| 1. |
- Thorning, Anna
(author)
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Sustainable Development in Forest Owner Associations – Stakeholder Roles
- 2024
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Forest owner associations are co-operative organisations with democratic foundations based on one member -one vote. The members are forest owners who are organised in the associations as owners and also have the roles of suppliers of forest raw materials and customers of forest services. Generally, forest owners are changing from a homogenous to a more heterogeneous group based on socioeconomic and demographic transitions. Therefore, forest owners can be said to have increasingly diverse interests and values. This leads to different ways of viewing their forest ownership in relationship to sustainable development. These changes are also affecting their willingness and motives for participating in the governance of the co-operative organisation. An important aspect of sustainability management in forest co-operatives, is including the forest owners in the process. This thesis aims to increase understanding of how forest owners view sustainability management by analysing their various stakeholder roles in forest co-operatives. The studies compilated in this thesis consist of different perspectives of forest owners in their relation to the association. Study I focus on forest management certification as a sustainability management activity in forest owner associations. Forest owners are here seen as suppliers of sustainability-certified raw materials and customers of a sustainable service offering. Study II takes on the perspective of forest owners as members and owners of the association and how they are viewed to participate in sustainable development in the association. The findings suggest that the stakeholder roles that forest owners have need to be taken into consideration by forest co-operatives in sustainability transitions.
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| 2. |
- Sabel, Kristin
(author)
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Competence Management in Rural Family SMEs : An Exploration of Challenges and Strategies
- 2024
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Regardless of firm size, governance structure, and ownership form, all firms depend on competencies, i.e., skills, knowledge, and qualifications, as a vital resource for business prosperity. However, previous research has shown that access to crucial competencies varies depending on the context in which the firm operates. It has previously been suggested that firms operating in rural contexts are substantial contributors to local and national economy, although these firms are generally small and have limited access to crucial resources that enable business prosperity. Simultaneously, in recent decades, the rural context has proved to offer limited competencies that match the competence needs of the firms operating in this context because individuals with specialised competencies have extensively ‘emigrated’ from rural areas to seek more advantageous job opportunities and access to crucial infrastructure in urban areas. This has left rural areas with low population density and, as a result, downshifted infrastructure. Most of these small firms operating in the rural context have a family ownership structure, which is associated with specific familiness traits in their governance. These familiness traits produce an even narrower selection of competencies than other firms have. Small, family-owned firms operating in rural contexts thus have limited access to matching competencies due to the extensive rural competence scarcity, and simultaneously, they ‘block’ the few potential competencies available by preserving familiness and long-term firm heritage. This downward rural spiral creates challenges for rural family firms and affects the competence management strategies they apply to navigate this situation.The purpose of this dissertation is to deepen the understanding of challenges and strategies in rural family SMEs’ (small and medium-sized enterprises) competence management and examine how industry affiliation, location, competence diversity, and business disruptions affect these firms’ challenges and strategies. Three research questions guided the empirical studies of this dissertation: RQ1) How do industry affiliation and location affect the prerequisites and strategies for competence management in rural family SMEs? RQ2) In which ways and why does familiness affect competence diversity in rural family SMEs in terms of finding, attracting, and retaining competencies? RQ3) Which competence management strategies do rural family SMEs apply to enhance entrepreneurial endurance during business disruptions and why?Three studies were conducted that applied both qualitative and quantitative as well as a mixed-methods approach. Two industries were investigated in different geographical areas: the manufacturing industry and the tourism industry in southern and northern Sweden. The resource-based view (RBV) was used to understand how rural family SMEs find, attract, and retain competencies, while socio-emotional wealth theory (SEW) was applied to delve deeper into the how values, norms, and behaviours of the family SME-owners guide the management of competencies. SEW theory was also applied to understand how familiness traits affect the strategies of rural family SMEs. Previous studies have not thoroughly outlined this allocation of competencies in rural family SMEs, nor has the perspective of how familiness affects competence management strategies in rural family SMEs been investigated. These two perspectives can deepen the understanding of which competence management challenges rural family SMEs face and how they develop their strategies.This dissertation finds that rural family SMEs use short-term competence management strategies rather than long-term prospects to navigate rural competence scarcity; this finding contradicts previous research indicating that family firms act with a long-term perspective. Rural competence scarcity, in combination with unique familiness traits, pushes rural family SMEs towards short-term strategies rather than long-term prospects to fill their immediate competence needs. The rural location is proved to affect the competence management extensively, as rural family SMEs find that they cannot compete with the salaries offered in urban areas. The two industries examined here use strategies with some similarities to manage their competencies by prioritising family members in positions within the firm and by recruiting individuals from their closest networks. While the manufacturing industry, for instance, uses coopetition as a competence management strategy, the tourism industry uses seasonal staff. This study further reveals that rural family SMEs use network coopetition as an advantageous competence management strategy to navigate business disruptions, such as crises. There is an extensive need for rural family SMEs to exchange knowledge when competencies are scarce during business disruptions, which makes them seek competitors for collaboration. The use of the network coopetition strategy enhances robustness for rural family SMEs, which helps them endure business disruptions better than other firms. The small size of their firms makes network coopetition a successful competence strategy to use during business disruptions. An important contribution is that familiness causes reluctance towards competence diversity – such as bringing competencies from outside into the network – in rural family SMEs, and thus, they have a rather ambiguous attitude towards bringing diverse competencies into their firms. As previous research has established that competence diversity enhances business performance and growth, rural family SMEs' ambiguous attitude towards it sheds light on a rather ‘closed’ working environment that does not properly use potentially available external competencies at hand, despite the need to do so.An important theoretical implication is that, complementing prior research, the findings of this dissertation show that rural family SMEs do not solely rely on internal resources, as RBV suggests, to make ends meet, but also on external resources. Another implication is that the few competencies available in rural areas must be better matched with the competence needs of the family SMEs operating there. The findings suggest that more attention must focus on addressing the extensive difficulties that rural family SMEs face in meeting their competence needs due to rural competence scarcity. Sufficient, functioning infrastructure is a crucial aspect that could prevent rural competencies from being lost. Starting educational programmes that nurture necessary competencies in rural areas to match competence needs could also increase the attractiveness of working and living in those areas.
