‘When the boat comes in’: An empirical study of leadership as emerging activities at Greenlandic fish factories

Abstract

Based on empirical work at Greenlandic fish factories this article develops a more nuanced view on middle management activities. The empirical findings suggests that the leadership practice of middle managers invokes problematization as a collective achievement, based on experience and sensitivity. At the fish factory the middle management activities stand out as a bricolage practice happening as processual activities enacted in an interplay between many organizational actors. The processes where leadership emerges involves different perspectives that support appropriate problematization of the mundane activities as they unfold. Thus, the discussion of leadership is concerned with how middle managers emerge themselves in daily sensitivity work. This contrasts with conventional leadership research, much of which is turning leadership into an “it” assuming stable relations. The concepts of experience and sensitivity contributes to a more complex understanding of the mundane everyday leadership practice that unfold among various organizational actors.