Att leda i två olika världar : sex röster om civilsamhällets svåraste uppdrag

Sammanfattning: Civil society is regarded to be a cornerstone in democratic societies and therefore an essential field of social science (Wijkström & Lundström 2002, Harding 2012). However the leadership of civil society organizations (CSOs) has been bypassed (Wijkström & Malmborg 2005). In this study I have interviewed three leaders from the Swedish Red Cross and three others from Swedish Save the Children, two of the biggest humanitarian NGOs in Sweden (Svensk insamlingskontroll 2017). The interviewees were chosen by their background working in other sectors than civil society, as former politicians, government officials and leaders from trade and industry, this makes them boundary crossers. They were interviewed on professional background, leadership ideas, and challenges. The results clearly show how leadership ideals and models from other sectors where brought in to my case organizations. I have analyzed the encounter between leadership ideas/models from other sectors and the logic of civil society with theories on institutional logic. The results show how the leaders brought near to intact belief- or activity systems from earlier professions into the case organizations. The leaders can be seen as carriers of the institutionel logic from the sector they are recruited from. Other results show the difficulty combining these leadership ideas and action systems with member based rule and institutional logic of civil society. The leaders try to navigate between the demands for member democracy and the demands of efficiency and results from other agents as donors and government. The analysis outlines two worlds in the same organization, where one of them is the member organizations, where members are “living their own lives” parallel to the work in the organization of the office holders which is run with the logic of professional leadership. This shows the possibility of running organizations with parallel logics.