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ABSTRACT
The aim of this paper is twofold. The first is substantive: to shed light on the structural conflicts and contradictions that run through first-line manager (FLM) roles where routine supervision has been supplemented by wider management responsibility for business performance and customer service and on how FLMs themselves interpret and handle these conflicts through the ways in which they construct their identity and enact their role. This paper presents an analysis of two case studies of FLMs in their organisational context which traces the relationship between the structural conditions that shape the way in which the FLM role is defined and the subjective meaning-construction that shapes how the role is interpreted and enacted, and, in so doing, draws upon both 'critical realist' and 'sense-making' perspectives. Thus the second aim of this paper is to offer some methodological reflections on the possibilities and limitations of using critical realism and sense-making as complementary analytical frameworks and the implication this has for the problem of paradigm commensurability. It is argued that critical realism and sense-making are complementary, rather than syncretic, and can be deployed in tandem to generate cumulative interpretations of different facets of a problem.
Key Words: First-line Managers; Supervision; Critical Realism; Sense-making; Paradigm Commensurability.
INTRODUCTION
The aim of this paper is both substantive and methodological. On the one hand, it draws on an analysis of case study data on how the first-line manager (hereafter FLM) role is constituted and enacted in two organisations to shed light on whether and, if so, how a broadening of the role of FLM from that of supervisor to one of responsibility for managing unit performance and/or customer service has impacted on the way in which FLMs interpret, negotiate and enact their role. The analysis traces the dynamic relationship between the structural conditions shaping the way that the FLM is defined and the process of sense-making that shapes the way that the role is interpreted and enacted by FLMs themselves. In so doing, the analysis draws on both critical realist and sense-making perspectives. The methodological aim of this paper, tiierefore, is to explore the case for combining these two perspectives which have, hitherto, occupied rather different, not to say opposed, positions on the terrain of methodological paradigms and...