Authorising managers in management development?

Text and authority

To grasp the different dimensions and implications of the organisational view in relation to MLDPs, we draw on CCO, which researchers have recently successfully applied as a theoretical approach in leadership studies (Holm and Fairhurst, 2018; Meier and Carroll, 2019). CCO is a collective designation for recent organisational theories based on the premise that organisations not only communicate but emerge in and are made up of processes of communication. CCO has links to Berger and Luckmann (1966) and social constructionism and emphasises that the reality is a result of interpretation as well as actual practice; that is communication not only interprets social reality but also creates it (Ashcraft et al., 2009). All organisations consist of and are constituted by communication. Communication is seen as a dialectic between conversation (i.e. interaction) and text (Taylor et al., 1996); a distinction that replaces previous distinctions between agency and structure (Ashcraft et al., 2009: 22).

Texts can be both concrete (e.g. documents, images and rules) and figurative, that is, abstract organisational representations (Kuhn, 2008: 1234 ff). Text articulates the relevant collective of the organisation (Schoeneborn et al., 2019: 483); it is a ‘representation of the collective’ (Koschmann and Burk, 2016: 394). The text can come in the form of explicit self-descriptions as when organisations outline mission, values, strategies, policies, bylaws or structures. A text has some resemblance to what Campbell (2007) refers to as ‘house paradigms’ (p. 11), but whereas house paradigms are about thinking, feeling and believing, texts are structuring resources (Kuhn, 2008), both in the form of abstract representations and concrete artefacts (Bourgoin et al., 2019; Kuhn, 2008). Communication takes place as specific events (someone says something), but these specific events involve a reference to a certain collective – that is, text. Inspired by Tourish et al. (2010) and Larsson et al. (2020), we suggest introducing the term ‘unitarist text’, referring to a text that assumes agents and subjects share the same goals.

A text only comes into being when it is used and presented by agents who speak for or in the name of it. Cooren (2012) conceptualises this as a form of ventriloquism asserting that people ventriloquise ideas, ideologies, interests and organisations when they speak for or in the name of such texts. He provides the following example:

When an official (let’s say, an ICA president, for instance) invokes the bylaws of his association to either justify a decision or decline a request that a member may have made, he/she is ventriloquizing these bylaws by indirectly making them say and do something, which creates an effect (always limited and limitable) of reproduction of institutional/organisational/social order. Ventriloquizing the policy also means that he/she is simultaneously ventriloquizing the association and its interests, a form of representation that, of course, can always be challenged and questioned. (Cooren, 2012: 5)

As the CCO perspective stresses, organisations continuously constitute themselves in processes of conversations that lead to texts that may then be ventriloquised in further conversations (Cooren, 2012; Kuhn, 2008: 1233, 2012; Schoeneborn et al., 2019: 482).

Endeavouring to empirically study the realisation of authority is a key interest of the CCO perspective (Benoit-Barné and Cooren, 2009; Bourgoin et al., 2019; Holm and Fairhurst, 2018; Koschmann and Burk, 2016; Koschmann et al., 2017; Porter et al., 2018; Taylor and Van Every, 2014; Vásquez et al., 2018). ¹ In this regard, the relationship between text and authority is a significant concern. According to Taylor and Van Every (2014), organisational text is ‘a source of authority for those who represent it’ (p. 14). The word auctōritās derives from augere, which means to augment, to amplify (Rabe, 2004). Taking our cue from this foundation, we can examine authority as a relationship in which a speaker’s words are amplified when the speaker speaks in the name of something or someone else. Authority means that an agent amplifies the probability for the connectivity of subjects, through the assumptions that they speak on behalf of a commonly accepted collective – that is a text. A text as a source of authority implies the agent’s authorisation vis-à-vis some subjects.

