The purpose of the thesis is to map the meaning of ?international competence? in Swedish company boards of directors. The study is divided in a qualitative part and a quantitative part. The qualitative study consists of a discourse analysis where variation in interpretative repertoires are identified to enhance the understanding of the nature of reasoning related to the meaning and importance of the issue at stake. The discourse analysis is conducted on an empirical material from 27 interviews with decision makers in recruitment processes to Swedish company boards of directors.

AbstractThis essay contains a comparison between principals and supervisors within the Health-care and is focused on their view regarding their own leadership. It contains a comparison between their respective models for leadership and how to evolve as a leader within these two organizations.The study is carried out as in dept interviews with four principals and four supervisors.The results show that the principals have a sufficient education and a broad network, but they need the opportunity to a personal development within their leadership. On the other hand, within the Health-care, the supervisors stand on a good base of education where focus lies on the personal development within the leadership. However, they need more opportunities to build up their networks.The conclusion that can be drawn is that these two organisations would gain on learning from each other, in order to establish as good conditions as possible to improve the leaderships within their own organization..

This thesis reports on the methodology and results of a study with one retailers 73 units to investigate factors of the store managers leadership that influence productivity performance in store. The study determine the impact of ten independent variables in terms of the store managers leadership on four performance measures: (3) three productivity measures: Sales Over Labor (SALOL), Sales Over Inventory (SALOI) and Sales Over Square-metre (SALOS) and (1) one profit measure: Contribution Income Over Square-metre (CIOS). The result shows that the leadership factors give no more explanation to the economic results after factors of local market condition and the store attributes are taking in to account. The store manager's leadership can though influence his or her decision-making in-store. The store manager's decision to staff the store more intense (higher service-intensity) can increase the level of contribution income over square metre in-store..

The work place is becoming more flexible and an increasing number of employees report to a leader in another location or country. The borders between different countries, work places and cultures are diminished to a greater extent than before. Working from a distance means new opportunities in terms of competence development, flexibility in working hours, tasks and resources, a larger platform for various career opportunities and an expanded network. The purpose with this study is to examine how leaders can create a successful virtual team and motivate remotely. The qualitative study is carried out through interviews with leaders and employees within Nielsen Nordic.

Competence Portals are software tools that are intended to make it easier for persons that have had no previous contact to find and contact each other. The portals can address areas ranging from finding an expert within an organisation to the marketing of the competence of a region or a research centre to other organisations. The purpose of the thesis is to examine the necessity of Competence Portals in research-intensive organisations. Important characteristics of the information in such portals have been identified and used as a basis for recommendations regarding how Competence Portals could be designed. Furthermore, the thesis focuses on the task of finding a source of knowledge within an organisation.

The aim of this study is to understand first line managers experiences of the impact leadership have on the health of employees. The study focuses on leadership behaviours and actions, experienced by first line managers working in elderly care, with either positive or negative outcomes on the employees health. To answer the purpose of the study a qualitative method was used and the data was collected through seven individual interviews. The analyse was conducted using theories of transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership. To enable a broader dimension to the study the concept of health-promotion leadership was also used in the analysis.

Servant leadership är ett begrepp som visar potential inom ledarskapsforskningen, framförallt för att förklara meningsskapande ledarskap, hur ledaren leder sig själv samt hur ledarskap kan accepteras utan auktoritet. Problemet är att forskningen hittills varit alltför okritisk. Begreppets validitet har bevisats i kvantitativa mått, men dess implikationer för själva ledarskapsutövandet eller ledaren är oklara.Syftet med uppsatsen är att testa begreppet servant leadership som verktyg för ledarskapsstudier. Kan begreppet konkretiseras och mätas? Kan man vara säker på vad man mäter? För att besvara dessa frågor omfattar uppsatsen en granskande litteraturstudie och en tillämpande fallstudie i tre delar.Resultaten antyder att begreppet servant leadership kan brista i precision och tillförlitlighet.

