Ledarskap - En balanskonst?: En studie av föreställningar om ledarskap

Sammanfattning: The industry of management training programs is increasing rapidly. Every year numerous organizations sponsor expensive management training programs for their managers, hoping that this will pay off and make the organizations more profitable. The companies that offer these management training programs could be seen as important conveyers of conceptions of leadership. Thus, the purpose of this thesis is to identify similarities between a number of management training programs and see how they are related to different leadership theories , and based on this try to recognize the conceptions of leadership that are conveyed. The study is of qualitative nature and is based on interviews with representatives from five management training companies in Sweden along with a text analysis of written material presented by the companies. The study shows that the programs offered by the different companies are similar in several ways and that they seem to share several conceptions of leadership. Firstly, they all seem to treat the concept of leadership as a specialized role (as opposed to a shared influence process). Secondly, they seem to presuppose that leaders do have the power to influence the actions of an organization. Thirdly, they seem to believe that there is a state of opposition between the operational and technical aspects of leadership on one hand, and the social aspects on the other hand.