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This paper deals with partnerships, clusters and innovation systems from a governance perspective. Very little tourism research has used this perspective, and relatively little attention has been brought to the two latter of the mentioned models. It is argued that the governance perspective makes sense when dealing with these models in the tourist destination context. As will be shown, the models draw attention to different features of governance and even suggest different forms of governance and government involvement. It also concludes that the partnership perspective makes sense in basically all tourist destinations, while fewer qualify for the cluster model, and even fewer for the innovation system model. Empirical observations are drawn from different studies of the Swedish ski resort of Are.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical framework for and an initial understanding of critical times in business relationships.

The authors define “critical time” as a period of time with increased sensitivity in a business relationship that may change the actors' attitude and/or behaviour in the relationship. The authors review previous research, present the theoretical framework and present the findings from two explorative empirical studies concerning companies' relationships with information technology consultants and advertising agencies. The focus is on the factors driving the flow of critical times.

This authors introduce the concept “critical time” as a period of stress and raised sensitivity in a relationship that may change it. Critical times are built up by three elements: initial state of the relationship, the flow of critical time and outcome state of the relationship. The authors contribute with the critical C‐model: competence, communication, and clock.

This is the first study focusing on critical times in business relationships. The authors study two categories of knowledge intensive professional services. A new theoretical framework for, and an initial understanding of, critical times in business relationships are suggested.

This paper has two purposes: one is to analyse how the policy of freedom of choice emerged and was formed in the Swedish health care discourse; the second is related to how free choice influences the discourse in health care and how subjects are formed within the field, i.e. what the language of choice in health care does.

The research strategy is inspired by a combined theoretical framework borrowed from Michel Foucault's concepts of “discursive formation” and “subjectivization” completed with Judith Butler's concept of performativity.

The language of “freedom of choice” calls to mind the rhetoric of promises, i.e. that the patient should be free and responsible, in his or her relation to health care. Since patients seem to be insufficiently informed and supported about the actual benefits of possibilities and limitations associated with the severely restricted reform of free choice, the statements concerning opportunities to make personal health decisions will lose their significance. The advocacy of discourses of freedom of choice seems therefore mostly like empty words, as they are producing weak patients instead of free and empowered people.

As the reform was initiated in the beginning of 2000 it is rather fresh.

The paper produces insights into the rhetoric of political promises and the limitations of the reform dealing with freedom of choice in health care.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and test a construct of perceived justice and its DIP‐dimensions (i.e. distributive, interactional, and procedural) in the context of both the consumers' initial negative service experiences' and the following processes of complaint handling. The objective is also to investigate similarities and differences of perceived justice in negative service experiences and complaint handling, and the validity of the constructs over time.

A triangular approach is used, based upon interviews and a survey in the Norwegian tourism industry. This paper reports on the results from a survey consisting of 3,104 customers. Comparative and confirmatory testing of perceived justice during the initial service encounter and subsequent complaint‐handling process has been performed.

The DIP‐dimensions of the construct of perceived justice in the service encounters tested have indicated a satisfactory fit, validity, and reliability.

The empirical findings provide a seed for future research to refine and extend corporate endeavors in managing critical incidents of both service encounters and service recovery.

Strategies to manage the perceived justice in negative service encounters and complaint handling should aim at managing the DIP‐dimensions of negative incidents in service encounters.

The DIP‐construct brings together, complements and fortifies existing theory and previous research in the context of justice in service encounters and complaint handling. Addressing both pre‐ and post‐complaint processes provides a complementary contribution to the field in focus.

The objective of this paper is to test the validity and reliability of a SOS construct and its dimensions (i.e. self, other and situational) of negative emotions in the context of consumers' service experience (CSE) and the following processes of service recovery by firms (SRF).

A triangular approach was used, based on interviews and a survey in the Norwegian tourism industry. This paper reports the results from the survey consisting of 3,104 customers.

Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses have been used to examine and test the SOS construct of negative emotions in CSE and SRF. The SOS construct tested has indicated an acceptable fit, validity and reliability.

The SOS construct of CSE and SRF may be seen as a seed for future research in refining and extending endeavors of managing critical incidents in CSE and SRF.

Strategies to manage CSE and SRF should be aimed at solving the three different SOS dimensions of negative incidents in service encounters, namely those that are caused by the customer, the company, or the situation.