Authority is relational

According to Max Weber (1978), the realisation of authority is through receivers’ following orders. This definition is too restrictive as managerial communication is not only presented in the form of orders. Drawing on a continental stream in CCO (Cooren and Seidl, 2020; Luhmann, 2018; Schoeneborn, 2011), we suggest that the accomplishment of authority is an increased likelihood that subjects will connect to an agent’s communication. Connecting to communication means that the subjects use the agent’s message as information that limits their room to manoeuvre. Authority is thus linked to power but does not necessarily involve ‘A affecting B in a manner contrary to B’s interests’ (Lukes, 2005: 30). Whereas coercive power is causal (Fleming and Spicer, 2007:14), authority is reciprocal. The probability that subjects will connect to the communication depends on the addressee recognising the source of authority. If the subjects do not accept or recognise an organisational text (i.e. the source of authority), they are less inclined to connect to the utterances of the agent ventriloquising the text. This is also why Barnard (1968) states, ‘the decision as to whether an order has authority or not lies with the persons to whom it is addressed and does not reside in ‘persons of authority’ or those who issue these orders’ (p. 163). ² This highlights the importance of recognition in the relational establishment of authority. Authority is not something a leader can simply claim or possess; it must be accomplished through communicative and social interaction between the subjects involved.

Managers communicate based on their own identities as well as in reference to an organisational text that then functions as a source of authority. However, the organisational text is not just established as a simple fact, it must be presented and recognised by the subjects through ongoing social interactions that authorise the manager as a manager. Investigations engaging the concepts of text and authority enable us to explore how the organisational text presented within the framework of an MLDP is ventriloquised in everyday organisational interactions and whether this organisational text serves as a source of authority for managers in actual practice.

The concepts of text and authority also enable a more comprehensive understanding of leadership as a relational phenomenon. Studies of the practice of leadership have shown the establishment of direction and alignment to be a shared, cooperative and collective process (Larsson and Lundholm, 2013; Ospina et al., 2020), rather than a process emanating from any single individual. The suggested concepts of text and authorisation clearly follow this insight. Because the text must be collectively recognised, leadership is not an individual act but a social relationship involving connectivity. CCO and the suggested concepts of text and authority allow us to link two different contexts (MLDP and leadership practice) to apprehend leadership practice as genuinely relational.

In sum, using the conceptual tools of organisational text, authority and connectivity amplification, we engage with our research aim: to explore how the organisational text offered by an MLDP emerges in and shapes authority relationships in managers’ leadership practice. We do this through a case study described in the upcoming sections.

Coding and analysis

The analysis of the organisational text is based on background documents, interviews, presentations by guest speakers and the consultants running the programme, and teaching materials such as slides, tests and articles. The analyses of leadership practice are based on interviews and observations. All interviews and selected audio recordings of interactions were transcribed. Documents and transcripts were coded using NVivo. In the analysis of the organisational text, we looked for the organisational aspects selected by the programme (e.g. steering technologies, structure, strategy, rules and goals) and analysed how these aspects were observed by participants (for a more elaborate analysis of the organisational view of the programme, see ‘Knudsen and Larsson, 2022’). The analysis of leadership practice proceeded as follows. Based on the CCO assumption that decision-making is a core organisational operation (Luhmann, 2018), we began by coding situations involving managerial decision-making. Most decisions were readily accepted as part of the manager’s jurisdiction; however, some situations were more problematic in the sense of a lack of connectivity. This was expressed through conflicts as well as employees and collaborators simply not following the expectations communicated by the manager in question. We interpreted the lack of connectivity to decisions as expressions of managers’ difficulties with becoming authorised.

In the next step of the analysis, we coded for the sources of authorisation used by managers to amplify the probability of connectivity. This resulted in an initial list of 17 different sources of authorisation. Guided by CCO, we grouped some of the sources into categories as part of the same overall organisational text (official hierarchy, strategy, rules, standards and management tools), mirroring the text of the MLDP. Relating the use of organisational texts to previously identified connectivity challenges showed a clear pattern (see Appendix 1). Managers with connectivity problems were also those most prominently employing formal hierarchy, rules, management tools and official strategies as sources of authorisation. Conflicts often arose when decisions were authorised in reference to the organisational text, which was also identified as a central text of the MLDP.

