| 1. |
- Bjuggren, Carl Magnus
(författare)
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Family Matters : Essays on Family Firms and Employment Protection
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is a study of firm dynamics, family ownership, and employment protection. It addresses the implications of employment protection on firm productivity and how family owned firms react differently with regard to economic shocks. It also investigates whether family ownership matters for the probability of exhibiting high growth. By using a novel data identification strategy, family ownership is identified in full population register data. The thesis also highlights some important caveats in the official statistics on self-employment.
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| 2. |
- Al Ghafri, Aziza, 1982-
(författare)
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"I Wanna Be Free" : On the Challenges and Coping Strategies of Women Entrepreneurs in Sweden
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Women's entrepreneurship is often presented as important for creating economic prosperity at the national level and is said to offer freedom, independence, and emancipation for women. The purpose of this study is to explore the conditions of women entrepreneurs who have different backgrounds in Sweden. To achieve this purpose, this study focuses on the challenges women entrepreneurs perceive and the coping strategies they employ to navigate these challenges. The study adopts an intersectional gender perspective, grounded in research on entrepreneurship, gender, and ethnicity. It draws on qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews with women entrepreneurs in Sweden who have different backgrounds. The findings show that the challenges experienced by the women entrepreneurs included lack of support, being belittled, being excluded, having to work harder and be strong and having to adapt. The analysis discusses that these challenges can be understood as a result of gendered perceptions of entrepreneurship and processes of Othering. Ethnicity and race also play a role in shaping these conditions. The interviewed women deal with the conditions through four strategies: the assimilation strategy; the positive strategy, the ambiguity strategy, and the change strategy. The coping strategies are discussed in relation to empowerment and emancipation. From a theoretical perspective, this study contributes to developing concepts and conceptual relationships to capture how gender, ethnicity, and race impact women's conditions as entrepreneurs.
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| 3. |
- Otto, Opira
(författare)
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Trust, identity and beer : institutional arrangements for agricultural labour in Isunga village in Kiryandongo district, midwestern Uganda
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis explores the role and influence of institutions on agricultural labour transactions in Isunga village in Kiryandongo District, Midwestern Uganda. It primarily focuses on how farmers structure, maintain and enforce their labour relationships during crop farming. The study is based on semi-structured interviews of twenty households and unstructured interviews with representatives of farmers associations. These interviews show that other than household labour, the other common labour arrangements in the village include farm work sharing, labour exchanges and casual wage labour. Farm work sharing and labour exchanges involve farmers temporarily pooling their labour into work groups to complete tasks such as planting, weeding or harvesting crops on members' farms in succession. This is done under strict rules and rewarded with 'good' beer and food. Against this background, the study asks what institutions really are, why they matter and what we can learn about them. Literature suggests that institutions influence labour transactions by their effects on transaction costs and the protection of contractual rights. However, literature does not suggest which institutions are best for agricultural labour transactions. Taking institutions to be the 'rules of the game', with farmers as 'players' who strategically use these rules to their advantage, the study focused on the interaction between institutions and farmers. The major findings of the study are: (a) farmers' choices of institutions are influenced by the characteristics of transactions, the costs of using institutions for handling labour dealings, the fairness and predictability of the outcome of contract enforcement mechanisms, and socio-cultural factors such as kin/ethnic status, morality and affection, (b) formal institutions in Isunga are either weak, ineffective or absent. So, farmers rely heavily on institutions embedded in social norms and networks to structure their transactional relationships, to ensure the performance of the respective parties, and to settle disputes if they arise. The study concludes that agricultural labour transactions in Isunga involve judgements of personal characteristics and social roles expressed as reputation and trustworthiness.
