Ingi Rúnar Eðvarðsson

Hagnýting menntunar meðal háskólamenntaðs starfsfólks einkarekinna fyrirtækja og opinberra stofnana

The aim of the article is to examine whether there is a difference in the utilization of education among university educated employees in private companies on the one hand and public institutions on the other. The target population of the research was based on a random sample drawn from the National Population Register by the National Survey of the Social Science Research Institute of the University of Iceland from 9 March to 9 April 2016. The survey included 2,001 individuals, aged 18 or above, from all over the country. A total of 1,210 persons responded to the survey. This research only involved those participants in the sample who had completed a university education and were salaried employees in Iceland. After data cleansing, 374 participants remained, 178 males and 196 females. The initial results of the research indicated that 20.3% of participants were over-educated for their jobs. The majority of females work in public companies, while the majority of males work in private companies. Individuals with under-education are most likely to be found within public companies, at the same time as over-educated individuals are most likely to be found in private companies (the difference lies in the under- and over-education of females). Those working in public companies come primarily from educational and health sicences, while engineers and natural sicentists work primarily at private companies. Incomes are higher in private companies.

Strategy in Icelandic organizations

The objective of this article is to present the results of a survey conducted in 2007 on strategic management in Icelandic organizations. The survey wass ent by e-mail to organizations with five or more employees. Answers from 222 top managers of companies and institutions (46% response rate) were received. The distinctiveness of the survey is that it targets organizations of all sizes, both small and medium sized as well asthe big companies and organizations. The main results of the survey are as follows: Most of the top managers answering the survey believe that the vision for their operations is very clear. In 57% of the companies a formal crafting of strategy is conducted,showing variation for both size of the companies and the education of the managers; formal strategy is more likely to be in place in the bigger companies and in companies and institutions run by university educated managers. For around 70% of the companies and institutions, crafting and implementing strategy is either an ongoing process or it was in progress at the time the survey was conducted. Board members and top-managers are most likely to partake in crafting the strategy for the companies. In 19.3% of companies and institutionsthe performance of the organization´sstrategy is not measured at all, but in 41.2% of them the performance is measured by both quantitative and qualitative measurements. Most of the companies apply performance measuresfor measuring both employee and shareholdersatisfaction.