In the analysis presented here, we have selected a subset of four managers for analysis. Cases 1–3 represent managers whose reflections and leadership practice most clearly ventriloquised (Cooren, 2012) and presented (Benoit-Barné and Cooren, 2009) the authoritative text produced in the MLDP. ³ They demonstrate what happens to managerial authority in practice when it is based on the assumptions of the unitarist organisational text authored in the MLDP. In order to obtain depth in the analysis, we especially focus on case 1. Cases 2 and 3 are included in order to add nuance to the understanding of the links between the unitarist text as a source of authority and situations involving lack of connectivity. Finally, we present a manager (case 4) with successful authority relations as a contrast-case demonstrating how authority can be established in polyphonic organisations. We present our findings in two parts, first detailing the text authored in the MLDP in question, then following the managers to identify how they make the text present in daily practice.

The ambition of the programme

In an internal note regarding the ambitions of the programme, the Capital Region stated the following about its specific expectations of managers after attending the programme:

The managers know their mandate and their role and responsibility to manage up, down and across. They can therefore transform strategy and goals into action in the everyday work and secure high quality and safety for the users. (Capital Region of Denmark, 2013: 6, translated by the authors)

This describes an organisation in which strategy, goals and everyday actions are aligned. The aim of the MLDP, correspondingly, is to turn managers into agents for an organisation as described in official goals and strategies (see also Walker (2018) for a similar observation).

The curriculum

To realise the ambition of educating managers authorised with reference to the Capital Region’s strategies and the notion of an aligned organisation, the programme involved a mixture of features focusing on (a) knowledge, skills and competencies; (b) self-insight employing more individualised methods like coaching and personality tests; and (c) collective learning activities like role-play aimed at enhancing collective capacities (see Table 1 for an overview).

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Table 1.

The six modules in the Capital Region of Denmark’s employee management programme.

Module 1: Operation management and economy	Module 2: Leadership with self-insight	Module 3: Managing consistently and personnel law	Module 4: Leadership with direction	Module 5: Management of quality and patient-oriented innovation	Module 6: Management of relationships
2 days	3 day overnight	3 days	2 day overnight	1.5 days	3 day overnight

The first module, Operation management and economy, introduced organisational management tools (e.g. budget, operations and quality) with an emphasis on operational target management. This was presented as the core steering technology of the Capital Region. A short film called Focus and simplicity that was shown on the first day of the programme stated,

It [operational target management] is a tool that will prove its worth. Having this on hand ensures that no one will get lost and that, one by one, we will know that we are on the right track towards our common goal. (Capital Region of Denmark, translated by the authors)

Operation target management was thus presented as a specific tool designed to align daily activities with strategic goals. The same idea regarding alignment was also an integral part of module 4 Leadership with direction, which was presented in the slide shown in Figure 1.

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Figure 1.

Slide from the Management and Leadership Development programme on strategic areas of priority (own translation).

The slide illustrates how strategic areas of priority can produce a shared focus and direction to align various kinds of activities, symbolised by the chaotic array of arrows on the left that are funnelled into a group of arrows pointing in the same direction. Similarly, the Capital Region presented the leadership pipeline as its formal leadership model, which is designed to align levels of leadership and organisational functions to produce a common output, to develop a shared language among managers and to secure a smooth transition from one managerial position to the next (see Figure 2).

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Figure 2.

Slide presenting the leadership pipeline model (own translation).

Congruent with the ambitions of the programme, the curriculum represents an organisation that acts as one – an organisation aligned by management tools, strategy and structure in the form of a leadership pipeline.

