| 1. |
- Arora-Jonsson, Stefan, 1969-, et al.
(author)
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Konkurrens som organisation
- 2019
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In: Organisation & Samhälle. - Stockholm : Föreningen Företagsekonomi i Sverige (FEKIS). - 2001-9114 .- 2002-0287. ; :1, s. 22-27
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Journal article (other academic/artistic)
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| 2. |
- Arora-Jonsson, Stefan, 1969-, et al.
(author)
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Organizing a Competitive Logic in the Swedish School Market
- 2019
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In: Academy of Management Proceedings. - : Academy of Management. - 1543-8643. ; :1
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Journal article (other academic/artistic)abstract
- A common assumption in organizational literature is that the “rules” by which organizations compete in a market emerge from processes of mutual adjustment among competitors to the constraints posed by market structures and institutions. While this may often be the case, we point the analytical gaze to the arguably prevalent but understudied case where the rules for competing are decided, i.e. result from an attempt at organizing by an organizer, rather than by mutual adjustment among competitors. We explore the formation and change of a competitive logic among Swedish upper secondary schools, using archival and interview data from two municipalities. We find how a broad-sweeping reform initially failed to shape a competitive logic, i.e. schools did not think they were competing. Over time, however, the idea of competing for students took hold, resulting in the organization of two very different competitive logics. Our findings speak to literatures that deal with institutional, geographical, and structural perspectives on competition, adding the notion of organizers as central actors in processes where competition forms and changes.
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| 3. |
- Bomark, Niklas, 1984-, et al.
(author)
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Convincing Others That They are Competing : The Case of Schools
- 2021
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In: Competition. - Oxford : Oxford University Press. - 9780192898012 - 9780191924460
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The past decades have seen numerous attempts to introduce competition into new sectors of society, but we still know little about the processes by which competition is realized in a new setting. We study three decades of organizational efforts of a Swedish municipality that sought to introduce competition for students among its upper secondary schools following a national reform in the early 1990s. Our study shows that declaring competition was far from sufficient for its realization; the path to competition was lined with hesitation, uncertainty, and a rich variety of organizational challenges to be overcome. One particularly vexing challenge was to convince the principals of the schools that they should view each other as competitors for students. Our findings contribute to previous literature by demonstrating that competition need not be a prerequisite for choice; that several organizers of competition may operate at once; and, more generally, that competition is introduced through stepwise, piecemeal processes.
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| 4. |
- Bomark, Niklas, 1984-, et al.
(author)
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Corporate Demography and Income Inequality : Revisited
- 2019
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In: Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings. - New York : Academy of Management. - 0065-0668 .- 2151-6561. ; :1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We replicate and extend Sorenson and Sorensen’s (2007) study how corporate demography shapes workforce wage inequality across region-industries by: (i) replicating their original results from Danish regions in 1992-1998 using a close to identical dataset of industry-regions in neighboring Sweden during the same time-period, (ii) extending the study to 2012 to gauge the corporate demography – wage inequality relationship during a period of rapidly increasing inequality, and (iii) expanding the scope of the model by two new measures of organizational form diversity. Our findings suggest a fairly strong test-retest validity, an enhanced effect of corporate demography over time, but that more nuanced measure of organization form diversity do not necessarily enhance the model’s explanatory power.
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| 5. |
- Bomark, Niklas, 1984-
(author)
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Drawing Lines in the Sand : Organizational Responses to Evaluations in a Swedish University
- 2016
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- As organizations are increasingly evaluated, evaluative practices are becoming central to organization theory. While highlighting how organizations may respond to evaluations, earlier work on organizations and evaluation has been limited to inter-organizational evaluations, such as third-party rankings or ratings. As a consequence, the prevailing perspective on organizational responses has been developed almost entirely based on an idea that what is being evaluated in the first place – the evaluation entities – is unproblematic. Acknowledging that the definition of the evaluation entity may be ambiguous prior to the evaluation, and that this definition might vary over time, some interesting areas of inquiry emerge in relation to current understandings of organizational responses to evaluations.First, it raises questions of how entities are defined in evaluations, and how this can be seen as an organizational response? Second, it raises questions about our current understanding of the dynamics of organizational responses and how organizational responses shape organizational adaptation and change. Third, it raises question about how entity definitions shape how organizations become evaluated. Despite recent interest in understanding organizational responses to evaluations, organizational scholars have largely refrained from entertaining these questions.The objective of this dissertation is to revisit the assumption of the unambiguously defined evaluation entity in the current theorizing on organizational responses to evaluations. An opportunity to investigate this question emerged when the oldest university in Sweden, Uppsala University, decided to carry out two large evaluations of the research activities within the university – in 2007 and in 2011. The evaluation was made public and aimed to identify and evaluate (partly through a rating) the research achievements of the departments of the university. This presented an opportunity to study organizational responses to evaluations in a setting that is different from what has been studied previously. Based on a study of 44 of the departments within the university my main finding show how entities are defined and how this can be seen as an organizational response to evaluations. My findings also show how entity definitions interact with the more traditional responses taken after an evaluation, and that entity definitions shape the evaluation of the department. This dissertation thus lends support for the idea that apart from responding by changing activities or their organizational units, organizations can also respond to evaluations by the way they shape what will be evaluated – the entities being subject for the evaluation. The findings in this dissertation holds consequences for organizational theory and the evaluation of organizations.
