Nordic Academy of Management 2022

The Trust in mentoring in the pre-career context of the business students

Sari-Johanna Karhapää, Mirjami Ikonen — Thu, 30 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0200

This paper examines how trust is perceived from the mentor’s perspective in mentoring relationship. Mentoring being an interactive relationship in which experienced individual (mentor) shares one’s knowledge and wisdom with less experienced and usually younger actor, protégé, (Noe, 1988; D’Abate & Eddy, 2008) is studied in the pre-career context of the business students applying qualitative methods and a process view. Mentoring process includes four stages, which are initiation, cultivation, separation, and redefinition (Kram, 1983; Chao, 1998). Mutual trust is the basis of cooperation in mentoring relationships (Lewicki & Bunker 1996; Wilson & Patent, 2011). Trust in the other individual means ‘to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behavior of another and a willingness to be vulnerable’ (Rousseau et al., 1998; Mayer et al., 1995). Vulnerability appears in a form of not being able to monitor or control the actions of the other party in the relationship (Mayer et al., 1995). Here, trust in mentoring is explored based on the dimensions of trustworthiness being competence, integrity, and benevolence (Mayer et al., 1995). Trust initiates and develops based on a cognitive evaluation of another individual’s (trustee’s) trustworthiness. Ability is one of the three factors of trustworthiness presented by Mayer et al (1995). Ability consists of skills, competences, and characteristics of an individual. Integrity being the most essential to trust in the early stages of a relationship includes features of the trustee such as reliability, fairness, justice, and consistency, which the trustor considers acceptable (Mayer et al., 1995; Fulmer & Gelfand, 2012). Judgements of ability and integrity form quite quickly during the relationship. Benevolence includes the notion that the trustee wishes to do good for the trustor, rather than having an opportunist motive, and has a degree of attachment to the trustor (Schoorman et al., 2007). The impact of benevolence in trust increases with interaction over time as the relationship develops (Mayer et al., 1995). The bonding of benevolence takes more time. The empirical data consists of ten mentors’ interviews. The study follows qualitative approach, and the data is analyzed by thematic analysis. Mentoring process followed formal business students’ mentor programs. Nine of the mentors were operating in Finland (Moorrees, 2019) and one mentor in Denmark. The mentoring focused on the counseling of business students for transition to the labor market. Based on the preliminary findings, mentor’s ability originates from their education, experiences in business and private life. Also, the mentoring program offers knowledge and guidance. Ability to communicate is essential especially related to themes such as the search of job, and characteristics of work life. These themes are highlighted in the pre-career context of the business students because the transition to the labor market were in the focus in mentoring. Themes in relation to benevolence were emphasized. Benevolence was revealed in themes concerning support and encouragement of the protégé. Dimensions of trustworthiness in relation to mentoring in the precareer context of the business students will be discussed in more details in the full paper.

Learning user innovation in the “new normal”

Mona Enell-Nilsson, Minna-Maarit Jaskari — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

In the heart of higher education is the development of relevant competencies for the students.
However, if the competence development is difficult in today’s VUCA world, the Covid-19
challenged it even more. It forced to change the traditional classroom teaching in online
teaching at once. In this paper, we analyse how the perception of competence development
differs in an online setting compared to an earlier face-to-face mode of teaching. Our data
consists of five years of student feedback from a user innovation course. Surprisingly we find
no statistical differences over the year, not even when moving online. We discuss the possible
reasons behind our results.

A Dialectic Method for Reducing Knowledge Overconfidence in Students

Kristian Sund, Pernille Ryden — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

If one of the raison d’êtres of higher education is to impart knowledge and build confidence in that knowledge, we argue that helping students calibrate their own knowledge should be considered a central task of educators. We test a method of dialectical bootstrapping, to explore whether educators can teach students simple techniques to reduce knowledge overconfidence and more accurately assess what they know. We argue that business schools could actually be incubators of knowledge overconfidence, unless students are equipped with methods of critical
thinking.

Experts mentoring university students. Purely an act of benevolence?

Jenni Kantola — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Mentoring has proved to be an effective supporting practice for students in higher education in terms of building networks, guiding their career aspirations, and building a stronger professional identity. However, we lack a deep understanding of what attracts experienced experts to invest time and energy into guiding students. The latest studies suggest that motives to mentor are strongly prosocial. Here, we apply the concept of benevolence that refers to the individuals´ need to sense of having a good impact on others’ lives. We interviewed ten mentors and recognized that mentors interpret their impact on students by reading signs of gratitude, trust, companionship, and mismatch. The concept of benevolence provides a new perspective on mentors’ motives by focusing on the benefits mentors’ experience and sense. Benevolent acts should not be considered solely from the perspective of benefiting the recipient but also are intended to provide something to the giver.

Keywords: mentoring, mentor, motive, benevolence, self-determination theory (SDT)

The future of learning sustainability in business

Olga Dziubaniuk, Maria Ivanova-Gongne, Monica Nyholm — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Technology has already become an inevitable part of the learning process at the higher education institutions (HEI). However, the recent COVID-19 pandemic situation has increased the utilization of digital technologies even more, by making teachers to switch to the online or hybrid modes of teaching, but at the same time facilitating students` learning. At the same time pedagogic developments in international business studies (Kardes, 2020; Aggarwal & Wu, 2020) take place. Especially courses dedicated to sustainable development in business (Bagur-Femenías et al., 2020; Montiel et al., 2020) are introduced. The integration of digital technologies into the learning process may require a revision of the conventional learning theories applied to the curriculum design. Student learning of sustainability in business is frequently grounded on theories of e.g., constructivism (Dziubaniuk & Nyholm, 2020), social learning theory (Keen et al., 2005), transformative learning (Seatter & Ceulemans, 2017) or other pedagogical frameworks such as experiential learning (Anastasiadis, 2020), active learning (Claro & Esteves, 2021), design thinking (Manna et al., 2022), etc. However, the digital age demands new approaches to the facilitation of students` learning, including new ontological and epistemological approaches to the organizing of the learning environment with the help of communication technologies. Connectivism learning theory can be a suitable alternative in cases where students develop knowledge by means of forming social networks with the help of technology (Siemens, 2004). Connectivism is a theoretical framework for understanding learning where the learners “make connections between ideas located throughout their personal learning networks, which are composed of numerous information resources and technologies” (Dunaway, 2011, p.676). According to connectivism, knowledge is developed when a learner makes mental connections between concepts, ideas, opinions that can be accessed via Internet-enabling technologies, which makes information technologies an inevitable part of learning facilitation (ibid). The key principles of connectivism stress that learning is based on: diversity of opinions; connected sources of information; evaluation of the most relevant information and ability to find connections between opinions, facts, ideas, etc.; technologies enable learning; maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continuous learning; up-to-date knowledge and its critical assessment should encourage learners to demand more information; and decision-making is a learning process in itself (Siemens, 2007; Dunaway, 2011; Goldie 2016).

The utilization of digital technologies for organization of the learning environment have become “a new normal” in universities, many online teaching facilitation methods may still be used in the future to bridge online and offline learning. Additionally, students frequently access the most relevant and current information via Internet, which makes them connected to technologies in their leaning process. Therefore, new approaches to learning facilitation also concern courses in international business with a focus on sustainable development, and the theory of connectivism can be useful for the design of the learning environment. A limited number of articles address connectivism in relation to learning sustainability in business studies (Karlusch et al., 2018; Abad-Segura, et al., 2020). Thus, this study aims to explore how the principles of connectivism can be implemented for designing a digital learning environment for courses in sustainable business in the context of HEI. This study contributes to the literature on student learning, by considering connectivity theory for learning sustainable business in an online environment, which has so far been rarely addressed by pedagogy scholars.

This qualitative research is based on empirical data collected in form of open-ended written course feedback by students attending the course Sustainable business at Åbo Akademi University (Finland) during 2020 and 2021. During these years, the course had to switch its pedagogic mode from in-class to online teaching. All interaction and knowledge transfer between the course instructors and the students occurred via Zoom, the course web page, and emails. The course reading package was available from the university e-library. Individual learning also took place via Internet searches for the most relevant and current information. At the end of the course, students had to provide feedback and answer the following questions: 1. What are the most important things that you have learned and how do they link to your previous knowledge and experience? 2. How can you benefit in the future from the things you have learned during the course? 3. When and how can you put into practice the things you have learned? The amount of collected course evaluation feedback is 71 (year 2020) and 95 (year 2021), which makes 166 feedbacks in total. These textual artefacts were analyzed via content analysis (Duriau et al., 2007) with the help of NVivo textual data analysis tool, which aids in arranging and analyzing large amount of textual data (Dean & Sharp, 2006).

The research results indicate that connectivism theory can be a useful framework in developing online or hybrid learning environment in a HEI. Particularly, this concerns courses dedicated to sustainability in business, where it is important to use up-to-date information such as business cases, governmental regulations, and international policies. According to the feedback analysis, students have developed their knowledge and understanding of sustainable development by connecting concepts such as the formal meaning of sustainability (as stated in Brundtland report, 1987), sustainability initiatives by the companies and their effects on stakeholders, circular economy models, corporate social responsibility and reporting, misleading marketing, ethical business conduct, etc. Students also connected the learned concepts about sustainability to their major studies, their future careers, and their daily life.

Beside online interactive lectures and reading of assigned literature, learning also took place via group work and writing individual assignments. Group work, as a form of connective learning, has supported the students' learning from each other. Additionally, working in groups virtually also facilitated informal interaction between the students, which enhanced their learning especially if the group consisted of international students representing different cultures and, therefore, different insights into sustainability in their countries. The individual work during the course was based on writing assignments that required online information searches and analysis. These assignments demanded critical thinking in order to recognize relevant knowledge in the sea of available information on the Internet. Critical thinking, as one of the key principles of connectivism, is also necessary in order to analyze misleading marketing approaches (or greenwashing) and unethical behavior of international companies. In addition to knowledge of sustainability in business, students obtained skills of making video presentations, pitching business ideas online, organizing virtual communication for their project work, and making online presentations. According to the students' course feedback, they were also motivated to continue learning by watching recommended documentaries about e.g., sustainable textile recycling, or listening to podcasts on sustainable development topics.

Where is my community?

Helena Kantanen, Leena Penttinen, Päivi Rosenius, Katri Ruth — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

This study examines relatedness, self-efficacy, autonomy and career orientation of the student
cohort of 2020 whose first semester consisted mainly of online teaching because of the
restrictions caused by the COVID-19. Comparisons are made to our previous study of the 2018
cohort when we found that the key factors of motivation and engagement were a supportive
study community and meetings with alumni. These elements were absent in 2020 but these
deficits did not endanger students’ motivation. Both groups had challenges with academic study
skills. Therefore, attention must be paid to the academic study skills of first-year students, and
to the needs of relatedness of the ‘COVID cohort’.

Organizing in crisis - a study on what went on within higher education during the covid pandemic.

Sara Lidholm, Christina Mauléon, Rolf Solli, Tomas Müllern — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

When the corona pandemic began in early 2020, universities as well as other sectors in society, were profoundly affected. Higher education was expected to continue to work as usual, except that everything should be conducted digitally. In this crisis, teachers received a “carte blanche” from management to handle the situation in any way they found appropriate (Hjelm-Lidholm, Mauléon, Müllern & Solli, 2021). However, the support functions at the universities (student support, administrators, university management) did not show the same ability to adapt to the crisis. Our study (Hjelm-Lidholm, Mauléon, Müllern & Solli, 2021) shows that although teachers acknowledged how they were the ones who had the know-how of handling the dramatic shift from on-site teaching to off-site teaching they felt they weren’t provided with appropriate support in order to being able to conduct this transformation in an efficient way (Hjelm-Lidholm, Mauléon, Müllern & Solli, 2021). The lack of appropriate support from management and other support functions made the dramatic shift in many cases challenging for the teachers. One teacher described it as laying out the rails whilst the train was moving (Hjelm-Lidholm, Mauléon, Müllern & Solli, 2021). In these occasions teachers turned to their closest colleagues to find support in the often chaotic situation. What is interesting here is how we found that the strong bureaucratic governance of universities (as well as other public institutions) were either not prepared or appropriate for handling the crisis. The bureaucratic governance system, we found, rather obstructed than supported the crisis driven digital transformation of teaching from on-site to off-site.

This paper allows for broader reflections on how professionals interact with managers in times of crisis, but also on the role of digitalization in the continued change and development of universities. It is our hope that this paper will spark a debate on the role of university teachers (professionals) in the strategic management of universities, considering the clear trend towards increased centralization and bureaucratization.

Ambiguous organizational change

Magnus Frostenson, Mats Persson, Sol Skinnarland — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Public organizations are replete with projects of different kinds. Projects within public organizations may be used instrumentally as part of an agenda of change. However, such an agenda is not necessarily clear from the outset. Ambiguous approaches to change relates to both lacking clarity about the desired outcomes and the nature of the means through which outcomes should be generated. That goes for the original ideas of the instrumental use of the projects and the more specific contents of the projects, which may be changed underway depending on circumstances. For that reason, it is necessary to understand the role of projects in organizational change, not only through looking at the projects as such, but also how they relate to each other and the overall idea of organizational change.

This conference contribution sheds light on and analyses a project context of a Norwegian administrative county, where projects over time became instrumental to changing the organization through ongoing project reformulation in terms of direction and contents. The purpose is to understand how organizational change is furthered by means of parallel project establishment and management.

Building on an ambition of flexible work and closeness to the inhabitants and to attract and retain key staff, the Norwegian county established a concept for distributed workplace organization by and through a system for digital interaction. A multi-faceted project focusing on new forms of working was initiated in late 2019. Through four pilot projects, new forms of work should be enabled on four different geographical locations. Thematically, the four pilot projects focused on different issues, as shown in table 1.

Table 1. Pilot projects within the county

Project	Focus	Principal geographical location
1	Co-creation centre for co-workers (activity-based workplaces)	Sarpsborg
2	Forms of work and management in open office solutions at a geographical distance	Oslo
3	Building facilities as tools for integration, interaction and identity	Drammen
4	Work in nodes, open common office solutions for flexible workplaces to be used by the county’s co-workers	Various

In one way or the other, all pilot projects concerned office and working solutions for co-workers. For all pilot projects, digital interaction was presupposed. Also, a new personalized portal was constructed. A new quality system was set up to bring about a common understanding of best practice, processes and potential deviations.

As the projects went on, in the midst of the corona pandemic, all of them changed either contents, directions or names. To understand this rather complicated context of (sub-)projects and how they developed, it is important to understand the agendas, backgrounds and dynamics of the different projects in relation to each other – and also the meta-agenda that was partly formed during the course of the projects.

As will be argued, contrary to the idea of rational organizational change with clear purposes and goals, organisational change is emergent and – and in this particular case to a high degree dependent on ‘windows of opportunity’ that emerge in a context marked by the corona pandemic. In this situation, projects play a role as proxies for new ways of working – in the sense that new ideas and practices were developed underway and realized as opportunities to change the organisation’s way of working.

The paper contributes both to the literature on organizational change and project management. It suggests that projects should preferably not be understood just as vehicles given their missions and specifications, but as ongoing constructed opportunities of change that are used by significant actors to promote certain ambitions underway. It also claims that projects should best be understood from a meta-context, where the borders between different projects are not sharp, but negotiable.

The implementation of digital technologies in courts and a mindset for change

charlotta kronblad, Johanna E. Pregmark — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Pharmacists’ collective phronesis during the Pandemicracy

Karin Berglund, Anna Wettermark — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

During spring 2020, as the Corona epidemic turned into a pandemic, we got access to follow a hospital pharmacy. In our ethnographic study we examined how pharmacists quickly had to re-organize by transferring wards pharmacies, re-organizing the hospital into different zones, and setting up designated Covid-19-wards. The work to prepare and tackle the pandemic situation that unfolded was synchronized among care professionals. There was a constant shortage of materials and drugs, and the pharmacists faced challenges they had not seen before. It was no longer possible to press a button and wait for market deliveries. Instead, pharmacists had to turn to proven knowledge and combine it with forgotten methods in a search for practical solutions by reviving tried and trusted pharmacy craftsmanship. Using the WHO recipe, they could secure the stock of hand sanitizer, searching for necessary components in the local community and in other parts of the hospital. By finding ways to tap sterile water from the water system in the dialysis department they could also secure access to the sterile water which was needed to moisten the lungs of ventilator patients. When they were in danger of running out of the anesthetic Propofol, they initiated a collaboration with nurses and doctors in the Intensive Care Units to invent solutions to the life-threatening shortage of anesthetics on the market.

In the revival of the pharmacists’ knowledge in securing stocks of drugs and medical products, there was a sense of excitement combined with determination to succeed and the satisfaction of succeeding. This everyday creativity we view as an expression of professional judgment, which has been suppressed in an economically over-rationalized organizational world. The Swedish philosopher Jonna Bornemark (2018) has pointed out how staff in interpersonal professions (such as care and education) feel that they no longer perform the work they have been trained for but have been transformed into ‘hyperrational’ slightly remote-controlled cogs in the wheel, where creativity is taken hostage by governing documents and chained by financial concepts such as ‘business goals, results, efficiency, governance and customers.’

In the midst of the pandemic we point in this paper to how the pharmacists and their health care professional colleagues were able to let go of the economical rational logic and give more space to the professionals’ experience, judgment, empathy, ethics and creativity, allowing these qualities to be a guide to coping with the problems that unfolded. This is interpreted as a collective phronesis (Bornemark, 2020); an organizational orchestration of professional judgment consisting of handling embodied knowledge, asking ethical questions, and an ability to act despite the paradoxes and dilemmas that unfold (Bornemark, 2020).

The pharmacist’s strong sense of professional judgment, we view as based on awareness of what the consequences of their potential non-action might be, and an ability to focus on their organization’s main mission (Bornemark, 2018). Relating to professional judgment an ability to act under uncertainty emerged. The hospital pharmacists balanced risks, and when necessary circumscribed rules and norms and to develop solutions that addressed concrete problems, often in collaboration with others (Weick et al., 2005; Maitlis & Sonenschein, 2010). Their professional judgment, combined with practical agency, enabled pharmacists, as a marginalized profession, to play an increasingly important role in an organization in crisis.

In this paper we will, based on observations and interviews conducted with hospital pharmacists from May 2020 – Dec 2020), analyse collective phronesis as a concept that can help us understand the role of organizational orchestration of judgement, and a collectively enacted entrepreneurial behavior. This behavior seemed to be triggered by the pandemicracy, an extreme situation that necessitated a modification of rules.

Lock, stock and book boxes

Signe Jernberg, Sabina Dellstig — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Bringing the unsolvable together – wicked tendencies and coordinating aspects of collaborations in public health

Helen Stockhult, Thomas Andersson, Christian Gadolin — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Pandemicracy and organizing in unsettled times

Josef Pallas, Barbara Czarniawska, Elena Raviola — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

In modern times, the public sector has not been affected by events that have had the power to broadly challenge - and in many respects also reform - the capacity, functionality and sustainability of professions that support key parts of public activities thar form the core of our welfare infrastructures. Covid-19 pandemic has changed that. It has come to contest the resilience and endurance of large parts of the public sector far beyond the public health. Professions and employees within areas such as social services, family counseling, therapy, culture, education, migration, research, and many other part of provision of public services are experiencing dramatic and previously almost unthinkable challenges (Mazzucato & Kattel 2020). The media reporting and now also the first research reports (Banks et al. 2020; Lemieux et al. 2020; López-Cabarcos et al. 2020) testify of major adjustments and challenges that governments, public sector organizations and welfare occupations/professions have undergone to deal with the effects and consequences of the pandemic.

Based on existing and emerging testimonies, we can already now conclude that the every-day working conditions of thousands of public sector employees have been challenged and in some cases even been thoroughly redefined. Expectations and demands on continuous and expanded provision of public services and goods have made the tasks and responsibilities of many of the public sector organizations and their employees to grow both in relative and absolute terms. Notions of emotional and at times desperate responses to the increased intensity, uncertainty, unpredictability as well as emotional stress, discomfort and even life-threatening working conditions are not uncommon in stories from different societal sectors (Lee 2021).

However, it should be said that most of testimonies and stories that has been gathered in popular as well academic texts and studies focuses on work performed by so-called front-line professions and occupations – mainly nurses, physicians and other health care professionals within primary and elderly care. But what has happed to working conditions of occupations and professions that operate in other parts of the public sector. How has the capacity, functionality and perseverance of teachers, social workers, pre-school personnel, public sectors managers and administrators, immigration officers got affected when their work and their organizations encounter the pandemic related challenges such as social distancing, hygiene routines, source control (munskydd) and other measures taken to manage the COVID-19 crisis?

In this chapter we describe a phenomenon we refere to as "pandemicracy" – the governance efforts related to the pandemics, and public sector employees' reactions to it. Being inspired and motivated by the seemingly expanding vocabulary of working ethos of public sector organizations (that now seems to include words such as sacrifice, solidarity, dejection and determination) we have collected work stories from people working in various parts of the Swedish public sector. These stories describe daily work in times of turmoil in a country that has been internationally deemed to be an exception in the way the pandemics has been managed. Indeed, Sweden has decided not to introduce a general lockdown, even if many other measures have been taken. But in Sweden, like in all other countries, there are medical, societal and economic effects of the pandemic that have a protentional to set a hallmark for future organization and governance (of work of) public sectors organizations and their members.