Perceptions of the outcome of the programme

After the programme was completed, we interviewed participating managers and their managers. In general, both groups indicated that providing an understanding of the wider organisation permeated the programme. One newly appointed manager talked about the programme as a way for her to become acquainted with a previously unfamiliar strategic perspective for the first time. Supplementing this, one of the managers of managers explained and evaluated the overall outcome of the programme as follows:

I think it gives them an insight into what management is. You don’t necessarily have any experience, even if you’ve been employed as a middle manager (. . .). You can’t continue acting as an employee; there are different expectations toward you. You must have an understanding of the strategy work within the Capital Region and how this is felt all the way down to your own position. That specific rigor is good, I believe.

Following the programme is considered a way for managers to acquire a more precise understanding of the larger context of their managerial practice, as well as the accompanying expectations for this particular situatedness: the responsibility of adhering to regional strategies. Mirroring this quite closely, another manager of managers stressed the managers’ ability to acknowledge and integrate the awareness that their responsibilities involve adhering to certain frameworks and conditions:

This interview excerpt demonstrates that the programme is successful in producing a specific organisational text that serves as a common point of reference for the managers and thus as a shared source of authority.

Summing up

Our research question asks how the organisational text presented in an MLDP authorises the manager in the home organisation. In accordance with the programme’s ambitions, curriculum and perceived outcomes, we identified a specific organisational text characterised by the overall idea that there is (or should be) one common organisation with which top-level strategies and everyday operations align, and which authorises the managers. Accordingly, managers are envisioned as individuals whose primary source of authority is derived from this specific organisational unity and whose primary purpose is to integrate the various levels of the organisation by aligning daily operations with the Capital Region’s overall strategy. This organisational text closely resembles what Tourish et al. (2010) and Larsson et al. (2020) called a unitarist view of organisations, which is characterised by the assumption that organisational members share the organisational text; or, in other words, a widespread organisational text, resonating with what Mabey (2013) calls a functionalistic perspective. Furthermore, it is often used when designing and delivering MLDPs, as suggested by McGurk (2010): ‘The traditional approach to training managers rests upon a rationalistic framework in which organisational strategy is translated into appropriate individual behaviours at the respective levels of management’ (p. 458). This is in line with the notion of the unitarist view of organisations.

We will address the second part of our research question in the next section by analysing emerging dynamics in practice when unitarist organisational text is enacted and whether it serves to authorise managers’ communication.

Case 1: Marie

Our first and most detailed case concerns Marie, a recent participant in the Capital Region’s MLDP, who is the manager of a secretarial unit in a hospital department consisting of two outpatient clinics and four laboratories. Marie is educated as a medical secretary but she also has a degree in business and several years of work experience from private companies. Previously, the secretaries were employed in the clinics and the laboratories, but they have recently been merged into one unit managed by Marie. We demonstrate how the unitarist text of the MLDP is presented in the way Marie envisions her own role, furthermore following how Marie fails to achieve connectivity with a group of doctors as she ventriloquises the unitarist text.

Marie stresses the streamlining of work processes as key to her managerial task. Recently hired to head the new joint secretariat, Marie states, ‘So we attempt to streamline the processes across the organisation and to make the employees understand that they are part of the Capital Region’. In this way, Marie clearly ventriloquises the unitarist organisational text in her desire to relate the new secretariat and its activities more closely to the Capital Region’s strategies. One specific tool that she has found particularly useful in this regard is operational target management, which was presented in module 1 of the MLDP. According to Marie, she has made it her personal responsibility to promote operational target management and lean board meetings as a routine activity in her daily management, even if it is not necessarily met with enthusiasm by her employees and collaborators.

To Marie, the necessity of creating a common ground for daily operations by using specific techniques, such as lean boards and shared targets, comes with her specific function as a manager. As opposed to being a manager who refers to a specific profession, Marie stresses that she practices management as a distinct discipline and function:

I consider management a discipline, and I’m employed to treat it as such; it is my role. I could just as well have been a secretary. I could have also been department director if I were a doctor and had the desire to do so; however, I am not. But we all fill a role.

