Leadership and digitalization in the Swedish public administration.

My research started from my interest in the assumption, or claim, that public organizations need “leadership” to succeed with digitalization. This relationship, which often seems to be described as positive and causal, reappears in a number of different research fields – as well as several documents and reports connected to the Swedish public administration. In other words: If the Swedish public administration succeeds with leadership (A) they will automatically succeed with digitalization (B). After a closer examination though, it seems unclear what ”leadership” and “digitalization” actually refers to in these texts. The difficulties connected to defining leadership goes for the research field around leadership as well. However, most definitions have one thing in common: Leadership is something positive and comes with a promise to solve all problems.

When it comes to theory and methodology, my research should be positioned close to perspectives where leadership are understood as a relation, practice or interaction between different actors and their context – rather than focusing on individuals and managers.

Even though my interest for the “relationship” between leadership and digitalization serves as a starting point for my research, another important aspect of my methodology is to open up for different interpretations and perspectives. In this sense, rather than focusing on one narrow theory within the field of leadership research, I am continuously considering other perspectives from, for instance, political science, sociology and critical management studies (CMS).

I have an interest in several different research methods, however, my current research builds upon ethnographic fieldwork within one Swedish municipality. Within my ethnographic fieldwork, I am using several qualitative methods, such as participant observations, shadowing, “go-along interviews”, semi-structured interviews and document analysis. The idea with this approach is to follow the everyday work within the municipality and, thereby, understand “leadership” and “digitalization” better.