Crossmodal Correspondences between Typefaces and Food Preferences Drive Congruent Choices but Not among Young Consumers

Tobias Otterbring, Kristian Rolschau, Elise F. Furrebøe, Ellen K. Nyhus — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Several studies suggest that consumers match stimuli across sensory modalities, with angular (vs. round) typefaces typically associated with sourness (vs. sweetness). Drawing on findings from the field of crossmodal correspondences, this study (N = 220) examined potential typeface effects in naturalistic settings and found that exposure to angular (vs. round) typeface increased (decreased) consumers’ preferences for sour (sweet) food but had no impact on their expectations or perceptions of these tastes. Moreover, while typeface did not have a direct effect on food choices, consumers exposed to angular (vs. round) typeface reported a greater relative preference for sour over sweet foods, resulting in sourer (vs. sweeter) food choices. However, the effects of typeface on preferences and food choices were moderated by consumers’ age, and only applied to older (vs. younger) consumers, with different taste preferences among older and younger consumers constituting a possible explanation for such age-contingent findings. Thus, exposure to angular (vs. round) typeface increased older consumers’ choice likelihood of sourer (vs. sweeter) food alternatives, with this effect being mediated by increased preferences for sour relative to sweet foods. Taken together, the current research reveals how, why, and when typefaces may be crossmodally linked to consumers’ preferences, purchase patterns, and choice behavior.

Virtual agent ignorance and its effects on perceived service quality

Magnus Söderlund — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Virtual agents (VAs) used for service encounters online are becoming increasingly common. The present study examines one aspect of conversations between VAs and humans, namely what happens when a VA openly discloses its knowledge gaps (by saying “I do not know”) versus when it makes attempt to conceal them (by never saying “I do not know”) in a setting in which it cannot answer user questions. A between-subjects experiment with a manipulated VA, and with perceived service quality as the main dependent variable, shows that never saying “I do not know” boosts perceived service quality.

Social Validation, Reciprocation, and Sustainable Orientation

Tobias Otterbring, Michał Folwarczny — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

We test whether social influence strategies generate more sustainable tourism practices. Study 1 manipulated printed messages in the changing rooms of a sporting goods store to investigate whether reciprocity and social validation messages resulted in fewer daily cleanups carried out by store employees compared to a control message. Study 2 exposed participants to different social validation messages or a control message and measured participants’ willingness to engage in sustainable tourism behaviors. Both reciprocity and social validation messages resulted in more sustainable practices than the control message (Study 1) and all social validation messages performed better than the control message in inducing sustainable tourism behaviors (Study 2). Our findings suggest that tourism managers can easily apply reciprocity or social validation messages to reduce the environmental footprint of tourists’ activities, while simultaneously reducing the operating costs of their own businesses.

Sustainability boundaries of actors in a supply chain: a longitudinal analysis of the Swedish mining sector

Emelie Havemo, Jakob Rehme — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Shareholders, society, and other stakeholders increasingly expect firms to extend their boundary to include sustainability effects in the supply chain and beyond. The purpose of this paper is to describe sustainability reporting boundaries among key actors in the Swedish mining sector over time to describe how boundary change supports sustainable supply chains. Our analysis of annual reports from 1990-2020 identified sustainability boundary extensions driven by collaboration on sustainability initiatives and increased supplier monitoring in all firms. However, the extensions were largely firm-centric; we therefore stress the importance of increasing supply chain-level reporting of boundaries to account for broader sustainability effects.

Beyond purchasing skills

Vojtech Klézl, Stephen Kelly, Klaas Stek — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

What are the desired personality traits of a buyer?
Over the past few years, there has been an increased academic interest in skills required by purchasing and supply chain (PSM) professionals (e.g., Bals et al., 2019). To provide another perspective to this debate, we analyzed ads for PSM positions. In the process, we noticed that the postings usually require the candidate to possess certain personality traits (74.7% of postings), which has been overlooked in the extant literature. Thus, we aim to assess what personality traits are required from PSM professionals, and how do these personality traits differ across the hierarchical levels.
In total, 432 PSM job postings in the Czech Republic were collected and examined based on the hierarchy (junior buyer, buyer, senior buyer and purchasing manager). On average, the job posting contained 8.97 codes (skills or traits) and 1.69 personal traits. The Big five personality traits model (Barrick & Mount, 1991) was used to split the traits in five groups – agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, extraversion, and openness to experience. We found that the conscientiousness was a dominant trait group for the PSM jobs, appearing in more than a half of the postings with skills such as independency, responsibility, compliance, and disk aversion. This is followed by openness to experience appearing almost in quarter of the postings (23.38 %), agreeableness (19.68 %), extraversion (17.59 %), and emotional stability (13.19 %). Using chi-square test, we also find that the postings for junior buyer (87.1 %) are more likely to feature a personal trait than the more senior position (72.3%), which led us to argue that personality traits are more important for the hiring company when hiring juniors, as the purchasing related skills can be learned on the job. However, the overall composition of personality traits within an ad is only marginally different across the different levels of seniority – only statistically significant difference is that conscientiousness is even more required from junior buyers.
In conclusion, we find a new, previously underexplored research opportunity in covering the personality traits required from PSM professionals. We also find the most commonly expected traits, as well as find significantly different requirements for junior and higher level professionals.

Governance dilemmas and academic freedom in contemporary universities

Ulla Eriksson-Zetterquist, Kerstin Sahlin — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Even if academic freedom is an often expressed ideal – in which independent knowledge formation and distribution assumes autonomy for institutions and scholars alike – contemporary changes of governance and organization of universities have led to a situation in which the autonomy of higher education and research is under dispute. In this paper we analyze a contemporary reform of Swedish Higher Education Institutions (“HEI”), a reform that was presented as part of a package of new forms of governing that should strengthen university autonomy and academic freedom. The analysis focuses on presentation of the reform in investigations commissioned by the government, the government proposition, and the reception of the suggested changes in blog comments made by Vice-Chancellors. It shows that academic scholars, when governed according to either enterprise or bureaucracy ideals (or both), may not necessarily suffer from coercion, as long as they are allowed to study, teach and speak about what they want within their discipline. However, as these governing ideals assume organizations to be top-controlled and directed towards a common goal, they still hamper the opportunities for free research. Thus, the declared freedom to a great extent appear ritualistic. We claim that contemporary de-collegialization and managerialization of individual universities and research, risks to challenge and possibly undermine academic freedom and academic self-control.

Challenges of Academic Leadership

Lars Engwall — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

This will be a concluding session of Section 6.1 “Academic Leadership”. In this session, Lars Engwall will have a conversation with two Vice-Chancellors of Örebro University regarding their experiences. The panellist will be Professor Jens Schollin, Vice-Chancellor between 2008 and 2016 after having been Deputy Vice-Chancellor between 2003 and 2008. He is Senior Professor of Paediatrics and has experience as clinic manager, area manager and research manager at Örebro University Hospital. Jens Schollin was responsible for the work of obtaining medical education to Örebro University.
Professor Johan Schnürer, Jens Schollin’s successor as Vice-Chancellor, since July 1, 2016. He became professor of microbiology at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala in 2000 and was head of the Department of Microbiology between 1996 and 2010. Before coming to Örebro, he was Vice President for Collaboration at SLU between 2010 and 2016.

A Vice-Chancellor in Action

Lars Engwall — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The paper focuses on the working conditions of top university leaders. In this way, it stands on earlier research on executive behaviour from Sune Carlson in the 1950s to the present time. It is also a continuation of an earlier study where thirty Swedish Vice-Chancellors responded in structured interviews. Empirically the paper presents a close-up analysis of a diary covering six months in 1990 of Stig Strömholm, Vice-Chancellor of Uppsala University, between 1989 and 1997. The results are in line with Sune Carlson’s work as well as the previous survey study. In the latter, Vice-Chancellors expressed preferences for dealing with long-term strategic issues. However, when asked about their daily work, it turned out that short-term issues dominated their days. In the same way, various kinds of social contacts dominated Strömholm’s working days. The most common words in the diary were thus Visit, Meeting, Reception, Lunch, Conference and Gathering. In two thirds of the cases, the counterpart was external, while about half of the meetings took place within the university. In conclusion, the paper points to the role of university leaders as boundary spanning liaison actors as well as internal trouble-shooters.

Higher education as learning organizations

Cecilia Bjursell, Anette Johansson, Ingela Bergmo-Prvulovic, Annika Engström — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The paper presents a study of Swedish academic leaders’ perception of their work situation. The aim was to explore the conditions which can enable creativity and learning in higher education institutions. The KEYS survey was sent to a sample of 64 university managers from social sciences, humanities and technical departments at Swedish universities. The response rate was 39 % (n25). The result indicates that education managers perceive a lack of feedback from upper management, but at the same time, they claim to have a high level of trust from upper management.

Managing accreditation in Business Schools

Sauli Sohlo — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Business schools increasingly engage in improving their legitimacy, status and reputation in the international markets, through pursuing international accreditations. While there is significant body of knowledge on these processes, the point of views of the accreditation organizations themselves has largely been neglected. This study aims to shed light on what the executives and professionals of AACSB International see as being the key challenges and success factors, unraveling at business schools that aim to earn and maintain the sought-after AACSB accreditation recognition. The findings identify numerous factors during the four phases and on the five levels of each phase that determine whether a school is successful in its accreditation endeavor.

Governance, insecurity and changing university administration

Signe Jernberg, Linda Wedlin — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Combining these insights, we aim to further nuance the view of recent changes in university administration, and where it comes from. In this paper we seek to explore the changing character and form of university administration in relation to these developments, by relating the changes to different functions it serves in mediating pressures both from inside and outside the university. We depart from an institutional model to understand the changing administration from the perspective of both increasing governance and management needs, and from the demands to satisfy interests coming in large part from outside the organization. Our research question is as follows: - How is administration changing in different higher education organizations as responses to changing institutional pressure and how does it vary over time?
We explore this empirically with data from the Swedish university field in the years between 2005 and 2019. We track quantitatively the extent of changes to different university administration units and tasks, the timing of these changes, and its content/focus. We also explore these in more detail in four specific organizational settings, two old and large universities and two university colleges.

Academic Faculty Dean’s Lived Experience of the Middle Manager’s Job; Working Context, Job Demands and Social Support

Inga Jona Jonsdottir — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The aim of the study presented here is to shed light on academic faculty deans’ lived experience of their work context, psychological job demands and the social support they receive at work. The research design is a case study, drawing on a phenomenological approach. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews with deans of twelve faculties (six men and six women) were conducted. The findings reveal shared experiences of a complex and paradoxical work context. The perceived experiences are lack of a decision-making authority, a vague and unhelpful job description, psychological job demands related to personnel issues and interpersonal conflicts.
The schools’ human resource managers are the main source of advice and help in their role of workplace social support.

Reviewing the challenges of business school leadership

Louise Kringelum, Jens Holmgren — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Much existing research takes the point of departure on contextualized challenges of business schools in a specific geographical area or in tight connection to pedagogical development of curriculum changes. In contrast, the aim of this paper is to identify the potentials and challenges of managing and leading business schools through a review of existing research. Based on this, future research directions will be proposed.
This is a working paper under development.

Wicked problems, leadership and clumsy solutions in higher education

Helen Stockhult — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Is academic leadership really independent from academic management?

Peter Österberg — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The Myth of the Global Market for Business Education

Lars Engwall, Linda Wedlin — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Aspirational talk or hypocrisy?

Ryan Christopher Armstrong — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Peter Senge defined “creative tension” as the distance between a vision of the future and the current reality. But when does this gap drive organizational learning, and when does it result in anti-learning behaviors? This paper argues that deriving benefits from creative tension requires tending to other types of organizational incongruence, namely emotional and word-action incongruences. The paper draws from the founding of a mental health clinic in which all participant aspired to a set of written dialectical values. The paper offers the concept of aspirational labor as a new factor in explaining anti-learning behaviors alongside emotional labor for the individual, and group support and non-judgmental in differentiating hypocrisy from aspirational talk.

Towards a new type of harassment at work ?

SEBASTIEN POINT, Gaëlle Deharo — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Coopetition in Rural Micro-Enterprises in Times of Crisis

Kristin Sabel, Cecilia Dalborg, Yvonne von Friedrichs — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The purpose of this paper is to examine how small rural artisan food enterprises manage to create and capture value in times of crisis, and which effect entrepreneurial collaboration has on robustness. The base is a case study of the REKO-ring phenomenon in Sweden. The results shows that cooperation through REKO-rings has increased during the pandemic and that it has offered an extended source of income for the smallest entrepreneurs. One important aspect, regarding REKO, is that it encourages local food production and fosters local value creating. The collaboration has generated increased knowledge exchange and networking activities between the participating entrepreneurs.

A Data Driven Assessment of Cognitive Fit in Recruitment

Gayanga B. Herath, Davide Secchi — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The recruitment and selection (R&S) process is generally considered a highly vital component of an organization (Searle, 2009). This is due to the fact that successful R&S has been closely linked to positive organizational outcomes in the literature (Billsberry, 2007). One such stream of literature that has received some attention over the last decades is person-environment fit, also known as P-E fit (Edwards, 2008; Werbel, and Gilliland, 1999; Kristof, 1996). Essentially, P-E fit carries the notion that an individual should match aspects of the organizational environment in which they work or are to become part of (Edwards, 2008). Accordingly, since its conception, a number of fit measures have been introduced ranging from person-supervisor/person fit, person-job fit, person-organization fit, person-group fit, and others (Kristof-brown, Zimmerman, and Johnson, 2005).

Over the years a number of criticism have surfaced. For example, such measures have been found to (a) be too static in nature (Boon & Biron 2016), (b) be unable to effectively contribute and explain employee performance (Edwards, 2008; 1991), and (c) inadequate when used in combination with other fit measures (Edwards and Billsberry, 2010). In general, such measures assume that it is sufficient to match various units (e.g., beliefs, values, job requirements) between two parties in order to find the adequate fit of an individual to a physical or social organizational element. However, this notion does not hold well when the dynamic aspects of change are considered (Suddaby & Foster,2017).

In this study, we argue that a cognitive approach could perhaps help with the concerns above. This is because cognition may serve as a way to identify prospective workers who can quickly grasp team dynamics and easily integrate into a work environment. When cognition in organizations is defined from a distributed cognitive viewpoint (Cowley and Vallee-Tourangeau, 2017; Secchi & Cowley, 2020) in combination with the behavioural disposition of docility (Secchi & Bardone 2009), then it is relatively easier to highlight the social interactive dynamics that identify ‘fit’. The term docility here refers to “the tendency to depend on suggestions, perceptions, comments, and to gather information from other individuals on the one hand, and to ‘provide’ information on the other” (Secchi & Bardone 2009, p.8). The concept of distributed cognition carries the notion that cognition is distributed from within to one’s surrounding environment (Cowley and Vallee-Tourangeau, 2017). The idea here is that individuals collaborate and share information with their surrounding environment (team members, for example) hence they ‘socially organize’. Secchi and Cowley (2020, p.34) define this phenomenon, called social organizing, as the process where “people act as parts of organizations and connect ‘intelligence’ with various social dynamics”.

In order to explore the utility of using such an approach, in this study we propose a system to capture and identify an individual’s social organizing (i.e. by utilizing docility as a measurement), thus used as the premise to ‘fit’ an individual into an environment. Moreover, we focus our attention on teams as they are fundamental working units for most organizations. In doing so we intend to conduct a two-way survey where we target (a) the current members of an existing team and (b) the job candidates that are applying to be hired by those teams. Once we have collected the required data from both parties, we then intend to use the collected data to calibrate an existing organization-cognition fit (O-C fit) agent-based simulation model (developed by Herath & Secchi, 2021). The work by Herath and Secchi (2021) in combination with the O-C fit model is considered as a theoretical prelude to this study and therefore follows a similar cognitive foundation.

The goal of the current study is to explore the utility of such a cognitive approach by using empirical data, in an attempt to investigate if such an approach would yield in better employee performance. This would lead to something called ‘verification’ of the agent-based model (Secchi, 2021). Ultimately, we seek to provide valuable implications to HRM practitioners and contribute to the understanding of cognitive fit in the organizational fit literature and beyond.

Towards a zero-vision for accidents in the forest industry: Co-creative and proactive behaviors for sustainable safety processes

Pia Ulvenblad, Henrik Barth, Anders Billström, Per-Ola Ulvenblad — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The role of ambassadors in collaborative innovation projects: from resistance to trust

Daniela Argento, Eva Lövstål — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

This paper is particularly concerned with the role that health professionals can have in collaborative innovation projects in the public sector. More specifically, the aim of this paper is to explore how health professionals can become the ‘game changers’ of a collaborative innovation project that involves mutually dependent stakeholders. The paper draws upon public management literature combined with empirical observations from the DIDEC (Digital Innovation for Dementia Care) project aimed at developing innovative products and services in the field of dementia care. Based on the findings achieved through interventionist research conducted over a period of three and half years, this paper shows how collaborative innovation projects, that are managed well and producing good results, can overcome the resistance displayed by health professionals. In a time of projectification, the paper contributes with new knowledge about how the conflicts arising in collaborative innovation projects in the public sector can be dealt with by empowering personnel in the role as ambassadors. Findings from the study show how project management practices enabled health professionals to act as an
important link between the personnel and the project leaders as well as other stakeholders involved in the innovation project.

Digitalization in Co-Creation of Public Service Innovations - Perceived positive and negative experiences on technology utilization among ten European countries

Heli Aramo-Immonen, Maarit Laiho, Hanna Kirjavainen, Ritva Salminiitty — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

In this paper we explore the role of digital tools in co-creation of public services. Our aim is to
explore the positive and negative experiences on technology utilization in various co-creation
processes. To meet the objective of our research, we conducted a multiple case study in ten
European countries using data collected in the CoSIE H2020 project. Our findings show that
digital tools such as social media (SM) have various pros and cons and different roles depending
on the context of co-creation.

The Meaning and manifestation of the dual nature in co-operatives

Anu Puusa, Sonja Novkovic — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Based on their history and the ideology that motivated the creation of co-operatives in the 19th century (ICA 1995), co-operatives have unique characteristics which separate them from other business forms. Co-operatives are known to be complex organizations with a variety of goals, some of which may be in conflict with one another (Draheim 1952; Skurnik 2002; Mooney & Gray 2002; Puusa et al. 2013).

Typically, the “cooperative difference” is captured in their dual nature, which creates the basis for the unique co-operative identity. A co-operative is a business enterprise and a social group of members and as such has both a business and member community roles. This specific character, duality has been identified and conceptualized in co-operative literature in the 1950’s (Draheim 1952). However, a comprehensive and well-established theoretical framework on the subject is still missing.

In this paper we argue that co-operative duality is a multifaceted concept, which requires more in-depth examination. Although a basic division into business and member community roles is identified in prior research, the in-depth content and meaning of the roles, and in particular their manifestation in practice, are still largely unclear and little researched topic area.

In this paper we provide a more nuanced interpretation of dual features of co-operative enterprises, encompassed in the dichotomy between: patronage and ownership (Nilsson 2001; Mazzarol et al. 2011); social and financial aims (Novkovic 2012); collective and individualistic interests (Puusa 2013); collective and private ownership (Crowell & Novkovic 2019); and their diverse purpose. The paper contributes to a deeper understanding of co-operative complexity, and their strategic advantage.

Co-operatives, Management Agency, Democracy and Failure: why governance should not be seen as the issue

Peter Davis — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Co-operative values or common values?

Sanna Saastamoinen, Anu Puusa — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The co-operatives are organizations that are based on a strong value base (ICA 2021). Although a key unique characteristic of co-operatives creates a strong value base, there has been almost no interest towards the topic in scientific debate in recent years. Most studies have been conducted in the 1990s and early 2000s (see Oczkowski et al., 2013). There is still a need for research regarding the relevance of the values and principles updated by ICA (1995) to modern co-operatives, as the conditions have changed significantly in this millennium.

The co-operative values per se are quite broad and the co-operative principles can be considered as more concrete standards for their practical implementation (Goel 2013). In addition, the value base of co-operatives´ is determined by internal factors (e.g., attitudes / perceptions of values of management, administration, and employees) and external factors such as laws, competition, and industry rules (Oczkowski et al., 2013; Jussila, 2013; Rabong & Radakovics, 2020). Nevertheless, scholars seem to agree that the co-operatives’ survival, competitiveness, and success in business are based on the application of co-operative values and principles (e.g., Novkovic, 2006; Spear 2000; Rabong & Radakovics, 2020).