The aim of the study is to examine how the executive leadership and the decision-making process are shaped by the leadership environment in a transition democracy as Venezuela. The questions I intend to answer are: What kind of leadership environment surrounds the leadership and what kind of consequences does it have on the leadership and the decision-making process in Venezuela? To answer my questions I will use the literature: Political Leadership in Liberal Democracies (Elgie, Robert 1995, London: Macmillian), together with the method ?The cultural determinist school of history? by Tomas Spencer, later reproduced by Kellerman. The leadership environment provides unique opportunities for a leader to gain control over the decision-making process. Institutional structures and the needs of the society are major parts in determining how the political leadership is exercised.

What do we really mean when we are talking about the perfect leadership? Does a leadership like that really exist in the world we live in today? Being perfect is something that many people are longing for, but that is hard to achieve. In school, in families and at work: the longing for perfectionism is everywhere. Being a leader is a tough goal to master, being the perfect leader is something impossible. Many managers in Sweden today all want to be successful and perfect at what they do, many of them don?t have the time to reflect over how the perfect leadership should be characterized.

The purpose with our study is to investigate why Capgemini adopts the Rightshore strategy, how they implement this strategy and how it affects Capgemini?s core competence. We also aim to look at how the company?s knowledge management is supporting the offshoring strategey, in addition to how Capgemini ?keeps control of? its core competence in following the trend of offshoring to India?.

Background: The description of different characters in soapoperas are often exaggerated to catch the viewers interest and to present an exiting content. The phenomenon that takes place in soapoperas can often relates to every-day- life-situations. The viewers should recognise them selves in the content, the imaginary situations and the characters should be normal but at the same time exaggerated and twisted to catch the viewers attention. This means that the characters in Rederiet should have connections to the real world and this makes it interesting to study how the different styels of leadership are descibed.Purpose: The purpose is to analyse and compare three choosen characters in the soapopera Rederiet, from existing leadership thoeries. To identify leadership on three hierarchical levels ? head of machinery, superintendent and captain ? and to analyse how leadership are descibed in the soapopera.

In this qualitative study the authors explores, by studying several quality-development models what quality in leadership is. The models are: Total Quality Management; SIQ?s model for customer-oriented organizational development; the EFQM excellence model; the ISO 9000:2000 standard; and Six Sigma. These models will be compared from Deming?s list for upper management; the Situational Leadership Theory; and the Contingency Theory.

Culture is seen as an abstract phenomenon, not easily defined. It is cathegorized as something that affects every person, though it is seldom described how. This study adress how culture, in the form of basic assumptions and accepted behaviors and ways to think affected how young coaches formed their leadership under the influence of their organization. The possible implications for the importance of knowing about ones culture in an organization affect both the recruitment process in organizations and what the organization stands for and what is conveyed through values and ways to act in the organization. The purpose of this study was, through the use of semi-structured interviews with young coaches and organizational leaders and a review of policys, to get the perspective and experiences of young coaches regarding cultural influence on their leadership.

Previous research in the area of leadership and stress has shown that the leader plays an important role but in what way is still an issue to explore. A qualitative approach was used in this study to develop an increased understanding of the leader's experience of stress using four themes; leadership, stress, control and organizational factors. A total of 12 semi-structured and un-structured interviews were carried out with 6 leaders, three females and three males. The data was transcribed and thematic as well as narrative analysis was conducted.The results indicates that leadership stress is caused by a lack of control and that factors intrinsic to the role as a leader both facilitates and complicates the leaders situation when facing stress..

The aim of this work is to define the party structure of Feministic Initiative (FI). We want to examine the structure of an organization that doesn?t start out with a hierarchical order. We further intend to examine the party?s leadership; whether or not it is equal, between the three spokespersons.We find it interesting as a topic from a democratic point of view as well as to see if a flat structure could work in practice.