By positioning herself and her management in this way, Marie presents the general approach to management within the MLDP. She adopts the basic idea of the leadership pipeline in the programme by envisioning herself as having a specific position and task within the framework of the organisational whole in which everyone has a specific role in relation to the overall goal. Marie thus presents herself as a ventriloquist of the unitarist organisational text as well as its faithful and eager proponent. While following her in her daily practice as she attempted to (re)present the organisational text of the MLDP, we observed Marie’s authority being repeatedly challenged.

Ventriloquising the unitarist text

In the following we describe a meeting in detail in which Marie fails in her attempt to establish an authority relationship based on the unitarist organisational text of the MLDP. The specific issue Marie has put on the agenda and attempts to gain the authorisation to manage is a new common categorisation for medical records, while shifting the responsibility of writing a specific category of medical records from the secretaries to the doctors. Marie sees this change as closely related to the ambition of creating new productive synergies across units to meet the politically instigated treatment guarantee; in short, to work in accordance with the strategic goals of the Capital Region. Drawing directly on the operational target management tool from the MLDP curriculum, Marie introduces the categories to facilitate mutual coordination as well as shared goals between the administrative staff and the doctors, thus ventriloquising the ideal of the unitarist organisation. In the following, as we focus on the interaction at the meeting, it becomes clear that the text Marie presents as a source of authority ends up being misrecognised and overruled by the medical doctors.

We follow Marie into a Lean board meeting. Three secretaries, four doctors from the outpatient clinics and the department director attend the meeting. At the beginning of the meeting, Marie presents the agenda and emphasises the importance of medical records. She then moves forward by explaining a new categorisation of medical records based on different timeframes: urgent, semi-urgent and normal, depending on the urgency of the specific case. At the very beginning of the meeting, a controversy emerges when a doctor enquires about the category ‘normal’:

The doctor’s upset and accusatory tone when she asks about what they are supposed to tell the patients clearly implies that she felt that Marie and the secretaries should be responsible for managing the current delays. However, Marie responds by putting the responsibility on the doctors, stressing that their response to the patients depends on the doctors themselves: the timeframe is 4 months unless they write the medical records themselves. By introducing certain categorisations of medical records, Marie seeks to carve out the responsibility of the doctors, obliging them to take part in the production goals of the department. She assumes that the doctors and secretaries have (or should have) the same goals. In doing so, she also ventriloquises the unitarist organisational text of the MLDP.

Despite Marie’s attempt to frame the categorisation of medical records and the new division of labour as a shared interest across the professional groups, her version of roles, tasks and responsibilities vis-á-vis the organisation is not accepted by the medical doctors, but on the contrary. For example, one doctor states agitatedly,

But I just have to know, how can you believe that we would be able to find time for this in the clinic? To write an urgent note, go get the copy and then also manage to take in patients, get them to undress and weigh them and measure them? I simply don’t get it!

This doctor appears to have misunderstood Marie’s attempt to have them write normal records and not the urgent ones, but the message is clear enough. According to the doctors, including further administrative tasks while attending to patients is simply unsuitable in terms of the reality of the outpatient clinic. The doctors begin to mutually support one another in the belief that implementing documentation tasks into their daily work is not feasible on a practical level, adding that the desks and printers are inadequate and that standardised categories are simply incompatible with real patients, and standards do not match the complexities of the real-life people the doctors are treating. A lengthy, heated exchange between the group of doctors and Marie ends as follows:

As the exchange implies, the doctors are not going to adhere to the common categories since they do not see them as being in the best interest of the patients. The doctors simply do not recognise some general categories and goals as a relevant source of authority. As opposed to having an idea of common production goals and a strategic notion of the unitarist organisation as the authority base and organising principle, the doctors refer to the well-being of the patient as the primary source of authority. In line with this, the doctors opt for their own professional judgement from case to case, as an alternative to common categories. Nearly speaking as one voice, two of the doctors argue,