While the importance of values and principles for co-ops is critical, their use in day-to-day business is less obvious and the gap between values and management is sometimes wide (Novkovic 2006). For example, it has found that only a few co-operatives adhere to all principles (Birchall 2014, Mazzarol et al., 2011) and most typically adhere to limited return to equity, democratic voting rights, and the need to provide benefits to members while seeking to provide benefits to the co-operative (Mazzarol et al., 2011). Thus, it has also been suggested that poor adherence to values and principles calls the importance and legitimacy of the co-operative into question (Cote 2000), causes demutualization (MacPherson 2012), and can lead to the deterioration of the co-operative and loss of identity (Somerville 2007).

Co-operatives are based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity, and solidarity. In the tradition of their founders, cooperative members believe in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others. (ICA, 2021). The co-operative principles are voluntary and open membership, democratic member control, member economic participation, autonomy and independence, education, training, and information, cooperation among cooperatives, concern for community (ICA, 2021).

Research so far has examined co-operative values and principles from various perspectives. For example the experiences of managers and board members in the application of values and principles in their day-to-day operations and their awareness of values and principles in the context of small and large co-operatives (Novkovic 2006). Novkovic (2006) noted that the experiences of managers and board members differed somewhat and that the size of the cooperative also had an impact on the experience and application of values. Rabong and Radakovics (2020) examined the values that citizens associate with different type of co-operatives and summarized the three core values; responsible business conduct, regionality and tradition, and economic soundness. Rixon (2013), for his part, examined the emergence of co-operative principles in the annual reports of co-operatives and interviewed the top management of co-operatives. He noted that the principles were not presented in the reporting, but some performance indicators implicitly reflect the principles.

Most previous studies examined members’ perceptions (see Oczkowski et al., 2013; Rabong & Radakovics, 2020) (excluding Novkovic, 2006, Rixon, 2013). Rabong and Radakovics (2020) noted that at least the values attached by citizens to co-operatives varied from country to country, which is why he suggests that further research on country-specific impacts is needed. Novkovic (2006) reports significant differences in the perceptions and different utilization of principles by the management of large and small co-operatives. Most studies look theoretically at how principles can be applied in practice and evaluate the advantage and disadvantage of adhering to principles (Oczkowski et al., 2013).

In this paper, we examine in the context of large Finnish co-operatives what values their managers and elected representatives attach to cooperatives, how they interpret the co-op value system, and what meanings they attach to co-operatives from value point of view.

The research data are based on 41 qualitative interviews. The interviewees represented 8 of the largest co-operatives in Finland and served as the co-operative's manager or chairpersons of board of directors or supervisory board. 13 of them work in producer co-operatives and 28 in the consumer co-operatives. The data will be analyzed by using qualitative content analysis. Due to the extensive knowledge, Atlas.ti software is used as a technical aid in the analysis.

The analysis process is still ongoing, but our preliminary conclusions indicate that while reference is made to the international co-operative values and principles, the overall awareness of them seems very incomplete. However, a special value base is strongly associated with the co-op idea and co-operatives, which is realized via the basic practices of co-operatives. When talk of values is connected to practical managerial actions, the role of values and distinctive principles become dim and their interpretation kind of narrows down. Values are perceived as some kind of ideal, and whether value discourse is genuinely associated with the ideology of co-operatives or whether it is a response to the prevailing general managerial discourse and demands for corporate social responsibility remains unclear.

The Co-operative Mission and Identity in the 21st Century

Anu Puusa, Juha Kinnunen, Heidi Fosström-Tuominen — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Co-operatives have a strong history in collective solving of economic and social challenges. Through times, co-operatives have been a channel for change and affecting economic and societal conditions. The times are changing, and we are facing, for example, economic crisis after COVID, and increasing polarization in many parts of the world. Considering the circumstances, the modern mission and identity of co-operatives becomes interesting. While co-ops have a wide reach and economic weight also at the time being, there are alarming signs that the co-op philosophy might be forgotten, or at least co-operative identity is becoming blurred and similar to Investor-Owned-Firms (IOFs).

In this study, we explore how co-operative managers interpret the mission and identity of co-operatives today and what are the needs that the co-operatives meet. We seek to interpret the responses in relation to the co-operative literature and the original mission and identity of co-operatives and thus, the study aims to understand if the mission and identity of co-ops have changed.

We utilize qualitative textual data gathered in interviews with 35 leaders of consumer and producer owned co-operatives in Finland.

In our analysis, we find that the managers refer to the specific features of co-operatives, but a structured and comprehensive understanding of them seems limited. However, the managers clearly recognize that the co-ops have their own characteristics related to the value base of the co-op movement and principles, as well as regional and long-term impact. The business role of a co-op is perceived as natural and evident, whereas the understanding of the role of the member community is rather limited and variable. Competition has increased and the business role of the co-operatives is being emphasized. As a result, co-operatives are seen to have become very similar to the IOFs and thus, the co-op identity seems blurred in relation to the original mission of co-operatives. Paradoxically, however, the discourse of co-operatives’ originality and thus, identity is reinforced when the respondents compare co-operatives with the IOFs. In this context, the mission of co-operatives is seen as highly original, clearly distinguishing co-operatives from other actors that are perceived as not so responsible and sustainable.

Interestingly, there is a dichotomy and partly contradictory attitude towards the co-op ideology: For some it represents the true and desirable philosophy that guides operations, albeit somewhat hidden and forgotten. Others, on the other hand, interpret it as old-fashioned and a little naive, a speech that romanticizes the past of co-operatives.

Another perspective that the data permits, sets a paradox: on one hand the co-operative idea is seen as extremely current and appealing, and capable of responding to the value climate of our time and the current needs of the people, economies, and societies. On the other hand, it is seen as outdated and it is difficult for the interviewees to see how combining the social needs of members with profitable business would be possible. Where the business role is well understood and its direct benefits to individual members are visible and tangible, the co-op ideology and the role of the member community seems to be bundled into clusters of large and abstract themes that are desirable but very challenging to tackle at the level of an individual or by an individual co-op (e.g., responsibility, sustainability, climate change, social problems). However, according to the data, in these abstract themes lies the potential of co-ops in the current time and also in the future.

The respondents were unanimous that there is a place for co-operatives in the corporate field and possibly even a growing need in the current environment and in the future as well. Because of their value base, co-operatives are interpreted as being more natural in playing a role in solving both local and global problems than business forms with different earnings logic and mission. Crystallization and re-discovery of the co-operative mission and identity are needed to grasp the opportunities of the current environment.

Business Model Categories: A Systematic Integrative Review, Conceptual Framework, and Research Agenda

Sergio Alves, Sujith Nair, Herman I. Stål — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The Influence of National and Corporate Culture on Innovation Ambidexterity in the Telecom Industry

Chiara Isola, Martin Svensson, Divya Peddireddy — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

ABSTRACT

Purpose: Telecom firms are examples of multinational corporations (MNC) that face cut-throat competition in today’s rapidly changing business industry. Competitive pressures together with geographical dispersion makes MNCs dependent on management of both ambidextrous capabilities (the management of both incremental and radical innovations in relation to exploitative and explorative behaviors) and culture. An example of such a management process is to manage the influence of an inherent national culture with the development of a goal-orientated corporate culture in relation to innovative capabilities. Thus, this study is designed to increase understanding of the relative and simultaneous contribution of national and corporate culture on innovation ambidexterity.

Design/methodology/approach: After an extensive literature review, a theoretical model of how factors of national and corporate culture contribute to exploitative and explorative behaviors of innovation ambidexterity, was assembled. National culture attributes were derived from Hofstede’s work. The corporate culture attributes were selected after review of literature and engagement with practitioners from the telecom field. The model constituted the basis for a cross sectional randomized survey to be distributed within purposely selected sites of the telecom firm across Europe and Asia. The survey was sent to 156 employees, including leaders and employees. A total of 96 (41 leaders, such as middle, project and product managers, and 55 employees located in Sweden, Italy and China) returned the survey. The main dataset consisted of the survey responses, including leaders and employees (cohort 1, N=96). The first subset consisted of only employees (N=55, cohort 2) whereas the next subset (cohort 3) consisted of only leaders (N=41). Another subset consisted of both leaders and employees at the Swedish national site with 28 samples (N=28, cohort 4). The next data subset consisted of both leaders and employees at Italian national (N=31, cohort 5). The final subset consisted of both leaders and employees at the Chinese national site (N=26, cohort 6).

The data was analyzed with a PLS-SEM configuration as well as with a machine learning algorithm, multilayer perceptron (MPA) of the class of feedforward artificial neural network (ANN), to predict explorative and exploitative behaviors.

Findings: The main hypothesis, stating that explorative behaviors predict innovation ambidexterity to a larger extend the purely exploitative ones, was confirmed in the main dataset and in the five subsets. Moreover, the outcome of the PLS-SEM analysis showed how “creative instability” (internal corporate culture attribute) played a major role (with a path coefficient value of 0.426 (p-value 0.002) in PLS-SEM managerial chart for cohort 1) in generating explorative behaviors and decreasing the exploitative ones. The indirect effects analysis provided indications on how creative instability could be a mediator of innovation ambidexterity in the main datasets and in the subsets. Creative instability not only appeared to be positively linked to explorative innovation (cohort 1: path coefficient 0.426 with p-value 0.002; cohort 2: path coefficient 0.480 with p-value 0.002; cohort 5 path coefficient 0.989 with p-value 0.006), but also appeared as a possible mediator of innovation ambidexterity more than a direct contributor when analyzing the entire dataset (cohort 1) and on four out of six other datasets.

When analyzing cohort 1, apart from the major finding on creative instability, boundary spanning (internal corporate culture attribute) was found to decrease exploitative behaviors with a path coefficient value of 0.264 (p-value 0.002). From a national culture point of view, power distance was found to increase exploitative behaviors of innovation (path coefficient 0.354, p-value 0.009). In addition, gender diversity was found to increase explorative behaviors identified through the path coefficient value of 0.242 (p-value 0.017) for cohort 2. It was found to decrease exploitative behaviors identified through the negative path coefficient value of 0.178 for cohort 3, however, the p-value was 0.08. Lastly, statistically significant relationships were found for the remaining attributes of national and corporate culture when analyzing the five subsets separately to reduce heterogeneity.

In cohort 1, explorative innovation was found to be positively linked to innovation ambidexterity (path coefficient 0.661, p-value 0.000). The latent variable of explorative innovation accounted for 63.1% of variability (R-square adjusted), and exploitative innovation of 55.7%, forming the innovation ambidexterity variable that was captured at 42.7%.

Conclusions/implications: The findings lend theoretical as well as empirical support to previous research on the role of explorative and exploitative behaviors on innovation ambidexterity with explorative behaviors relating positively to innovation behavior. However, the findings also move beyond simplified explanations of innovative behavior by addressing the underpinnings of explorative behaviors as well identifying the relative influence of national and corporate culture attributes. Consequently, the influence of culture (national and corporate) on innovative behaviors may be asymmetrical across sites in the MNC. The findings also aid in providing insights for the company`s executives, to be used strategically, in terms of how various KPIs may be linked to the type and amount of innovation as well as to gain counter intuitive insights on human capital.

We believe that this conceptual model and the proposed methodology, including predictions can be extended to incumbent firms of the telecom sector. The PLS-SEM model can be personalized with moderating and mediating factors based on the outcomes of the initial rounds of analyses. Moreover, our findings and methodology are also indicative of that companies may refine their Big Data Mining efforts by means of Small Data (such as data granular from questionnaires sampled for this research) psychometrics techniques. This means that an unexploited reservoir of strategic information remains available for corporate decision making as well as for pointing out direction for change management.

Keywords: management, ambidexterity, culture, innovation, organization, big data, small data, artificial neural network, transformation, change.

What macroeconomic factors determines growth in micro, small and mediumsized firms in Europe?

Åsa Grek, Carin Nordstöm, Catia Cialani — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The aim of this paper was to study the macro-factors effect on entrepreneurship at aggregate level in Europe. A distinguishing has been done at both the size and categories. The study covers SMEs in European Unions(EU) 28 countries, from 2005 to 2018 in ten different sectors: Mining and quarrying; Manufacturing; Electricity, gas etc.; Water supply etc.; Transportation and storage; Accommodation and food service; Information and communication; Real estate activities; Professional, scientific and technical activities; Administrative and support service activities. The result suggests that the mainly most important variable, for increasing the
number of SMEs, is Human Development Index (HDI).

Shooting next to the target? – Balancing stakeholder goals in university knowledge/technology transfer

Anna Ragén, Emilene Leite, Gabriel Linton, Christina Öberg — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Utilisation has emerged as a new concept and goal of university-industry interaction. Targeting the broad fulfilment of future challenges while broadening the pallet of activities, utilisation risks becoming a fuzzy concept with many different understandings. This paper describes and discusses various parties’ sensemaking related to the transformation of university-industry interaction into utilisation as the core objective of university-industry activities. The empirical part of the paper is based on interviews and participatory research related to a doctoral course on utilisation. The paper shows how parties that from start would have different priorities in their work tasks increasingly incorporate these as utilisation without changing what they do.
This means that when university-industry interaction moves from commercialisation to utilisation as a main goal, parties decreasingly work for the same targets and rather create rooms
for their priorities. This disconnects sensemaking from the sensegiving and forms what we refer to as sensedrifting related to the new concept of university-industry interaction. The paper importantly contributes to past research through highlighting sensemaking and sensegiving during times of change in multi-party settings. Practically, the paper indicates how utilisation as a new goal of university-industry interaction does not foremost become a path forward, but one which increasingly contains many different meanings.

The productivity of licensing endeavors at entrepreneurial universities

Dolores Modic, Irena Kustec — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

(Formal) technology-transfer activities at entrepreneurial universities (Etzkowitz et al., 2000) - such as licensing of university technologies - are seen as conduits for knowledge-based economic development (Rothaermel et al., 2007, Mowery and Ziedonis, 2015; Bercovitz et al., 2019). The licensing activity is a bridge between business and universities - two different innovation ecosystem actors relied around common ‘artifacts’ (Granstrand & Holgersson, 2020); in our case university technologies.

Entrepreneurial activities with the potential to ‘yield new businesses or products’, i.e. those that Baumol (1990) categorizes as ‘productive entrepreneurship’, are often deemed in advance to increase value. At first glance, we can reasonably construe that the licensing activity when leading to dissemination whilst giving the licensees the potential to appropriate value, should bring well-being, i.e. positive societal outcomes. However, Lucas and Fuller (2017) warn that (social) value need not be created by those engaging in seemingly ‘productive’ activity particularly when these activities are publicly funded, however, this is hard to evaluate as there is often a lack of feedback information.

Using licensing revenues as a proxy for such feedback, we ask ourselves which factors contribute to licensing that cannot be deemed as ‘productive’? The lack of revenue can be seen as a signal of not utilizing the licensed technology. Using detailed micro-license data we examine the factors that contribute to licensing of university technologies not delivering returns and thus not fitting with the notion of productive entrepreneurship.

We consider several reasons for why such licensing activities exist. Firstly, prior literature points to the embryonic nature of the licensed technology (Thursby et al., 2001). If this is combined with the lack of additional developmental commitment, it prevents the technologies’ implementation, and causes a lack of licensing revenue.

Secondly, the reasons can be connected to failed opportunity assessment of the licensee about the technology potential, hence unwillingly contributing to what we cannot deem as ‘productive entrepreneurship’. Thirdly, the licensee can have strategic reasons to gain a license, e.g. to shelf it or to prevent others to use it, which is in line with Baumol’s ideas of ‘unproductive activities’. Fourthly, the technology transfer offices (TTO) might also have chosen the wrong licensee - one that is either unable or unwilling to use the technology. Fifthly, in line with the institutional logic theories (Thorthon and Ocasio, 2008), the TTO strategies related to licensing, i.e. its institutional context, might push for certain licensing practices. On one hand, TTO might excessively seek an increase in the number of licenses, since those are often an alternative measure of the TTOs ‘success’. Thursby et al. (2001) point out that larger numbers of licensing agreements do generate more income, however, due to large amounts of patented technologies, generation of ever-more licensed technologies might become unsustainable due to resource constraints. On the other hand, many TTOs follow the idea that one needs many deals to get results, in line with the notions of a ‘licensing lottery’.

Our paper provides a nuanced view of university licensing activities by focusing on activities that cannot be deemed as ‘productive’. By unpacking the black box of university licensing, and thereby uncovering inefficiencies in university licensing, we add to the lacking area of micro-foundational analyses and answer to the call by Cunningham and O’Reilly (2018) for more micro studies with respect to the technology transfer, and in particular licensing.

Methods

We acquired micro-level administrative data on licensing and connected it to licensing revenue streams, despite a recorded lack of availability and accessibility of such data (Bercovitz et al., 2019). The university exhibits strong licensing performance. Our dataset includes information on licensing revenues (10yhrs), combined with licensing agreements data and hand-curated data on licensees. Our unit of observation are licensing agreements to particular licensees related to particular patents, i.e. patent families (n=385).

Following a descriptive analysis, we conduct a preliminary analysis in which we specify several attributes for every observation. We determine attributes related to patent and technology (international patenting, granted patents, joint patenting, embryonic, patent field, inventors), to institutional context (TTO size, coordinators attributes), to licensing (licensee size and type, agreement types), and to revenue (size, time, type). We consider the cases with licensing revenue being zero as not fitting the definition of being productive. We also conduct robustness checks: i) including licenses with trivial revenues, and ii) including only typical licensing contracts (n=193).

Results and implications

The focal university transfers approximately one fifth of all their patents. We confirm the existence of less productive licensing activities by documenting that 82 (21,2%) of all licensing cases generate no revenue. This non-negligible result indicates resource inefficiencies stemming from university resources, and implies potential for distorting dissemination.

The licensing attempts with no generated revenue are less often connected to a corporate licensee. However, the licensing process is longer than for those that have received some revenue. This could imply lesser demand for these particular technologies. There is a significant difference in whether a running royalty has been agreed – indicating there is a different understanding of the risk related to the applicability of a certain license. Other results contrast with conventional logic and prior literature; e.g. licenses with no revenues more often include patents that have been invented by larger groups. Furthermore, these licenses less often include an experienced ‘star PI’ as the primary investigator; contrasting with the literature depicting these PIs as efficient substitute brokers for technology transfer. We take these insights to further investigate reasons for less productive licensing activities by using panel data and survival analysis techniques.

The eudaimonic well-being benefits in entrepreneur’s personal networks

Marion Karppi — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The entrepreneurs’ well-being is important factor both in economic and individual perspectives.
Psychological well-being such as happiness and sensations of fulfilling lives are connected to
healthier lives, increased work productivity and creativity. The aim of this research is to
describe and develop understanding of the entrepreneurs’ experiences of eudaimonic wellbeing within their personal networks. This qualitative research is based on 24 interviews
conducted to entrepreneurs in small and middle-sized enterprises in Finland. The preliminary
findings show the interaction in personal networks facilitate experiences of eudaimonic wellbeing. However, this research is still in process, and more in-depth analysis is required.

Collaborative industrial platforms and the role of institutions: an innovation ecosystem perspective

Per Carlborg, Nina Hasche, Gabriel Linton — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Traditionally, innovation has been regarded as a process closely related to technological development and with a focus on intra-organizational activities. However, recently, innovation is recognized as a multi-actor phenomenon across in complex innovation-related ecosystems. Researchers and practitioners agree that a key aspect to manage innovation processes is the understanding of a firm's position in its ecosystem and its pictures/map of the overall ecosystem.

Some types of ecosystems hold an industry platform which defines standards, rules and overall function of the system, which allows for integration between the industry platform and different businesses. The present case study is situated in the energy sector, which is seen as our industry platform encapsulated within in the larger ecosystem. The sector is characterized by new technologies that allow a move from centralized (e.g., nuclear) electric production to distributed (e.g., solar) electric production and a replacement of fossil fuels with renewables. The case study investigate four electric utility firms that collaborate with an aim of innovating the focal offering in terms of customer value propositions. Our research aim evolves around how different firms pictures the ecosystem and how the different pictures enable and constrain innovation.

Our preliminary findings indicate that (1) Firms imagine the ecosystem and their roles within the ecosystem in different ways. Some firms picture their ecosystem more narrowly than others, which is limiting the possibilities for innovation. These firms tend to imitate innovations created by firms that imagine the ecosystem in a broader way. (2) Innovation requires a new set of interactive competences and skills among the firms. (3) Innovation within the business ecosystem is more incremental than radical, where a lot of effort is concentrated on innovating customer offerings. (4) The industry platform in this setting is clearly and narrowly defined, which allows for easy integration but restricts the possibilities for innovation.

Operational Excellence and Resilience as Drivers for Business Growth in Micro-enterprises?

Dr. Anna-Mari Simunaniemi, Dr., Adjunct Professor Ville Isoherranen — Sun, 21 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Entrepreneurship is dealing with risky situations in which goals must be achieved under dynamic conditions of uncertainty, change and resource scarcity. Enterprises need to be prepared for also unexpectedly challenging business scenarios and market changes. During the COVID19 pandemic, the concept of entrepreneurial resilience has gained both academic and public attention. Resilience, tolerance of uncertainty, and the ability to learn from disadvantaged situations and failures are major factors for entrepreneurial success. Entrepreneurs must adapt their managerial actions to address changes so their businesses will survive and even grow.

