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The purpose of the article is to analyze how physicians and nurses, as the two major health care professions, experience psychological empowerment for managerial work.

The study was designed as a qualitative interview study at four primary care centers (PCCs) in Sweden. In total, 47 interviews were conducted, mainly with physicians and nurses. The first inductive analysis led us to the concept of psychological empowerment, which was used in the next deductive step of the analysis.

The study showed that both professions experienced self-determination for managerial work, but that nurses were more dependent on structural empowerment. Nurses experienced that they had competence for managerial work, whereas physicians were more ignorant of such competence. Nurses used managerial work to create impact on the conditions for their clinical work, whereas physicians experienced impact independently. Both nurses and physicians experienced managerial work as meaningful, but less meaningful than nurses and physicians' clinical work.

For an effective health care system, structural changes in terms of positions, roles, and responsibilities can be an important route for especially nurses' psychological empowerment.

The qualitative method provided a complementary understanding of psychological empowerment on how psychological empowerment interacted with other factors. One such aspect was nurses' higher dependence on structural empowerment, but the most important aspect was that both physicians and nurses experienced that managerial work was less meaningful than clinical work. This implies that psychological empowerment for managerial work may only make a difference if psychological empowerment does not compete with physicians' and nurses' clinical work.

Over the past thirty years or so, a body, albeit a somewhat disarticulated body, of evidence on the work of managers has accumulated. The field of study which has given rise to this evidence is, from time to time, subject to ‘internal’ criticisms by some of its own practitioners (Luthans and Davis 1980, Marples 1967, Mintzberg 1973, Stewart 1983) whose main contention, predictably, is that the studies do not, methodologically or analytically, always live up to their self‐imposed project. The studies in short are upbraided for what they have imperfectly done. In an earlier paper (Hales 1986) I sought to extend and add to these criticisms of studies of managers' work. I argued that the studies fail to distinguish, within the vague term ‘managerial work’, between: first, ‘management’ as a process and ‘managers’ as a particular category of agents; second, managerial work as a totality and managerial jobs as clusters of that (and other) work; third, what managers are required to do (role definition) and what they actually do (role performance) and fourth, the outputs and purpose of managerial work (managerial tasks and responsibilities) versus the inputs and practice of managerial work (managers' behaviour and activities). These ambiguities are, I suggested, symptomatic of a rather narrow empiricist approach and failure adequately to theorise the ‘management’ which managers are, apparently, doing. In this way, I wanted to arrive at, rather than merely assert, the proposition that the activities of managers cannot be adequately understood without setting them, empirically and theoretically, in a wider context.

The purpose of this article is to describe the basic characteristics and qualities of managerial work in small firms.

The article draws on a summary and synthesis of five studies from the “managerial‐work research tradition” that investigates the behaviour of top managers in small firms by means of direct observation. Studies are evaluated by using research on managers' jobs in general, and some needs as well as guidelines for future research on entrepreneurial and managerial work in small firms are suggested.

Managerial work in small firms is described by discussing: how managers divide their time between different activities; managerial interaction and communication, and the elements of managerial work in small firms. Three limitations of existing studies are identified: they are difficult to compare; they adopt a simplistic conception of the constituents of managers' jobs, and more specifically of the relation between the managing actor and the context in which he/she works; and they fail to recognise to the value of inductive analysis.

Future studies of managerial work in small firms have much to gain by considering the development that has been taking place within general management theory and in the study of managers' jobs. This article contributes a first step towards bringing research on managers' jobs into the small‐business research community.

The paper initiates a better understanding of the basics of managerial work in small firms, which has not previously been elaborated upon and is an important step in exploring the dynamics of small business management.

This paper explores the nature of managerial work in the public relations context drawing comparisons with the way mainstream management research has defined the main elements and processes of management within organisations. The paper begins with a critical review of the public relations and management literatures relating to managerial work and behaviour, highlighting the distinctively different approaches taken by public relations and management scholars in defining the nature of managerial work and behaviour. The paper goes on to present the findings of a qualitative investigation into the role and work patterns of practitioners occupying senior positions in cross sections of both US and UK organisations. The study identifies a number of common elements in pattern of “managerial” work performed by both UK and US‐based practitioners. The study also reveals the extent to which senior practitioners participate as members of the dominant coalition within their organisations and contribute to strategic decision making. The paper concludes by reflecting on the adequacy of existing definitions and understanding of the managerial dimension of the role played by practitioners within organisations.

The study explores the alignment of Swiss small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) managers' understanding of digital transformation, with evidence of digital tool adoption in managerial and operative work. This reveals opportunities for more fully realizing the potential of digital transformation for SMEs.

This multiple-case study, with four theoretically sampled cases, analyzes data from the qualitative answers of 1,593 respondents to a survey of Swiss SMEs about digital transformation. The study draws on a convenience sample of Swiss SME managers.

