Now I have completed the first 8 years of my survey into Norwegian management and can only conclude that I hope it is misrepresentative!

How to summarise ? Well a substantial proportion of middle and higher managers show the uncharming traits as follows: Arrogance, under communication, discrimination, croney-ism and being coated in a good lick of Teflon: nothing sticks.

Again I find myself the victim of the "gutter klubb" and to some extent it is understandable. Also someone my own level is lurking to take away my ambitions. i appreciate that people are used to much longer periods at one employer, but I do not like when my performance is completely stamped upon by someone coming in from another place and reducing my responsibility and therefore future, to about 70% of what it was last week. If that in terms of future.

It seems the BI oslo is not a glass ceiling it is a bloody reinforced concrete, brand stamped boundary to foreigners getting promoted in Norway. You can suffer small companies and get on faster with lower pay and longer hours than in a large company, but you will not be able to do the reverse.

It comes down for me personnally not only to the whole BI /NHH thing but also the futher means in which confidence is built between norwegian males. There is all the false modesty and under communication to deal with. Then there is the obtuseness- playing smarty pants devils advocate all the time. Further there is then the language "barrier" which works in kind of reverse: if you can speak very good norwegian it works against you: you move from that "welcomed guest" I wrote about earlier to that "interloping invader" which so nearly is what "innvandere" (immigrant) inholds for many Norwegians: Xenophobia and the clanish way they stick to the Oilberg and it's rather dull traditions.

Cast in my own personal foibles of some neurosis, passive-agrression, up-and down moods, up and down confidence, risk taking initiatives and then the whole big big question mark lies over me as a person DESPITE any actual measureable performance.

There is a fundamental lack of trust in immigrant labour here and also a bad attitude that is is immigrants who are always expendable. I get paranoid about it being my own foibles but so often I hear that this is the case or that an immigrant must totally over perform and cover two norwegian's jobs ( not that hard if you have either worked in London or for an american multinational).

So there sit the "fløtepuser" the cream fed cats with their mamma and pappa perm and their 500 thousand krone a year, tax deducted loan on an Audi and detached house with big capital gains. Lazy sods, they are positively rewarded for having their head above water many of them " permierte" they say: however I also have many hard working colleagues and very competent ones: they just by in large don't want to include me much.

My head is just underwater all the time, bobbing there in the belief I will one day breath the air of the norwegian lifestyle I deserve already given my effort and input! It doesnt take much, but the very flat wage structure for those not premierte means I could creep up quite slowly in reality.

This time I have anyway slipped through the perment employment net which so often is used to screen out immigrants : from temp bureau to contract to not making your six months to permanency. Instead they are conspiring a little to either make it constructive dismissal if they dissolve the tight area I am responsible for, or just by patronising me by reducing my responsibility they hope I will get the message