According to the doctors, professional judgement and the welfare of the patient, and not some generalised rule, are what should act as the point of reference and main source of authority. As the meeting progresses, Marie’s initial ambition becomes even harder to envision. While Marie continues to appeal for a shared understanding of the categories to enable cooperation and an overall improved ability to meet the official timeframes for patient treatment, the doctors opt for patient welfare, professional judgement, flexibility from case to case, and a correspondingly close and individualised involvement of the secretaries. In this sense, the doctors speak in the name of an organisational text that diverges from the organisational text presented by Marie. As the debate becomes more and more intense, time is running out. Towards the end of the meeting, agreement has not been achieved. The result is the rejection of Marie’s intended introduction of common categories for aligning the activities of the secretaries and doctors in relation to the Capital Region’s strategic goal of timely patient treatment.

In summary, the analysis shows that in her attempt to change the categorisations and responsibilities of writing medical records, Marie draws on a perspective of the organisation as unitary; a collective with common goals. This unitarist organisational text, which was presented to Marie in the MLDP, and which she eagerly ventriloquises in her self-representation and in this meeting, is not recognised as a source of authority by the others; thus, it does not amplify the doctors’ connectivity to Marie’s plans. Rather, the doctors present a different organisational text emphasising the various needs of patients and their own professional judgement on a case-by-case basis, as their sources of authority. Marie and the doctors clearly speak on behalf of separate organisational texts.

Case 2: Sarah

The same pattern of authorisation by means of the unitarist text and lack of connectivity was clearly apparent across all of our empirical material. In the case of Marie, the lack of connectivity concerned collaboration between different professional groups with different hierarchical structures. In other cases, we observed connectivity problems in direct hierarchical relations. For instance, we observed Sarah having connectivity problems in relation to nurses. Sarah was a nurse and a newly appointed ward manager in an outpatient clinic treating terminally ill patients. She had decided that the nurses should start the day by preparing treatments individually at 07:30 and then have a meeting at 08:30. Previously, the 15 nurses working in the ward started the day with a brief meeting at 07:30. The manager says,

This morning we were three who came half past eight – out of 12 in attendance. And then one says ‘should we not soon evaluate?’. Then I say, that I do not really think we need to evaluate it, because it is something we continue with. And there one could say that I am the one making that decision.

The ward manager insists that she as the formal manager has the right to make this decision. She thus authorises her decision in reference to her position in a formal organisational hierarchy. This general idea of an organisational hierarchy had been reproduced and legitimised by the MLDP which promoted ‘the leadership pipeline’ (defining tasks based on hierarchical level) and the formal rules defining the jurisdiction of the managers. The statement that she is the one making the decision is, though, falsified in practice as the nurses simply do not abide by or connect to Sarah’s decision. This is related to the way the nurses perceive themselves as a relatively autonomous group. A nurse explains,

Before Sarah we had a manager with whom we had a strained relationship. She was very much one sitting in her office. We did not know what the hell she was doing. We have always made jokes about that here we are all ward managers – having run the place ourselves.

The nurses perceived themselves as an autonomous group, independent of the formal hierarchy represented by the ward manager. In their notion of the organisation, they were authorised by themselves, rather than by the formal hierarchy. The nurses observed their own group of colleagues as the primary collective and did not recognise the formal organisation, to which Sarah refers as equally authorising. The nurses did not connect to Sarah’s decision, as she relied on the formal hierarchy as the single authorising text. Several organisational texts were at play simultaneously.

