have shown that interpersonal leadership is essential in the more controlled public
human service setting. Interpersonal leadership occurs through management behaviors that provide
arenas for displaying leadership characteristics. Standardization of work tasks, either alone or in
combination with other suggested factors, is a likely explanation for differences in leadership
experiences between counselors and caseworkers. For human service managers and practitioners,
the findings suggest that:
● Interpersonal leadership persists as important in public human service organizations.
● Standardization of tasks influences how employees and managers perceive leadership.
● Managers should be aware that management could be an essential arena for providing
leadership.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
ORCID
Chris Rønningstad http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4261-4396
References
Alvesson, M., Blom, M., & Sveningsson, S. (2016). Reflexive leadership: Organising in an imperfect world. London: Sage.
Alvesson, M., & Sveningsson, S. (2003a). Good visions, bad micro-management and ugly ambiguity: Contradictions of
(non-)leadership in a knowledge-intensive organization. Organization Studies, 24(6), 961–988. doi:10.1177/
0170840603024006007
Alvesson, M., & Sveningsson, S. (2003b). The great disappearing act: Difficulties in doing “leadership”. The Leadership
Quarterly, 14(3), 359–381. doi:10.1016/S1048-9843(03)00031-6
Author. (2019). in-review.
Bowen, G. A. (2006). Grounded theory and sensitizing concepts. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 5(3),
12–23. doi:10.1177/160940690600500304
Carnochan, S., & Austin, M. J. (2015). Redefining the bureaucratic encounter between service providers and service
users: Evidence from the Norwegian HUSK projects. Journal of Evidence-Informed Social Sork, 12(1), 64–79.
doi:10.1080/15433714.2014.954944
Castro, M. P. (2017). Is social management a profession? Managerial styles within Italian welfare organizations.
Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance, 42(3), 267–284. doi:10.1080/
23303131.2017.1360228
Christensen, T., & Lægreid, P. (2011). Complexity and hybrid public administration—Theoretical and empirical
challenges. Public Organization Review, 11(4), 407–423. doi:10.1007/s11115-010-0141-4
Cogliser, C. C., Schriesheim, C. A., Scandura, T. A., & Gardner, W. L. (2009). Balance in leader and follower
perceptions of leader-member exchange: Relationships with performance and work attitudes. The Leadership
Quarterly, 20(3), 452–465. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2009.03.010
Collinson, D., Smolović Jones, O., & Grint, K. (2018). ‘No more heroes’: Critical perspectives on leadership romanticism. Organization Studies, 39(11), 1625–1647. doi:10.1177/0170840617727784
Empson, L., & Langley, A. (2015). Leadership and professionals: Multiple manifestations of influence in professional
service firms. In L. Empson, D. Muzio, J. P. Broschak, & B. Hinigs (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of professional
service firms (pp. 163–187). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fossestøl, K., Breit, E., & Borg, E. (2016a). Betingelser for sosialt arbeid. En case- og surveystudie fra fem storbyer og syv
storbykontorer. [Contingencies for social work] (2016:02). Oslo. Retrieved from http://www.hioa.no/content/down
load/122848/3116076/file/r2016-02_BetingelserForSosialtArbeid.pdf
Fossestøl, K., Breit, E., & Borg, E. (2016b). Hvorfor lykkes ikke NAV-kontorene med å jobbe mer arbeidsrettet? [Why
are NAV offices not successsful in being more work-oriented?]. Søkelys på Arbeidslivet, 1(2), 5–23. doi:10.18261/
issn.1504-7989-2016-01-02-01
122 C. RØNNINGSTAD
Freidson, E. (1986). Professional powers: A study of the institutionalization of formal knowledge. Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press.
Gjersøe, H. M. (2016). Getting sick and disabled people off temporary benefit receipt: Strategies and dilemmas in the
welfare state‘s frontline. Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies, 6(1), 129–145. doi:10.19154/njwls.v6i1.4889
Gunnarsdóttir, H. M. (2016). Autonomy and emotion management. Middle managers in welfare professions
during radical organizational change. Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies, 6(1), 87–108. doi:10.19154/
njwls.v6i1.4887
Hafford-Letchfield, T., Lambley, S., Spolander, G., & Cocker, C. (2014). Inclusive leadership in social work and social
care. Cambridge, UK: Policy Press.
Hurst, T. E., & Hurst, P. W. (2017). White bear syndrome: Recognizing potential roadblocks in transitioning from
practitioner to leader. Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance, 41(4), 438–447.
doi:10.1080/23303131.2017.1281857
Lord, R. G., Foti, R. J., & De Vader, C. L. (1984). A test of leadership categorization theory: Internal structure,
information processing, and leadership perceptions. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 34(3),
343–378. doi:10.1016/0030-5073(84)90043-6
Martin, R., Thomas, G., Charles, K., Epitropaki, O., & McNamara, R. (2005). The role of leader-member exchanges in
mediating the relationship between locus of control and work reactions. Journal of Occupational and Organizational
Psychology, 78(1), 141–147. doi:10.1348/096317904X23763
McKitterick, B. (2015). Self-leadership in social work: Reflections from practice. Bristol, UK: Bristol University Press.