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| 4. |
- Brink, Johan, 1976
(författare)
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Accumulation, Boundaries, Capabilities and Dynamics - Explaining Firm Growth
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to further develop the theoretical understanding of the growth of knowledge intensive business organizations. The overall aim is to understand the growth challenges of emerging firms in the knowledge-based economy. In particular this thesis addresses several aspects of the growth of small bioscience based firms. In a world characterized by global markets and rapid information transfer, the existence of firms can no longer be justified by established products and defence of old positions. The traditional logic of economic activities and industrial organization has instead increasingly been replaced by dynamic Schumpeterian competition in which firms compete based upon knowledge and innovations. This thesis depart in the emergent theories of evolutionary economics which focus on economic action and firm behaviour in a restless disequilibrium and endogenous technological change (Nelson and Winter 1982). Within such a restless capitalistic society, new firms play a central role in economic development. As a consequence, economic as well as management researchers has increased their interest in entrepreneurship and industrial dynamics. The emergence and growth new firms have been found to relate to both the introduction and diffusion of new knowledge, innovations, as well as generators of new employment. The growth of new firms is hence vital to understand from the perspective of industrial dynamic throughout the process of Schumpeterian competition and technological evolution and in the longer perspective, economic growth. The thesis is structured around the general, puzzling phenomenon of the relative absence of growing firms within this specific technological and industrial context. In order to investigate the research problem a theoretical framework is put together along two main dimensions. The first consists of a review of the research field of firm growth including such as entrepreneurial and organizational aspects. The second dimension provides a theoretical outline regarding the specific industrial and institutional environment and thus presents a context in which these new firms evolve. The focus within this thesis is primarily on the growth of the individual business organizations. The initial research problem centres around the empirically evident relative low growth rates of bioscience based firms. As a consequence of this low growth rate of firms, the industrial dynamics is instead shaped by entries of new actors, creating a highly turbulent industry. According to the dominant theories of the firm, the reasons for performing activities within the institutional form of a business organization, resulting in economic advantages of being inside the boundaries. Such knowledge and innovation based competition should be seen in the context of the firm’s unique trajectory and as a process of accumulation of associated specific capabilities and distinctive competences. Innovation is thus a process of knowledge accumulation of both internal and external learning, influenced by the specific context in which the firm resides. The lack of growth of new knowledge intensive firms within this specific industry is thus found in the complexities of knowledge accumulation as generating firm capabilities for further actions. The pressure on innovativeness and the ability for firms both to foster and take advantages of knowledge raises several issues regarding growth of knowledge intensive business organizations. Altogether understanding firm growth within this context might potentially be seen as role models for increasingly knowledge intensive firms within other industries. Even with more modest implications such findings might have profound effect when limited to the studied industrial context.
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| 5. |
- Andersson, Johnn, 1983
(författare)
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Shape it until you make it: A conceptual foundation for efforts to analyze and shape technological innovation
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- These are times of accelerating climate change and mass extinction of species on planet Earth. We are in the midst of an ecological crisis that will have profound consequences for human society and its natural environment. While the conditions for life have changed abruptly in the past, the current situation is characterized by the increasing power of a single species. Human beings are not only to blame for the unsustainable practices that brought us here, but also capable of harnessing their combined ingenuity to develop technology that may reduce environmental impacts and provide additional benefits for society. At the same time, the answer to the ecological crisis and other grand challenges is not found in the blind expansion of new technologies. Our success in accomplishing social and environmental objectives rather depends on how, where and when innovation influences patterns of production and consumption. This calls into question the focus of academics and policymakers on stimulating technological innovation. And it highlights the need for analytical tools that can be used to explore how policymakers and other actors may shape the direction of change. The research presented in this thesis therefore aims to develop a conceptual foundation for analyzing and shaping technological innovation. This effort draws on three qualitative case studies that investigate emerging renewable energy technologies from a Swedish perspective. The thesis is situated in the sustainability transitions research community and takes the literature on technological innovation systems as a theoretical point of departure. However, the research adopts a critical perspective and gradually departs from the core concepts used in this literature, over the course of a learning process that unfolds in five appended research papers. In the end, the thesis proposes the technological systems framework as a set of concepts that offers a multidimensional perspective on the dynamics and outcomes of technological innovation. It also presents empirical findings that demonstrate different development trajectories, reveal some of their underlying dynamics and highlight policy implications. This will hopefully contribute to an ongoing shift in academia and politics – from stimulating the expansion of new technologies, to shaping the direction of change.
