Search results

A meta-study covering the past decade maps the development of Norwegian municipal planning, climate adaptation and institutional vulnerability towards climate change. This paper aims to explore the implementation of climate adaptive changes in Norwegian legal planning and building framework into municipal practice and policy instruments from 2007 to 2016. The study is planned to answer the question: what drivers ensure increased municipal efforts in their climate adaptive planning and building practice?

The paper presents empirical findings from two qualitative research projects, each with nine interviews of municipal key personnel within three municipalities’ planning and building services and an ongoing qualitative, expert interview-based study (eight individual/group interviews).

Risk reduction and climate resilience are still unsatisfactorily attended in many Norwegian municipalities. There is a gap between political and administrative levels in communicating bilateral expectations and needs for incorporation of climate adaptive measures. Policy instruments maintaining climate adaptation are in demand by different building process actors. Yet, extreme weather events seem to be the main drivers for actual implementation of climate change aspects into municipal policy instruments. Networking, both within and between municipalities, is an important strategy for learning climate adaptation.

Both globally and in Norway, the focus on climate change impacts is steadily increasing. Municipal risk and vulnerability analyses are statutory, as is the incorporation of the results into local plans at appropriate levels.

The originality of this paper is the meta-perspective over the past decade, the qualitative approach and the use of environmental psychology theories.

The emergence of Research Management and Administration (RMA) is a result of the pressure on academics to secure research funding from external sources, the increasing competition for these funds, as well as the rising requirements of research funders in terms of reporting and compliance with regulations. This is relevant in the case of the current Horizon Europe Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (HEU) funded by the European Union (EU) which requires important level of professionalisation of the research support staff on behalf of the applicant institutions. Data management, open science, research ethics and integrity, achieving impact beyond academia and the valorisation of project results can be regarded as non-research specific criteria which have to be met by applicant organisations to secure the highly competitive funding. Meeting these non-specific criteria is not always possible in countries whose performance is lagging behind compared to the Western European competitors in EU-funded programmes, such as Hungary.

Our findings reveal two things. First, research support in Hungary is in its early stage of maturity, similary to many countries in Central and Eastern Europe. In several cases, Research Managers and Administrators (RMAs) do not possess the knowledge necessary to meet the non-research specific criteria even if the knowledge is present at the institution or with other colleagues. Second, due to the continuously increasing participation in EU-funded framework programmes (FPs), the state of research support in Hungary is constantly evolving. There is also willingness to learn and improve capacities, which needs strategic planning, studying others’ examples and their adaptability. Such processes can support the capacity building and professionalisation of research offices not only in Hungary, but in countries of the Central and Eastern European region with a similar maturity level of RMA.

The development of Research Management and Administration (RMA) in Europe is strongly connected with the development of the Science and Technology (S&T) policy of the European Union (EU). These policies were the result of a continuous debate between the member states and the European Commission and European Parliament.

Although there is no data on the early development of RMA, there are some publications on the history of the development of the S&T policy in Europe: the excellent publication ‘A History of European Union Research Policy’ by Luca Guzzetti (Guzzetti, 1995). Guzzetti’s book investigates the history of EU research policies from 1948 up to the preparation of the Fourth Framework Programme (FP) (1994–1998).

The RMA aspects are constructed mainly by oral history complemented with some written sources. The history shows a gradual development of the profession unevenly spread in time and European geography. This has mainly with the EU enlargement in the same period, when new member states were connected to the FP. The profession started with a few colleagues’ way back in the eighties of the last century as financial people were dealing with the first European financial reporting up to the present day where RMA is becoming a field of work attracting many new colleagues.

This paper aims to contribute to overcoming the gap existing in the supply chain literature related to digital servitization by bridging digital servitization with knowledge management and identifying the rise of digital knowledge servitization as a driver for changes in the supply chain business model towards open innovation.

The study follows an inductive grounded theory approach for theory building. To analyse the impact of digital knowledge servitization, in-depth interviews of managers in the main business units of the Volvo Group supply chain ecosystem were carried out.

The results show how the digital servitization process affects the supply chain business model, highlighting the central role of knowledge in the service ecosystem and the rise of the theoretical concept of digital knowledge servitization. In particular, through the Innovation Lab (Volvo Group) study, the paper contributes to bringing together the theoretical knowledge-based view of servitization with the digital servitization concept, which demonstrates the role of this combined perspective in the transformation of the supply chain; this is carried out by introducing a new business model based on open innovation in inbound and outbound processes.

The research offers interesting insights from a managerial perspective, as increasingly advanced and complex digital solutions require shorter times in supply chain management (SCM). Companies need to be able to quickly manage information and knowledge flows deriving from internal and external interactions and involvement with external actors upstream and downstream of the supply chain ecosystem. Therefore, the digital knowledge servitization of the supply chain also highlights implications for managers in terms of human resources management.

The novel research goal is to contribute to the supply chain literature by integrating the digital servitization with the knowledge view and analysing the impact on the inbound and outbound supply chain through the introduction of an open innovation business model.