"Konflikter bidrar till en levande verksamhet" : En kvalitativ studie om ledarskapets inverkan vid konflikthantering i privat och offentlig äldreomsorg

Sammanfattning: This study is based on interviews with four managers in public elderly care and four managers in private elderly care. The aim of this paper is to examine how these managers are experiencing their leadership in relation to conflict management, and if the managers leadership differs depending on private or public elderly care. Leadership and conflict management are theories that have been used in order to analyze the empirical findings. Previous research that has been used in the study concerns “leadership/leadership styles”, “conflict management”, “to be active in the private/public elderly care”. Social workers often choose to work as a manager in private and public elderly care. The work as a manager is demanding with pressure from several/different parties and the manager faces new challenges. Conflicts are one challenge that mangers faces, and conflicts can be a sensitive topic. The study deals with the complexity that managers in the private and public elderly care faces, mainly based on the leadership role in conflict management. The results show that the interviewees leadership in this study, for the most part can be linked to the situational leadership style, which means that managers believe that leadership adapts to any situation that arises. They also experienced that the private elderly care has higher demands and that there is a bigger responsibility on the individual manger than it is in the public elderly care. There are many different support functions in the public elderly care that managers have the opportunity to take help from daily, that opportunity does not exist in private elderly care.