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| 6. |
- Birch-Jensen, Andrea, 1989
(författare)
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The evolving role of customer focus in quality management: Using customer feedback to mobilize quality improvements in the age of digitalization and increased service delivery
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Understanding customer needs is fundamental for being able to deliver high quality products and services, and, as a result, maintain and improve customer satisfaction. Achieving this has become a challenge, as rapid technological developments, market saturation, and increasingly skilled competition from low-cost economies have led to progressively more complex customer needs. In addition, more manufacturing firms are offering services, thus shifting the focus from merely providing a physical product to also providing services. These changes result in an array of challenges for quality management regarding how to manage the integrated duality of product and service quality. Consequently, the need for quality management to understand how customers perceive the quality of the firm’s offering is becoming increasinglyimportant, as merely focusing on technical product quality improvements is insufficient. Compiling five papers, based on four studies across both manufacturing and service industries, this thesis outlines the evolving role of quality management in the age of digitalization and increased service delivery, by exploring the use of customer feedback for quality improvements in both products and services. First, the thesis identifies the prerequisites needed to use customer feedback for quality improvements, identifying the importance of access to the different interfaces through which customer feedback emerges. These interfaces are growing in number and complexity as digitalization and increased service delivery reshape how firms and customers interact and how offerings are delivered. Second, the capacities needed to mobilize customer feedback for quality improvements are explored using the concept of absorptive capacity, which describes the capacity to acquire and use external information. The studied firms are found to have underdeveloped absorptive capacity in terms of mobilizing customer feedback regarding service quality compared to mobilizing customer feedback on product quality. Third, the evolving boundaries and scope of quality management, driven by digitalization and increased service delivery, require quality management to go from reactive and inward-focused to embracing a proactive, continuous, and customer-focused way of working. Furthermore, the abundance of codified customer feedback in the form of big data readily available for firms today, leads to the risk of predominantly focusing on technical quality aspects while neglecting more intangible quality elements. The importance of integrating small data into firm efforts to manage quality is therefore key to ensuring quality improvements encompass the entire customer experience. Conclusively, the evolving role of customer focus in quality management requires the reconceptualization of quality to quality-in-use, and the development of both the capturing and the converting roles of quality management in terms of mobilizing customer feedback for both quality improvements and increased customer knowledge.
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| 7. |
- Nilsson, Tomas
(författare)
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Rhetorical business : A study of marketing work in the spirit of contradiction
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Marketing has traditionally been understood from the perspective of marketing management. This causes problems when we study marketing practices because the normative discourse of marketing management is not particularly useful for describing the day-to-day work of marketing practitioners. This calls for marketing research from new perspectives. Rhetorical business – A study of marketing work in the spirit of contradiction investigates marketing work in professional service organizations from a rhetorical perspective. The overall research question – What do marketers do when they do marketing work? – is explored empirically through conversations, observations and daily interaction and argumentation with professionals involved in the marketing of consulting services. The rhetorical theory applied in the analysis builds on the assumption that every reasonable argument can be met with an equally reasonable counterargument, which is not only how we argue but also a representation of how we gain knowledge of the world – namely, by contradicting it. The analysis is organized in three themes – situation, strategy and subject – that address questions such as Where and when do marketers argue for business purposes? What rhetorical strategies are used?, and How can the subjects of marketing work be portrayed? This is followed by a discussion of the analysis under the two headings persuasive marketing talk and marketing work “in-between”. This book concludes that marketing work is accomplished by self-reflexive marketers who argue for business purposes in, through and in-between meetings as they employ versatile and expansive language and enact contradictory selves. In so concluding the book contributes a multifaceted account of marketing work beyond the framework of normative marketing management. It also shows how rhetorical theory can be used in marketing research to analyse aspects of marketing practice that would otherwise have been poorly accounted for. Finally, the book is written as a “confessional tale” by an author with long experience of marketing work, in the hope that it may encourage self-reflexive inquires among professionals involved in marketing.
