Passion or delusion: middle managers constructing new meanings of work

Recently, organization scholars have called for a need to re-think managerial leadership so as to take into account the "mundane", the key activity of which is "influencing expectations, meanings, and values about what is desirable and necessary related to everyday work" (Sveningsson et. al., 2012: 84). In other words, mundane leaders can be seen as sense makers (Weick, 1995) and sense givers (Gioia and Chittipeddi 1991). Managerial leadership has also been described as event-driven actions arising mostly from unforeseen happenings (Holmberg and Tyrstrup, 2010). A study of site managers in construction depicted their leadership as a "muddling through", i.e. they skilfully solve problems as these inevitably crop up, and they try to be everywhere at the same time Styhre, 2012). We argue that muddling through also puts high demands on site managers' abilities and possibilities of coping with and balancing their work, family and personal life. The purpose of this paper is to explore what mundane leadership and muddling through actually mean for managerial leaders in construction from a wider perspective than their work. In other words, what does muddling through mean in terms of coping with work and family and life in general. This paper contributes empirical examples from 37 in-depth interviews with site managers, foremen and supervisor in a large number of construction organisations. We draw on practice theories to explore and analyse the data, and argue that mundane leaders are indeed both organizational sense makers and sense givers, the linkers of the strategic with the operational, the cohesion that generates coherence. All the site managers interviewed were passionate about their work, but deplored organisational and institutional constraints, which mostly obstructed rather than supported or facilitated their work. Sense-making and sense-giving roles demand presence, flexibility, experience, hindsight, judgment and improvisation, which in turn, and over time, often result in exhaustion and stress, and leave little energy over for family and life outside work. We conclude that the "mundane" activities of middle managers are far from trivial; they demand leadership competences that require fostering and nurturing. Today there is little support for middle-managerial leaders and little training of the competences that they need the nmost

Workaholics on site! Sustainability of site managers' work situations?

Site-managerial practice in construction has been depicted as a 'muddling through', being everywhere at the same time and skilfully solving problems as these crop up. The purpose of this paper is to explore work patterns and related well-being implications of site managers in construction. Drawing on the work-life stories of 21 site managers, which have been analysed using narrative analysis we argue that muddling through put high demands on these managers' abilities and possibilities of coping with and balancing their work situations. In all the accounts, several features of workaholism were identified as driving forces, often leading to negative well-being symptoms. The site managers were passionate about their work, but deplored organisational and institutional constraints, which mostly obstructed rather than supported or facilitated their work. This resulted in periods of exhaustion and stress, leaving little energy over for family and life outside work. We conclude that the warnings we perceive concerning the unsustainable work situations of site managers warrant further research

Exploring the work practices of site managers as processes of embodiment

In construction, site managerial work has often been depicted as 'muddling through', skilfully solving problems as these inevitably crop up and trying to be everywhere at the same time. This perspective seems to give precedence to structural conditions in the industry when explaining micro-level practice on construction sites. Recently, however, organisation scholars have highlighted a need to investigate managerial practices as these unfold in everyday work. This means we ought to take into account the actual work activities that influence expectations, meanings and values about what is desirable and necessarily relate to everyday work. The purpose of this paper is to further explore how practice enactment and outcomes are embedded in the lived, everyday work activities of real human beings working on site. The focus is on the work stories of two site managers, a man and a woman, in a large Swedish construction company. Drawing on their stories we take a critical stance towards the established view that certain structural and cultural conditions are strong and sufficient precursors to predict work practice outcomes. We propose instead that practices enacted on site can better be understood as various processes of embodiment

Conceptual Framework for the Project <i>Separation of Powers for 21st Century Europe (SepaRope)</i>

The SepaRope project aims to provide an understanding of how the different branches of government, from different levels of governance, co-determine each other’s powers within the EU. The project takes inspiration from Christoph Möllers’ conceptualisation of separation of powers derived from individual and collective self-determination as the central element of the justification of public authority. We build on this and aim to identify how the interactions between different branches within the EU contribute to or hinder democratic will-formation, and manage or fail to control the exercise of public power

Photon creation from vacuum and interactions engineering in nonstationary circuit QED

We study theoretically the nonstationary circuit QED system in which the artificial atom transition frequency, or the atom-cavity coupling, have a small periodic time modulation, prescribed externally. The system formed by the atom coupled to a single cavity mode is described by the Rabi Hamiltonian. We show that, in the dispersive regime, when the modulation periodicity is tuned to the `resonances', the system dynamics presents the dynamical Casimir effect, resonant Jaynes-Cummings or resonant Anti-Jaynes-Cummings behaviors, and it can be described by the corresponding effective Hamiltonians. In the resonant atom-cavity regime and under the resonant modulation, the dynamics is similar to the one occurring for a stationary two-level atom in a vibrating cavity, and an entangled state with two photons can be created from vacuum. Moreover, we consider the situation in which the atom-cavity coupling, the atomic frequency, or both have a small nonperiodic time modulation, and show that photons can be created from vacuum in the dispersive regime. Therefore, an analog of the dynamical Casimir effect can be simulated in circuit QED, and several photons, as well as entangled states, can be generated from vacuum due to the anti-rotating term in the Rabi Hamiltonian.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures. Talk presented at the International Workshop "60 Years of Casimir Effect", 23 - 27 June, 2008, Brasili

Absolute Properties of the Eclipsing Binary Star BF Draconis

BF Dra is now known to be an eccentric double-lined F6+F6 binary star with relatively deep (0.7 mag) partial eclipses. Previous studies of the system are improved with 7494 differential photometric observations from the URSA WebScope and 9700 from the NFO WebScope, 106 high-resolution spectroscopic observations from the Tennessee State University 2 m automatic spectroscopic telescope and the 1 m coudé-feed spectrometer at Kitt Peak National Observatory, and 31 accurate radial velocities from the CfA. Very accurate (better than 0.6%) masses and radii are determined from analysis of the two new light curves and four radial velocity curves. Theoretical models match the absolute properties of the stars at an age of about 2.72 Gyr and [Fe/H] = −0.17, and tidal theory correctly confirms that the orbit should still be eccentric. Our observations of BF Dra constrain the convective core overshooting parameter to be larger than about 0.13 Hp. We find, however, that standard tidal theory is unable to match the observed slow rotation rates of the components\u27 surface layers