The leader identity - a means to experience conflict and constructing balance

• Literature shows that self-employed individuals seem to experience more conflict between work and family demands than employees but variation is great, especially among self-employed men and women. For instance, studies suggest that women chooses self-employment as a strategy to balance work and family while men uses self-employment as a way to find employment and earnings. Many self-employed individuals describe a feeling of being always on. Self-employment is closely related to masculine values giving emphasis to long work hours and high job demands. Self-employment is an identity and impede men and women to draw a line between work and private life. It is often argued that this is not a problem in the Nordic countries because of high gender equality. However, quantitative data shows rather the opposite.Sparse literature suggest that both men and women use self-employment as a way to ease conflict between work and family. In recent years the concept of work-life enrichment has grown as an explanation how one role can improve quality in other roles easing conflicts. Research suggest that high job control for self-employed men and women eases conflict demand and perhaps create enrichment.In this study, we analyzed interview data from managers in 18 small scale enterprises (SSE), of which 8 were women and 10 men, in the central regions of Norway and Sweden aiming to gain a deeper understanding of how they men and women construct and relate to work and private life in their role as managers of SSEs.Preliminary results show that self-employed men and women narrate a strong identification in their leader identity resulting in a duality in relation to work and family. We identify that interviewees describe that conflict seams to part of the deal of being a leader. They describe how the strong leader identity legitimate a high level of conflict among both men and women. This is in line with the notion that self-employment builds on masculine values and women, though being the main responsible of the home, seem to construct these male values. Meanwhile, the strong leader identity is used as a way to construct balance. In their role as managers and leaders they are allowed to be flexible, more flexible than their employees. However, this flexibility is often used as a way to fit work around family. Lastly, interviewees describe how managerial identity contribute to a work-life enrichment. High job identification gave the leader self-esteem, skills and perspectives which produced a positive affect in relation to work.

Ämnesord

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Hälsovetenskap (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Health Sciences (hsv//eng)

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