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Studiens syfte är att framlägga de vanligaste konflikterna kommunikativt som uppstår ibyggnadsproduktion mellan arbetsledare, yrkesarbetare och underentreprenörer. Studien taräven upp hur dessa konflikter ska förebyggas samt hantering så det ej återupprepar sig påsamma byggarbetsplats eller nästkommande. Vidare ska studien visa på hur arbetsledare skahantera konflikter som redan har inträffat. Studien exponerar huruvida de olikaledarskapsstilarna implementeras av en arbetsledare för att uppnå en god arbetsmiljö med enbra laganda mellan yrkesarbetare och underentreprenörer. Effekten av detta arbete skulle medhög sannolikhet resultera i bättre kommunikation och en effektivare produktion.I form av en kvalitativ studie besvaras frågeställningarna genom litteraturstudie ochsemistrukturerade intervjuer. En omfattning av 10 stycken kandidater kommer att representeraintervjudelen hos det valda företaget.Det valda företaget där denna studie har utförts är Svenska Entreprenad & Förvaltnings AB(SEFAB). Där upplever ledningen att yrkesarbetare i produktion saknar motivation, därförskall konflikter analyseras. Detta för att uppnå en god arbetsmiljö vilket med hög sannolikhetleder till högre motivation hos medarbetarna.I analysen framkommer den vanligaste orsaken till kommunikativ konflikt, vilket beskrivsvara renhållningen. Hanteringen av denna konflikt föredrar respondenterna att arbetsledarenanvänder sig av en demokratisk ledarstil där alla känner sig delaktiga i beslut. Vidaresammanfattas hantering och förebyggande åtgärder till att hålla en öppen dialog med samtligasamt diskutera problemet. / The purpose of the study is to present the most common conflicts communicatively that arisein house-building production between supervisors, workers and subcontractors. The studyalso addresses how these conflicts should be prevented as well as management so that it doesnot repeat itself at the same construction site or next. In succession, the study will show howsupervisors should handle conflicts that have already erupted. The study exposes whether thedifferent leadership styles are implemented by a supervisor to achieve a good workenvironment with a good team spirit between workers and subcontractors. This work willhopefully lead to better communication and more efficient production in succession.In the form of a qualitative study, the questions will be answered through a literature studyand semi-structured interviews. A total of 10 candidates will represent the interview section atthe selected company.The company selected for this study is Svenska Entreprenad & Förvaltnings AB (SEFAB).There, management feels that workers in the production has lack of motivation, thereforeconflicts must be analyzed in order to achieve a good work environment which hopefullyleads to high motivation among the employees.The analysis shows the most common cause of communicative conflict, which is described asthe cleansing. Handling this conflict, respondents prefer that the supervisor use a democraticleadership style where everyone feels involved in decisions. Furthermore, management andpreventative measures are summarized to keep an open dialogue with everyone and discussthe problem.

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The main purpose of the present study was to examine the leadership styles of Turkish middle-level managers and leadership prototypes of Turkish employees in terms of task-oriented and people-oriented behaviours. The secondary purpose was to investigate the effects of incongruence between actual and ideal manager perceptions on three important work outcomes: performance (task and contextual performance), job satisfaction, and organizational commitment (affective, continuance, and normative commitment). A total of 320 people working in a wide range of organizations (71 managers and 239 employees) filled out the questionnaire. Employees rated their actual managers&rsquo / leadership style and also their ideal manager&rsquo / s leadership style (i.e., leader prototype) in the same questionnaire, while the managers rated their own leadership style as well as their leadership style as perceived by their subordinates. Additionally, supervisory-rated performance and self-rated job satisfaction and organizational commitment levels of employees were obtained. Results indicated that self-reported leadership styles of Turkish managers were consisting of more people-oriented behaviours than task-oriented behaviours. On the contrary, employees perceived their managers as being more task-oriented than people-oriented. Ideal leadership style for the employees were comprised of higher levels of both task- and people-oriented behaviours than their actual managers. Incongruence between the actual and ideal manager perceptions of employees predicted job satisfaction levels of the employees only. The results are discussed together with the implications, strengths and limitations of the study. Some suggestions for future research are made.

Thesis (D. Min.)--New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 2005. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes final project proposal. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 115-122, 56-62).

Thesis (D. Min.)--New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 2005. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes final project proposal. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 115-122, 56-62).