Case 3: Marianne

Further up in the hierarchy, there may also be problems recognising authority based on the unitarist text. We thus experienced how Marianne, a manager at a call centre for acute illness, was regularly bypassed by top managers. In the call centre, standards have a central role in how the work is managed and evaluated, and in many ways, the managers simply function as administrators of these standards. At the same time, the call centre is a highly politicised organisation as it recently replaced medical doctors with nurses. Doctors subsequently criticised the unit, and politicians were very keen on making it a success. This meant that top managers stayed very close to the nurses’ work processes, even after being staffed with 500 individuals. Marianne’s boss expressed, ‘suddenly the vice-director is here, asking Marianne to do something. You are quickly by-passed’. According to Marianne’s boss, it became very hard for her and for Marianne to take any decisions without the interference of top management. Furthermore, the hierarchy was challenged as a source of authority, as higher levels of the organisation also directly interfered in the work of the nurses. Marianne’s (and other managers’) authority, based on standards and hierarchy, was thus fragile, as both standards and line of command could be overruled by higher level managers. Marianne seemed lost in this confusing situation. From the MLDP and its organisational text (not least the presentation of the leadership pipeline and its inherent notion of clearly separated hierarchical layers), Marianne had the idea that the formal position gave her her authority. As this organisational text obviously did not align with her actual situation, it did not work as a source of authority, and Marianne did not know what to do.

Marie, Sarah and Marianne experienced lack of connectivity as they spoke on behalf of a unitarist text that was not recognised as a relevant source of authority by their associates (Marie), subordinates (Anne) or managers (Marianne). Conversely, we did also observe managers with unproblematic authority relations during our fieldwork. Hanne’s case serves as an example.

Case 4: Hanne and successful authority

At times, managers employed different kinds of texts as sources of authority. For instance, Hanne was a ward manager at a medical bed-unit who attended the MLDP as Marie, Sarah and Marianne. Whereas Marie presented herself as a ventriloquist of the unitarist organisational text, Hanne referred to the other participants when asked about her gains from the programme:

We are in a workday with a huge amount of problems, and it was absolutely fab to have that group (a group of participants at the MLDP). In a way we got psychological help from that group, because you could get something off your chest and get some tips back. That was what gave me the most.

Exchanging experiences and getting tips from other managers indicates an orientation towards different texts – an orientation we also found in Hanne’s managerial practice. After a large-scale structural change in 2015, part of Hanne’s clinic was to move to a different hospital 10 km away. The staff could choose between staying at the hospital (though in a different specialty) or moving to the new hospital. It was announced that 10 people could move. They ended up moving 12 nurses and nursing assistants. All the staff moving hospital did it voluntarily – following Hanne, the specialty and their colleagues. Hanne thus implemented an unpopular relocation from one hospital to another. Nonetheless the staff volunteered to follow her and the ward. While previous cases presented dis-connectivity, this is a case of connectivity. The question is, What amplified the probability for connectivity, what gave Hanne her authority?

When we shadowed her, she spent most of the time in the nurses’ common office; a room with five computers (for documentation and electronic files) and a whiteboard with an overview of the current ward patients. In this room, Hanne was observed discussing patients with the nurses and the doctor, talking about private weekend activities, ordering new materials, and speaking on the phone with municipalities and other actors outside the clinic. Hanne knew the patients, their treatment and their history. Once, and sometimes twice a day, she went to a brief meeting with the other middle managers from the ward to distribute new patients between the clinics. She was concerned with the ‘hotel-logistics’ keen on keeping all beds occupied (to have a good argument against savings in case that would become relevant) – without having too many patients. Regarding Hanne, one nurse says,

I think she is good at speaking her mind also in relation to the other clinics. Moreover, she is good at accomplishing things. For instance we are three during the night in this section, while at the other wards, they are only two. And that is a thing Hanne has accomplished. So I think she is really good at saying no and fighting for our cause – also when something is not quite reasonable.

It seems that loyalty to ‘our clinic’ is a source of authority. This is the same source of authority behind the request to evaluate the new meetings in Sarah’s case, but in that case, it was ignored rather than built upon by the manager. It gives authority to fight for the local unity with which the employees identify. The nurse continues,

I think she is always willing to lend a hand. I think she is always ready to step in and help. Also if you are short of personnel in the weekend, then she is willing to come in, if you cannot find someone else and – yes – we are always allowed to call her.