On company-level, the preparedness for changes and ability to overcome sudden hardships can be conceptualized as operational excellence which means focusing on maximising customer value delivered by business operations. Any company striving for business growth particularly in geographically remote regions must pursue for operational excellence to achieve a competitive advantage, although the contextual factors make it harder to achieve some traditional competitive advantages defined by Porter (1998). More than 90% of the companies in the Nordic countries are microenterprises. In sparsely populated and Arctic regions, microenterprises are facing business challenges related to long distance from customers, low population density, and climate conditions that lead to higher operation costs in comparison to other regions. However, companies with operational excellence can overcome regional disadvantages through creation of networks with other companies, utilizing network assets as company resources, and advanced digitalization. When business operations are at the excellent level, the challenges can be tackled successfully, and business growth and renewal is possible.

Definitions of operational excellence state the development of enablers to generate competitive benefits in a dynamic environment. Building resilience at entrepreneur as well as company-level could make one type of competitive benefit compared to less resilient competitors. From the above-mentioned perspective, it is reasonable to assume that the concepts of entrepreneurial resilience and operational excellence are related and their impacts on business outcomes are partly entangled.

In this paper, we aim to further discuss and develop the hypothesis on the entangled concepts of operational excellence and resilience, and their roles on business growth among microenterprises. We plan to construct a literature-based overview to get a state-of-art description of how these concepts are defined and considered in the context of microentrepreneurship, and whether the previous studies have discussed the interconnections between these concepts. One hypothesis is that operational excellence with optimal business operations helps to build resilience to bounce back and quickly renew in changes. On the other hand, the potential interplay could be that having entrepreneurial resilience boosts creating operational excellence in microenterprises. This analysis will result in more in-depth understanding on the processes and mechanisms through which microenterprises also in sparsely populated areas can achieve competitive advantage and resilience on both entrepreneurial and company level.

Change and Crisis Management of Microenterprises: The Case of Taiwan’s Erlin Wineries

Ho-Don Yan — Wed, 22 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Taiwan’s joining the WTO in 2001 has brought a wide and deep impact on the local economy. With the liberalization of private productions of wine and liquor, central part of Taiwan has been growing to a popular destination for local produced wine tasting and tourism. This paper takes Erlin, a little town located in Changhua County, as an example to demonstrate how Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in Taiwan respond to the challenges of the external environmental changes. This paper consists of three parts. First, we update the research of Chen and Kingsbury (2019), which employed the Triple Helix (TH) and Innovation systems (IS) as principal frameworks to study the industry-government-university interaction and examine the development process in the Erlin winery cluster. Second, we report the impact from Covd-19 and government responses in Taiwan (Wang et al. 2020). With worldwide economy suffering from the scourge of the pandemics, many small businesses have been dealt with serious blow due to the sudden shrinkage of travelling and the ban of large gathering (Alekseev et al., 2020; Bloom et al., 2021). Although with waves of economic stimulus and support programs, including loans and assistance to pandemic–hit enterprises, and consumer voucher program (February and October, 2020), there is a disparate impact on industries. While some gains such as hi-tech industry, some fare badly, particularly for the hospitality industry. Third, to investigate how Erlin’s wineries manage the crisis, we interview Erlin’s eight wineries, which are mainly family-run small businesses. By focusing on five thematic sets of questions covering business operations, business finances, the interaction of business and household responsibilities, business employees, and survival strategies, we analyze how these wineries grapple with the shock from pandemics individually and collectively. We finalize to discuss strategies for strengthening resilience for Erlin wineries.

Resilience in the micro and small business context – literature review

Santeri Halonen, Peetu Virkkala — Wed, 22 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Abstract

This paper purposes to systematically review existing resilience literature in the micro-entrepreneurship context focusing on entrepreneurial resilience and resilience competency and its development and development process from intra and interpersonal perspectives. In addition, the paper aims identify and study the interventions can be taken to enhance the resilience development. The premise for the analysis is previous literature review by (Lee & Wang 2017).

The management priorities in four early-stage canadian family-owned breweries

Matti Muhos, Dr. Anna-Mari Simunaniemi, Riitta Forsten-Astikainen — Wed, 22 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Early growth is the most critical period for the survival of a new business. The aim of this study is to clarify the management priorities of four micro- and small-sized Family-owned Breweries in Sparsely Populated Areas of the Nova Scotia, Canada. Growth of firms is a central topic in entrepreneurship research (McKelvie and Wiklund, 2010; Shane and Venkataraman, 2000), and it is studied from multiple perspectives. Many of these perspectives are focused on the factors leading to growth, while this study focus on the growth management process (McKelvie and Wiklund, 2010). The study focusses on the growth management priorities experienced during the early stages of business development.

This is an explorative case study focused on four Family-owned Breweries located in Nova Scotia, Canada. The management priorities can be studied by analysing what managers pay attention to and how they weight that information in solving problems (Smith et al., 1985) related to company management. The data consist of four cases of the early-stage breweries representing diverse stages of the company development. The first one represents growth-oriented startup. The second one represents brewery at the take-off stage. The third one represents mature brewery having already passed the take-off. The fourth one represents is an impulsive and experimental life-style business with no high growth ambitions. The data was collected in 2019. The data was analysed using Critical Incident Technique. The research question of this study is: What

The unit of analysis in this study is an early-stage family business located in a Sparsely Populated Area located in Nova Scotia. In Nova Scotia GBD is lower than the national average in Canada. The companies face challenges related to long distances and sparse population and ageing. There is not a single generally adopted definition for family business, but according to Villalonga and Amit (2004), most of them share three common dimensions: a signiﬁcant part of the capital is held by one or several families; family members retain signiﬁcant control over the company through the distribution of capital among non-family shareholders and voting rights, with possible statutory or legal restrictions; and family members hold top management positions. Family business practitioners face considerable challenges trying to compete with the professionally run and better financially endowed multinational enterprises – Family businesses must be examined within the cultural contexts in which they are bred, nourished, and grow (Gutpa et al., 2009).

This analysis opens on the management priorities experienced by the owner-managers of the selected Nova Scotian Family Breweries. The contextual management priorities were visited from the perspectives of the Family-owned breweries in Nova Scotian SPAs. The study clarifies the context specific characteristics of the management in an early-stage business. It is widely acknowledged the growth of firms is at least somewhat dependent on their location (Hoogstra and van Dijk, 2004; Mason and Harrison, 1985; Storey, 1994). Particularly, location plays a critical role in accessing important resources and capabilities (Freeman et al., 2012). Therefore, instead of relying on universal frameworks and moders, it is important to clarify the phenomenon, in this case the management priorities, within the context.

Early-stage entrepreneurs' conceptualizations of knowledge for survival and success

Juha Saukkonen, Dr. Muhos — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Unique knowledge and capability in managing it are largely seen as key contributors to the success of entreprenurial effort. Simultaneously, the models and processes for knowledge management are predominantly derived from and applicable to larger corporate setting, whose resource-base places them to a very different position compared to early-stage micro- and SME-entrepreneurs. This paper studies via qualitative method the ways in which entrepreneurs in this cohort - more specifically in creative industries highly dependent on creativity and continuous innovation - express their views on nature and origin of the knowledge possessions as well as the maintenance and exploitation of those knowldge assets. The paper makes a move towards concpetual model of KM adapted to the micro- and SME-context.

(the full abstrar´´ct saved as a file at the previous step)

The Critical Incidents of Micro-enterprises’ Internationalisation in Rural Area

Jenni Juola, Dr. Matti Muhos, Martti Saarela, Dr. Jukka Majava, Janne Hietaniemi — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The Critical Incidents of Micro-enterprises’ Internationalisation in Rural Area

The aim of this study is to clarify the early internationalization of micro-enterprises in the rural area. Microenterprises are the most common type of enterprise size group, accounting over 93% of all enterprises in the European Union (Muller et al., 2018). Microenterprises, a subgroup of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), are considered an important business actors of European Union’s (EU) economy, creating jobs, and contributing to economic growth. They are a very dynamic group of firms characterised by a large share of young firms, higher growth rates, and high exit rates (Falk et al., 2014). Microenterprises face challenges derived from the lack of resources, e.g. difficulties of accessing funding and technology, and limited management capabilities. These problems become more critical regarding the internationalization process of microenterprises. In small countries, like Finland, domestic markets are limited, and many growing enterprises consider that internationalization is a only possible way of expanding business.

There are multiple approaches in the literature that seek to clarify firms’ early internationalization processes including e.g. Uppsala model, network based approach and born global model. Internationalisation can be explored gradually in accordance Uppsala model (Johanson and Vahlne, 1977), starting with low commitment of resources, and obtaining support and accompaniment along the exporting phase from experts from both private and public organizations. The network approach stems from Johanson and Mattsson (1988), who argued that a firm internationalises by considering its environment in relation to business networks and markets. A network is defined as an evolutionary process where firm first establishes its positions in new networks and then develops existing positions to increase its resource commitments (Hermel and Khayat, 2011). Born global firms can be defined as the nearly founded company that immediately starts seeking superior international business performance from the application of knowledge-based resources to the sale of outputs in multiple countries (Knight and Cavusgil, 2004).

Anyhow, there is a lack of studies focused on the internationalisation of microenterprises as a special group of enterprises (Falk et al., 2014; Lehtinen et al., 2021 [forthcoming]). This study aims to bridge the above-described gap by opening the characteristics of internationalization as experienced by the owner-managers of micro-sized enterprises located in the sparsely populated area. The above described can be condensed into the following research question: What are the critical incidents of the early internationalization experienced by the managers of SPA micro-sized firms? How the support actions organized by local regional development agency was experienced by the managers? This study utilises an exploratory cross-sectional case study (Yin 1989) strategy to open the internationalization process in ten Finnish micro-sized enterprises located in sparsely populated area. The data collection technique of this study is Critical Incident Technique ((Chell, 2014; Edvardsson & Roos, 2001; Fisher & Oulton, 1999; Flanagan, 1954). The data was collected in early 2020 by semi-structured interviews.

This study opens the understudied internationalization process from the perspective of micro-sized enterprises’. This study opens the internationalization process from the perspective of the owner-managers of the micro-sized firms. On the basis of the analysis, the key critical incidents of the internationalization process relate to the following categories: operations, quality of products and services, networks, resources, market penetration, language and cultural barriers and export strategy. Moreover, this study opens the motivation of the owner managers of the micro-enterprises towards internationalization as well as the experiences from the support actions provided by the public business agencies and other relevant support instruments.

Teaching business ethics and preventetion of corruption and financial crimes in business administration and entreprenuership curricula

Merle Ojasoo, Aive Pevkur — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Understanding the wider societal context and interdisciplinarity in making business decisions are often in the focus of social scientists when educating future business leaders and entrepreneurs (Saarniit and Pevkur, 2019).

However, whilst business ethics is often included in the business administration or entrepreneurship curricula, topics such as anti-corruption or financial crimes are oftentimes neglected.

Higher education must be more proactive in enhancing an ethical and fair business environment. Honest and law-abiding entrepreneurship should receive more attention in society, also become a priority for higher educational institutions.

This study introduces the research carried out in Estonian universities in 2020. It aimed to identify to what extent business ethics, corruption, and financial crimes are included in the curricula of business administration and entrepreneurship. The research comprised of curricula analysis (n=13), interviews with programme managers (7) and a survey among the teaching staff (n=61).

The research demonstrated that topics inflicting ethical and law-abiding behaviour should be taught as a separate course, but also implemented into other disciplines (e.g., marketing, accounting, sales etc). Program managers and lecturers agreed that ethics, corruption, and law-abiding behaviour should be addressed at bachelor's and master's levels. The need to include topics related to ethics, corruption and economic crime was justified with social need; external influences (eg conditions for accreditations, etc.); in the case of private higher education institutions, the expectations of the owners; support from university and faculty leaders. This finding is also supported by Rossouw and Stückelberger (2012) who found that various accreditations and ranking criteria are the convincing reasons for including ethics and corporate social responsibility in curricula.

Our study demonstrated that lecturers do not have sufficient knowledge and appropriate examples to address corruption and financial crime issues in their classes. As a result of the research, a toolkit to support the lecturers with materials, references, and examples of corruption and financial crime prevention was developed.

The research also contributed to the pedagogy of higher education. The authors made many practical suggestions to improve business administration and entrepreneurship curricula.

The evolvement of the research on women’s social networks in organizations: a literature review

Mukhammadyusuf Shaymardanov, Suvi Heikkinen, Anna-Maija Lämsä — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

This article carries out a literature review and answers the following question, how has the research on social networks of women’s career in the context of organizations and management evolved between 1970 and 2021? Our analysis shows that the field has widened to include individual, organizational and social environment viewpoints. The research on women’s social networks has evolved from establishing the field to individualistic understanding and further taking into account the socio-cultural dynamics. The approach to gender has evolved from the gender comparison to gender particularity and then contextualizing gender.

How do entrepreneurial family businesses in rural take decisions?

Shqipe Gashi Nulleshi — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The aim of this paper is to add to the theorization on the entrepreneurship context(s) by examining the influence of rural context in the family business decision-making through a gender lens. Undertaking a contextualized view, by applying Welter’s (2011) typology of where and when contexts, and adding “who” (Whetten, 1989) as an element of context enables us to identify an array of factors that encourage or discourage various forms of entrepreneurial activity (Welter & Baker, 2021). This paper takes its point of departure that not only entrepreneurship shapes the context but also context shapes entrepreneurial processes. Thus, contributing to the discussion about the context and agency which has gained increased interest in the last decades (Welter et al., 2019; Welter & Baker, 2021).

The importance of government Corona support and business robustness

Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The still ongoing Corona pandemic is a societal crisis that has resulted in radically changed conditions for everyone - people as well as for organisations (Ratten, 2020). Since viable companies constitutes a basic precondition for a society's economy and development (Singer, 2018), it is important that the local companies, which constitute an important employer, are robust against the negative changes that a crisis often can bring about (Beninger and Francis, 2021). Around the world, a number of support packages have been initiated in order to underpin companies in surviving the pandemic (Oikawa et al., 2021). Besides various forms of public financial support, conversion initiatives may be necessary for companies to implement, such as revision of existing business- and marketing models (Ritter & Pedersen, 2020). The agendas and actions to prevent COVID-19 to spread has nationally been very different. What is common to the Nordic countries is that none of them has had extensive shutdowns, like many other countries in Europe (Ekholm et al., 2020). However, there are many measures that differentiate the Nordic countries. In this study, Sweden and Norway are compared and Table 1 below shows some significant differences between the countries.

Table 1. Initial Corona restrictions in Norway and Sweden 2020

Corona restrictions 2020	Norway	Sweden
Closed schools	Completely	Partly
Closed borders	Completely	Partly
Prohibition of visiting elderly housing	Completely	Completely
Prohibition to visit holiday homes	Completely	Not at all
Closed restaurants, shops etc.	Partly	Not at all
Recommendation for telework	Completely	Partly
Maximum allowable crowds	10	50

Early in the pandemic, Norway introduced a low limit on crowd gatherings and strictly border surveillance. In Sweden, the restrictions primarily were based on personal responsibility, voluntariness and trust in the authorities. In 2021, the restrictions became stricter in Sweden as well (ibid.). The aim of the study is to explore how different Corona policies and support systems in Sweden and Norway have affected the countries' companies in terms of creativity and robustness. The paper explores if conversion work has been easier to do in the Swedish companies due to lower restrictions, or if the creativity rather is thrived in countries that faced greater restrictions, such as in Norway. A survey was distributed electronically, in the fall of 2021, to 805 SMEs within the food and tourism industry, located in two neighbouring regions in Norway and Sweden. The digital survey included both open-ended and closed questions in order to identify encountered challenges, actions taken and received support measures to the pandemic. The survey data was processed in SPSS where descriptive frequency analysis, correlations and regression analyses were used to analyse the data. The preliminary results show similarities between the Swedish and Norwegian companies. For example, about half of the companies have been running their businesses for more than 10 years. The average age of the owners is just over 50 years. In these industries, the gender distribution is equal and the majority of business owners have a university degree. A slightly larger proportion of Norwegian companies have had a turnover of one million or more. In Sweden there are more companies that only employ the owner. In both countries, about half of the entrepreneurs have received financial support (47%) and the size of amounts also seems to be the same (the majority has received support less than Euro 25 000). However, the view of the future, and the long-term effect of Covid-19 differ between the countries. The Norwegian companies are more positive, and three out of four companies expect sales in 2021 to be higher compared to 2019. It also seems that the strategies for dealing with the pandemic differ between the countries. In Norway, common actions to counteract the pandemic is said to be: “need to find new customer groups”, “change in business model”; “change in marketing” and “change in distribution”. In Sweden the most common action is “reduced cost”. It also seems that the management of public funds has worked differently in the countries. In Norway the municipalities, in a larger extant, have been used as intermediaries, and this is noticeable in the answers. More than a third (37%) of the Norwegian companies state that their municipality has been important or very important during the pandemic. The corresponding figure in Sweden is 11 percent. “We who run small companies fell outside the usual compensation scheme due to low fixed costs. However, we received support from the municipality” (Norwegian entrepreneur). A lot of money has been paid out to companies during the pandemic. At the same time, criticism is growing in society that the subsidies have been cumbersome to apply for, and often unfair as they are not considered to have gone to the "right" companies. For example, start-ups or growing companies have had difficulties to obtain support since comparisons have been made with previous year. The preliminary results of the study indicate that the policy in the countries has affected the companies and their abilities to be robust in different ways. In the continued work with the data, in-depth comparative analyses will be made.

Robust businesses in time of crisis - The role of resources and capabilities

Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The responses of self-employed aged 55+ to COVID-19 crisis in Finland

Reetta Raitoharju, Katja Heikkinen, Sara Lindsröm, Heli Ansio — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Self-employment is a vital part of Finnish economy. Almost 70 % of business owners in Finland are self-employed. In 2019 there were according to Finnish Statistics 187 000 self-employed persons in Finland out of which 80 000 were women and 107 000 were men. (StatFin). Self-employed persons are defined as those who are engaged in economic activities on their own account and at their own risk. Self-employed can be self-employed with employees or without employees, such as own-account workers or freelancers. A person acting in a limited company, who alone or together with his/her family owns at least one half of the company, is counted as self-employed. (Statistics Finaland: Concepts) The reasons of becoming a self-employed are many. In a study, 42% of Finnish self-employers said they had become self-employed after being unable to find a paid job (Kokkonen & Tönnes Lönnroos 2015) Older age cohorts are increasingly encouraged towards employing themselves (Tomlinson & Colgan 2014; OECD 2012). At the same time, prolonging work careers is a shared concern and the ideologies of Lifelong Learning and Active Aging have spread over Europe (Walker 2008).

Since the first COVID-19 cases were confirmed in Finland in January 2020, the entrepreneurs were facing an exogenous shock. An exogenous shock can be defined as a sudden event beyond the control of the authorities that has a significant negative impact on the economy (Geithner, 2003). Since March 2020, the Finnish Government declared a state of emergency and several measures to slow down the virus were implemented. Such measures included closing of schools, limiting gatherings, and making other restrictions.

Also measures to support the economy and companies were taken. The main objective with most of the measures was to save jobs, while support for self-employed or persons starting their business was weaker. Small business are fragile to large shocks and shutdowns. In a study of Bartik et al. (2020) small business with more than $10,000 expenses in the United States were found to have liquidity only to survive two weeks in a case of mandatory shutdowns. Small business are especially vulnerable due to their economic situation, dependence on a few customers and fluctuating incomes. (Giones et al. 2020)

The target group of this study: the +55 self-employed are vulnerable for exogenous shock in multiple ways. First, as a self-employed the economic situation and financial buffer might be lower. Second, due to their age and proximaity to retirement, they might lack the motivation and resources to restart a business or make large adjustments to it. Third, the actions taken by the Finnish government and other agencies to prevent bankruptcies and to revive economy have been more targeted to save jobs not to support the self-employed.

The objective of this study is to explore what kind of responses self-employed aged 55+ have had to the exogenous shock of COVID-19. We hope to contribute to the discussion about the entrepreneurial actions in uncertainty and the role of age in it. We wish to add to the discussion about the measures to support +55 self-employed when facing an exogenous shock.

The data for the study was collected in three group discussion sessions with self-employed aged 55+. The informants were part of a funded project that aims at increasing the productivity and well-being of entrepreneurs aged 55+. The data was collected as notes during the discussion and was then analyzed by two researchers.

The results indicate that for many self-employed the business stopped totally in spring 2020. We classified the response mechanisms for the shock into three categories 1) positive responses, such as enjoying more free time, getting a push to re-educate oneself or starting a new business, 2) neutral, such as waiting the situation go by and 3) negative, such as feeling hopeless and benumbed and not seeing possibilities or opportunities, even building the feelings of bitterness. Age was brought into discussions as an explanation for why not to take actions, for instance start virtual business. Age (and experience) was, however, also helping some informants to see that “things come and go” and that the situation will probably be better in the future.