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| 8. |
- Saeedi, Mohammad Reza
(författare)
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Pluripotent Dynamic Capabilities in the Internationalization of Firms : Focus on Learning, Innovating and Networking in SMEs from Sweden
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has been a considerable concern for international business (IB) scholars. Particularly, for those economies such as Sweden with small local markets, internationalization of SMEs could be fundamental. The firm-specific advantages (FSAs), including what the firm has and does, are crucial for SMEs to overcome in the face of their numerous different obstacles such as liability of smallness (LOS) and liability of foreignness (LOF).Examining the extant literature on the evolution of IB theories indicates that over time, IB scholars have been reaching to dynamic-based FSAs (what the firm does) as the source of developing and protecting sustainable competitive advantages (SCA) across national borders in a changing business environment. The nature of dynamic-based FSAs could be similar to dynamic capabilities. But, when it comes to determining specific component factors of dynamic-based FSAs (as dynamic capabilities), there has been little agreement between IB researchers. In other words, the room of the dynamic capabilities is still dark. In this respect, shedding light into this room, particularly in the area of IB studies, is crucial. In addition, after determining the component factors of the dynamic-based FSAs, it is also critical to know the likely relationships between the identified component factors as well as their impact on the SMEs’ international performance (IP) as an important outcome of the internationalization. This means that there is a potential theoretical gap associated with the conceptualization of the component factors of the dynamic-based FSAs on one hand, and a potential empirical gap on the other. Given both theoretical and empirical research gaps, the purpose of this study is to examine, from a theoretical perspective, the nature of the dynamic-based FSA and its related component factors in the IB context, as well as empirically explore how SMEs’ IP is influenced by the identified component factors of the dynamic-based FSAs.To perform this study, first of all, based on lenses of the resource-based view (RBV) and dynamic capability view (DCV), the literature on organizational capability in the context of the IB studies was systematically reviewed to fill the theoretical gap. Consequently, three component factors of dynamic-based FSAs including networking capability (NC) as a relational-based FSA, innovative capability (IC) as an innovative-based FSA and absorptive capacity (ACAP) as a learning-based FSA were identified, all of which are pluripotent and dynamic in nature. Then, a deductive approach was followed to develop several hypotheses and the associated conceptual model. Furthermore, a survey strategy, collecting data from 330 Swedish internationalized manufacturing SMEs, was applied to accomplish the purpose of the study. Then, the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) as a quantitative method was used to analyze the collected data.The results of the PLS-SEM analysis show that the SMEs’ international performance (IP) is positively influenced by the three identified component factors, whether directly or indirectly. In this regard, ACAP and NC are the two reliable predictors (directly) of the SMEs’ IP. The results indicate that innovative capability (IC) does not have direct impact on the SMEs’ IP, and that its effect is fully transmitted on IP only by the mediating effect of the networking capability (NC). Further analysis showed that ACAP, as an endogenous latent variable, additionally has a positive indirect association with SMEs’ international performance (IP). Moreover, the results also indicate that innovative capability is directly and positively affected by ACAP (innovating-by-learning effect). It was also empirically revealed that ACAP is a very strong predictor for networking capability, which is labeled as the networking-by-learning effect. Another major finding was that in internationalized SMEs, NC is strongly, directly and positively affected by IC; this effect also is termed as the networking-by-innovating effect. The overall picture resulting from the PLS- SEM analysis indicates that ACAP in internationalized SMEs is a wellspring to develop both innovative capability and networking capability, as well as influence SMEs’ IP. Furthermore, these results suggest that the networking capability is a vital gateway to transmit the effect of the other two component factors on IP and, at the same time, directly influence IP.
