دانلود رایگان مقاله ادغام ایده آل های مدیریتی در آفشورینگ سوئدی IT

ABSTRACT

This article explores management ideals in transnational business relations by drawing on interviews with 18 Swedish managers involved in managing IT offshoring from Sweden to India. Drawing on a critical discourse framework the analysis highlights how the managers interviewed discursively constructed the meaning of ideal management and tried to merge their familiar Swedish management style with the transnational business context, using different discursive practices. The Swedish management ideal was understood as highly context sensitive and the subject position constructed within the discourse was not unproblematic to assume outside of the Swedish business context. Instead, according to the managers interviewed, their management practices were inefficient in the transnational business context in which they were now operating. The article advances the discussion of contemporary management by examining how managers negotiate management ideals when faced with the challenges of effective management of offshore IT sourcing relationships. The managers argued for flexible management strategies that merged the Swedish management style together with the Indian business setting. Even if this entailed abandoning key aspects of the Swedish management ideal it was understood as necessary for securing and maximizing business efficiency.

5. Concluding discussion

Being one of the first studies focusing on management ideals in a transnational business setting this article makes a contribution to several different fields of research relevant for management studies. First, it brings new insights to our understandings of “global variations in management styles” (Smith et al., 2003: 492) and of a “Swedish management style” (cf. Gustavsson, 1995; Holmberg & Åkerblom, 2006; Styhre et al., 2006) and how these different management styles are produced in an ideological language infused by banal nationalism. The analysis has limitations as it draws on a small number of interviews, but the aim is not to generalize the results to Swedish managers or to argue that a management ideology, characteristic for Swedish managers, exists. Instead, the article shows how the idea of a “Swedish management style” is reproduced in management talk and that it provides managers with a sense of identity and creates a sense of “us” in relation to the “others” and that these others are attributed both negative identities and positions (Indian employees and managers) and positive identities and positions (American managers). The article illustrates how 18 Swedish managers produced and reproduced the discourse of a distinct Swedish management style and identified with the subject position produced within this discourse. However, contrary to previous research on management ideals, the results also show how the ideal management practices and strategies promoted within this discourse were not uncontested.