Middle managers in elderly care under demands and expectations

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this project was to study how middle managers look on and shape their work and leadership with regard to the demands and expectations that exist from different participants within the home help service operation. The participants are politicians, officials at central level, nursing staff, persons receiving care and their relatives.

Design/methodology/approach

The participants are eight managers in eight different home‐help service units. The units are spread out in four districts with high socioeconomic status and four districts with low. Four managers are at public units and four are at units with private executor. The majority of the managers had worked as leaders between three and eight years. The study is based on individual interviews and observations of the managers and of staff meetings. The data were subjected to content analysis. Two main categories and five subcategories were generated.

Findings

There were large similarities in how the managers perceived the demands and expectations, but there were differences when it came to how they handled them. Three of the managers experienced that they could handle the demands and expectations through organizing and structuring the operation and prioritizing the assignments, while five of the managers experienced difficulties to handle them and they conveyed that they suffered from stress. The managers who could handle the demands combine a professional and an organizational perspective in their leadership.

Originality/value

The knowledge from the study may be of great value in recruiting new managers in elderly care but also in creating programs of competence development for managers.

Citation

Ekholm, B. (2012), "Middle managers in elderly care under demands and expectations", Leadership in Health Services, Vol. 25 No. 3, pp. 203-215. https://doi.org/10.1108/17511871211247642