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Samspillet mellem forskning og praksis kan tage mange former. I denne artikel er ambitionen at give indblik i, hvordan et meget omfattende samarbejde, en reel indlejring af forskeren i en offentlig organisation, fungerede. Der er tale om en partikulær og induktiv beretning om, hvordan forskningsprocessen tog sig ud i samarbejdet, og på den baggrund identificeres en række konkurrerende hensyn i vidensproduktion, der kom til udtryk i processen. Afslutningsvis diskuterer artiklen, hvad læringspointerne kunne være for andre forskere og praktikere, der overvejer at indgå et tilsvarende langtrækkende samarbejde.

Purpose
The literature so far has shown that perceptions of managerial interventions matter for motivation and performance. However, how these perceptions are formed and develop over time is less clear. The purpose of this paper is to fill part of this gap.


Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses a panel case study to investigate how perceptions of a managerial intervention are formed and developed over time among daycare workers in a Danish municipality.


Findings
The paper reveals the dynamic nature of preferences and the centrality of the local manager in perception formation, illustrating that it is not necessarily the implementation style (soft/hard) that is important as much as the managerial involvement in the initiative.


Practical implications
Whereas managers are still well advised to consider the pros and cons of a hard vs a soft implementation approach, this paper also underlines the importance of constant managerial involvement not only to ensure implementation but also to continuously impact the way managerial interventions are perceived.


Originality/value
The paper adds to the existing knowledge about perception formation by using a panel case study, hence illustrating the dynamic character of perception formation.

Is New Public Management (NPM) a threat to motivation in public organizations? Large parts of the public administration literature seem concerned that it might be the case. Through an in-depth case study of the implementation of a NPM-inspired appraisal system in the European Commission, an organization which has traditionally branded itself on strong intrinsic and altruistic motivation among employees, this claim is investigated. The case study concludes that, while the organization formally balances the two different approaches to motivation of employees, implementing performance management while underlining the importance the European project as well, in practice it is not possible to have it both ways. The performance appraisal system is undermined from below and transformed by employees and middle management into a system that is similar to the system in place before it was introduced.

Charismatic leadership is an integral yet understudied aspect of foreign policy in liberal democratic states. Combining insights from recent developments on charismatic leadership in organization and management studies with literature on foreign policy, we construct a novel theoretical framework for understanding how foreign policy leaders exercise charismatic leadership. We argue that charismatic leadership makes sense of who 'we' are and where we are going through communicative practices. We specify these practices and discuss why charismatic leadership is important in foreign policy analysis; what it is; and how and why sense-making matters for a charismatic leadership style. We contribute with new empirical knowledge by probing our theoretical propositions in a comparative case-study of the charismatic leadership practices of Donald Trump and Angela Merkel. The case-studies illustrate the importance of charismatic communication for both leaders, while disclosing variations in both the 'thickness' of charismatic leadership practices and their compatibility with rational legal authority and liberal democratic values.

Studies have shown how women are underrepresented in senior executive positions in public and private organizations. Equal representation matters both for reasons of performance and legitimacy, and, to understand the mechanisms behind the glass ceiling, we explore if the women making it to the top of the Danish civil service differ from the men who do so. We want to understand if senior executive positions require something different of women than men. Using a dataset consisting of the entire career trajectory of all senior civil servants in Denmark, we find that, on numerous human capital dimensions, the women and men making it to the top are quite similar, for example, in terms of tenure and educational level. However, we find on the one hand that men are more often employed in the most prestigious departments and, at the same time, it seems that men with a profile deviating from the norm are more likely to make it to the top than women. This may indicate that the most prestigious positions – also in terms of early‐career positions – are less accessible to women, and that women are less willing to apply for jobs outside their usual domain, or that those responsible for recruitment are less willing to take a chance on a woman with a slightly unorthodox profile. Hence, our study indicates that greater interest should be paid to the dynamics keeping women at lower levels of the hierarchy and possibly to encourage them to apply for top positions.

