DISTRACT seminar with Steen Erik Navrbjerg
Title: Virtual Management during the Corona Crisis – results and methodological considerations
Abstract: The project “Virtual Management during the Corona Crisis” followed a number of managers and employees during the 1st and 2nd lockdowns in 2020. The project sheds light on management and collaboration during the corona crisis - and what we have learned. In hindsight, the corona crisis gave us the potential to change our working lives significantly. As such, the crisis posed many challenges but has also opened doors. These doors would not have opened if the crisis had not taught us new ways of management and collaboration at work place level. Many managers have had to adjust their management style according to the new virtual reality, and for some, it has been a steep learning curve.
Question is to what management has been willing to learn from the crisis - and what to take with us in the future. While a major concern for managers during the first lock-downs was if productivity could be maintained while employees worked from at home, the focus had changed significantly in the second lockdown where work place coherence was on management agenda – i.e., what kind of work place do we have when we don’t meet physically.
The project took place in the midst of the 1st and 2nd lockdowns of the Corona crisis. The research object was a ‘moving target’ as the 1st lock-down was replaced by opening of society, only to be followed by an 2nd lockdown. At the same time, interviewees where still in the process of defining their roles in a ‘now normal’. The particular challenges of conducting ‘corona research’ will be discussed, as well as potential new learnings. The empirical base is two rounds of interviews, 36 during the 1st Lockdown and 28 during the 2nd, supplemented with a questionnaire with 594 HR-managers.
Associate Professor Steen E. Navrbjerg from FAOS, Employment Relations Research Centre, University of Copenhagen, and Professor Dana Minbaeva from Department of Strategy and Innovation, Copenhagen Business School carried out the project. Innovation Fund Denmark funded the project.
More detailed information: https://faos.ku.dk/nyheder/virtuel-ledelse-under-corona-krisen/
Steen E. Navrbjerg is an Associate Professor at FOAS, Employment Relations Research Centre, University of Copenhagen