Aim: There is a growing body of literature that recognizes the importance of Social Enterprises (SE) to improve the welfare of society. Few empirical studies have attempted to investigate what are the challenges SEs face and how they manage them. A number of researchers have reported that SEs often have a negative connotation. The aim of this study is to investigate challenges social enterprises face in Sweden.Method: The study adopted a Qualitative approach. Primary data is gathered by interviewing 10 managers of social enterprise from 5 different SEs in Sweden. The interview was made in three different locations, Gävle, Uppsala and Tierp. De-coding the qualitative research data through content analysis, an interpretive analysis was used classifying the data concerning responses by highlighting important messages.Findings and Conclusion: SEs face diverse challenges: Funding, Public Image, Sales, Network and Cooperation, Governance/Structure, Leadership and Management. One of the more significant finding to emerge from this study is that, the foundations-access to finance is one of the critical challenges on which the fate of each SE depends. Most of the times, societies do not acknowledge the role of social enterprises and the values they bring to the society. From this, SEs cannot attract support of any kind. SEs lack the understanding and significance of marketing. Making people understanding SEs’s role, would provide them with a positive public image and thereafter support.Suggestions for future research: The study has a small sample size and results cannot be generalizable. A natural progression of this work is to analyse: Challenges on SEs with focus on Society, The impact of Society on SEs, Public identity of SEs and importance of Society.Contribution of the thesis: Dependency on fundraising, grants and donations are heavily connected with widespread lack of understanding the impact of SEs on society. SEs managers should apply different marketing tactics to communicate their role in welfare of the community.

Background: Advances in new technologies like the Internet of Things, Big Data, and Cloud Computing are opening up new possibilities for manufacturing firms. The extent of these changes is expected to be far-reaching leading researchers to proclaim the fourth industrial revolution a priori. Within this development, Industry 4.0 presents the concept of how manufacturing firms want to meet these changes and benefit from newly created possibilities. However, while the technological aspects leading the introduction of Industry 4.0 have been subject to many studies, the managerial aspects on how to lead such an implementation have so far mostly been neglected. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the managerial challenges that companies might face when implementing Industry 4.0 and to draw conclusions on how they could be met. Method: Our empirical study included a range of qualitative methods. After following a sampling strategy, semi-structured interviews were conducted with researchers, consultants, and plant managers located in Western countries. All collected data were transcribed, open coded and analysed using grounded analysis. Conclusions: While managing people to welcome and embrace new processes as well as leading projects in general has been described in the literature concerning change and project management to some extent, we broaden this knowledge by providing a new Industry 4.0 related perspective and describe possible adaptations to meet the special characteristics of the concept. Further, we elaborated on how the right mindset of top management can influence implementation efforts. On top of the managerial issues described, we added an organisational perspective to the knowledge in the field, making first attempts at describing how a structural framework supporting the implementation could look like. Finally, we investigate how current ways of working might be affected by the implementation of Industry 4.0 and how these might change.