Although the topic is trending globally, clear steps forward for female leadership are yet to be made. This is impacted even more by the fact that little empirical research has been conducted to examine the attitudes towards females in managerial positions from different countries' point of view. Therefore, the aim of this research is to get an understanding of the current state of affairs of female leadership in a more global context, with input from both developed and developing countries. Specifically, it explores the similarities and differences of female leadership challenges in Afghanistan and The Netherlands. To explore challenges experienced by, as well as strategies of, Afghan and Dutch female leaders, a qualitative study was conducted. Ten semi-structured interviews were done in-person and through video calls, consisting of 5 interviews for each country. Ten participants, meeting the criteria of holding a leadership/management position, were chosen through convenience sampling. The results showed significant similarities and differences in female leadership challenges, as well as strategies.  The unfortunate entanglement of culture in Afghanistan, under Taliban rule, has resulted in the oppression of female leaders. In the Netherlands, female leadership progress appears idealized. Nevertheless, female leaders in both countries share similar strength and strategies to cope with challenges themselves because society seemingly fails to bring change. As the results also show leadership skills specific to female leaders, societies and organizations worldwide should spread awareness and take action in gender equality, unlocking the full potential of female leadership.

This thesis examines my experience of leading leadership development. During the last three years I have been researching my role as Head of Leadership and Organisational Development at the University of Hertfordshire (UH), with a view to making sense of and rethinking leadership and approaches to leadership development more generally. This thesis considers how my own thinking and practice has changed and developed as a consequence of paying attention to and reflecting on personal experience, whilst at the same time locating my sense-making in the broader academic scholarship. Narrative accounts of the significant incidents and interactions that I have participated in during the past three years have been shared verbally with the participants on the programmes that I lead, and explored more extensively in written form with colleagues in the learning community on the Doctorate in Management (DMan) programme at UH, as a means of intensifying my sense-making and its generalisability to a community of engaged enquirers. My research was prompted by disillusionment with the dominant discourse on leadership and leadership development based as it is on theories, frameworks, tools and techniques that privilege a form of autonomous, instrumental rationality and deceptive certainty that did not reflect the social, non-linear, uncertain day-to-day realities faced by me and the managers with whom I worked. In this thesis, I draw on my experiences as a manager, leader of leadership development, and a student of leadership development, to problematise the mainstream managerialist conceptions of leadership and organisation that are now part of the organisational habitus (Bourdieu, 1977) in the UK. The rise and naturalisation of managerialist ideology across the private, public, and charitable sectors in the UK makes it an inordinately difficult perspective to contest without risking some form of exclusion. I contend that my experience of attempting to encourage radical doubt and enquiry rather than the mindless acceptance and application of conventional wisdom contributes to knowledge in the field of leadership and organisational development by providing insight into and an alternative way of thinking about and practising leadership and leadership development. In contesting dominant conceptions, I proffer a more reality congruent alternative to mainstream thought. I draw on the perspective of complex responsive processes of relating (Stacey et al, 2000, Griffin, 2002, Shaw, 2002), critical management studies (Alvesson and Willmott, 1996), social constructionism (Berger et al, 1966), and other thinkers critical of managerialist conceptions of leadership and leadership education (Khurana, 2007) to explore leadership as a social, relational activity where leaders are co-participants, albeit highly influential ones, in the ongoing patterning of relationships that constitute organisation. However, I argue that it is insufficient for management educationalists to snipe critically at managerialism from the sidelines, problematising one perspective and simply replacing it with another (Ford et al, 2007), leaving their participants ill-equipped to navigate the potentially destructive political landscape of day-to-day organisational life. While the dominant discourse on leadership and organisation is flawed, to avoid exclusion managers must still become fluent in the language and practice of managerialism, the ideology that has come to dominate the vast majority of organisational communities in which they find themselves. In this thesis, I argue that it is crucial for managers and leaders of leadership development to engage with a polyphony of perspectives, and develop the reflective and reflexive capacity to continuously explore and answer for themselves the questions who am I, and what am I doing, who are we, and what are we doing?

This interpretive research study examines peer leadership in a distributed online MBA community of practice at New States University (NSU pseudonym, based in USA). It explores ways in which faculty members in a global business course, NMBA616 (pseudonym), negotiate relationships, meaning and identity in their efforts to be effective teachers and address their own needs for professional growth and development. The research participants provide insights about community formation and function in a virtual domain where they work together at a distance without meeting face-to-face. The study appears to be a new application of culture code methodology, symbolic interactionism and social learning theory as they conjoin on social, psychological and organizational levels. To my knowledge it is the first study of an MBA virtual community of practice. Research interviews were conducted primarily by distance using web-based technology, teleconferences and email, as well as some face to face discussion. The central questions are: 1) To what extent does a distributed faculty team in an online global business management course constitute a community of practice? 2) What is the nature of faculty relationships in the online global business management course? and 3) What are the leadership issues in a virtual practice setting? Findings reveal that online community practitioners are resourceful in creating peer leadership that is embedded within the group and its relationships. The study is motivated by my personal interests and professional experience, as well as by the quest of online colleagues for ways to assess, support and improve themselves and their practice. Building on personal experience as an online business communications instructor, the thesis presents an example of peer leadership in a virtual global business community of practice and in its completion stands as a case study.

