Managerial discretion is said to be a fundamental condition for effective leadership. Studies of managerial discretion have to a large degree focused on the magnitude of managers’ discretion and how different factors influence managers’ perceived level of discretion (Hambrick, 2007; Hambrick & Finkelstein, 1987; Hutzschenreuter & Kleindienst, 2013). In this chapter, we argue that it is insufficient to study the size of managers’ room for discretion. We also need to understand the content included in leaders’ discretionary rooms. In a study of ten successful logistics companies, one of which was studied more in-depth, we find that the managers perceive their room for managerial discretion as large. However, the alternatives considered are to a large extent operational and short-term, at the expense of more long-term, strategically relevant alternatives facing future challenges. Hence, we develop the concept “strategically relevant managerial discretion”, which, in addition to the alternatives that managers are aware of and that are acceptable for the mangers’ stakeholders, also includes a new dimension: to what extent the alternatives are strategically relevant for future challenges. We conclude the chapter by pointing out interesting directions for future research, including a call for empirical studies of the conceptual model developed in this chapter.

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Norwegian sports today are characterized on the one hand by a need to innovate organizationally and rethink current practices, and on the other hand to respect national traditions and values of sporting culture. This dual responsibility poses a particular challenge to sports leaders of tomorrow. Whereas other studies have examined sports management education or sports leadership qualities as solutions to this challenge, this chapter examines the potential of a mentoring program to improve leadership skills. It draws upon qualitative interviews with participants, mentors and organizers of the 2019/2020 Mentor Program for Young Sport Leaders offered by the Norwegian Federation of Sports (NIF) and the Norwegian Association of Student Sports (NSI). Our findings reveal that this program enables young sports leaders to become more aware of their personal strengths and weaknesses. At the same time, the transfer value they represent to the organization is conditioned by prior experience, attendance motives and mentee-mentor relations. Consequently, this program reproduces known pros and cons found in earlier research on mentoring programs, yet offers something new in the sense that it allows young leaders to be part of the solution to issues in Norwegian sports by defining the relevant problems.

Studies of radical change pay more attention to early phases of the change processes than to later phases and implementation. Research that can contribute to a deeper understanding of factors that influence the implementation of such changes is therefore called for. The purpose of this chapter is to increase the insight and understanding of how trust and psychological safety impact implementation of radical changes. To meet this purpose, we raise the following research questions: 1) What are the differences and similarities between the concepts of trust and psychological safety? 2) How does trust and psychological safety influence implementation of radical changes in organizations? To answer the first question, we start by conducting a review of the literature on trust and psychological safety in part one. Although both concepts are widely used, the observable level of precision and understanding of the concepts varies. Our review reveals that the concepts are popular and quite closely related, yet there are also important differences worth noticing. To answer the second research question, we apply the insight from part one to discuss a conceptual case, well-known to many organizations in current business life; the implementation of radical new service technology. The discussion reveals that both trust and psychological safety play important, but somewhat different roles in top-down and bottom-up organized radical and adaptive change processes respectively.

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