Abstract
The UK Royal Navy operational sea training has a worldwide reputation for excellence through delievering realistic and stressful training at FOST, both for national and international military surface ships. This thesis examines how the decentralized initiative from the Norwegian military leadership philosophy ”Oppdragsbasert Ledelse (OBL)” is affected by training with this foreign military organization. Serial reports from the Royal Norwegian Navy´s participation at FOST 2012 and 2013 are used as empiric material ranging over 30 exercises in total.Colonel John Boyd´s organizational climate for success based on the WW2 German Blitzkrieg-concept is used as a theoretical platform for this thesis, allowing his 4 main climate concepts of Einheit, Fingerspitzengefuhl, Auftragstaktik and Schwerpunkt to be operationalized, and acting as optics for the empirical analysis.The main deductions of this thesis reveal that the FOST training environment especially focuses on Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), Quality Control (QC) and Divison of Responsibility (DOR), rather than decentralized initiative. Thus providing results which are contradictory to the vision of the leadership philosophy itself, implying that Norwegian officer´s and operators are being trained as "automated robots” rather than individuals with the capability to think outside the box, use initiative and creativity, when the opportunity presents itself.