Becoming a Manager: A case study of first-time managers in Oslo Municipality

Despite the vast amount of research that has been conducted on leadership and leadership development, there has been a lack of investigation of first-time leadership. The first career transformation can be viewed as the most challenging one, because, besides learning through experience, it involves a psychological adjustment. Since this is the starting point of all leadership and leadership development, it needs to be understood better in order to be managed properly. The purpose of the current study is to gain insight into how Oslo Municipality’s first-time managers experience their first managerial role. Through semi-structured qualitative interviews, three first-time managers’ perspectives regarding of their first leadership role were elicited, as well as their feedback about the types of challenges and struggles they encountered in this transition. The interviews were analyzed by means of template analysis, which indicated an interpretation of the first-time managers’ challenges and struggles in four primary areas: 1) The transition from individual contributor to manager and self-view as a leader; 2) Learning to cope with stress, loneliness, and redistribution of time and delegation of tasks; 3) Becoming familiar with Oslo Municipality as employers; and 4) The role of support, follow-up and feedback. Their experiences add nuances to our understanding of new managers’ perspectives on becoming leaders for the first time. Based on the analysis of the empirical data, as well as evidence-based support from previous research and literature, the current paper may further contribute to designing appropriate leadership developmental initiatives that take into account the first-time managers’ standpoint in Oslo Municipality

Boards' involvement in firm strategy : how can a board be effectively involved in strategy formulation and contribute to firm's successfulness

The role of the board of directors in firm strategy has been subject of debate for a long time. Many researches have been done from different perspectives particularly on this issue. The purpose of this thesis is to study the role of the board of directors in firm strategy. This study will further investigate on how the board of directors can be effectively involved in strategy formulation for the firms and through this to contribute to the firms' successfulness. Board of directors is a group of individuals who are elected by the shareholders of a corporation and assigned to carry out certain tasks on behalf of the shareholders to govern the corporation. Some of the main tasks of the board of directors are appointing the Chief Executive Officer, issuing additional shares and declaring the dividends. Board of directors are responsible for defining the strategy for the firms and make sure that it is implemented by the management. A case study research method is used and four companies from southern part of Norway have been selected for this research. Two of them are in offshore business, one is an educational institute and the last one is a software company. They all are Small and Medium size Enterprises SME. The research concludes that the boards can be effectively involved in firm strategy if the board directors have relevant knowledge and skills to the firm and have experience from the industry they are in. The board and CEO should have close relations and have frequent meetings. Board diversity is also important because diverse boards will come up with different perspectives, healthy debates and good information for decision making