Mintzberg, H. (1979). The structuring of organizations. London: Pearson.
Neubert, M. J., Hunter, E. M., & Tolentino, R. C. (2016). A servant leader and their stakeholders: When does
organizational structure enhance a leader‘s influence? The Leadership Quarterly, 27(6), 896–910. doi:10.1016/j.
leaqua.2016.05.005
Noordegraaf, M. (2015). Hybrid professionalism and beyond: (New) forms of public professionalism in changing
organizational and societal contexts. Journal of Professions and Organization, 2(2), 187–206. doi:10.1093/jpo/
jov002
Oc, B. (2017). Contextual leadership: A systematic review of how contextual factors shape leadership and its outcomes.
The Leadership Quarterly, 29(1), 218–235. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2017.12.004
Offermann, L. R., & Coats, M. R. (2017). Implicit theories of leadership: Stability and change over two decades. The
Leadership Quarterly, 29(4), 513–522. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2017.12.003
Øvrelid, B. (2018). Profesjonsidentitetens vilkår [Terms for professional identity]. Tidsskrift for Velferdsforskning, 21
(02), 103–118. doi:10.18261/issn.2464-3076-2018-02-02
Peters, S. C. (2017). Social work leadership: An analysis of historical and contemporary challenges. Human Service
Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance, 41(4), 336–345. doi:10.1080/23303131.2017.1302375
Peters, S. C. (2018). Defining social work leadership: A theoretical and conceptual review and analysis. Journal of Social
Work Practice, 32(1), 31–44. doi:10.1080/02650533.2017.1300877
Raeymaeckers, P., & Dierckx, D. (2013). To work or not to work? The role of the organisational context for social
workers‘ perceptions on activation. British Journal of Social Work, 43(6), 1170–1189. doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcs048
Rank, M. G., & Hutchison, W. S. (2000). An analysis of leadership within the social work profession. Journal of Social
Work Education, 36(3), 487–502. doi:10.1080/10437797.2000.10779024
Rønningstad, C. (2018). Leading for better outcomes: Social work as knowledge work. Nordic Social Work Research, 8
(1), 75–87. doi:10.1080/2156857X.2017.1422138
Sagatun, S., & Smith, E. (2012). Aktivt medvirkende og medansvarlige brukere i sosialtjenesten og NAV [Active
complicity and co-responsible users in social services and NAV]. In A. G. Jenssen & I. M. Tronvoll (Eds.),
Brukermedvirkning: Likeverd og anerkjennelse (pp. 168–180). Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.
Sahlin, K., & Eriksson-Zetterquist, U. (2016). Kollegialitet: En modern styrform [Collegiality: A modern form of
governance]. Lund, Sweden: Studentlitteratur AB.
Schutz, A. (1962). Common-sense and scientific interpretation of human action. In M. Natanson (Ed.), Collected
papers I (pp. 3–47). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
Shanks, E. (2016). Managing social work: Organisational conditions and everyday work for managers in the Swedish
social services (Doctoral dissertation). Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden. Retrieved from http://su.divaportal.org/smash/get/diva2:920490/FULLTEXT01.pdf.
Silard, A. (2018). Emotions for a cause: How the emotion expression of nonprofit leaders produces follower
engagement and loyalty. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 47(2), 304–324. doi:10.1177/0899764017737383
Stogdill, R. M. (1974). Handbook of leadership: A survey of theory and research. New York, NY: Free Press.
Sullivan, P. (2016). Leadership in social work: Where are we? Journal of Social Work Education, 52(sup1), S51–S61.
doi:10.1080/10437797.2016.1174644
Uhl-Bien, M., Riggio, R. E., Lowe, K. B., & Carsten, M. K. (2014). Followership theory: A review and research agenda.
The Leadership Quarterly, 25(1), 83–104. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2013.11.007
Weber, M. (2012). Samfunnvitenskapens “objektivitet” [The objectivity of the sociological and social-political knowledge].
In E. Fivelstad (Ed.), Max Weber—Makt og byråkrati. Oslo: Gyldendal Akademisk. (Original work published 1904).
HUMAN SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS: MANAGEMENT, LEADERSHIP & GOVERNANCE 123
Witman, Y., Smid, G. A., Meurs, P. L., & Willems, D. L. (2011). Doctor in the lead: Balancing between two worlds.
Organization, 18(4), 477–495. doi:10.1177/1350508410380762
Yukl, G. (1989). Managerial leadership: A review of theory and research. Journal of Management, 15(2), 251–289.
doi:10.1177/014920638901500207
Yukl, G. (2010). Leadership in organizations (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Zaccaro, S. J., Green, J. P., Dubrow, S., & Kolze, M. (2018). Leader individual differences, situational parameters, and
leadership outcomes: A comprehensive review and integration. The Leadership Quarterly, 29(1), 2–43. Advance
online publication. Retrieved from http://isiarticles.com/bundles/Article/pre/pdf/84449.pdf
Zhu, J., Song, L. J., Zhu, L., & Johnson, R. E. (2018). Visualizing the landscape and evolution of leadership research.
The Leadership Quarterly. Advance online publication. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2018.06.003
124 C. RØNNINGSTAD