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| 6. |
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| 7. |
- Bomark, Niklas, 1984-, et al.
(author)
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Managing Competing Logics Through Situational Irony
- 2015
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In: The international journal of information and learning technology. - : Emerald. - 2056-4880 .- 2056-4899. ; 8:4, s. 649-678
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to extend the literature on how actors manage competing logics in an organizational field. The authors do so by introducing the concept of organizational irony to the literature on how to manage competing logics, and analyze a collaborative cultural project encompassing actors subjected to competing institutional logics. Design/methodology/approach - The case study is built on qualitative data from in-depth interviews, newspaper articles and observations. Findings - The authors describe and analyze a cultural project encompassing actors subjected to competing institutional logics and show how they responded to institutional pressures in their environment with the use of organizational irony. Thereby, the actors could collaborate with actors subjected to a competing institutional logic and still maintain adherence to their respective institutional logic. Research limitations/implications - Most studies of how to manage competing logics asserts that one logic will prevail over a competing one, either through "battles" or gradual dominance (Reay and Hinings, 2009). This study supports and adds to Reay and Hinings' (2009) finding that actors also can collaborate and maintain adherence to their respective logic under such circumstances. In particular, it supports two identified mechanisms of how this can be achieved, namely, to separate decisions and to jointly innovate in experimental sites. It also adds to these mechanisms by showing that this can be done through the use of organizational irony. The authors only study one cultural project in one organizational field. It remains unclear if these findings are common in other cultural projects or in other organizational field, and the authors therefore encourage other researchers to extend or challenge the findings of this study. Practical implications - The authors believe that the analysis and findings can be useful for politicians to take into account and address either to minimize the risk of organizational irony or on the contrary encourage it as a source of reflexive critique of society and cultural politics. The authors also believe that the response of organizational irony to institutional pressures broadens the acting space of cultural actors, provide media and critics with an analytical tool to analyze and deconstruct practices that otherwise would risk to be silenced or neglected. Finally, the authors believe that an analysis of organizational irony has the potential to make people attend to contradictions and multiple meanings in the artworks under study in a novel way. Originality/value - The paper provides an intriguing and complex empirical case to demonstrate how actors manage competing logics in an organizational field through the production of organizational irony. The authors believe that its theoretical contributions and practical implications can inspire future research on how paradoxes can be managed through the use of organizational irony in other projects and organizational fields.
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| 8. |
- Bomark, Niklas, 1984-, et al.
(author)
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Organisationsteoretiska perspektiv på skolsegregation
- 2019
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In: Segregation. - Stockholm : Riksbankens jubileumsfond i samarbete med Makadam förlag. - 9789170613036 - 9789170618031 ; , s. 59-70
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Book chapter (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Den här boken är resultatet av ett stort forskningsprogram som velat utveckla den analytiska sociologins teoretiska och metodologiska grundvalar, och förbättra kunskapsläget gällande segregationsprocesser i dagens Sverige. Jag vill framföra ett stort tack till Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ) som beviljade oss ett mycket generöst anslag. Detta gjorde det möjligt för oss att bygga upp en excellent forskningsmiljö, först vid Institutet för framtidsstudier och sedan vid Institutet för analytisk sociologi, Linköpings universitet. Flera forskare inom forskningsprogrammet har intresserat sig för självförstärkande processer där framgångar leder till ytterligare framgångar, och anslaget från RJ illustrerar med all önskvärd tydlighet betydelsen av den här typen av processer. Medlen från RJ ledde till ytterligare anslag från andra forskningsfinansiärer och spelade en avgörande roll i den process som ledde fram till bildandet av Institutet för analytisk sociologi i Norrköping.Jag vill också uttrycka min stora tacksamhet till alla de forskare som medverkat i programmet, betydligt fler än de som kunde inkluderas i denna bok. Ett särskilt tack går till Gunn Birkelund (Universitetet i Oslo), Robert Mare (University of California, Los Angeles), David Sumpter (Uppsala universitet) och Petri Ylikoski (Helsingfors universitet) som spelat en avgörande roll för forskningsprogrammets utveckling. Ett stort tack går även till de medarbetare vid Linköpings universitet och vid Institutet för framtidsstudier som gjorde att alla administrativa bekymmer lyste med sin frånvaro och gjorde det möjligt för forskarna att uteslutande ägna sig åt sin forskning. Avslutningsvis vill jag även tacka Thomas Andersson, Jenny Björkman och Catherine Grimlund Träff för deras professionella redigeringsarbete.
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| 9. |
- Jonsson, Stefan, et al.
(author)
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Picking the low-hanging apples : The case of “reverse cream skimming” among Swedish private schools
- 2018
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In: Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings. - : Academy of Management. - 0065-0668 .- 2151-6561. ; :1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- An increasingly common practice across the world is to introduce private alternatives into publically funded education systems. Economists have found that following from this practice, private schools often engage in what is called “cream skimming”, where they attract solely the most highly able students and thereby worsen the socio-economic stratification of the education system. In this paper, we argue that under conditions where for-profit schools are allowed, but they only receive a flat voucher per student, the phenomenon of “reverse cream skimming” where private schools selectively target the least motivated students is a likely outcome. We show this to be the case in a quantitative analysis of admissions to the secondary schools in a Swedish municipality from 1999 to 2017. Implications for theories of how schools compete, public education policy, and for institutional theory are discussed.
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