ادغام ایده آل های مدیریتی در آفشورینگ سوئدی IT  Merging management ideals in Swedish IT offshoring

1. Introduction Management ideals describe the qualifications, skills, competence and conduct that characterize successful organizational management (Peterson, 2007). They express what counts as “good management” (Gherardi & Murgia, 2014: 691), provide guidelines for action and prescribe what issues in the workplace that a manager is supposed to deal with—what problems they are required to solve and how they are expected to solve them (Varje, Anttila, & Väänänen, 2013). Organizational ideals label actions, behaviour and practices as “right” or “wrong” and therefore have a legitimizing function (Aaltio-Marjosola, 1994). As a result, management ideals exercise disciplinary power because they influence, shape and constrain management performances (Jørgensen, Jordan, & Mitterhofer, 2012). Moreover, managers’ understandings of what they should be like and how they are expected to perform so a to be identified as professional and successful managers determine how they describe management work (Gertsen & Søderberg, 2010). Representations of management ideals thus appear in managers’ self-reports of working conditions, challenges, strategies and practices (Smith, Andersen, Ekelund, Graversen, & Ropo, 2003). Management ideals do not evolve “naturally” in organizations. They are created, maintained and reproduced in social processes characterized by ideologies, power relations, ideas and values (Aaltio-Marjosola, 1994). The ideas of what constitutes ideal management reflect contemporary images of management and can shift depending on the arrival of new management theories (Katila & Eriksson, 2013). The charismatic leader, the transformational manager and the participative leadership approach are examples of models that make a case for different management ideals (Madsen & Albrechtsen, 2008). Management ideals also vary due to “the conceptual foundation of the organization” (Allan, Gordon, & Iverson, 2006: 43) referring to how work is arranged, power exerted and decisions made (Holvino, 2010). Bureaucratic organizations for example promote a management ideal fundamentally different from the ideal dominating in team-based organizations (Peterson, 2005). To sum up, while management ideals concern personal authority, status and identity they also legitimize relations of inequality and privilege in the workplace (Collinson & Hearn, 1994). This article explores management ideals in transnational business relations by drawing on interviews with 18 Swedish managers involved in managing IT offshoring from Sweden to India. The topic of outsourcing and offshoring has started to attract academic interest (Lacity, Khan, & Willcocks, 2009) although the research literature on the organization and management of offshore outsourcing of IT services is still limited (Gannon, Wilson, & Powell, 2014). This article advances the discussion of contemporary management by examining how managers negotiate management ideals when faced with the challenges of effective management of offshore IT sourcing relationships. Drawing on a critical discourse framework the analysis highlights how the managers interviewed discursively constructed the meaning of ideal management and tried to merge their familiar Swedish management style with the new transnational business context, using different discursive practices.