Studies have shown how women are underrepresented in senior executive positions in public and private organizations. Equal representation matters both for reasons of performance and legitimacy, and, to understand the mechanisms behind the glass ceiling, we explore if the women making it to the top of the Danish civil service differ from the men who do so. We want to understand if senior executive positions require something different of women than men. Using a dataset consisting of the entire career trajectory of all senior civil servants in Denmark, we find that, on numerous human capital dimensions, the women and men making it to the top are quite similar, for example, in terms of tenure and educational level. However, we find on the one hand that men are more often employed in the most prestigious departments and, at the same time, it seems that men with a profile deviating from the norm are more likely to make it to the top than women. This may indicate that the most prestigious positions – also in terms of early-career positions – are less accessible to women, and that women are less willing to apply for jobs outside their usual domain, or that those responsible for recruitment are less willing to take a chance on a woman with a slightly unorthodox profile. Hence, our study indicates that greater interest should be paid to the dynamics keeping women at lower levels of the hierarchy and possibly to encourage them to apply for top positions.

"In European policy-making, the Nordic countries are often viewed as a relatively coherent bloc; in international and European affairs the Nordic position has traditionally been conditioned on being different from and better than Europe. This book offers a coherent, original and systematic comparative analysis of the relationship between the Nordic countries and the European Union over the past two decades. It looks at the historical frame, institutions and policy areas, addressing both traditional EU areas such as agriculture and more nascent areas affecting the domestic and foreign policies of the Nordic countries. In doing so, it examines how the Nordic approach to European policy-making has developed and explains why the Nordic countries are similar in some respects while differing in others when engaging with EU institutions. In highlighting the similarities and differences between the Nordic countries it explores what lessons -- positive and negative -- may be drawn from this approach for the Nordic countries and other small states. This book will be of interest to scholars, students and practitioners engaged with the Nordic Countries, EU politics and policy-making, European politics and comparative politics."--Provided by publisher

Street-level workers are notoriously difficult to manage. Over the years, scholars have highlighted the importance of social dynamics and informal and collective leadership in street-level contexts. Yet, the question of how formal managers can support street-level workers' performance and well-being remains underexplored. Building on insights from the street-level and generic leadership literatures, the authors seek to delineate a role for formal managers that takes seriously the particularities of the street-level context. The authors develop a concept of street-level leadership that is underpinned by a relational approach and focused on activating street-level workers' professional knowledge and building supportive communities, with the purpose of supporting professional uses of discretion, conscientious prioritizations, and the ability to handle moral dilemmas and emotional strain. Empirical examples illustrate street-level leadership in practice. Future research should explore the proposed mechanisms and effects of street-level leadership, including important HRM outcomes such as job satisfaction, retention, and burnout.

Research shows that leadership identity is important for public managers' behavior, but has until now relied primarily on self-reports. Arguing that leadership identity is a relational concept, this article compares the managers' experienced leadership identity with the corresponding follower perceived leadership identity and followers' role perceptions of their leaders. Further, we test whether leadership training affects these concepts. Panel data from 911 municipal employees and their 84 managers confirms that managers experience that they have a more dominant leadership identity relative to their employees' perception, but that employees see their managers as having a more dominant leadership identity after the managers' participation in leadership training. Data from 171 managers and their 1,572 employees in another municipality further show that many employees emphasize the professional role of their manager. Our study implies that public managers should consider prioritizing leadership training to strengthen their followers' perceptions of them as leaders.

This article investigates trust between politicians and public officials in local government. Beginning with Svara's claim that such relations are characterized by complementarity, we point to the importance of trust as the micro foundation for these relationships. Applying a mixed-methods strategy, we investigate a number of factors we expect to be related to the level of trust between politicians and public officials, as perceived by the latter. We find that the communication climate and a clear distribution of tasks correlate positively with trust, whereas an unstable environment correlates negatively with trust.