In a profession that requires both human connection and sales performance, recruitment consultants must navigate a daily paradox: how to appear authentic while playing a role. This thesis explores how consultants in recruitment experience and manage emotional labour while attempting to remain genuine. Drawing insights from dramaturgical theory and emotional labour literature, we investigate how th

Title: The Unpacking of Female Managerial Life in Contemporary Organizations Authors: Annemijn Janien Bakker and Jana Marcie Wäller Supervisor: Stefan Sveningsson, Professor of Business Administration; Lund University School of Economics and Management, Sweden Date: 26th of May 2025 Purpose: The purpose of this research is to critically examine how leadership is constructed, experienced, and navig

This qualitative study provides a critical lens on social enterprises. The concept of purpose-driven control, a form of normative control, is established, which comprises how organizational practices, grounded in a social and/or environmental purpose, are used to foster organizational identification and employee commitment, leading to behavioral alignment and extraordinary efforts as well as the p

The blur between employee’s personal and professional lives has increased for the past few years. Organizations have used the ‘we are like family’ discourse to subtly control employee’s identities that implicitly impact the way they behave at the workplace. Transformational leadership, which is always been known for its compelling traits, can be one of the mechanisms for organizations to subtly ch

RQ: What is the relationship between organizational structure and its sustainability efforts, and how do perceptions of sustainability efforts vary across different job functions within a company? Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to better understand the current state of sustainability efforts in large organizations. Especially to recognize how the structure of the company might pose issues

The study examines whether Nigerian communication practitioners engage with, adapt to, or diverge from dominant Western crisis communication assumptions when managing crises shaped by ethnic, political, and religious complexities. Using a phenomenological qualitative approach to explore their lived experiences, ten communication professionals from government, corporate, and consultancy sectors w

This thesis contributes to scaling literature by offering an employee-centred view of scaling processes and enriching Picken’s (2017a) model with insights from employee experiences. Further, it critically analyses the ‘growing pains’ metaphor and highlights how it shapes and can obscure perceptions of workplace change.

Title: Where Identity Meets Meaning - An interpretivist qualitative case study on identity construction in mission-driven non-profit organisations Authors: Leonie Erika Renate Brake and Emily Florentine Horn Supervisor: Stefan Sveningsson, Professor of Business Administration Lund University School of Economics and Management, Sweden Submission Date: 25th of May 2025 Purpose: This study aims to un

This study investigates how brand trust is constructed, challenged, and redefined on dating applications, with a focus on the communicative strategies and lived experiences of female users. Adopting a qualitative approach grounded in thematic analysis, it draws on semi-structured interviews with 15 women residing in Sweden to examine how users negotiate trust in emotionally charged, algorithmicall

In communication and management research, employee voice has been widely acknowledged as a central component for organizations long term development and survival. With the increasing digitalization and need for flexibility, digital workplace meetings have become a common form of communication, demonstrating a new arena where employee voice is expressed and shaped. Thus, the aim of this study is to

Student Brand Ambassadorship: The Influence of Identification with the University on Student Advocacy in Higher Education Institutions This study investigates how students’ identification with the university influences their willingness to engage in brand-supporting behaviors, conceptualized as student brand ambassadorship. This study argues for a differentiation between university as organizatio

Agility has emerged as a strategic ideal across many sectors, especially within financial institutions facing heightened pressure to respond swiftly to technological disruption, regulatory shifts, and market volatility. While commonly positioned as a solution to organizational inertia, agility is often promoted through leadership programs and strategic narratives that assume a shared understanding

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to contribute to a deeper understanding of how intensified public media attention influences the ways in which middle managers interpret and navigate in a large-scale change process. Our study aims to offer new insights into the implications of public news media coverage for individual sensemaking during a large-scale organizational change. Methodology: This

This thesis investigates how government communication officers navigate the strategic challenges posed by homeless media—informal, unregulated digital actors that increasingly shape public discourse in Indonesia. Drawing on qualitative interviews with eleven officers across national-level agencies, the research applies the Government Communication Decision Wheel (GCDW) and the concept of instituti

This thesis explores how creative professionals in a global automotive company's advanced design department navigate the creative process when designing for uncertain long-term futures. Through ten semi-structured interviews and an interpretive, qualitative approach, the study investigates how meaning is constructed and ideas are developed in contexts lacking clear problems, timelines, or eval

This study discusses IKEA's brand storytelling across its official websites and Chinese social media platforms, with a focus on the balance between consistency and localisation in its brand narratives on the Swedish and Chinese official websites, as well as the expression of local adaptation in the brand's official accounts on Xiaohongshu and Weibo. Through multimodal social semiotic analy