Leadership Recruitment by Private Work Agencies : A Case Study Assessing Knowledge of Leadership Traits

Abstract: This thesis investigates the leadership recruitment of private work agencies, a sector that has grown significantly in Sweden over the past two decades. Through interviews with leadership recruiters in three firms, desirable and undesirable destructive leadership traits were investigated and the question was addressed of how leadership traits are identified and assessed by recruiters. A distinction was made between desired and undesired leadership traits, both tacit and explicit, and a special focus was given to destructive traits. The results and analysis demonstrated that although there seemed to be a general coherence about the desirability of managerial and intellectual leadership traits, there was no coherence in terms of how to assess undesired destructive leadership traits. Moving beyond the wide categories of managerial and intellectual, an in-depth analysis also showed the existence of an incoherent body of tacit knowledge of desirable leadership traits involved in the recruitment process. The results of the study raised the question whether leadership recruitment could be made more explicit, coherent, and efficient or whether it is inherently difficult and perhaps not relevant to classify leadership traits systematically.