Pandemic Effects on SMEs – Heterogeneity across Industries

Anna Kremel, Håkan Boter, Anders Lundström — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The study seeks to understand how small firms manage innovation and business development
during the Covid-19 pandemic. The empirical data consists of telephone interview with 1 200
SMEs and nine in-depth interviews with firms from the high technology and restaurant/hotel
industry. The analysis revealed that the basic conditions for firms are strikingly different in the
service sector compared to the manufacturing industry. The restaurant and hotel actors were
instantly and severely affected by Covid-19 and the negative effects of the pandemic applied
for a longer time despite intensive innovation work. The situation in high-technology firms
were radically different.

The Significance of Trying: How Organizational Members Meet the Ambiguities of Diversity

Annette Risberg, Hervé Corvellec — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

We address the uncertain outcomes of diversity work in organizations by showing that diversity management does not let itself be reduced to a matter of success and failure. Drawing upon theories of ambiguities in organizations and 2.5 years of longitudinal fieldwork in a Swedish municipality, we show that ambiguities characterize diversity work, including what diversity encompasses, the goals of diversity management, and its outcomes. To account for these ambiguities, we suggest approaching diversity management in terms of trying rather than outcomes. First, focusing on trying emphasizes that working with diversity entails a shifting, relative, and tension-filled notion. Second, it brings forth the tentative performativity of diversity management. Third, it opens up ways of looking at diversity in the workplace beyond a reductionist dichotomy between success and failure. Diversity work has no clear end, but this lack of an endpoint does not call into question its raison d'être. On the contrary, it makes it a reason to insist on trying to strive for enhancing diversity.

Organizing Sustainable Workplace Integration for Refugee Migrants

Vedran Omanovic, Ann Langley — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

In this paper the focus is on the processes of labor market integration of people with refugee background by utilizing a novel approach. I focus in particular on how people with refugees background themselves make sense of their experiences associated with encountering, learning and taking an active part in the job search process and getting the first employment in the host country. By grounding my interpretations and analyses in the voices of refugees I focus on refugee migrants’ interpretations of specific “encounters” that happened in the job search process - between them and the representatives of Swedish organizations and companies, and ask what the results of these encounters have been in terms of their possibilities for getting first employment?

Thus, unlike the majority of the previous management and organizational studies where the focus is prevailingly on managers’ or other elite stakeholders’ stories I shift the analytical focus, by applying the analysis of refugee voices as a method in this paper, arguing that also their voices contain important information about the establishment of refugee migrants onto the labor market in the host-society.

More specifically, in this paper I ask the following research questions:

What organizations and individuals are doing, when they are enrolled in refugee migrants the job search process? In short, what do they do, and whether their “doings” are mutually related to each other?
What are potential barriers/obstacles and “openings” in the process of

job search and getting first employments - refugee migrants encounter and how these are “navigated”?

Data Collection

The empirical material for this paper is based on biographically oriented interviews with Bosnian and Herzegovinian’s refugees who arrived to Sweden in the early 1990s. The topics in the interviews captured the respondents’ life prior to immigrating to Sweden, the initial period in Sweden (e.g., the period of time spent in refugee resettlement camps, the process of applying for and waiting to receive a residence permit, partaking in Swedish For Immigrants (SFI) courses, evaluating and validating educational qualifications), and the post-receipt of permit process that saw respondents seeking either to begin/continue their studies or to go about securing employment.

In this paper I focus on the respondents’ stories that include their ‘encounters’ regarding the job search process and first employments – as well as the barriers they were perceiving themselves as facing along with the agency exercised to overcome them.

The fieldwork began in autumn 2017 and was completed in autumn 2018. Respondents were chosen based on my initial personal contacts, and were then gradually expanded by using a snowball technique. A total of 38 interviews were held with respondents whose educational background (secondary school or university), age, occupational profession (e.g., including fields of study in journalism, mechanical sciences, business administration, economics, law, architecture, electrical engineering, as well as political science) and regional place of origin within Bosnia and Herzegovina – varied. Regarding a gender balance - it was an equal number of women and men, among the interviewed respondents. The majority of the respondents were living for in Sweden for more than 21 years, when the fieldwork ended (in autumn 2018).

Concepts that cause conflicts – perceptions of the business model in the collaborative economy

Jon Williamsson — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The collaborative and sharing economies are perceived as opposites but are important
parts of sustainable development. However, a neo-liberal market paradigm has a grip on the
debate about how to organize these sectors. The business model concept is a part of the
market-oriented discourse which has been strongly associated with the sharing economy. This
paper explores how the respondents actively mold the language associated with their
initiatives to support the development of norms in their organizations and in society. The
paper presents three approaches to conceptual development that may support the conceptual
development in the collaborative economy.

The On-line community as a self-organized network and space of belonging in a context of suburban planning - a case study

Anne Pässilä, Satu Parjanen, Allan Owens, Joona Outakivi — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The paper aims at understanding the potential of the construction of memories and meaning of everyday lives in the past in the context of a future community planning process. This was achieved through a digital community inviting residents from 1970’s to recall the time when they lived in a particular neighborhood. Focus was placed on the interpretation of their detailed descriptions of space and place, relationships, events and actions in order to create an evocative video. This captured something of the social and cultural layer of that time leading to the creation of the concept historialla muotoilu/ designing by memory.

Citizens´ perceptions for co-creation in urban open space management

Sari Suomalainen, Clive Holtham, Anne Pässilä, Allan Owens, Helena Kahiluoto — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The context of this paper is the management of urban open spaces, with specific respect to approaches to planning and managing such spaces which involve citizen participation, and particularly arts-based participation methods as evolved by the co-authors. The core of the paper is to examine whether a framework called CLEHES, originating from Chile, could provide a novel lens through which to review retrospectively such participative methods. In turn, the insights gained might usefully inform the reshaping of such fieldwork in the future, and in turn enhance participative approaches to planning and management.

Identification and collaboration with citizen groups in a suburban area – new perspectives

Eeva Aarrevaara, Mirja Kälviäinen — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The paper is introducing a research project in a suburban area of the city of Lahti aiming to produce citizen oriented information of the area by different resident groups. The project started in 2020 by collecting basic information and identifying stakeholder groups in the area. Citizen experiences were collected by a map-based questionnaire and interviews directed to adult and especially elderly citizens in Mukkula. Due to the findings a two-week experiment of temporary meeting place in the local shopping mall was arranged in spring 2022 to provide and test a service which was identified in the earlier research.

Interconnecting Paths: A Study of Path Emergence and Change

Dermot Breslin — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Path dependence shapes and constrains an organization’s ability to respond to changes in the marketplace, as history extends into the present and future. These living chains connect different time periods, and it is unclear how organizations can break free from the paths that bind them. Using a 7-year longitudinal study of a technology start-up, this paper examines how organizations change paths over time. It was seen that multiple paths emerged in the organization and that change involved a rerouting of the firm from its founding path to a newly created track. The paper makes a number of contributions to theory in this area. First, it points to the irreversibility of paths, with related action patterns persisting, despite decreasing returns from reinforcing mechanisms. Second, the study shows how change involves a rerouting of paths alongside a shift from within-path to between-path selection. Finally, this paper presents the organization as a landscape containing many interconnected paths. Whilst some are more dominant at different epochs, all retain an influence on the organization’s past, present and future.

Interactions and strategies in unfolding low-carbon transitions: a co-evolutionary approach

Sophie-Marie Ertelt, Johan Kask — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Implementing an agile framework as a rulebook or toolbox?

Tomas Gustavsson — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Transforming into agile ways of working in large organizations can be performed by implementing a pre-defined agile software development framework. However, how the implementation is carried out could be based on different sorts of logic. This paper aims to improve our understanding of agile transformations by viewing software development as an institution and investigates differing institutional logics in two case organizations. The findings display diverse impacts due to differing institutional logics when implementing the Scaled Agile Framework. Findings show that the two identified institutional logics, Agile toolbox logic and Agile rulebook logic, could be used to analyze agile transformations.

Caught in digitalization

Sara Dahlman, Emil Husted, Erik Mygind du Plessis — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

With this paper we challenge the black-and-white nature of the literature on digital technology and alternative organization. We do so by answering the question: How does digitalization impact organizational alternativity? The research question is operationalized by employing key concepts from Science and Technology Studies (STS) to analyze the use of sophisticated algorithmic tools in an alternative fintech start-up pseudomized as SusPens. More specifically, we rely on the notions of ‘delegation’ and ‘prescription’ (Akrich, 1992), as well as the concepts
‘immutable mobiles’ (Latour, 1986) and ‘obligatory passage points’ (Callon, 1986), to produce a nuanced analysis of the complex ways in which digital technology both enables and constrains alternativity

Management in the Age of the Algorithm

Alf Rehn, Stefan Roth-Kirkegaard, Jonas Nurredin Fetteh — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Management, as an activity and as a concept, is by necessity affected by the political, economical, social, and technological context it emerges in. At the moment, this means being affected by a pandemic, but also by a number of emergent technical facts. One of these is the indeterminate shift from logic and intelligence being always already mediated by human action to a state of affairs where algorithmic logic, machine learning, and artificial intelligence take on a more and more dominant role in decision-making. This paper deals with the managerial dilemma of being committed to notions of technological development, and at the same time conflicted when it comes to how the selfsame developments might affect one’s own professional identity. Based on a qualitative study of how top executives view artificial intelligence and the manner this might upend power relations in management, the paper will discuss the complex issue of how algorithmically driven decision-making processes can be understood in an executive mindset, and how this might be critiqued.

Current notions of artificial intelligence and how these might affect organizational work has usually focused on menial and manual labor. The logic has been that only such categories will be truly affected by the limited logical works of emergent AI. That said, modern notions of AI have indicated that a core developmental tendency within this field is the way in which actions such as delegation, reporting, and control (all key managerial functions) can be entrusted to algorithms and associated learning regimes. As notions that would previously have been considered managerial become assigned to machinic logics, what does this mean for categories such as general management as function, the way managers view the same, and the way they identify as specifically managers, leaders, and executives?

By way of an interview study with high-level executives in the Nordics, this paper thus aims to analyze the manner in which corporate executives are attempting to make sense of management in an age of burgeoning AI. Through this, the paper highlights the way in which technological developments are used to illustrate a simplistic notion of progress, even when they could be interrogated for the ways they destabilize and query existing power structures. In the end, the paper aims to show that categories such as “management” play a dual role – both as a valorized category that stabilize organizational discourse, and as an indeterminate category that allows for a radical questioning of the same. By doing so, the paper aims to highlight the manner in which the marker of “management” is more than an objective category, and also a symbol and signifier of power in an executive matrix, one that makes and potentially breaks notions of managerial identity.

An AI leadership competency framework for manufacturing companies: An interdisciplinary and mixed methods approach

Jon Eklöf, Thomas Hamelryck, Ulrika Lundh Snis — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

In this study, we create and assess a framework for leaders of manufacturing companies that wish to introduce AI in their businesses. In addition, we investigate how differences in leaders’ ability to apply the framework affect their capacity to deploy AI.

Deal Doctors: Data Analytics Use in the Financial Due Diligence

Tim Kastrup, Michael Grant, Fredrik Nilsson — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Based on a case study of a Big Four accounting firm in Sweden, this paper explores how calculative culture shapes the use of data analytics (DA) tools in financial due diligence. It finds that DA use patterns can be traced back to interrelated practices (e.g., reconciliations) and norms (e.g., auditability) of data and model use. By bringing together the concepts of calculative culture and heavy-/lightweight IT, it provides an accounting-based explanation for the (non-) use of DA among accounting professionals. Furthermore, it offers new insights into why many areas of accounting have remained Excel strongholds.

“It is already in our DNA, isn’t it?”

Niina Erkama, Pien ter Beek — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Organizational narratives can serve as means for communicating organizational strategies for organizational members, but they can also help organizational members to make sense of organizational change processes. However, currently we lack knowledge on the interplay and tensions between organization’s official strategy narratives and the same narratives on the lower levels of the organization, particularly during organizational change processes. Therefore, this study focusses on tension between different organizational narratives during a sustainability strategy transformation process in a Dutch case organization. The results discuss four pillars of sustainability narrative and the tensions related to each of them.

Legitimizing state ownership and government action

Merja Koskela, Mona Enell-Nilsson — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

In Finland, as well as in many other countries, the government annually submits a comprehensive report on the activities of state-owned companies to the parliament; the annual report of state ownership steering. This report comprises approximately one hundred pages of text, and typically summarizes the results of each state-owned company on one page. The report can be compared to private companies' annual reports in the respect that it is prepared annually and describes the results of operations in financial terms. However, the document has a unique character, as in addition to reporting financial results, it is intended to create trust and legitimize the state's role as owner.

This paper presents a study of the legitimation strategies of state’s ownership in the letter from the responsible Minister, called “A word from the Minister” or “Preface by the Minister”, presented in the Finnish annual reports of state’s ownership steering for the years 2007–2016. The Minister’s letter is placed in the annual report where the CEO’s letter normally appears in private companies’ annual reports (see e.g. Nickerson & De Groot 2005). In the text, the Minister summarizes the past year and highlights selected aspects both in terms of companies' operations and state’s ownership. The aim of the study is to analyze how state’s ownership in general and the government’s actions during its ruling period in particular are legitimized by the Minister in the report. This is interesting because state-ownership is a topic of constant ideological debates, and each government has its own goals for it (see also Rahm et al. 2019).

Methodologically the analysis is based on Van Leeuwen's (2007) classification of legitimation strategies. The analysis of the text material is supplemented with aspects concerning legitimation from a data collected through interviews (3) with government employees involved in the preparation of the annual report (see Koskela 2020). In addition, comparisons are made with corresponding Swedish text and interview material to shed light on specific Finnish features.

The study is part of the project RegeRa - Governments report on state’s ownership carried out at the University of Vaasa. The project is a collaboration between researchers at Lund University and at the University of Vaasa. The purpose of the project is to analyze and compare the reporting of state’s ownership in Sweden and Finland.

References

Koskela, M. (2020). Institutionaalista tekstilajia laatimassa – Valtionhallinnon henkilöstön näkemyksiä vuosikertomuksen synnystä. VAKKI Publications 12, Workplace Communication III, 32-45.

Nickerson, C. & De Groot, E. (2005). Dear shareholder, dear stockholder. Dear stakeholder: the business genre in the annual general report. In: Gillaerts, P., Gotti, M. (Eds.), Genre Variation in Business Letters, 324-346. Peter Lang AG, Bern.

Rahm, H., Skärlund, S., & Svensson, P. (2019). Monopolets moral: de nordiska alkoholmonopolens legitimeringsarbete – The Moral of the Monopoly: Legitimation Work in the Nordic Alcohol Monopolies. Sakprosa, 11(2).

Van Leeuwen, T. (2007). Legitimation in discourse and communication. Discourse & communication, 1(1), 91-112.

Empowered to consume

Cecilia Hjerppe — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Wait, who are we and who do we want to be? Communicatively constructing strategy and organizational identity in a knowledge-intensive firm

Iina Mustakallio, Hanna Lehtimäki — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

I have a dream! Challenges and opportunities for a refugee on the path towards entrepreneurship

Stefan Lång, Maria Ivanova-Gongne, Jonas Lagerström — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The aim of this paper is to study the core motivations for refugees to become entrepreneurs, and the role of embeddedness in the host country's social environment. The indicative results show that the challenges a refugee meets when placed in a host country is lack of local social capital, language skills, knowledge about the cultural, legal and financial issues, liability of foreignness or alienation. Further, refugees are not prepared before arriving to the host country, however, education could speed up the process of integration and provide a more successful start for entrepreneurship.

Why do refugees become entrepreneurs?

Jonas Lagerström, Stefan Lång, Maria Ivanova-Gongne, Michael Wynn-Williams — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Entrepreneurship rates among refugees differ substationally across EU countries. This paper examines to what extent these differences can be explained by labour market rigidity and integration policies. Using detailed survey information on 518,671 refugees in 17 European countries over the period 2007-2013, we find that 1) self-employment among refugees increases significantly when labour markets become more rigid (we see no such effects for the native population), 2) improved labour market rights for immigrants correspond to reduced self-employment among refugees and an increased probability of being an wage-employee, 3) the individual characteristics that predicts entrepreneurship are fairly similar for refugees and the native population. Our findings suggest that European self-employment among refugees is primarily a choice out of necessity.
Keywords: Self-employment; Entrepreneurship; Refugees; Discrimination; Institutions

The role of libraries in supporting refugee entrepreneurship

Eeva-Liisa Eskola, Gunilla Widén, Karen E. Fisher — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Aim: The aim of this paper is to explore whether libraries can support the development of refugees’ entrepreneurial knowledge and skills in order to enhance their lives in refugee camps and beyond.
Introduction: “Despite significant hardships, refugees are pushing the limits of what most people recognize as the general entrepreneur spirit. There is a resilience among refugee communities that enables them to thrive, not just to survive, and to be creative members of society.” (Parater 2016). In this endeavor, refugees naturally need different types of support, and access to key information for their decision-making as entrepreneurs. For example, there are a number of host country government restrictions on sectors in which refugees are allowed to work, and restrictions on how refugees can receive money. Public libraries around the world are committed to follow values which promote equal and free access to information and knowledge, dissemination of information and knowledge, community engagement and empowerment, diversity and inclusion, and protection of cultural heritage and memory (IFLA 2018; Vårheim 2018). The values guide the activities and services as libraries function as learning, cultural and information centres for diverse communities (IFLA, 2012), providing access to information and knowledge resources and services in library buildings, and as outreach services (e.g. mobile libraries) (IFLA, 2010). In addition, libraries promote information literacy (IL) skills and competences among citizens, ‘encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning’ (ACRL, 2015), taking social and cultural differences into account (UNESCO, 2021). These skills, promoted by libraries, are crucial in a world where the excess of information, dis- and misinformation impede access to reliable information, hampering social inclusion and active citizenship, such as entrepreneurship.
Method and material: The paper explores the existing literature in order to identify the preconditions and obstacles of libraries to successfully enhance refugees’ entrepreneurial skills. The relevant literature includes ideological foundations and services of public libraries and the concept of information literacy in relation to capacity building of various groups of people. Moreover, literature and other documentation on circumstances and library services in refugee camps, specifically in the Zaatari camp in Jordan are explored and described as examples.
Expected results: The ideological foundations of libraries, as well as the services developed according to these foundations provide a solid base for supporting the development of camp residents’ entrepreneurial knowledge and skills. Challenges and obstacles related to the circumstances in refugee camp settings are identified.

The effects of humor on career guidance e-services

Zahra Zahedi Nejad, Eeva-Liisa Oikarinen, Simo Hosio — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Through an experimental design, we examine the humor’s moderating effect on the interaction between process and outcome in terms of customer evaluations of the career guidance e-services. Our results suggest a favorable process reduces an unfavorable outcome regarding satisfaction, enjoyment, and behavioral intentions when related humor is embedded on the website. However, on a non-humorous website, the functional process has no effect when outcome is unfavorable. Although, aside from the compensatory effect, we discover for websites with unfavorable process and outcome, the use of related humor gives rise to more negative customer evaluations in comparison with a non-humorous website.

Exploring student emotional and rational experiences throughout international study exchange journey: an interpretative phenomenological analysis

Mohsin Abdur Rehman, Eeva-Liisa Oikarinen, Mari Juntunen, Magnus Söderlund — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Customer experience theme has been explored extensively, primarily dominated with positivistic paradigm. Therefore, the research topic needs more focus at interpretive paradigm. Like other service contexts, higher education gone through interactional transformations (from physical to digital) during the global pandemic. Therefore, it is both current and important to understand student experiences as a dynamic phenomenon. Even though, considerable literature is available on studying student experience throughout the domestic higher education journey. Research still lacks to explore student experience throughout the international exchange journey. The phenomenon of student experience has been empirically investigated in isolation either from emotional experiences or rational experiences. Research still needs more focus on combination of emotional and rational experiences following interpretive paradigm. Therefore, the current study aims to explore student emotional and rational experiences throughout international study exchange journey in the Finnish higher education context. Finnish higher education is selected as it acknowledged globally for high quality education standards. The current study aims to explore this phenomenon using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), a phenomenological approach that has unique way to explore the phenomenon at different layers of experience, including expected experience (anticipated utility), actual experience (experienced utility), and reflective experience (retrospective utility). We recruited two international exchange students to collected triangulated data using semi-structured interviews for first-hand personal accounts, interview videos for facial data and open-ended surveys for text data to compliment qualitative findings. From facial, interview transcription, and survey text data, emotional experiences were further explored to understand the intensity of positive (happy and surprised) and negative (sad and scared) emotions. The findings revealed that the positive emotions were dominant. The findings revealed five personal experiential themes of student experiences throughout the international study exchange journey, natural beauty, self-discovery, cultural diversity, hybrid interactions, and emotional experiences. Additionally, the limitations and implications of these findings are also discussed.

