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Om konstruktionen av chefskap i coaching
During the last decade executive coaching has become an increasingly popular method of management development. Few studies have been conducted within this area, especially in Sweden, and little has been said about the construction of management in executive coaching. The purpose of this master?s thesis is to study executive coaching from a social constructionist perspective, focusing on the construction of management. The two research questions are: How is management constructed in executive coaching? How can we understand the construction of management in executive coaching? Additionally, we identify gender as a social construction of importance and thus include a gender perspective in our analysis. The conducted study is qualitative and based on interviews with coaches and executives. Relevant theories concerning the construction of management and gender have been used to analyse the empirical findings. We conclude that while coaches describe the ideal manager as a humanist, executives tend to visualise the ideal manager as a rationalist. Both constructions treat management as an individual phenomenon and are characterised by a masculine norm. Furthermore we argue that the coach has an influential position in coaching. However, the coach?s power is limited by the executive?s position as a customer. We suggest that the two constructions of management arise because the executive and coach come from different worlds. Possibly, two different constructions of management can co-exist because coaching is a vaguely defined management development method and because the executives? construction of management also includes some elements of humanism. Finally, we argue that our study contributes to research on executive coaching by applying a different (social constructionist) perspective than previous research.