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| 9. |
- Onufrey, Ksenia
(författare)
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Enabled by the past : understanding endogenous innovation in mature industries
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Mature industries have played and still play a crucial role in national and world economies. To survive and retain competitiveness, they need to innovate, as innovation is the driver of economics growth and industrial transformation. However, existing research does not provide sufficient explanation of how innovation in mature industries can be enabled based on resources and internal development logic of those industries, i.e. endogenously. Some previous studies focused on incremental innovation patterns, which led to an underestimation of innovation potential of mature industries. Other studies acknowledged a high innovation potential of mature industries, but failed to explain how, through what mechanisms, industry-endogenous logic can bring about major innovations.Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to systematically address, explain and conceptualize endogenous industry- innovation and its driving mechanisms in mature industries. To achieve this purpose, three main issues are addressed. First, the thesis investigates and conceptualizes the notion of industry endogenous innovation mechanisms based on the path dependency theory. Second, the thesis addresses strategic choices and actions by established companies that are rooted in the industry endogenous mechanisms and result in highly innovative outcomes. Third, the thesis systematically analyses different aspects of radicalness of innovations resulting from industry endogenous mechanisms.The thesis represents a qualitative, embedded case study with two main industry cases, i.e. the global lighting industry and the Swedish pulp and paper industry. The lighting industry and its sub-cases in the form of specific lighting technologies have been studied via the analysis of patents of leading lighting manufacturers, archival and secondary data sources as well as interviews with different types of actors in the industry. The pulp and paper industry and its sub-cases in the form of innovation initiatives have been studied with the help of interviews with leading manufacturers and research institutes, as well the analysis of annual reports and secondary data sources. The outcomes of the study are presented in the form of the thesis cover paper and five appended papers.The results show that innovations of any magnitude can be endogenously developed in mature industries. At the industry level, endogenous innovation is driven by innovation mechanisms that can be conceptualized as reactive sequences and self-reinforcing mechanisms. At the level of individual companies, the exploitation strategy corresponds to the logic of endogenous innovation mechanisms by enabling highly innovative outcomes and building on a wide range of resources available in the industry. The endogenous character of innovation mechanisms imposes certain limitations on the radicalness of the outcomes in the form of trade-offs in terms of how many and what particular aspects can be radically new at once.With these results, the thesis contributes to a more balanced overall understanding of innovation potential of mature industries and allows shifting the focus of discussion from whether mature industries can develop radical innovation to when and under what conditions they can succeed in this process. The results of the thesis also suggest several recommendations for managers in established companies with regard to how they can they can take advantage of industry endogenous innovation mechanisms.
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| 10. |
- Alexandersson, Anna
(författare)
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Incubating Businesses
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The efficiency of business incubators is disputed, but they have attracted significant attention from policy-makers and are a part of economic policies worldwide. To ensure their efficiency, it has been suggested that more involvement in the ventures by the incubator management would be beneficial. The purpose of this thesis was to inquire into the relationship between entrepreneurial processes and managerial practices in business incubation. Drawing upon research about entrepreneurial processes and the management of entrepreneurship and creativity in other organizational contexts, the thesis problematizes the suggestions of increased managerial interventions in entrepreneurial processes in business incubation.The purpose was achieved through an analysis of entrepreneurial narratives from two Swedish incubators with different levels of managerial involvement in their ventures. The theoretical frame of reference used for the narrative analysis was based on Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts for studying varying possibilities and groundings for becoming in narratives. Entrepreneurship is understood as a creative process characterized by dialogue, polyphony and carnival, which has implications for our understanding of business incubation as a phenomenon.The narrative analysis generated four genres of entrepreneurial narratives and two models of incubation with different conceptualizations of entrepreneurship, the role of the incubator management and the incubation process. The result from the analysis of the incubator management from a creative process view was that the managerial approaches to coaching and clustering favored by the two incubators had different implications for entrepreneurship by providing varying possibilities for creativity due to aspects such as control, standardization and specialization. This study shows that business incubation, regardless of the model, includes a larger variety of entrepreneurial processes than previously recognized.This study contributes to our understanding of how managerial involvement in business incubation is conducted in practice and how it is understood from the entrepreneur’s perspective. The theoretical contribution of this study is a Bakhtinian framework, which allows us to observe and to understand business incubation differently. The study shows how the Bakhtinian concepts can be adapted and be made useful in studying the relationship between entrepreneurship and management in business incubation by emphasizing entrepreneurship as the product of social interaction.
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