Building emotional safety in coach-team online interaction: An instrumental case study of teamwork coaching

Eija-Liisa Heikka, Eeva-Liisa Oikarinen — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

This study examines factors that build emotional safety through coach-team online interaction in the context of teamwork coaching. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, firms are increasingly developing their teamwork skills when work is taking place in multiple locations. Thereby, many service providers offer coaching services via new communication platforms and face the challenge of how to build emotional safety, particularly during online coaching. However, despite the acknowledged role of emotional safety in high-performing teams, the question of which factors contribute to emotional safety in professional services provided online remains a relatively unexplored topic. Based on the results of a qualitative instrumental case study, this study gives theoretical and practical suggestions of factors that foster emotional safety in online professional services.

Beneath the surface of laughter

Kristina Leppälä, Hanna Lehtimäki — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

This at-home ethnographic research examined acts of resistive humor in a cross-functional medical device innovation team. The worker level participants reacted as a resistive, dissonance to a managerial initiative and its enactment. These acts of resistive humor are at the intersectionality of work, work life, and personal expression. These acts transfer learned student engineering humor (Finnish: teekkarihuumori) to the workplace. These actions of resistive humor were unannounced, meaning that they were created and removed acts of installation humor, temporary installations created by members of the cross-functional engineering team with the goal of humorous appreciation from the team. These artefacts of installation humor were spontaneous, non-managerially aligned, occurred during the workday, and were present on a temporary basis in the workplace

Play and vigorous work to boost employees’ creativity

Sari Alatalo — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

In today’s turbulent business environment, generating novel innovations are of vital importance for companies operating in local and/or global markets. Consequently, the factors affecting employees and their innovative capacity are worthy of research. The ambition in this conceptual paper is to discuss several such possible contributors, i.e. communication culture, including playful and/or humorous features of it, cultural dimension of performance orientation and work engagement.

Nowadays, all employees in companies are to take part in creating new solutions, and not just some part of the organization, such as R&D department (Cassiman & Veugelers, 2006; Kesting and Ulhøi, 2010). For this reason, it is important to have the individuals’ innovativeness in focus of research. The importance of this kind of innovativeness emphasizes the need to deepen the understanding of ways to influence innovativeness. For one, play appears to have beneficial effects on the creativity and idea generation of individuals (Mainemelis & Ronson, 2006; Russ et al., 1999). Moreover, the organizational culture (Hunter et al., 2007) and communication as one part of it (Isaksen et al., 2001) have also been brought into the discussion of innovativeness. In these discussions, play and humour, however, seem quite often to be left to the background (Kinder et al., 2019). Hence, it is suggested here that the aspects of playfulness and humour employed in corporate communication are positively linked to individual level innovativeness.

Apart from corporate culture, also national cultures may play a role in innovativeness at an individual level. In particular, high performance orientation societies (Javidan, 2004) are more concerned with results, rewards, demanding targets, taking initiative etc. Based on these features, this dimension can be expected to have a positive effect on innovativeness. Set aside the corporate level, at an individual level work engagement has also the potential to enhance individual’s innovativeness as it is characterized as a state of mind with vigor, dedication and absorption (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004; Schaufeli et al., 2002). Engaged employees of this kind even experience tiredness as something positive associating it with accomplishments (Bakker et al. 2011) which, in practice, could be new innovations. This would imply that there is a potential for engaged employees to be creative.

In sum, the primary goal here is to develop a framework of the concepts in order to demonstrate the suggested connections of communication culture, playful and / or humorous communication, performance orientation and work engagement to individual level innovativeness. Drawing from the hypothesized relations, several propositions are formulated. The framework provides a basis for further research to produce results with practical implications to help organizations enhance employees’ innovativeness.

To Be or Not to Be Emotional about Sustainability

Taina Vuorela, Kristiina Brusila-Meltovaara, Sari Alatalo, Helena Arttola — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

To Be or Not to Be: Emotional about Sustainability in Product/Service Descriptions

Sustainability has become a buzz word in business (Viljanen & Juuti 2018). This phenomenon can also be observed in the brief product descriptions provided in the clothes tags by the clothing industry, which has a notorious reputation for pollutive production processes. How are companies presenting their products to buying customers in the limited space provided by the clothes tags? The state of our environment requires sustainability measures: this is a rational observation. Yet, sustainability seems also an emotional issue for some customer segments, more so than to the others. We address how consumers make buying decisions: rationally or emotionally or using a mix of the aforementioned. Is the content of the product labels helping consumers make the types of buying decisions that they want or are they misleading them? We will particularly examine sustainability as an aspect of making the purchasing decision. The use of specific words as an indicator of sustainability has been undertaken in a number of studies ( Kotonen 2019; Kotonen & Savonen 2014) This article explores the most common terms or words used in sustainable garment clothes tags, which consequently help purchasers make informed decisions about whether they are buying sustainable goods - through identifying specific terminology. Athletes require rigorous protection against the cold and the sun when exercising. Such outgoing consumers may be assumed to be also interested in nature protection and environmentally-friendly materials. The aim of the present article is to analyse the clothes tags collected during 2018-2020 with a specific focus on the clothing sold for athletic purposes with a special focus on the discourse used. The theoretical framework of the paper will involve both sustainability: economic, environmental and social sustainability viewpoints, as well as discourse analytical approaches, both quantitative and qualitative.

References:

Bacigalupo, M., Kampylis, P., Punie, Y., Van den Brande, G. (2016).EntreComp: The Entrepreneurship Competence Framework. Luxembourg: Publication Office of the European Union; EUR 27939 EN; doi:10.2791/593884 https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC101581/lfna27939enn.pdf

Laine, K. 1996, Cloze readability of financial reports: a cross-national comparison, PhD, University College of North Wales, UK. Available: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.318944

Kotonen, U. (2009) Formal Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting in Finnish Listed Companies. Journal of Applied Accounting Research, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 176 – 209. http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1827313&show=abstract.

Kotonen, U. (2009) Third-party assurance practices on CSR reporting: Experiences and views from large Finnish listed companies. The International Journal of Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability, vol. 5, no. 5, pp. 219 – 236.
https://cgscholar.com/bookstore/works/thirdparty-assurance-practices-of-corporatesocialresponsibilityreporting?category_id=cgrn&path=cgrn%2F289%2F291.

Kotonen, U. & Savonen, T. (2014) Sustainability in travel industry: Empirical findings from the biggest travelcompanies operating in Finland. The International Journal of Sustainability Policy and Practice, vol. 10. issue 3 – 4, pp. 15 – 30. https://cgscholar.com/bookstore/works/sustainability-in-the-travelindustry?category_id=cgrn&path=cgrn%2F289%2F294.

Liang, P. & Guo, S. (2015). Social interaction, Internet access and stock market participation—An empirical study in China, Journal of Comparative Economics, Vol. 43(4), pp. 883-901.

OP suuryritystutkimus: Suomalaiset suuryritykset valmistautuvat matalan kasvun aikaan (2021)
https://news.cision.com/fi/op-ryhma/r/op-n-suuryritystutkimus--suomalaiset-suuryritykset-valmistautuvat-matalan-kasvun-aikaan,c3266433

Nieminen, T. (2013) ''Siinä onkin hommaa, jos puhtaan eettistä toimintaa maapallolta haluaa löytää''– Piensijoittajien näkemyksiä eettisestä sijoittamisesta, Maisterin tutkielma, Helsingin Yliopisto.

Saarela, A. (2018 ) Piensijoittajan päätöksentekoprosessiin vaikutavat tekijät osakemarkkinoilla, Tampereen teknillinen yliopisto. https://trepo.tuni.fi//handle/123456789/26981

Uzsoki, D. (2020) Sustainable Investing: Shaping the future of finance. IISD: International Institute for Sustainable Development. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/sustainable-investing.pdf

Viljanen, S. & Juuti, P. (2018) Arvovallankumous. Eettisyys innovaatioiden lähteenä yhteiskunnallisissa yrityksissä. Keuruu: Edita.

Extending the concept of brand love with bodily dimension

Kaisa Aro, Jaana Tähtinen — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

This study extends the conceptualization of brand love to include a bodily dimension. Current conceptualizations including three dimensions of emotional, behavioural, and cognitive dimensions are insufficient in understanding particularly the relationships consumers have with destination brands. This abductive study on destination branding shows the importance of bodily dimension in brand love. Moreover, the study extends the understanding of brand love, not only as a static outcome of a consumer-brand relationship, but as a process of loving a
brand.

Acting is analyzing: Performative inquiries within organizations

Thomas Duschlbauer — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The performative inquiry is a way of dealing with what now is called VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) in general. This approach enables us to generate a co-creative methodology that will allow us to gain insights by means of a participatory process or to give greater acceptance to individual insights. It does not prescribe analyses before action; instead, it sees action, trial, and improvisation as analysis per se – out of which the extent of the scope of action of an individual or of a group of people can be judged too.

Accounting for the future: Credit risk management in banking

Amalie Ringgaard, Per Nikolaj Bukh, Niels Sandalgaard — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Purpose This paper examines how credit risk management accounts for the future through a quantification process where models and executive judgement blend together.
Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on a case study approach with interviews as the primary data source. The case company is a systemically important financial institution located in Scandinavia.
Findings We study how the bank quantifies credit risk through commensuration to fulfil legal and internal purposes. Specifically, we show how the models used to quantify corporate credit risk are considered useful in lowering capital requirements while also encouraging uniform reporting that will standardise information and advance decision-making. Further, we show how the monetary output of models is supplemented with executive judgement to account for uncertainties in future corporate credit risk.
Originality The paper demonstrates how a quantification process evolves as a result of the interrelated demands for external and internal control and how risk models integrate with subjective evaluation.

Accounting for impact: Switching between hope and disappointment

Jacob Reilley, Lukas Löhlein, jaromir junne — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

This paper explores why individuals remain enthusiastically invested in accounting’s potential, despite being continuously disappointed by its limitations. Empirically, this paper draws on a qualitative case study of a non-profit organization’s attempt to measure the impact of a social program for reducing child poverty. Our study highlights the multiple and shifting dispositions of individual actors towards accounting, as well as numerous disruptions of complementing work. To better understand these unruly modes of engaging with accounting, we focus on the underlying dynamics of distancing: processes in which accounting expands and collapses relations between accounts and the objects they aim to represent. Our analysis contributes to prior works in three ways. First, we challenge the notion that actors develop a stable disposition towards accounting, showing instead how they are constantly re-configured by fluctuating distances. Second, we show how the on-going modification or repair of incomplete accounting infrastructures is subject to various disruptions and re-starts, which condition how accounting expands and stabilizes itself. Third, we show how objects multiple, such as impact, produce an ambivalent dispositional mode – a hopeful skepticism – which becomes a core element of domains where accounting is deployed to achieve a broader social purpose.

“Perhaps we forgot about the essence”: Temporal entrainments and overflows in controlling home care services

Åsa Plesner — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

This paper reports early findings from a PhD thesis project investigating how
control techniques shape temporal structures and experiences of day-to-day work in the home
care services of a Swedish city. Tracing an eight-year process of control reforms in a public
home care organization, it demonstrates how the reforms altered temporal structures affecting
care workers, and how care workers mobilized a critique of temporal structures to defend their
interests in a way that contributed to thwarting the reforms.

Accounting Choice & Opportunistic Behavior – A Behavioral Sciences Perspective on the Rational Decision-Maker

Odd Stalebrink — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

This essay adds to the extant body of research, conducted on opportunistic accounting choice,
by examining it through the lenses of behavioral economics. It shows that this perspective can
be usefully applied to shed light on extant findings, which have shown that the presence of
professional gatekeepers, such as independent auditors and actuaries are likely to deter
opportunistic accounting choice. While the behavioral economics perspective does not refute
the value of relying on professionals, it suggests that extant findings might be overstating the
ability of professionals to combat opportunistic accounting choice, due to researchers’ reliance
on normative models.

Constructing the wanting subject

Niklas Wällstedt, Anton Borell — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

On digital management control systems, performance measures and unintended consequences in the Swedish educational setting

Christina Mauléon — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Abstract

Within the Swedish educational system improved student learning, teaching quality and organizational development has been the focus of attention for many years (OECD, 2015; Gorard 2010; Seidel & Shavelson 2007;). And many of the improvement initiatives have aimed at increasing learning and teaching quality by demanding more transparency and accountability (Everson 2016; Harris & Gorard 2015). To fulfill these requirements some of the solutions have been to implement and use digital management control systems (dMCS’) (such as unikum, schoolsoft, canvas, urkund, incident-reportingsystems and many more) to support follow-ups, decision-making, evaluations and actions in schools (Perry 2016; Leckie & Goldstein 2017). Subsequently are now teachers and principals required to collect, analyze and evaluate large amounts of performance data in dPMS’ to inform teaching and report achievements (DfE 2018).

Based on sociology and organizational research, it is known that the use of dPMS’ and performance measures will have unintended consequences (Ashton, 1976; Franco-Santos & Otley,2018 ; Ferreira & Otley 2009). Some of these consequences will be positive e.g. increased focus and attention; others will be undesirable e.g. measure fixation, bias, manipulation of data, ‘window dressing’, and stress amongst teachers and principals (Jones, et al., 2017).

The core idea for this paper emerges from the outcomes in a pilot study (Mauléon & Spante, 2015) showing how the use of an dPMS’ (a digital incident reporting system) at a primaryschool had adverse effects for the students being subjected to the dPMS’ and the teachers having to comply with it. It is also based on studies conducted in the US showing how groups of students such as African American, Hispanic and native American boys are disproportionately reported in dPMS’ due to the way in which teachers and principals enact (Weick, 1995) the systems. Over time, the digitally recorded information stigmatizes these particular students potentially affecting their futures (Anfinson et al., 2010).

This paper will present further empirical examples from the Swedish educational system of how well intended solutions end up having not only unintended but even negative consequences for students and teachers. We may call these unintentional social side effects, which due to the interpretation and use of the digital management control systems within the educational setting may affect them for years to come. The aim of our paper is thus to investigate the dark side of the use of digital management control systems within the Swedish educational system.

Sustainable Fashion Influencers as Institutional Entrepreneurs in the Circular Economy

Ines Kaivonen, Nina Mesiranta, Elina Närvänen — Thu, 30 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The aim of this study is to examine the ways in which sustainable fashion influencers (SFIs)
conduct institutional work among consumers, to transform both their attitudes towards
sustainable fashion consumption and actual consumption behavior. Drawing from institutional
theory, the SFIs are seen as institutional entrepreneurs who seek to change not only their own
consumption behavior when it comes to fashion, but also the behavior of others and, thereby
transforming and creating institutions in fashion and textile consumption. Drawing on the
findings from our study, we present a typology describing the identified institutional work the
interviewed SFIs conduct through their actions.

Prerequisites for the emergence of inter-industry value chain collaboration for the circular bioeconomy

Gabriela Schaad, Jon Williamsson, Anders Sandoff — Thu, 30 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Actors active in the circular bioeconomy strive to commercialize sustainable innovations from
bio-based resources and technologies. Inter-industry collaboration is a fruitful way to exploit
new market opportunities, yet these are rare and poorly understood. This research aims to
identify prerequisites for inter-industry value chain collaboration that promote the
commercialization of sustainable innovations in the bioeconomy. Data was collected through
case studies and interviews with firm representatives from Nordic collaborations aiming to
contribute to the shift towards renewable transport fuels. Combining a literature review with
empirical material, the paper presents a framework of prerequisites at the firm- and interfirm
level

Perceptions of Food Waste as a Wicked Problem in Indonesia

Nina Mesiranta, Elina Närvänen, Malla Mattila, Johanna Renny Octavia — Thu, 30 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Food waste is one of the major challenges confronting circular economy. Indonesia is
considered to be one of the leading producers of food waste globally, while also suffering from
food insecurity. This study applies and further develops the framework of food waste as a
wicked problem (Närvänen et al., 2020) in Indonesia. The data comprises seven focus group
discussions among Indonesian teachers, students, and other stakeholders. The paper highlights
how these stakeholders within the higher educational system perceive the problem of food
waste.

Consumer Collectives in Circular Economy: A Systematic Literature Review

Roosa Luukkonen, Elina Närvänen, Larissa Becker — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The article presents a consumer collective perspective to circular economy. Many circular
solutions require collective actions from consumers, such as sharing resources or participating
in local initiatives. Yet, there is no comprehensive understanding of consumers as members of
collectives in the circular economy literature. This study aims to synthesise the scattered and
multidisciplinary research on consumer collectives engaged in circular consumption through a
systematic literature review approach. Furthermore, the study focuses on the problem of what
is the role of consumer collectives in circular economy.

Consumer behavior as a challenge and opportunity for circular food packaging

Sabina Du Rietz, Anna Kremel — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The food sector is a potential site for the implementation of circular economy strategies. Food
packaging cause concern due to high production volume, short usage, problems of waste
management and littering. Circular economy strategies could address these concerns if there is
consumer acceptance and participation in systems with food packaging. We seek to review
current knowledge of consumer behavior in relation to circular food packaging. The study finds
that circular economy in terms of the recycling strategy, are found foremost in European and
American setting. While reuse strategies were more prevalent in studies from 1970-80s, such
initiatives have been renewed.

The Nordic values of work-life balance in diverse teams in multinational corporations

Lisbeth Clausen — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Globalization brings about transnational and diverse teams (Earley & Mosakowski, 2000). The study of geographically dispersed, diverse, and multicultural teams has been growing rapidly within psychology and cross cultural management studies (Stahl, Maznevski, Voigt, & Jonsen, 2010; Minbaeva, Fitzsimmons; Brewster 2021). Teams offer companies potentially effective ways to combine the various skills, talents, and perspective of a group of individuals to achieve corporate goals (Staples & Zhao, 2006). This study explores responsible management and change of mindset in corporations. Multicultural and diversified teams offer great potential in international collaboration. The success of diversity management connects positively to growth and innovation just like work-life balance is an important indicator of efficiency and work welfare.

Inclusion challenges in diverse teams

It is an established fact that improved representation of heterogeneous characteristics in organizational demographics and of minorities at the higher levels of the organization is important for dynamics of inclusion. (Joshi & Roh, 2007). Diversity management as organizational or business strategy may have an effect on diversity outcomes. Whether companies are proactive or reactive in relation to external pressure (e.g., political or competitive) or internal pressure (e.g., from top executive expectations and resources allocated) may have an effect. The success of diversity management is positively connected to growth and innovation and negatively connected to risk-aversion, times of downsizing, and strategic moves aimed at efficiency. (Joshi & Roh, 2007). The organizational history and culture also signals the company’s approach to diversity. The management of diversity in organizations induces a competitive advantage through reducing cost, attracting human resources, generating successful marketing, increasing creativity and innovation, assisting with problem-solving quality, and facilitating organizational flexibility (Cox & Blake, 1991). Becoming aware of implicit practices in time is transformative and suggests new areas of content related to responsible management to help people empower themselves to live full personal and professional lives.

Responsible management and work life balance

Work-life conflict is both the responsibility of employees as well as their organizations. Long work hour of companies has blurred the line between family and professional life. Therefore, to help the employees to balance both the roles appropriately companies have implemented many employee-friendly practices such as work from home, flexi-time, fun at workplace. The effects and blurring effects have only exacerbated due to lock downs during Covid-19. Diversity and work-life initiatives is at the core of the new social contract of negotiation between employers and employees. The basic outline calls for workers to commit their best contributions and greatest energies to the job in return for interesting work, respectful treatment, developmental opportunities, and an environment that responds to individual needs. Those provisions are critical for best outcomes. Flexible working opportunities also attract and retain qualified staff in organizations (Croucher and Kelliher, 2005). Work-life balance is the result of the satisfactory level of involvement in the various roles in one’s life. If the roles played at work and in family domains are incompatible, it results in an imbalance in work-life. Work life balance concerns spending time with family, time for emotional wellbeing and health of family members, support from peers, childcare and satisfaction with the workload (Karakas and Lee, 2004). Absolute balance of work and family life is a growing challenge. Communication about work-life programs is essential. Although an organization may offer work-life benefits, the positive effect depends on the senior management’s endorsement, company culture, manager and leader’s awareness and individual’s perception, as we shall see. Moreover, to manage employees from diversified background organizations are required to adopt heterogeneous practices rather than any generic practice.

This study

This study is based on a qualitative methodology of observing and interviewing high performing diverse team in seven subsidiaries of Danish, Japanese, American and Chinese multinational corporations in Tokyo. It is a qualitative field study. The first from observations and interviews in 2013-14 and the second from interviews in the corporations in 2019 and online in 2021). The diversity attributions in focus are nationality, functional expertise, experience - and gender.

While some studies may view diversity and work-life balance as separate functions, the business case for managing diversity is, in large part, the same for work-life balance. Both diversity and work-life initiatives promote employee commitment, improve productivity, lower turnover, result in fewer employee relations challenges, and decrease the likelihood of unethical business practices. (Konrad and Mangel, 2000; Kirkman Shapiro, 2001). A common thread that links the reasons of work-life benefits is organizational culture. This study explores

Society norms
Organizational culture
Team work
Individual conditions and perceptions

Observations

It is found that Danish corporations by comparison emphasize – arbejdsglæde – which means fulfilling work content - and equal conditions for women and men (salary, promotion and work-life balance[1]). Against this background, Japan has made efforts to maintain its working population and to raise its productivity in faces of a society with a declining population and economic stagnation. Economic reforms including the promotion of women in the work force – womenomics - have introduced a number of measurements to improve productivity. These should enhance corporate governance and reform the mindset of corporations in Japan towards stronger global competitiveness. Specifically, companies must enhance diversity amongst board members to build business acumen. Further, they should honor the merits of all employees irrespective of gender, nationality and age. Finally, the performance appraisals, rewards, communication, and employee welfare conditions should be fair and transparent. However, in spite of these policies a majority of Japanese companies are struggling to appoint female and foreign directors. It is even a challenge to appoint Japanese directors who are not in-house or already belong to the business system.

