Abstract  

Title: Maintaining a competitive brokerage team during a changing market marked by economic crises – A management perspective  

Level: Bachelor's degree in business administration  

Author: Emilia Almquist and Elin Larsson  

Supervisor: Svante Brunåker  

Date: 2024 May 

Purpose: The purpose is to examine what strategies leaders take to maintain a competitive brokerage team during a changing market marked by economic crises. 

Method: The study is based on a qualitative research method to answer the purpose and questions. Six semi-structured interviews have been conducted with a deductive research approach and with inductive elements. The respondents are active office managers from different real estate offices and the interviews were conducted both physically and digitally.  

Conclusions: The conclusions we reached through in this study are that sales training, cost reductions and follow-ups are some of the strategies that the leaders used to get through a tough market that consisted of various challenges. Transformational leadership style was marked in all respondents' interview answers, which strengthened the theoretical frame of reference suggesting that transformational leadership style is best suited in crisis situations.  

Contribution of the thesis: The practical contribution we make with this study is to give leaders tools in form of strategies they can apply in future challenging market situations or crises. The theoretical contribution we make with this study is that the old methods are no longer sustainable in relation to the changing environment. This describes how the market is constantly changing and that leaders must adapt new strategies to meet the new market conditions that are coming.  

Suggestions for further research: Further research of our work could be to examine whether employees are satisfied with their leaders' choice of strategies during a changing market marked by economic crises. Further research could also be to investigate the impact of a new crisis on leaders' strategies to see whether they have changed or been affected by it.  

Keywords: Leadership, crisis management, transformative leadership.