تفاوت در پیش شرط های سازمانی برای مدیران در خدمات شهری جنسیتی  Differences in organizational preconditions for managers in genderized municipal services

1. Introduction Public sector organizations in democratic welfare states have gone through a large transformation during the last decades with implications for power relations and gender equality (Conley, Kerfoot & Thornley, 2011). The precedence of contract over hierarchy, private sector style management, performance measurement and output control, organizational disaggregation, and incentives to increase competition and efficiency in the public sector are some of the key components of the New Public Management (Hood, 1991). This is a management paradigm that has been accused for devaluating the public sector as an employer, reducing the professional autonomy, and increasing work environment problems and gender inequality (Ashcraft, 2013; Davies & Thomas, 2002; Rasmussen, 2004). Before the mid-1960s and the large expansion of caring services, the Swedish public sector was dominated by male workers. Human services like education and health care were for a long period characterized by good working conditions with almost no gender differences in for example occupational health and sick leave rates. In a national health survey from 1990, teaching and nursing were ranked as the healthiest occupations for women (Stockholm County Council, 1991). This situation changed in the late 1980s (Angelov, Johansson, Lindahl & Lindström, 2011). Today, employees in occupations which imply regular contact with other human beings have an increased risk for sick leave in psychiatric diagnoses (The Swedish Social Insurance Agency, 2014). Many explanations have been suggested often with a focus on women and the double burden of paid and unpaid work (see e.g. Angelov et al., 2011). However, it is becoming increasingly recognized that explanations to gender differences in sick leave rates instead should be sought in the way work is organized in female and male dominated occupations, sectors and industries (Albin, Toomingas & Bodin, 2016; Härenstam, 2009; SSIA, 2014, Sverke, Falkenberg, Kecklund, Magnusson Hanson & Lindfors, 2016; Theorell et al., 2015; Östlin, Danielsson, Diderichsen, Härenstam & Lindberg, 2001). To organize public services and attract qualified employees, with decreasing resources and an aging population, is a challenge across Europe. Public sector managers are responsible for translating and implementing laws, regulations, and local level decisions in the operation. They are accountable for the work environment of the employees, as well as for the organizational performance. This motivates an investigation into the opportunities public sector managers have to fulfil their assignment. Management and leadership researchers are often keen to scrutinize the virtues, skills and strategies of great leaders, who cope with challenges and turn their companies, schools and hospitals into successful organizations. As a response to this emphasis on the individual, influential scholars have called for a less individualistic view that recognizes the national, sectorial and organizational influences on managerial work practices (Nordengraaf & Stewart, 2000; Mintzberg, 2006; Dierdorff, Rubin & Morgeson, 2009; Morgeson, 2012). They claim that it is important to consider the possibilities and constraints that are embedded in the context where managers operate. Scholars that take their point of departure from the managerial practice tend to view managerial work as interactive and situated phenomena, highly embedded in context and dependent on situation (Tengblad and Vie, 2012). The public sector is generally associated with standardized and welldesigned structures governed by the values of collegiality, equity and transparency- classic traits of the bureaucracy. Such ideal types of organizations are supposed to have a clear delegation of authority, clear job descriptions and principles for rewards. As government institutions, they are expected to live up to gender equality policies. Still, many bureaucracies have a gendered disposition in relation to recruitment, roles, access to resources, and membership of networks due to the traditional exclusions of women and women’s experiences (Annesley & Gains, 2010). Together with its Scandinavian neighbours, Sweden tends to take on lead positions in international gender equality rankings— for example, for the past ten years Sweden never dropped below the fourth position in the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index, covering aspects of women and men’s economic and political participation, education attainment and health (WEF, 2015). Yet, gender inequality still persists in Sweden, as well as in the other Scandinavian countries. For example, Swedish women still use the majority of days for parental allowance, they still work part time to a larger extent than men, sex differences in pay are almost unchanged since the 1980s and men have higher pensions (Statistics Sweden, 2014). Universal state-funded child allowances, parental leave, and child care, are social policy cornerstones which support female labour force participation and enable both women and men to reconcile work and family in the Nordic countries (Esping-Andersen, 1999; Ferrarini, 2003). Such family policies were the late-comers to the elaborate Nordic welfare state programs, and a dual earner model including women from all social classes was not realized in the Nordic countries until the 1960–1970’s (Nousiainen, 2000). In 2013, women’s labour force participation was higher in Sweden (91% in the age group 25–44, and 84% in the group 45–64) than in any other part of the world (Statistics Sweden, 2014). Yet, the dual earner model came to the price of a highly gender segregated labour market, with femaleand male-dominated sectors and occupations (cf. Martin, 2011). Among the 30 largest occupations in Sweden, only three have an equal sex distribution (i.e 40–60% of each sex), namely chefs/cooks, doctors and university/higher education teachers. Sectors are also horizontally segregated in Sweden: women make up 77% of the employees in municipalities, 78% in county councils, while the central government sector and the private sector are more integrated (with 51 and 39% women respectively) (ibid). One possible explanation to the strong horizontal gender segregation in the Nordic labour markets might be that when the welfare services expanded during the 1970s, they were manned mainly by women and organized according to patriarchal principles (Gonäs, Johansson, & Svärd 1996; Walby, 1990). Part-time schedules and standardized job descriptions facilitated exchangeability when the woman was needed to take care of her own children. These organizational principles still characterize caring services in Sweden. While there has been a trend towards occupational gender desegregation in Scandinavia for the past 20 years, the gender segregation remains intact at the sectorial level (Ellingsæter, 2014). Consequently, changes and developments in the Swedish municipalities and county councils predominantly affect women. Decreasing resources and new forms of government have been suggested to explain the increased work load and decreased professional autonomy reported in studies of public sector organizations in the Nordic countries (Rasmussen, 2004; Westerberg & Armelius, 2000). Increasing sick leave rates, particularly due to stress-related health problems in the human service sector are currently up for discussion at the national level in Sweden (SWEA, 2014a,b; Albin et al., 2016). To meet these challenges, more knowledge is needed about the workplace level mechanisms, which link macro-level phenomena (such as labour market gender segregation and sector specific changes of management technologies and organizing), to working conditions and work- related health. Could it be that feminized services are organized differently than masculinized types of services? Few studies have compared organizational conditions across genderized public sector domains. The public sector in Sweden is horizontally gender segregated and thus suitable for testing the idea that gender ‘rubs off’ not only on work activities and occupations (Ashcraft 2013; Britton, 2000; Cockburn, 1988), but also on organizational structures and arrangements. For example: is there less autonomy, less organizational support and less goal clarity in feminized caring service as compared to masculinized technical services? If differences are found, such knowledge would contribute to understand the mechanisms behind high work load and work-related health problems in feminized public services.