This approach gives Hanne authority as it does not require that she insists on her authority of position but is instead ready to help with the nursing activities. It is exactly because she is ready to suspend the formal hierarchy that she receives authorisation. By suspending her hierarchical position, she recognises the importance of the professional work and is perceived as a professional resource. A nurse explains,

Hanne is reading about the patients in the clinic, she is updated and knows the plans (. . .). I just think she knows very many things, also about how things are going on and, well, I just think she keeps informed about a lot of things. So she is probably the one I would go to, if there was something professionally.

Hanne’s continuous pursuit of knowledge about treatment, the organisation, personnel and specific patients is a core source of authority. This knowledge is maintained partly through remaining present at an everyday level in the clinic – among both personnel and patients who she always welcomes personally at the clinic. Another source of authority is Hanne’s track-record. She accomplishes things which also benefit the clinic. In this sense, her prioritisation of the clinic gives her authority among the employees. According to CCO, a text is an expression of a collective, and clearly Hanne speaks on behalf of different collectives: (a) the local clinic, which she protects and supports; (b) a professional nursing collective of knowledge and care; and (c) the hospital as a unit when speaking to units outside her clinic.

Limitations

As with other studies, the present article has limitations. It is a limitation that we have not taken into consideration aspects such as level of experience, professions, gender, ethnicity or other diversity dimensions. Our selections of managers prioritised participants who expressed a positive outcome of the programme. We thus shadowed less experienced managers as they tended to connect more strongly to the organisational text of the programme. A question is whether the managers’ authority was challenged because they were inexperienced (and therefore in need of a simple organisational text to authorise their practice) or because they ventriloquised the unitarist text. Another question – in relation to Marie’s case – could be if the doctors did not connect to her communication because she was heading the secretaries and not the doctors. The doctors’ lack of connectivity to Marie could be interpreted as professionals protecting their own jurisdictions (Abbott, 1988) more so as research has demonstrated the gendered nature of much of leadership and managerial practice (Ashcraft and Muhr, 2018; Muhr, 2011), it is relevant to note that the managers we shadowed are all women. An analysis of authorisation that pays particular attention to diversity would clearly deepen the discussion. In general, further research could investigate the role of a range of texts in authorising different managers.

Implications for the design of MLDPs

The analysis has possible implications for the future design of MLDPs. As contemporary organisations tend to be dependent upon collaboration, networks, self-management and professional communities, it is to be expected that leadership authority will inevitably depend on the ability to draw from a range of different and sometimes competing organisational texts to balance the multiple needs and rationalities characteristic of polyphonic organisations (Iedema et al., 2004), which was illustrated in Hanne’s case. As authority is relational and depends on recognition, leaders in polyphonic organisations need to understand that interlocutors may recognise different organisational texts as sources of authority. We thus propose that the design of MLDPs should be informed by discussions of the following questions: If authority presupposes a commonly recognised articulation of the organisation, that is, an authoritative text, and the increasingly polyphonic tendencies of modern organisations must be recognised, how can authority relations be understood and leaders supported in developing them? How can authority be practised and developed under polyphonic conditions?

We believe that the answers to these questions can build on knowledge regarding how managers in polyphonic organisations actually manage the incommensurate, ambiguous and potentially contradictory dimensions of their positions. Iedema et al. (2004) have an instructive analysis of how a doctor-manager practices heteroglossia, which is a context-regarding talk attuned to the discourses populating the organisation. Heteroglossia, they assert, enables managers to keep conflicting agendas in play across a range of settings as, ‘it realizes a deeply embodied sensitivity to the ongoing swirl of organisational currents, countercurrents, and undercurrents’ (p. 29). We imagine MLDPs cultivating such a sensitivity and aiming for the development of a heteroglossic managerial practice. If nothing else, it would be more attractive than the unimaginative idea of the tight couplings between overall strategies and daily operations in the unitarist organisation. Future research may explore the links between such sensitivity-cultivating MLDPs and practice.