Disruptive times often paved the way for great leaders to rise. This thesis intends to reveal organisational leaders behaviour during times of crisis, portraying the course of events and their influence from their and a subordinates perspective. The environmental context of the research is regarded through the application of the organisational ecology approach, emphasising the analogy of the struggle for life in nature and business. This intends to depict the challenges that leaders have to meet in the current times considering environmental changes. The identified behavioural patterns sum up to a certain leadership style with is identified and discussed later to draw conclusions and determine crucial patterns that have a decisive impact on the events. The findings are discussed on the background of the recent leadership theory to drawing conclusions and find analogies with the recent research.

This thesis consists of three self-contained essays on childhood disadvantage and its consequences in Sweden. A Longitudinal Look at Child Poverty Using Both Monetary and Non-monetary Approaches. In this paper, we broaden the analysis of child poverty by using both monetary and non-monetary measures of poverty and by comparing these over time. We use a composite of questionnaire answers from children regarding possession of socially perceived necessities and participation in social activities to develop two non-monetary child-centric concepts of disadvantage: material deprivation and social exclusion. The empirical analysis is based on two cross-sections and a panel of children in the Swedish Level-of-Living Survey matched with parental survey data and administrative income records. Consistent with previous findings, we find that relative income poverty among children increases significantly between the year 2000 and 2010. The fraction of children that is disadvantaged in two dimensions, monetary and non-monetary, is relatively small (0.9–7.0 percent) but increases significantly during the period of study. The modest size of the overlap suggests that our measures capture different dimensions of disadvantage, thereby pointing to the importance of alternative poverty indicators. We also find that income status in childhood is the best predictor of socio-economic outcomes in young adulthood. The Aspirations-attainment Paradox of Immigrant Children: A Social Networks Approach. Using two independent and nationally representative samples of Swedish children, I compare the university aspirations and expectations between children of immigrants and children of natives. In line with existing findings, I find that children with foreign-born parents have significantly higher aspirations and expectations than their native-majority peers with and without conditioning on school performance, academic potential and friendship networks. I do not find any evidence of a significant immigrant-non-immigrant aspirations-expectations gap; immigrant children's aspirations and expectations are not less aligned than those of their native-majority peers. This result suggests that immigrant-native disparities in school outcomes are not driven by an aspirations-expectations gap. Finally, the results reveal significant gender differences. Native-majority girls with academic potential are, for example, more likely to express an aspirations-expectations gap. Moreover, having only female friends makes one less likely to belong to the aforementioned category. The Key Player in Disruptive Behavior: Whom Should We Target to Improve the Classroom Learning Environment? In this paper, I address the question: Who is the individual that exerts the greatest negative influence on the classroom learning environment? To answer this question, I invoke the key player model from network economics and use self-reported friendship data in order to solve the methodological problems associated with identifying and estimating peer effects. I overcome the issue of endogenous group formation by using the control function approach where I simultaneously estimate network formation and outcomes. The results show that the typical key player scores well on language and cognitive ability tests and is not more likely to be a boy than a girl. I also find evidence that removing the key player has a significantly larger effect on aggregate disruptiveness in a network than removing the most disruptive individual, implying that policy aimed at the most active individual could be inadequate.

摘要 本研究之目的在透過實政研究方法回答兩個關於破壞式創新研究問題，首先，產業延續性創新速度與企業破壞式創新程度之關係為何？其次企業的破壞式創新程度對其績效影響為何？本研究透過文獻探討，設計問卷並以台灣資訊電子產業公開發行之企業進行問卷調查蒐集初級資料。經由統計分析，本研究得出兩重大發現，首先，產業延續性創新速度與企業破壞式創新程度為負相關，而企業對新產品開發專案之決策資訊充足要求程度會弱化此關係。其次，企業規模與財務績效有正相關，而企業破壞式創新程度會強化此關係。 / The aim of this research is to answer two research questions about disruptive innovation with empirical methodology. First, what is the relation between industrial sustaining innovation rate and a company's disruptiveness. Second, does a company’s disruptiveness impact firm financial performance? By collecting primary data, this research developed the questionnaire based on literature review and collected data from the publicly-listed companies in the Taiwan IT industry. With statistic analysis, this research has two significant findings. First, industrial sustaining innovation rate has a negative impact on an incumbent company’s disruptiveness and the accuracy of company investment decision on NPD project will weaken this relation. Second, firm size has a positive impact on firm financial performance and a company's disruptiveness will strengthen this relationship.