Moreover, Japanese organizations and the supporting culture of long working hours, virtues of hard work and commitment also have led to deficiencies such as an increase in incidents of stress. Conservative traditions also pose problems of integration and inclusion in the Japanese workforce. The present study explores the policies and practices of work life balance in seven international corporations in Tokyo. In comparison, the Chinese corporation’s employees were agile and robust to stress and the American corporation installed a four-day workweek with increased productivity.

The study offers examples of how these corporations responsibly leverage diversity and exemplify how they are catalysts of change and progress that benefit a diverse workforce in each their idiosyncratic ways. It also shows that responsible management was contingent on a number of factors in business organizations. The study exemplifies a number of solutions to similar principles rather than a one fits all.

[1] Denmark, as the Nordic countries, scored high in the OECD reports on happiness from 2012-2020. The reports measures are trust in the welfare system, employment, education, and work-life balance.

Innovation in a multistakeholder setting: Personalized medicine in Finland

Ida Parkkinen, Hanna Lehtimäki — Thu, 30 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Training in SME – what do we know?

Anna Kremel, Carina Holmgren — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

With this study we synthesize academic knowledge about training methods in SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises). Training in SMEs have long been argued as important for business performance and growth. These efforts have been supported by governments and EU programs. Even though different training initiatives have been evaluated and studied during the years, there are no knowledge overview of the effects of training in SMEs. With this study we try to remedy this. The study also discusses how to conduct a literature review with the use of Zotero and Nvivo tools.

Why organization happens – the case of macro-organizations

Nils Brunsson, Ingrid Gustafsson, Kristina Tamm Hallström — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Why does organization happen and why does organization expand? We discuss these questions by examining how a fairly simple form of organization in the form of standards expanded and finally led to the emergence of two global macro-organizations in the fields of management and sustainability. We find four ways by which organization expanded in these cases and we analyze the arguments for expansion used by the organizers. We argue that the search for trust, transparency, independence and impartiality can be significant drivers of organization.

Overcoming inertia in climate mitigation: How can organization theory contribute?

Susanna Alexius, Nils Brunsson, Staffan Furusten, Ingrid Nordin Gustavsson — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Many attempts are currently made to organize in order to tackle the grand societal challenges we are all facing (Ferraro et al, 2015; George et al, 2016). When actors from different sectors get involved and collaborate, this is seen as hopeful. Yet, the attempts look very different, are taken for different purposes and with different results. In this paper we compare differently organized attempts to foster climate change, and we focus on attempts that aim to create collective action between organizations to reduce the use of fossil fuels.

Climate research has shown what needs to be done, but a common complaint is that the transition is both too slow and too incremental (e g Aangenheyster et al, 2018; Dunlop and Spratt, 2019). In other words, inertia poses serious challenges to the much needed path generation. The purpose of this paper is to develop theory that contributes to explain how come some types of organizing seem to create more inertia, while other types of organizing may have the capacity for more radical and speedy change.

Empirically we analyze and compare differently organized attempts aimed to trigger organizations to act for climate transition for the public good. We map and categorize attempts such as the development of standards for sustainability (Brunsson & Jacobsson 2000; Boström & Tamm Hallström, environmental awards and prices, partnerships and collaboration programs (Ahrne & Brunsson, 2019). We also map attempts to establish meta-organizations (Ahrne & Brunsson, 2008) where membership requires particular environmental concerns, and hybrid organizations where social and environmental responsibility are built into the very constitution (Alexius & Furusten, 2019). Typical examples of the former category are industry associations, and of the latter; state owned enterprises (such as LKAB and Vattenfall).

Since the attempts to organize for climate transition are often aimed to generate new paths for organizational behavior, we draw upon theories of collective action and path generation as an overall theoretical frame (e g Bothello and Salles Djelic, 2018). However, we also problematize and complement these macro theories from the viewpoint of theories of partial organization (Ahrne & Brunsson, 2010; Ahrne & Brunsson, 2019) and hybrid organization (Alexius & Furusten, 2020).

We argue that different forms of organization are likely to have different and complementary capacities to trigger path generation through collective action between organizations. More specifically, we are interested in unfolding any co-variance between degrees of organization and degrees of inertia in the attempts. In order to categorize attempts according to their different degrees of organization, we analyze whether five organizational elements are present or not; membership, hierarchy, rules, monitoring and sanctions. We also relate the degree of organization of an attempt to its perceived inertia, where antecedents of inertia are likely to include conflicts of interests, power struggles and unclear assignment of responsibility.

Following Ahrne & Papakostas (2002/2014) we assume that inertia in organizations derive from both inability and unwillingness to change and adapt quickly and radically. Collective resources give strength and power to an organized attempt but also limitations, such as inertia. Another fundamental source of inertia is found in the organization’s structures (rules, decision-making processes etc), whereas a third source of inertia lies in the organizers ability (or rather inability) to perceive new things or the need for change. Inertia may also be associated with an unwillingness to change. This unwillingness may be rooted in the motives to join or make other exchanges with the organization or a particular attempt. The unwillingness may also come from own vested interests as well as ideological or cultural factors and a fear of change.

In terms of the analysis, we also acknowledge that many instances of inertia experienced in contemporary society spring from good intentions and high held ideals of inclusion and universal human rights. It is simply a fact of organizational life that democratic procedures, the rule of law, taking multiple perspectives into account as well as careful preparation and critical debate, all require their due time. Some of the most sought after values of bureaucracy; such as equal treatment and proper documentation, illustrate this point as well and highlight the need for value conscious judgment, as well as the need for critical, qualitative analysis of any instance of inertia.

While some instances of inertia may be there for better reasons (such as inclusion of more stake-holders), other instances of inertia may presumably be less well motivated (such as certain types of bureaucratic inertia) and perhaps then also easier to handle or avoid at little social cost? Hence, inertia may be more or less ethically motivated. When analyzing and comparing different attempts to achieve collective action for climate change, we assume that we will often come across these trade-offs between high-held values (Alexius and Tamm Hallström, 2014; Bres et al, 2018). The paper will thus also make a contribution to our understanding of how such dilemmas of climate organizing are handled in differently organized attempts aimed for climate change and path generation.

References

Ahrne, G. & Brunsson, N. (2008). Meta-organizations. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Ahrne, G. and Brunsson, N. (2010). Organization outside organizations: The significance of partial organization, Organization, 18(1): 83-104.

Ahrne, G. and Brunsson, N. (Eds.). (2019). Organization Outside Organizations: The Abundance of Partial Organization in Social Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ahrne, G. & Papakostas, A. (2002/2014). Organisationer, samhälle och globalisering. Studentlitteratur.

Alexius, S & Furusten, S. eds. (2019). Managing Hybrid Organizations. Palgrave Macmillan.

Alexius, S. & Furusten, S. (2020). Enabling Sustainable Transformation: Hybrid Organizations in Early Phases of Path Generation, Journal of Business Ethics, 165 (1).

Alexius, S. & Tamm Hallström, K. eds. (2014). Configuring value conflicts in markets. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Aangenheyster, M., Feng, Q. Y., vander Ploeg, F., & Dijkstra, H.A. (2018). The point of no return for climate action: Effects of climate uncertainty and risk tolerance. Earth System Dynamics, 9 (3), 1085-1095.

Boström, M and Tamm Hallström, K. (2010). Transnational Multi-Stakeholder Standardization: Organizing Fragile Non-State Authority. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Bothello J, Salles-Djelic M-L (2018). Evolving Conceptualizations of Organizational Environmentalism: A Path Generation Account. Organization Studies. 39(1).

Bres, L. et al. (2018). Pluralism in organizations: Learning from unconventional forms of organizations. International Journal of Management Reviews, 20(2).

Brunsson, N. and Jacobsson, B. eds. (2000). A World of Standards. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dunlop, I and Spratt, D. (2019). We must mobilize for the climate emergency like we do in wartime. Where is the climate minister? The Guardian, June 2^nd.

Ferraro, F. et al. (2015). Tackling grand challenges pragmatically: Robust action revisited. Organization Studies, 36(3).

George, G. et al. (2016). Understanding and Tackling Societal Grand Challenges through Management Research. Academy of Management Journal, 59 (6).

The challenges in initiating cluster activities: Lessons from three attempts to a biotech cluster initiative in Iceland

Runolfur Smari Steinthorsson, Hulda Gudmunda Oskarsdottir — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Fairness in scholarly writing: Examining the professional distance and personal involvement trade-off

Alexander Styhre — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

In management studies, several scholars have proposed that the ideal of professional disinterestedness is questionable as it either prevents scholars from engaging with matters of joint concern that are important for social and economic welfare (Tihanyi, 2020), or because it invites scholars to act under the veneer that their personal interest and concerns are strictly contained during the field work and the writing of scholarly papers (Anteby, 2013; Langley and Klag, 2017). That is, scholar either commit time and resources to research that are of merely of theoretical interest (Hambrick, 2007), or they fail to productively handle the paradox of “professional distance and personal involvement” (Anteby, 2013: 1278). These scholarly concerns regarding how institutional conditions and social norms effectively shape scholarly research agendas need to be understood against the preference for justice as fairness (Rawls, 1971) and the epistemic ideal of objectivity in scholarly accounts derived therefrom. If scholars are instructed to increasingly recognize their “personal involvement” in both emotional terms in and practical ways when the scholarly paper is being written, then certain key terms being part of the epistemological framework, normatively structuring scholarly writing, need to be critically examined. For instance, the concept of objectivity, widely endorsed as an epistemic ideal at the same time as it is repeatedly remarked that at least what is called mechanical objectivity (Porter, 1995; Cambrioso, Keating, Schlich and Weisz, 2006; Weiss and Huault, 2016) is an unattainable goals in the social sciences, need to be reformulated so that the authority of scholarly writing can be maintained on basis of a novel set of epistemic standards. The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the concept of objectivity and to fashion a more accurate complementary term being better aligned with the newly recognized quality of the value of personal involvement in scholarly research. In order to formulate a more useful notion that replace the concept of objectivity, a series of concepts such as justice, fairness, judgment, and writing—with writing being the end-point of the sequentially divided scholarly research process—need to be assessed and compared. The paper concludes that to deal with the professional distance and personal involvement paradox, core elements of the scholarly research process need to be revised and modified, or else the acclaim of e.g., personal involvement as a scholarly virtue is made in principle but not in substance. Some implications for the revised view of how objectivity, honoring the principle of justice as fairness as scholarly accounts portray things as they actually happened or occurred, are discussed, and management studies scholars are instructed regarding how to balance personal involvement and the preservation of scholarly authority in an interpretative research tradition.

Exploring indirect values of tourist attractions in place branding – the case of Tom Tits Science Center

Johanna Lindström, Joakim Lind, Johan Storgård — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Sustainable Tourism in the Shadow of Covid-19: Perceptions and Attitudes of Generation Y & Z

Maria Ek Styvén, Jenny Nilsson Vestola, Kerry Chipp — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

This purpose of this paper is to describe perceptions and attitudes of the young generations’ (Y and Z) toward tourism travel in times of Covid-19. Green behavioral intention is studied along with Covid-19-related concepts to see if there is any interplay between these variables. The study takes a semi-longitudinal approach, with data collected through an online survey in July 2020 and July 2021. In total, 722 Swedish men and women between 18 and 40 years responded to the survey. Results are presented at the conference.

Organizing destinations

Fredrik Sjöstrand, Karin Ågren, Sabine Gebert Persson — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The hospitality industry can on a general level be characterized as fragmented with several small and large actors working side-by-side with public actors (Nordin, 2017; Wang and Fesenmaier, 2007). Cooperation and interdependencies are important for the survival of the different actors as well as for the regional economic growth (Zahra and Ryan, 2007) and sustainability. Several factors have been identified as influencing different forms of cooperation within the hospitality industry, e.g. formulated strategies, maturity of destination etc. (Mariani, 2016). A number of designated organizations for the coordination of tourist actors have been established under the concept: Destination Management Organizations, DMO (c.f. Elbe et al. 2009), with the ambition to lead activities in pursuit of a mutual gain. In addition, DMOs are proposed as a coalition of different types of organizations and interest although in practice, these organizations have proven to be composed in different ways. With Covid 19, the hospitality industry has been severely affected due to imposed travel restrictions and thus the pandemic have proven to have immense impact on health, life and business.

In this paper, we add to research on the deliberate organizing of a destination in times of crisis. To understand the intentional organizing of organizations and how this could lead to action or inaction in the pursuit of a sustainable viability. What factors appear to be crucial for the sought after mobilization? We do so by following the historic path of a destination to identify to what extent there are patterns evolving over time that can explain mobilizing, framing and levels of cooperation aiming at identifying processes that re-occur over time as actors aim at mobilizing themselves. Mobilization can here be defined as:“ […] dynamic process of engaging actors on broad fronts to tackle a common issue.” (Salmi & Ritvala, 2011:888)

The paper takes on a case study approach and is based, among other things, on 65 interviews with stakeholders over three years’ time. What is more, data was collected through participation observation at meetings, as well as reviewing official documents and news articles related to the deliberate formation of a sustainable cruise network. In addition, the researchers actively took part in a co-organized workshop that dealt with the pandemic´s direct consequences for the hospitality industry. The data collection was focused on capturing the formation processes to give an understanding of which direct activities have been applied over time and how different processes evolved and for what reason.

The current results show that through history the organizing of the destination has shifted from private initiatives, to public organizing, and back to some kind of public-private organization and eventually revolving back into a private organization. The pursuit of an efficient and sustainable way to organize is a recurrent theme, but the power base and ability to influence has shifted continuously over time. The emerging development over time shows a shift from long-term network orientation into a short-term oriented issue-based net. The organizing shifts from facilitating cooperation in a decentralized and activity-focused organization into a centralized management, with higher intensity of interaction among a smaller number of influential actors.

Moreover, in order to enable joint action and mobilization, the purpose of the DMO or events in the context needs to be perceived as urgent or vital enough for the current business community. External pressures affect the level of cooperation, where the degree of centralization affects the activities and commitment to cooperate. Furthermore, the preliminary results indicate that perceived hinders towards collaboration decreased as the extensive crisis hit the industry. Decisions and initiatives tended to became more centralized and new joint activities were initiated.

Bibliometric analysis of digital content marketing for digital government

Anabel Guzman, Xavier Arroyo — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Due to the evolution in the last two decades regarding the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs), the adoption of digital channels has been increasing by government entities. Communication strategies that generate more significant interaction with citizens have been prioritized. The study's primary purpose was to investigate the evolution and current state of the literature using a quantitative-descriptive methodology and analyze the database yields' metadata. It was taken as a reference to classic marketing theories as well as emerging ones to classify the literature and identify potential gaps concerning public issues or digital government. This bibliometric study analyzed 121 scientific papers drawn from the Web of Science (WOS) platform, based on content marketing strategies for e-government platforms, which initially examined the knowledge development, the scientific quality, and influence of works and sources.

Digitalization and customer journeys

Lisa Lundin, Daniel Kindström — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

This paper explores how digitalization influences B2B customer journeys. Understanding
customer journeys has been identified as a top research priority. Additionally, digitalization
changes B2B interactions, as well as the way in which offerings are experienced. Consequently,
more research on B2B digitalization is also needed. Building on a conceptualization of
digitalized touchpoints and how they can be managed in B2B customer journeys, this paper
identifies key aspects of increasingly digitalized touchpoints and how they can be managed
throughout a digitalized customer journey. The research is based on an in-depth case study of
a B2B firm and four of their customers.

Building Platform Business Models for Smart Cities

Sari Perätalo, Mahmoud Mohamed, Marika Iivari — Thu, 30 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0200

This qualitative case study explores the outcomes of multilayered approach on the smart city governance. We apply the 4C model of the content, context, commerce, and connection as an approach for platform business model governance in the smart city. We argue that collective governance mechanisms between all stakeholders of the smart city enhances the value creation for citizens. However, ccities prefer to keep the centralised control mechanisms on the data-sharing policies, which impact businesses' willingness towards data monetization in return as a strategic approach to overcome sudden competition or technology imitation.

Assessing alternative future business models by their expected performance implications in 6G: scalability, replicability, and sustainability perspectives

Seppo Yrjölä, Petri Ahokangas, Marja Matinmikko-Blue — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

How to measure the effectiveness and performance outcomes of a business model has turned out to be highly discussed and manifold challenge similarly to business model concept itself. The performance-related debate presents numerous metrics and perspectives related to the elements and performance of a business model. Particularly challenging areas of assessment are business model innovation and future business models. In this study, the assessment of future business models is grounded on the concepts of business model antecedent and outcome. The antecedents consist of opportunity exploration and exploitation, value co-creation and co-capture, and competitive advantage exploration and exploitation. The business model outcome concept focuses on analyzing the expected outcomes through the lenses of scalability, replicability and sustainability. Via assessing alternative business models for the future 6^th generation mobile communication networks (6G) and services, this research aims to provide a futures-oriented conceptual framework for the practical analysis of the scalability, replicability and sustainability concepts. The proposed framework aims to offer helpful guidance for practitioners when alternative business models are created by companies.

Doing the right things in the digital era: the role of strategic leaders in business model innovation

Irina Atkova, Petri Ahokangas, Lauri Haapanen — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Connectivity technologies —5G and 6G— drive the transformation of firms, industries, and economies by creating preconditions for the emergence of ecosystemic business models. Yet, the role of strategic leaders in whether, how, when, and to what ends firms engage in digital transformation needs further clarification for advancing strategic entrepreneurship theory, research and practice. Adopting the business model perspective, this paper aims to investigate the role of strategic leaders in bringing nontrivial changes to the business opportunity, value process and competitive advantage, as well as their architecture to capitalize on digital
transformation in the ecosystemic context. Our study shows that the process of implementing connectivity technologies follows a hysteresis curve, wherein a strategic leader needs to orchestrate sequentially one-to-one and ecosystemic relationships.

International Business without foreign language capabilities

Maria Elo, Wilhelm Barner-Rasmussen — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Abstract

We challenge the assumption that a lack of foreign language competence confines SMEs to their domestic markets, and highlight diaspora networks as an alternative route to SME internationalization that bypasses the need for in-house foreign language competence. Our longitudinal case study of an internationalizing Greek SME shows how owner-managers compensate for a lack of foreign language skills by leveraging their social capital to access diaspora networks. Through these external resources, SMEs can access linguistic and cultural competences needed to exploit foreign business opportunities, with potentially significant repercussions especially for Global South SMEs due to the growth of diaspora networks as a consequence of increasing migration. Potential drawbacks of international expansion through diaspora networks are also discussed, and suggestions for future research are provided.

Who is a cosmopolitan? Conceptualising the phenomenon in International Management

Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Cosmopolitan behaviour has gained more momentum in the recent decade due to increased mobility, shifts in the forms of working, and the technological developments enabling nomadism. International business as a field features many characteristics that can be associated to cosmopolitan behaviour, such as transnational and global entrepreneurial migration, international mobility and careers of global and self-initiated expatriates. However, cosmopolitan behaviour as an individual concept yet lacks clear conceptualization within international business, as the existing concepts do not paint the full picture. This study explores the conceptual gap via qualitative life course narratives among Finnish-born cosmopolitans to offer some preliminary findings and insights.

Russophones in international entrepreneurship: A literature review

Maria Ivanova-Gongne, Maria Elo , Daria Klishevich , Liubov Ermolaeva — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

After the fall of Soviet Union several migration streams of Russian-speaking migrants to Europe have occurred. Furthermore, nowadays, migration from former Soviet Union states still remains high, with Russian-speaking people or so called Russophones being scattered across the world, in countries such as Germany, Finland, Spain, etc. Oftentimes, migrants revolve to entrepreneurship due to lack of job opportunities or other reasons. Russophone migrants frequently form a large part of the migrant entrepreneurship society where they reside. Common Russian language provides opportunities to employ a wide range social networks, not based solely on national ties, but also across nationalities that previously formed part of Soviet Union. This enables Russophone migrant entrepreneurs to be skillful in international trade. However, previous research have not considered linguistic diasporas as an important factor enabling international business. In order to fill in this gap, we aim to conduct a literature review of studies focusing on Russian-speaking migrant entrepreneurs and outline possible research implications and avenues for future research.