As the world of business changes at a pace higher than ever before, there is an increased need for organizations to rapidly adapt and respond to these internal and external changes, whether they are technological, political, social or environmental. In management, agility is a term frequently used today in response to this new business environment, which often includes the use of agile methodologies for product development. As organizations adopt agile methodologies, old traditional management and leadership models fade. This void is being filled by new and emerging agile leadership models. Additionally, self-organizing and cross-functional teams become key concepts. All these transformations are bound to culminate in a considerable alteration in the role of the manager. This study examines the new role of the manager in an organization transitioning to agile. To answer the research questions, changes in the key work activities of the manager were evaluated, as well as how changes in interplay and interaction between the manager and the group could affect the role. Furthermore, the aim was also to identify some of the main challenges and barriers that arise. This was studied qualitatively through a literature review. Also, a case study was conducted at the software development department at Scania AB, where ten managers and one employee was interviewed. A survey was also sent out to the group members at this department, with 150 respondents. Findings indicated that most work activities did not change. Some of them changed in character due to introducing an agile method and due to internal, structural changes. In one case, the work focus shifted from one activity to another. In the interplay with the group, the manager now has new roles to consider, while his role becomes more of an empowerer and meets new leadership models. With this organizational change, there are also new opportunities of delegating work activities to a higher extent. The main challenges that were identified regarded communication and coordination, control, and mastering agile methods. / Affärsvärlden möter förändringar i en allt snabbare takt än tidigare, varför organisationer måste bemöta och förhålla sig till både de interna och externa förändringar som sker, vare sig dessa är teknologiska, politiska, sociala eller miljömässiga. Inom ledarskap används idag termen agilt allt mer, som svar på detta nya affärsklimat, vilket ofta inkluderar användandet av agila metoder inom produktutveckling. Då allt fler organisationer inför användandet av agila metoder, tappar också de traditionella ledarskapsmodellerna sin roll. Detta gap som uppstår har kommit att fyllas av nya agila ledarskapsmodeller. Vidare blir också självstyrande och tvärfunktionella grupper viktiga koncept. Dessa förändringar medför en avsevärd förändring av chefsrollen. Denna studie undersöker hur chefsrollen förändras i en organisationen som blir allt mer agil. För att svara på forskningsfrågorna undersöktes hur huvudarbetsuppgifterna förändrats, men också hur förändringar i samspelet och interaktionen mellan chefen och gruppen kan komma att påverka chefsrollen. Vidare undersöktes också vilka huvudsakliga utmaningar och hinder som uppstod. En kvalitativ litteraturstudie utfördes i studien. Också en fallstudie på avdelningen för mjukvaruutveckling på Scania AB utfördes, där tio gruppchefer och en annan anställd intervjuades. En undersöknings skickades också ut till gruppmedlemmar på denna avdelningar, med totalt 150 svar.Resultatet påvisade att de flesta arbetsuppgifter inte förändrades. Vissa av dessa förändrades i karaktär och i utförandet, till följd av införandet av en agil metod och strukturella förändringar i företaget. I ett fall skiftade arbetsfokus från en arbetsuppgift till en annan. I samspelet mellan chef och grupp har nu chefen nya roller att ta hänsyn till. Chefens roll blir mer av en facilitator, där nya ledarskapsmodeller också står till mötes. Chefen har också större möjligheter till delegering av arbetsuppgifter än tidigare. De utmaningar som identifierades rörde kommunikation och koordination, kontroll, och hanteringen av agila metoder.

Leadership has been of the highest interest for decades as leaders are one of the main factors for organisational success. However, when understanding start-ups the classical leadership theories lack insight into how a leader can grow and thrive together with the organisation. The most used theories today determine what is generally understood as good and bad leadership styles. However, these fail to incorporate the start-ups' unique position and the leaders´ dynamic relationship with their organisation. Start-ups act in new, uncertain environments and more than two-thirds end up failing before growing into an established organisation. The critical phase in which the leaders could affect whether a start-up shall grow or fail is called the transition phase.  This study therefore aims to understand the perspective of leaders in start-ups through growth. By looking through the leaders' perspective, the study investigates how the transformational- and transactional leadership affect start-ups through growth. The second aim of the thesis is to gain a further understanding of the managerial challenges leaders face due to start-up growth.  The study was conducted through qualitative interviews with CEOs and top managerial founders of start-ups in the Northern region of Sweden. The studies managers had all been part of the organisation's growth journey and provided unique insights into the mind of a leader.  The findings portray two main trends of leadership, proactive and reactive. These findings provide insight into the importance of knowledge and positive attitudes toward change as contributing factors for proactively working towards adaptation and development. The findings also portrayed that managerial challenges are mostly connected to the lack of knowledge of leadership. The study concludes with a proposed framework, introducing a complementary dimension to the body of literature on leadership and growth. The dimensions are “Knowledge of leadership” and “Positive attitudes of change”.