“We are going to be a little bit crisper”: Amplification and standardization of first-line managers’ roles in Swedish social services

Abstract This article examines how senior managers in Swedish social services construct and stabilize the role of first-line managers under New Public Management. Adopting an interpretative, social-constructionist stance through an institutional-logics lens, the study employs semi-structured interviews with senior managers and internal documents from a large municipal social-care organization. Reflexive thematic analysis identifies two interrelated processes through which the role is constructed. Amplification refers to framing and justifying the salience of first-line management in terms of operational reliability and client-facing quality, while standardization captures how expectations are codified in role descriptions, induction materials, and follow-up routines. Across accounts, amplification and standardization were tightly interwoven as role meanings were articulated and stabilized. The study clarifies how managerial and professional prescriptions are reconciled by specifying the mechanisms through which role meanings travel and becomes durable. Theoretically, it links leadership-as-meaning-making with institutional-logics research by showing how justificatory narratives translate into artefacts that stabilize expectations.