In order to reach our aims, we conduct a systematic literature review in eight databases of major publishing houses, namely JSTOR, Science Direct, Emerald, Palgrave, Sage, Springer, Taylor and Francis, Wiley-Blackwell. We focus on the period of 1991-2020, since it covers the time after the collapse of Soviet Union. In the scope of this literature review, we look especially at how Russian-speaking entrepreneurs come to establish their business, what are their motivations and story, what methods do they use to develop their business. We also consider the methods that have been used for such research and what types of research approaches should be used in the future. In terms of practical implications we aim to understand whether there something that distinguishes Russian-speaking immigrant entrepreneurs from other entrepreneurs (both migrant and non-migrant) and what implications do they bring both to the host and home country economy. Theoretically, the study contributes to literature on international entrepreneurship and business by outlining the main gaps in literature on Russophone migrant entrepreneurship and understanding the direction for future research efforts.

Bringing global expertise home: deconstructing and reshaping current understanding and conceptualisation of the International Transfer of Career Capital possessed by Self-Initiated Repatriates

Emilija Oleškevičiūtė, Michael Dickmann, Maike Andresesn, Emma Parry — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Determinants of debt level target

Åsa Grek, Fredrik Hartwig, Mark Dougherty — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Anchoring unsustainable practices in rhetoric

Hanna Varvne — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

In this paper, rhetorical institutionalism is used to increase the understanding of how sustainable practices become legitimized. The rhetoric strategies and rhetoric structures are analyzed to show how the way we talk can constrains change and implementation of sustainable practices by investigating the following research question: What are the rhetoric strategies and structures in organizations that enable or hinder change to sustainable practices? The paper draw from an interview study of tanker ships’ arrival to port and the possibility to change the practice towards just-in time arrival. The findings of this study shows that different rhetorical structures exist side by side in periods of change. Further, it indicate that analysis of rhetoric strategies and structures can indicate where change is happening. Which in turn can be used to guide measures initiated to increase change towards sustainable practices.

Green Service Offerings

Daniel Ellström, Per Carlborg — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Social Entrepreneurship and The Political: Theorizing Social Change in Critical Entrepreneurship Studies

Amelia Olsson — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

An interest for the political dimension of social entrepreneurship has emerged, driven by the insight that research on social entrepreneurship tends to overemphasize the phenomenon’s managerial and entrepreneurial aspects (Barinaga, 2013). Cho (2006) illustrates that the social mission in social entrepreneurship is necessarily political, and explains how assumptions on the contrary derives from a perception of society as in a state of consensus. Because such assumptions often are made by people with power, who’s narratives dominates public discourses, this risks further marginalizing values and ideas of groups who already have a weak voice in society. He thus encourages us to engage in a dialogical approach to the phenomenon. Barinaga (2013) shows that social entrepreneurship in practice can follow different rationalities even if they approach similar social problems, and Jarrodi et al. (2019) reveal that social entrepreneurs may even be motivated by radical ideas such as attacking and destroying existing systems. Farias et al. (2019) moves on to suggest that entreprenuership has been colonized by an enterprising discourse, and instead use Rancière to illustrate how entrepreneurship implies breaking norms and rules, which per definition makes it political.

At the same time, scholars studying our political institutions talk about the political arena being in a state of post-politics, caused by neoliberalism’s displacement of the political. In such a state, political struggles have been reduced to policy problems best dealt with by experts. A false sense of consensus is conveyed where free market economics, cosmopolitan liberalism, and representative democracy is seen unquestionable. The notion of post-politics may explain why research on social entrepreneurship lack insights in the political dimension of the phenomenon. Especially since critical entrepreneurship scholars have revealed dubious connections between neoliberalism and social entrepreneurship. These studies show that neoliberalist governmental strategies use social entrepreneurship to legitimize a withdrawal of governmental responsibility for social protection and citizens’ welfare. Instead, such responsibility is outsourced to individuals who are encouraged to engage in innovative problem solving through the market (Eikenberry, 2018; Fougére et al., 2017). It seems to me that, since social entrepreneurship has become a preferred policy strategy in a time where our political institutions appear to be in a post-political state, the calls to study the political dimension of social entrepreneurship may be related to the neoliberal displacement of the political. I thus pose the question: How is the concept of social entreprenuership affiliated with the notion of post-politics? In order to answer this question, I engage with Mouffe's (2005) work on post-politics and her definition of the political as antagonisms inherent to society generated by conflicting interests amongst groups that cannot be reconciled.

Although the displacement of the political occurs in neoliberal discourse, this does not necessarily mean that it follows through to the practice of social entrepreneurship, which is what empirical studies such as the one conducted by Jarrodi et al. (2019) shows. In fact, according to Mouffe, the political can never fully disappear. This is an argument that comes from Laclau & Mouffe's (1985) framework, which views the current social order as constructed by hegemony, with the implication that a social order can never be completely fixed. Counterhegemonic discourses are always present and ready to undermine the existing order. This means that a displacement of the political dimension in policy discourse on social entrepreneurship does not necessarily imply a displacement of it in the practice of social entrepreneurship. This begs the second question: How can we understand political antagonisms in the practice of social entrepreneurship?

Answering these questions may help us to distinguish between social entrepreneurship in policy discourse and social entrepreneurship in practice. It may enable us to understand the practice as permeated by struggles of discourses, allowing us to engage with incongruences and conflicting ideas in our empirical cases of social entrepreneurship while at the same time taking both hegemonic and counterhegemonic discourses seriously.

What is the cost of sustainability?

Anatoli Bourmistrov, Nadezda Nazarova, Trond Bjørnenak — Thu, 30 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Aquaculture industry has over many decades generated significant value for shareholders, governments and consumers. The negative environmental impacts of current open net pen (ONP) fish farming technology were increasingly becoming major concern for all stakeholders involved. Responding to that, industrial actors have for many years been experimenting with new type of technology ranging from “semi-“ to “fully” closed facilities including “deep-water” offshore farms and land-based closed containment (LBCC) installations. However, due to higher level of capital investments and costs compared to mature ONP fish farming technology, the use of new environment-friendly experimental technologies creates uncertainty for decision-makers about long-term effects of new technological solutions and hinders the process of development. Under what conditions would higher level of investment and capital costs in new technology be justified in reaching an appropriate tradeoff between profitability requirements and improved sustainability?

This paper looks at how target costing can be used to address this tradeoff in case of “semi-closed” off-shore technology undergoing experiment at one company operating in Norwegian aquaculture industry. Our expectations in this interventionist inspired research was that target costing, being a long-term profit planning techniques, has good potential to inform decision-makers about tradeoffs between profitability and sustainability considerations of new costly technology throughout its life-cycle.

Our research demonstrates the value of existing accounting concept in new empirical settings and for sustainability and environment accounting (e.g. Gray & Milne, 2015; Quattrone, 2021). The findings show that target costing exactly due to its long-term perspective indeed can be used to highlight benefits and costs of different fish farming technologies and therefore to some extent can improve the basis for investments decisions. By mapping and comparing all quantifiable life-cycle costs in a target costing exercise for “semi-closed” vs ONP technologies, we estimated that “semi-closed” alternative can be more profitable and sustainable. However, the value of target costing to properly address profitability-sustainability tradeoff of new technologies has been rather limited due to certain challenges. First, the target costing has been considered unable to properly reflect the complexity and relatively high uncertainty of the context aquaculture industry operates in beyond the production process itself, e.g. future markets for fish products and capital markets. Second, and more importantly, there is a difficulty to access and estimate the cost of improved environmental and social sustainability of new technology. This is not only due to lack of reliable measures but it is rather due to a more general problem of conceptual understanding how improved sustainability can be taken into account in target costing exercise from a long-term planning perspective. The paper concludes with a call for rethinking how cost of sustainability can be conceptually addressed.

Individual accountability through sustainability control within a Swedish Public Sector Organisation

Leanne Johnstone, David Yates, Sebastian Nylander — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Accountability is often framed as an organisational level phenomenon in extant social and environmental accounting research and there is a lack of understanding in terms of how internal accountability for sustainability takes shape within organisations. This paper addresses how the sustainability mandate translates into individual employee behaviour in a Swedish public sector organisation, finding that while hierarchical ideas regarding sustainability are present, these are rarely instrumental in shaping individual accountability for sustainability to any true extent. Rather, collegial pressure and sustainability minded personnel drive the sustainable behaviour of employees in a more incremental way. Further still, hierarchical accounts rarely serve to individualise and isolate employees, but rather obscure individual accountability demands. Thus, socialising forms of accountability are viewed as just as important as hierarchical forms for sustainability. Although interestingly, these socialisation processes are not only embedded into relationships within the organisation but are also the result of extra-organisational familial influences and/or private beliefs and values. For managers, the findings suggest the need to build on the sustainability mandate through employee socialisation processes to reinforce corporate governance systems and controls in reinforce the necessary accountability dynamic for sustainability performance.

Top-Down Sustainability Analysis: How Governance is Related to Alternative ESG

Benjamin Maury, Niclas Meyer, Anete Pajuste — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

We explore the relationship between governance variables and a top-down artificial intelligence (AI)-based measure of a firm’s net impact on the environment, society, health, and knowledge. Employing a sample of large US and European firms, we find that more concentrated ownership is associated with lower net impact, while higher institutional ownership, younger boards, and more international boards are associated with higher net impact. Additionally, we find that firms in more stakeholder-oriented countries have higher net impact. The net impact variable is weakly correlated with traditional bottom-up ESG measures. This suggests that AI-based sustainability analysis could work as a complement to traditional measures.

Accounting Education in the Era of Digitalization: A systematic Review

Youssef Loutfi — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Accounting and auditing have long been regarded as conventional professions, operating as per a core set of rules and principles that are seldom challenged. Nevertheless, the current global wave of digital technologies has been increasingly challenging the industry itself, which many argue would become unrecognizable in the next couple of years.

To address the challenge of such an ever-lasting fast-paced digital transformation, accounting professionals need to become change of agents through developing their transformative capabilities. One way to realize this is through rejuvenating the accounting education and curriculums. Herlo (2018) argues that transformative capabilities essentially boil down to acquiring the capacity to learn and innovate, and that they are tightly linked to the “learning outcomes” defined by higher education institutions. Therefore, it is highly important to research and map the educational teaching methods and learning processes that have been found effective in developing the transformative capabilities of accounting professionals in the conditions of digitalization.

The 48 captured articles in SCOPUS from 2000 onwards will serve to better understand the changes that occurred at the level of accounting education as a result of the digitalization of accounting. Furthermore, this review will contribute to clearly understanding the mechanics, teaching methods, and learning processes through which accounting education can facilitate attaining the needed transformative capabilities to match the pace of digitalization. Finally, this paper can serve as a guide for the practitioners seeking to better understand the impact of digitalization on accounting education systematically, namely with regards to the responsive measures which have been taken so far.

Friedman doctrine prevails! Or does it? Evidence from the views of practitioners on corporate sustainability in their firms

Asif Huq, Klas Sundberg — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights on the views of firms regarding corporate sustainability (CS) and how the structure of the board affects this. We surveyed the CEOs, CFOs and Environment Officers of about 860 Swedish firms affected by mandatory sustainability reporting after the implementation of the EU Directive 2014/95/EU. The six-transcending ambition levels (namely: pre-CS, compliance-driven, profit-driven, caring, synergistic, and holistic) of corporate sustainability proposed by van Marrewijk & Werre (2003) were used to classify the views of key officers on the sustainability agenda of their respective firms. We find that the drive by firms for higher CS ambition levels is positively influenced by a diverse board (i.e., representation of female board members), and the effect is more pronounced if the board is constituted with a female top executive. Moreover, younger top executives are more likely to have a higher CS ambition level. On the other hand, external CEOs, external board members, and forceful disclosure of sustainability activity (e.g., EU Directive 2014/95/EU) do not significantly influence CS ambition levels, whereas firm size and industry affiliation do. Our findings are useful for top managers and regulators interested in corporate governance issues and influencing the sustainability efforts of their firms. Methodologically, the use of a survey method is an extension to an otherwise high reliance on archival research in the field of CS. Furthermore, the dataset is unique, and the results are robust to various sensitivity analyses.

The role of environmental costs in investment decision process – A field study in six energy companies in a Nordic country

Timo Hyvönen, Matias Laine, Jukka Pellinen — Wed, 17 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Climate change is one of the worst global problems at the time. Especially the fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas, peat) that are used in industries and traffic have accelerated the global warming. The purpose of this qualitative paper is to study companies’ investment processes and especially the role the environmental costs play therein. The study is carried out in one field of industries – energy sector.
The six cases selected for the study are middle-sized municipality owned energy companies that
produce heat and electricity by burning different fuels, and all of which had invested in new energy
plants within a few last years. Twelve interviews were carried out in spring 2019. The results obtained
indicate, that environmental costs as a general cost category are not relevant nor reported for the
decision makers but carbon costs are considered the most essential and the accounting processes focus
on monitoring and forecasting them. We also found a role of institutional isomorphism within the
field in creating trust in CO2 price forecasts

Defending and Expanding Boundaries: Exploring How the COVID-19 Triggers Boundary Work Among HR Managers in the Public Sector

Daniel Tyskbo — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

While the existing literature has provided important insights into how HR managers are involved in performing organizational change (e.g., Alfes et al., 2010; Alfes et al., 2019; Brown et al., 2017), much less is known about how HR managers themselves are shaped by change, particularly in relation to large-scale changes or so-called shock events (e.g., financial crisis, natural disasters, and terrorism) (Caligiuri et al., 2020). As with other professional and occupational groups facing these disruptive and highly uncertain changes, we would also expect HR managers to start negotiating their boundaries, e.g., constructing, defending, contesting, or expanding them (see e.g., Abbott, 1988; Ibarra, 1999; Langley et al., 2019; Pratt et al., 2006), but as few empirical studies have been conducted, the extent to which this is the case is unclear. Various calls have therefore been made for research exploring how HR managers are shaped by change, particularly in the public sector (Harney & Collings, 2021; Baran et al., 2019).

In this study, we address this by using a qualitative interview study to explore how the serious and profound COVID-19 pandemic shapes HR managers in public sector municipalities. While adding to the list of shock events (Caligiuri et al., 2020), COVID-19 also stands out in the way it is fundamentally a human one, placing HR managers in a central role (Berry et al., 2022; Collings et al., 2021). A focus on the public sector context is both theoretically interesting and practically important because of several reasons. It is a context generally given little attention in the HRM literature, and more importantly, public sector organizations are in many countries considered having important economic and social roles in managing crisis situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic (Mann, 2014; Schuster et al., 2020). The public sector context is also, traditionally thought of as conservative, bureaucratic, and difficult to change, and given these factors it is likely that HR managers will demonstrate “stubborn traditionalism” (Boudreau & Lawler, 2014), resulting in their negotiations of boundaries, during uncertain and disruptive changes, being particularly evident and heightened (Kettl, 2006). We therefore ask: How does the COVID-19 pandemic trigger boundary work in practice, among HR managers in public sector municipalities?

Our study revealed that the COVID-19 triggers HR managers to enact boundary work in two main ways, i.e. either by defending their boundaries or expanding them. We find that this variation is related to whether the HR managers experience the pandemic mainly as a threat of being forced into unwanted responsibility (including dirty work and difficult/sensitive work), or if they mainly experience it as an opportunity of taking advantage of the situation (including facilitating self-fulfilling and gaining more influence). In showing this, the study contributes to the literature in two main ways. First, it advances understanding of how HR managers are shaped by change, in particular in relation to shock-events. By using the boundary work perspective as regards how HR managers are shaped by change, it sheds light on an important variation in how HR managers enact boundary work (i.e. either by defending their boundaries or expanding them), as triggered by the COVID-19. Thus, the study answers the calls for research exploring how HR managers are shaped by change, particularly in the public sector (Baran et al., 2019). Second, it provides a grounded explanation of why such a variation in boundary work among HR managers exist. More specifically, the study stresses that, how HR managers experience change matters because these experiences serve as a foundation for how they enact boundary work, and consequently for how they handle and manage the changing situation. Thus, while the study stresses the largely disruptive and consequential nature of shock-events, it also highlights the importance of starting with HR managers’ experiences in practice.

Sustainability-driven project: Characteristics and ways to govern temporary inter-organizational sustainable projects

Jarmo Uusikartano, Tuomas Ahola — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Relational contracting in Nordic construction

Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Relational contracting increasingly used to enable resource efficiency and inter-organizational collaboration in complex and uncertain construction projects, but it has proved hard to sustain legitimacy and enable industry-level learning over time. In this paper, we compare the developments in relational contracting in four Nordic countries over 30 years using an institutional perspective. The countries share similar in problem perceptions and other factors triggering de-institutionalization but differ in dissemination patterns and models, key actors, structures for knowledge development, terminology and legitimacy challenges. In general, there is a need to find ways to combine higher collaborative competence and shared practices with broad dissemination.

Development levels of stakeholder relationships in collaborative projects: Challenges and preconditions

Farooq Ali, Harri Haapasalo — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The complexity, uncertainty, and increasing stakeholder expectations are forcing organisations to collaborate with a wide range of stakeholders to achieve competitive advantage and successful project delivery. This is particularly relevant in mega projects that are characterized by the large number and variety of stakeholders working together in a relationship-based approach. The complexity of megaprojects is driven by different factors such as environmental uncertainty, socioeconomic revolutions, and organisational interdependency, which makes interorganisational cooperation, control, coordination, and collaboration vital for successful project delivery. These concepts have been explained by researchers from different perspectives and used interchangeably without a clear distinction about the meaning and how they develop remains largely unknown, especially for collaborative construction projects. Our aim is to addresses this research gap by developing a conceptual framework that describe the links among these concepts in terms of development levels of stakeholder relationships. In addition, identify challenges and preconditions in relation to developing relationships at different levels. We have adopted the directed approach of qualitative content analysis method to validate and extend the conceptual framework of this study. The context of this study is a large hospital construction project located in northern Finland. The findings of our study suggest that collaboration in a relationship-based construction procurement is a dynamic process of active engagement of multiple stakeholders. These stakeholders must have high degree of shared understanding in terms of cooperation, control, and coordination for joint activities to achieve the mutual desired outcomes. Our study also identifies the challenges that project stakeholders could face in developing collaborative relationships. In addition, the preconditions required to develop collaborative relationships are described. Our study provides a better understanding to the project managers for managing inter-organisational collaborative construction projects successfully. Existing practical research on the development of relationships and their different levels in collaborative construction projects is limited. The outcome of this research would be beneficial to project management to deliver dispute-free construction projects.

Collaborative delivery model for industrial engineering projects

Tommi Pauna — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Industrial engineering projects are technology-intensive and temporary capital projects of private sector investors, and they are characterized by long time horizons, irreversible commitments, risks, and uncertainties. Suppliers and partners for these projects typically bring their specialized expertise and they come from different geographical locations and institutional environments. In the delivery of industrial engineering project, the main types of contracting are lump-sum, reimbursable, and incentivized collaborative contracting. Collaborative delivery models were introduced already in North Sea oil and gas projects and have since been successfully applied in contraction and infrastructure projects. However, application of collaborative delivery models in industrial engineering project context has been limited and the use of lump-sum engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) and reimbursable EPC and engineering, procurement, and construction management (EPCM) are more dominant.
Coordination of work differs between delivery models and the context and characteristics of the project affect the practical arrangement. In industrial engineering projects delivered by any arrangement, it is important to bring the expertise of different project actors to the project, align the project actors, achieve the best practical front-end loading, and work efficiently together. Delivery models have different approaches for these issues but there is evidence that more collaborative arrangements including risk and reward sharing structures, common goal setting, and more integrated project teams can lead to better results also in the context of industrial engineering projects. This research aims to find how collaboration and collaborative practices can be implemented and how they can support the leverage of the expertise of different project actors in industrial engineering projects. Moreover, the objective is to develop a delivery model that integrates the best features from existing delivery models.
Relying on design science research, a new delivery model engineering, procurement, and construction alliancing (EPCA) was developed and validated together with experienced project people from various companies. Main objective of the EPCA model is to define which project actors are engaged and when, how risks and rewards are shared, and how roles and responsibilities including decision-making structures are set. In the EPCA model, traditional bi-lateral contracts are used but in addition to them also multi-party arrangement between main actors is used. In multi-party arrangement, the issues that are decided together by key actors and risk and reward sharing mechanisms, decision-making structures, and collaborative practices and tools to be used are defined.
The literature and the results of this research emphasize that the private project investors, the project financiers, and the other key actors might not be ready to adopt a highly collaborative delivery model with purely multi-party contractual arrangement. Instead, in the EPCA model, key actors are engaged early to find together issues that benefit from collaboration and are included in multi-party arrangement to be managed together. Bi-lateral contracts are made to define the basic implementation of the project including the deliveries, costs, schedules, liabilities, and related penalties. The aim of the multi-party arrangement is to find together ways to optimize the work defined in the basic implementation setup and achieve the best-for-the-project results in collaboration. If jointly set project objectives are achieved, the rewards are shared in a way tailored to the project.
The results highlight the benefits of collaboration in the context of industrial engineering projects but also the need for context and situation specific tailoring. Theoretical contribution includes extending the understanding of different project delivery models and the differences in how they leverage the expertise of different project actors. The practical implication of the study is knowledge of how the best practices in existing and widely used delivery models can be integrated and used to define and develop a collaborative delivery of industrial engineering project.