The SOS construct brings together, complements and fortifies existing theory and previous research in the context of negative emotions in CSE and SRF.

The high-pressure accumulator has been widely used in the hydraulic system. Failure pressure prediction is crucial for the safe design and integrity assessment of the accumulators. The purpose of this study is to accurately predict the burst pressure and location for the accumulator shells due to internal pressure.

This study concentrates the non-linear finite element simulation procedure, which allows determination of the burst pressure and crack location using extensive plastic straining criterion. Meanwhile, the full-scale hydraulic burst test and the analytical solution are conducted for comparative analysis.

A good agreement between predicted and measured the burst pressure that was obtained, and the predicted failure point coincided very well with the fracture location of the actual shell very well. Meanwhile, the burst pressure of the shells increases with wall thickness, independent of the length. It can be said that the non-linear finite element method can be employed to predict the failure behavior of a cylindrical shell with sufficient accuracy.

This paper can provide a designer with additional insight into how the pressurized hollow cylinder might fail, and the failure pressure has been predicted accurately with a minimum error below 1%, comparing the numerical results with experimental data.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the outcomes and evolution over a five‐year period of a Swedish university hospital quality improvement program in light of enduring uncertainty regarding the effectiveness of such programs in healthcare and how best to evaluate it.

The paper takes the form of a case study, using data collected as part of the program, including quality indicators from clinical improvement projects and participants' program evaluations.

Overall, 58 percent of the program's projects (39/67) demonstrated success. A greater proportion of projects led by female doctors demonstrated success (91 percent, n=11) than projects led by male doctors (51 percent, n=55). Facilitators at the hospital continuously adapted the improvement methods to the local context. A lack of dedicated time for improvement efforts was the participants' biggest difficulty. The dominant benefits included an increased ability to see the “bigger picture” and the improvements achieved for patients and employees.

Quality measurement, which is important for conducting and evaluating improvement efforts, was weak with limited reliability. Nevertheless, the present study adds evidence about the effectiveness of healthcare improvement programs. Gender differences in improvement team leadership merit further study. Improvement program evaluation should assess the extent to which improvement methods are locally adapted and applied.

This case study reports the outcomes of all improvement projects undertaken in one healthcare organization over a five‐year period and provides in‐depth insight into an improvement program's changeable nature.

Recently many European countries have incurred crises in public finance despite the fact that EU institutions have pushed the national governments toward the sustainability of public finance with compulsory and voluntary rules regarding fiscal governance. This paper investigates the relations between the quality of fiscal governance and the financial virtuosity of national fiscal policy. We proposed a general framework for analyzing the fiscal governance issue and we empirically tested the correlation between the dimensions of fiscal governance and the budgetary performance of EU countries. The results showed a positive correlation between the quality of fiscal governance in the EU countries and financial surplus in the period concerned. However further investigations are needed and an effort should be made to collect uniform data on fiscal governance in the European Union.

This paper aims to develop a more nuanced view of subnational location choice with a particular focus on global cities. It is argued that multinational firms may use global cities to establish bridgeheads-subsidiaries at intermediate levels of the ownership chain that enable further international as well as subnational expansion.

Beyond those host country subsidiaries that are directly owned by a foreign multinational, the authors go deeper and focus specifically on the multi-tiered – “subsidiaries of subsidiaries” to examine how the geographic origins and destinations of these investments are associated with micro-location choices in a host country.

The authors find that there are substantial differences between the types, roles, activities and geographic origins of the firms locating in different areas, and in the ownership structures spanning them. The authors propose that this has managerial and theoretical implications which may be understood based on an organizing framework describing a tradeoff between the pursuit of global connectivity and local density on the one hand and cost control on the other.

Empirical work on foreign location choices should take into account ownership structures and take a more fine-grained view of subnational variation.

Managers need to consider the trade-offs between connectivity, density and costs when making foreign location decisions.

Policy makers should think about the unique contributions that various subnational regions such as global and ordinary cities can make to global value chains.

The authors bridge the hitherto separate literatures pertaining to subsidiary mandates and subnational dimensions of foreign location choice by investigating the fine-grained roles and ownership structures from a supranational as well as subnational perspective.