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| 3. |
- Pierre, Anne, 1974-
(author)
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The influence of wicked problems on community-based entrepreneurship in rural Sweden
- 2017
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Entrepreneurship research has, since the 1930’s, mainly focused on so-called traditional entrepreneurship and studies have to a large part discussed management processes. During the past 40 years social entrepreneurship research and research into community-based entrepreneurship and practice has emerged, as a response to changes in society due to global, regional and local events that affect local development. Such changes often affect rural areas severely, for instance depopulation, which often leads to a decrease in small business development, a decrease in social services such as healthcare, schools, banks and road maintenance, and a decrease in local and regional economic health. These structural changes are usually due to political decisions taken at a governmental level, which trickle down through society and affect local economic development and, indirectly, small business development. Local enthusiasts, business associations and in particular entrepreneurs often try to meet these structural changes through community-based entrepreneurship, which involves processes through which new businesses are created and can operate within the existing social structure of the local community. However, the practical problem is that there are factors influencing communitybased entrepreneurship and hence the establishment of small businesses and local development, such as wicked problems, which in the rural context in this thesis refers to structural changes and complex relations. The theoretical and practical research gap is found in that there is a lack of studies exploring how wicked problems influence community-based entrepreneurship in rural contexts. Complex relations can be found in the three pillars of institutions based on regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive elements, where the same person can have many different roles, hence influencing local rural development. For this thesis, the theories of community-based entrepreneurship, state-society synergy, and small business development have been used to explore how wicked problems (structural changes and complex relations) influence community-based entrepreneurship in rural Sweden. Two literature studies were made on social entrepreneurship and community-based entrepreneurship, followed by three case-studies. The context of the first case-study was rural areas in the county of Jämtland and is based on results from the findings in the cross-disciplinary project on societal entrepreneurship in sparsely populated areas (SESPA). The context of the second case-study is the municipalities of Berg, Krokom and Östersund in the county of Jämtland, where a total of 23 interviews were conducted with farm owners, participants in the service social farming and municipal officials and politicians. The context of the third casestudy is the municipality of Sorsele in the county of Västerbotten and the municipality of Berg in the county of Jämtland, which are both situated in rural areas, where a total of 39 interviews were conducted with owners of small businesses, municipal officials and politicians. Results show that the development of community-based entrepreneurship research has furthered the possibilities to better understand the processes of entrepreneurship in local rural contexts. Furthermore, results indicate that the complex relations influencing communitybased entrepreneurship that appear in this thesis call for caution. The structural changes that are interrelated with community-based entrepreneurship are, in spite of facilitating increased interest, not necessarily positive for local rural development. It was also seen that the rural context studied is a semi-stable institution, indicating that local rural development, and thereby small business development, is incoherent. If a municipality and the owners of small businesses are well in tune with the regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive elements in their rural context, have an understanding of what wicked problems are, and if they are properly understood and dealt with, then there is a chance that, although experiencing a semistable institution, local rural development can be attained. The theoretical contributions of this thesis pertain to entrepreneurship in rural contexts, community-based entrepreneurship, and wicked problems. This thesis concludes that wicked problems, in the shape of structural changes and complex relations, are present in the rural contexts studied. These wicked problems influence communitybased entrepreneurship by being disruptive factors, affecting policy creation and implementation by the municipality. A flow-chart model has been created in order to show how wicked problems influence community-based entrepreneurship and hence local rural development.
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