Executive coaching has been described as a multibillion dollar enterprise (Ennis, 2004) costing some organisations up to $15,000 (USD) a day (Berglas, 2002). Executive coaching has also been reported as the second fastest growth industry (Wasylyshyn, 2003). Despite these astounding figures, empirical executive coaching research is still limited, thus more randomised, controlled studies are required (Grant, 2005). There is a fundamental need for high quality research to demonstrate the effects of executive coaching and provide justification for the level of commitment expended. The current research program addressed this need through three studies which together provide empirical evidence as to the psychological and behavioural effects of executive coaching. In the first study, twenty-three leaders from a year long transformational leadership development program volunteered to participate in six sessions of executive coaching. The study examined the effects of executive coaching on leaders’ psychological states, specifically, their self-efficacy, developmental support, positive affect, openness to new behaviours and developmental planning. The study had an experimental design with random assignment of leaders to training and control groups which provided a rigorous basis to distinguish the effects of executive coaching from the effects of other leadership interventions in the program. Comparison of the training group (after six executive coaching sessions) with the control group (who had not received coaching) revealed that the training group reported significantly higher levels of self-efficacy, developmental support, openness to new behaviours, and developmental planning compared with the control group. No significant effects were observed for positive affect. Further analysis, however, revealed that the significant differences between the training group and the control group were due to a decrease in the control group before they commenced executive coaching, rather than because the training group increased on the psychological measures after participating in executive coaching. It was proposed that this pattern of results occurred because the pre-coaching measures were obtained at the end of a two day training workshop, when the psychological measures may have already been relatively high. Thus, the effect of executive coaching was to sustain the impact of the workshop for the training group. A longitudinal analysis was also carried out in Study One to examine whether the effects of executive coaching on the psychological variables were sustained over time. The pattern of change was examined at three time points: time one, prior to the commencement of executive coaching, time two, after the completion of six coaching sessions, and time three, six months after the completion of the six coaching sessions. This analysis was also affected by the training group’s high precoaching measures, but when the analyses were restricted to the control group (n=6) – who by this stage had received executive coaching, significant change over time was observed on all of the study measures, which was sustained up to six months after the completion of regular coaching sessions. However, because the control group sample was small, these findings were tested again in Study Two. The primary aim of Study Two though was to evaluate effects of executive coaching on transformational leadership behaviour, measured with self, supervisor and team member ratings. Twenty-seven leaders participated in this study. In the first instance, an experimental design was used to investigate whether leaders in the training group, who had been exposed to executive coaching, received higher ratings in transformational leadership behaviour compared with leaders in the control group. In the second instance this study examined whether there was change in transformational behaviour over time, observed in the area that was the focus of leaders’ developmental efforts. Both approaches yielded similar findings in that the team member feedback identified significant improvement in leaders’ transformational leadership behaviour after executive coaching. There were no significant changes in leaders’ self or supervisor ratings after executive coaching. When the psychological effects of executive coaching were re-examined in Study Two, the expected differences were observed between the training and control groups. However, once again, the data from the training group failed to show the anticipated pattern of improvement over time. This failure was attributed to the small sample size and low statistical power. Consequently, a final analysis was conducted combining the data from leaders who participated in Study One and Study Two. This analysis measured change in leaders’ psychological states from pre-to post-executive coaching and confirmed that after executive coaching leaders experienced effects in the five psychological states measured. Thus, overall, the data from the two studies supported the psychological impact of executive coaching. In Study Three a qualitative approach was employed to triangulate the quantitative results from Study One and Study Two. Eight leaders were randomly identified from the Study One and Study Two samples, and interviews were carried out with these leaders, their supervisors, two team members and their coaches (a total of 40 interviews). The interview data confirmed the effect of executive coaching on the previously investigated psychological variables and also identified coaching as providing leaders with a sense of greater control. In terms of transformational leadership behaviours, all participants in the study identified improvements in leaders’ behaviour, particularly in communication, and the transformational leadership dimensions of intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation and individualised consideration. One further aim of Study Three was to investigate the environmental conditions to determine the impact they had on the effectiveness of executive coaching. Constant change and high work load were most frequently identified as restricting participants’ ability to benefit from executive coaching. Overall, this program of research has demonstrated leadership development through executive coaching. The studies revealed that executive coaching positively enhanced the psychological states of self-efficacy, developmental support, positive affect, openness to new behaviours, and developmental planning. Impressively, the results also showed that executive coaching had sustained effects on some of the psychological states, and on team members’ perceptions of their leader’s transformational leadership behaviour. Practically, these findings justify the use of executive coaching in organisational settings. Theoretically, these outcomes augment the limited body of knowledge in this area.