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

Scaling of interfaces in brittle fracture and perfect plasticity

The roughness properties of two-dimensional fracture surfaces as created by the slow failure of random fuse networks are considered and compared to yield surfaces of perfect plasticity with similar disorder. By studying systems up to a linear size L=350 it is found that in the cases studied the fracture surfaces exhibit self-affine scaling with a roughness exponent close to 2/3, which is asymptotically exactly true for plasticity though finite-size effects are evident for both. The overlap of yield or minimum energy and fracture surfaces with exactly the same disorder configuration is shown to be a decreasing function of the system size and to be of a rather large magnitude for all cases studied. The typical ``overlap cluster'' length between pairs of such interfaces converges to a constant with $L$ increasing.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Elasticity of Stiff Polymer Networks

We study the elasticity of a two-dimensional random network of rigid rods (``Mikado model''). The essential features incorporated into the model are the anisotropic elasticity of the rods and the random geometry of the network. We show that there are three distinct scaling regimes, characterized by two distinct length scales on the elastic backbone. In addition to a critical rigidiy percolation region and a homogeneously elastic regime we find a novel intermediate scaling regime, where elasticity is dominated by bending deformations.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Using impact response surfaces to analyse the likelihood of impacts on crop yield under probabilistic climate change

Conventional methods of modelling impacts of future climate change on crop yields often rely on a limited selection of projections for representing uncertainties in future climate. However, large ensembles of climate projections offer an opportunity to estimate yield responses probabilistically. This study demonstrates an approach to probabilistic yield estimation using impact response surfaces (IRSs). These are constructed from a set of sensitivity simulations that explore yield responses to a wide range of changes in temperature and precipitation. Options for adaptation and different levels of future atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration [CO2] defined by representative concentration pathways (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) were also considered. Model-based IRSs were combined with probabilistic climate projections to estimate impact likelihoods for yields of spring barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) in Finland during the 21st century. Probabilistic projections of climate for the same RCPs were overlaid on IRSs for corresponding [CO2] levels throughout the century and likelihoods of yield shortfall calculated with respect to a threshold mean yield for the baseline (1981–2010). Results suggest that cultivars combining short pre- and long post-anthesis phases together with earlier sowing dates produce the highest yields and smallest likelihoods of yield shortfall under future scenarios. Higher [CO2] levels generally compensate for yield losses due to warming under the RCPs. Yet, this does not happen fully under the more moderate warming of RCP4.5 with a weaker rise in [CO2], where there is a chance of yield shortfall throughout the century. Under the stronger warming but more rapid [CO2] increase of RCP8.5, the likelihood of yield shortfall drops to zero from mid-century onwards. Whilst the incremental IRS-based approach simplifies the temporal and cross-variable complexities of projected climate, it was found to offer a close approximation of evolving future likelihoods of yield impacts in comparison to a more conventional scenario-based approach. The IRS approach is scenario-neutral and existing plots can be used in combination with any new scenario that falls within the sensitivity range without the need to perform new runs with the impact model. A single crop model is used for demonstration, but an ensemble IRS approach could additionally capture impact model uncertainties.peerReviewe

Failure of planar fiber networks

We study the failure of planar random fiber networks with computer simulations. The networks are grown by adding flexible fibers one by one on a growing deposit [K. J. Niskanen and M. J. Alava, Phys. Rev. Lett. 73, 3475 (1994)], a process yielding realistic three dimensional network structures. The network thus obtained is mapped to an electrical analogue of the elastic problem, namely to a random fuse network with separate bond elements for the fiber-to-fiber contacts. The conductivity of the contacts (corresponding to the efficiency of stress transfer between fibers) is adjustable. We construct a simple effective medium theory for the current distribution and conductivity of the networks as a function of intra-fiber current transfer efficiency. This analysis compares favorably with the computed conductivity and with the fracture properties of fiber networks with varying fiber flexibility and network thickness. The failure characteristics are shown to obey scaling behavior, as expected of a disordered brittlematerial, which is explained by the high current end of the current distribution saturating in thick enough networks. For bond breaking, fracture load and strain can be estimated with the effective medium theory. For fiber breaking, we find the counter-intuitive result that failure is more likely to nucleate far from surfaces, as the stress is transmitted more effectively to the fibers in the interior.Peer reviewe