The analysis shows little understanding of digital transformation as related to managerial work. However, there are two clear digital tool adoption patterns for managerial work: (1) workflow and workforce management and (2) work-flow and team management. Understandings of digital transformation and operative work focus on the (1) organization of operational work or (2) a combination of organization and changing the way people work. The digital tool adoption in operational work additionally focuses on the digital skills of operational employees.

The study is only able to identify patters of understanding of digital transformation and digital tool adoption in managerial and operative work. More research is needed to understand why these patterns are observed.

SME managers need to think far more carefully about aligning their vision for digital transformation and the digital tools they adopt in both managerial and operational work, but especially in managerial work.

This is the first empirical study of the digital transformation of Swiss SMEs and their digital tool adoption. Significant potential for alignment is revealed, suggesting potential performance gains are possible.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether empirical support exists for two commonly held beliefs about the work‐home interface: women, and particularly managerial women, are prone to “super‐mother” or “super‐manage” in an effort to balance both career and child‐rearing, and these demands diminish markedly when children reach school age.

Via a survey mailed to their home, 1,103 managerial and non‐managerial men and women completed measures of work‐home and home‐work conflict, work‐related stress and strain, and reported their number of work, domestic, and leisure hours per week.

Somewhat consistent with the popular beliefs, the authors found that managerial women reported working significantly more in the home; measures of conflict and strain, however, while showing some effect were not impacted to the degree that managerial women's combined number of work and home hours per week might suggest. The authors also found that measures of hours, conflict, and strain did not diminish abruptly when children entered school, due perhaps in part to manager's increased work hours and managerial women's renewed work emphasis when children entered school. Measures of hours, conflict, and strain did show some reduction for parents of teenaged children, although they were still significantly higher than those of nonparents.

Aside from being one of the few empirical papers to examine the impact of child rearing on managerial women, our data show how these demands are not confined to working parents of preschoolers.

Examines the hypotheses that high instrumentality, adaptive coping, and low work/family pressure are predictive components of women’s managerial advancement. A profile analysis demonstrated that the managerial profile was characterized by high instrumentality and low relationality accompanied by high adaptive work coping. On the other hand, the non‐managerial profile was characterized by low instrumentality and high relationality accompanied by low adaptive work coping and high maladaptive work coping. A LISREL path analysis was tentatively used to test the causal influence of internal (instrumental and relational) traits, work/family pressure, and coping on women’s managerial advancement. The results showed that the strongest predictor of managerial emergence was the instrumental factor, while work/family pressure and coping style had no impact.

This study addresses the perspective of N = 273 school principals as related to technology role in performing managerial roles.

In the context of this study, the concept of technology only refers to digital office tools such as microcomputers, email and administrative software. The concept of managerial roles is understood and used herein in relation to the definition provided by Mintzberg (2013) in his managerial typology. Moreover, a survey method was used to collect data from the aforementioned managerial employees. The managerial typology of Mintzberg was applied as a theoretical lens to collect and interpret survey data.

The findings suggest that surveyed school principals believe that technology use improves their ability to perform informational and decisional roles at work. Arguably, these managerial employees are satisfied with using technology as a labor tool for administrative and managerial work.

This study is limited because its sample size does not allow the findings to be generalized to all Canadian school principals. Nevertheless, the findings are significant because they suggest that similar to the positive technology-related attitude of managerial employees in business organizations, those in school organizations also perceive technology as an organizational asset. For that reason, management scholars should not only limit their studies of the intersection between technology and managerial roles or work to business organizations. They also need to extend their research studies and fieldwork to school organizations.

The originality of this study lies in the fact that in management literature, the intersection between technology and the managerial roles of school principals is underresearched. As such, this study represents a step forward toward the need to study the technology-related behaviors of school principals to better understand how technology use enables their workflow system.

Knight's Industrial Law Reports goes into a new style and format as Managerial Law This issue of KILR is restyled Managerial Law and it now appears on a continuous updating basis rather than as a monthly routine affair.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the value of shadowing managers, in relation to other methods for studying managerial work, such as interviews and surveys.

The paper reflects upon (empirical) studies of managers and managerial work, research and bodies of knowledge, and puts available insights into perspective.

Shadowing managers enables researchers to cope with the paradoxical situation that arises when managerial work is studied. Managerial work must be understood in as unbiased a way as possible; managers themselves are unable to understand their own work and the texts they use to capture their work and behavior are either superficial or “manipulative.” At the same time, managerial work cannot be understood without (theoretical) bias; researchers need a priori assumptions when they study real-life work, especially about the institutional settings in which work streams are embedded. The paper concludes that “theoretical shadowing” is relevant.

The paper brings together different bodies of knowledge that have evolved over time and shows that observing managers can never be done openly, despite remarks made by earlier students of managerial work.