Title: From horse people to business leader

Authors: Jennifer Norin, Maria Nyström and Therese Olsson

Supervisor: Anders Wrenne Department: School of Management, Blekinge Institute of Technology Course: Bachelor’s thesis in Business Administration, 15 credits

Purpose: The purpose of our work is to deepen the knowledge of horse people's potential to act as successful business executives by finding out how a person can implement their practical experiences from a horse environment in a role as business leader.

Method: This thesis has a qualitative approach in which we gathered the empirical material through three extensive semi-structured interviews by phone calls with managers of different riding schools. We also formed a poll with a quantitative approach to gather more overall information from a larger number of horse owners via social media.

Results: This thesis shows that there are several skills that develops in the stable environment that are useful as a business leader. Skills like problem solving, time planning and budgeting and many more are introduced and developed in the life with horses and then implemented in the workplace.