Next, I will provide a self-evaluation about how I succeeded in answering my research questions. I believe, that especially with the research question re- lated to challenges FTMs faced and how they overcame them, I was able to offer quite detailed and rich answers. Of course, they were to some extent limited by having only one round of interviews and including only the FTMs' self-reports.
Especially happy I am with the answers I provided to the second research question about the role of well-being for FTMs. I believe they give a mean- ingful view to the importance of FTM well-being as well as offers concrete examples of ways in which my informants had taken care of their well-being.
This said, I have to admit that coming up with the well-being findings was quite hard. The reason was the scattered nature of the data about well-being in the interviews. If I would do the data collection about well-being of FTMs again, I would concentrate on forming a more detailed list of questions. Prob- ably, I would also use a quantitative survey to gain insights of measured levels of the participating FTMs’ well-being
Considering the thesis as a whole, at some points of the process I had doubts about the meaningfulness of the grouping of the informants according to their overall experience of becoming a manager. Even though it provided some similarities within the groups, the overall experiences of the informants seemed to be in general quite unique. However, a key benefit of the grouping was practical: it was easier to do research with the data, when it was divided into three groups. One improvement I would do to the thesis if I would do it again, would be better mapping the effects of the organisational context. This could be implemented e.g., as a single question to the interview structure.
Finally, from a reader’s point of view, the thesis could be more concise, which would make it more reader-friendly. However, I believe that this is an issue with qualitative research in general, and especially hard for beginners. From my previous work experience, I know how demanding it is to write concisely and doing that in another than your native language makes it even harder.
Nevertheless, I wish that the thesis will help some individuals who consider a management career as well as organisations training first-time managers.
100
6 Conclusions
This study has added our knowledge about first-time managers in Finland and offers recommendations for both individuals and organisations regard- ing the topic. It has also mapped possible paths for future research. Core find- ings of the study include the centrality of FTMs' capabilities to reflect and act consciously as well as the challenges FTMs experienced due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the importance of well-being for the process of be- coming a manager became clear and the findings also suggest that the well- being of FTMs could be connected to the well-being of their subordinates.
Finally, I would like to conclude my thesis with the encouraging words of one of my informants:
At first, I thought that I'll try to stay on the background, so that no one notices that I touch anything in this managerial role -- But then when I touched things, I got to notice that it can go quite well.
-Informant 11, quote 64
101
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