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This paper aims to demonstrate the relevance of identifying lock-ins that characterise a service, showing how lock-ins or impediments reinforce the status quo and prevent change. It provides an understanding of the factors hindering the development of value co-creation in this service.

The study is based on 19 semi-structured interviews with representatives of the Swedish waste management industry. It focusses on the difficulties that waste management companies encounter when they try to collaborate with their industrial customers to develop waste prevention services.

Four lock-ins that impede collaborative ways of working are identified: a business model based on short-term transactions rather than long-term relationships, a low level of self-confidence among waste managers regarding their competence to offer waste prevention services, non-supportive legal and economic institutional factors and existing waste processing infrastructures.

Based on a case of waste services and to provide a better understanding of the rationale of value co-creation, this paper points to the generic relevance of investigating situations in which value co-creation encounters difficulties.

The authors identify the fact that lock-ins impeding value co-creation can act as a roadmap for the development of new services.

By focusing on a case of unsuccessful value co-creation, the paper offers a counterpoint to cases of successful value co-creation.

The purpose of this paper is to show that organizational change depends on societal narratives – narratives about the character, history, or envisioned future of societies.

A case study of a Swedish municipal waste management company serves as an illustration.

Swedish waste governance is powered by two main narratives: “less landfilling” and “wasting less”. Less landfilling has been the dominant narrative for several decades, but wasting less is gaining momentum, and a new narrative order is establishing itself. This new narrative order significantly redefines the socio‐material status of waste and imposes major changes on waste management organizations.

Based on the case of waste governance in Sweden, the authors conclude that organizations should be aware that societal narrative affects the legitimacy and nature of their operations; therefore, they must integrate a watch for narrative change in their strategic reflections.

This paper establishes the relevance of the notion of societal narrative to understand organizational change.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the way organizational actors argue to obtain a license to operate for new ventures.

The design, which addresses the issue at the industry level, consists of a case study of the ways in which power developers argue for the development of wind energy in Sweden.

The study shows that wind power developers proffer a necessity‐ability‐acceptability line of argument that relies not only on the convincing character of claims grounded in premises, but also on the persuasive character of values, knowledge and opinion likely to win the adherence of the audience.

From a theoretical perspective, this is an illustration of the relevance of bridging the divide between argumentation theories in tune with formal or informal logic and those oriented toward rhetoric and the social practice of communication.

More practically, the paper suggests that in order to obtain a license to operate, managers need to combine and balance in their practice of argumentation a logical approach to factual knowledge with a situational sense for the rhetoric favored by the audience.

This study emphasizes the key role played by argumentation in corporate communication.

Braiding organization theory and argumentation theory, the paper seeks to unfold how organizations act as social loci for the production, diffusion and development of arguments.

A Swedish association dedicated to the defense and promotion of nuclear power, Miljövänner För Kärnkraft (approximately Environmentalists for Nuclear Power) serves as a case study, describing the association's argumentative activity with a particular focus on its argument that “nuclear power is environment friendly as it produces no greenhouse gas emissions”.

The manner in which the association contextualizes this key argument illustrates the inter‐relationships that exist between organizing and arguing.

Organizing and arguing belong to each other's conditions of possibility, and it is therefore argued that an understanding of the organized character of argumentation is symmetrical to the argumentative character of organizing.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce this special issue on the subject of the rhetoric and narratives in management research.

The paper reviews selected contributions to the 4th Conference on Rhetoric and Narratives in Management Research held on March 24‐26, 2011 at the ESADE campus in Barcelona.

The paper reveals various views of rhetoric and narratives in management research including plagiarism, individual (personal) narratives , material and spiritual narratives and deception in storytelling.

The paper provides a useful introduction to the various papers on rhetoric and narratives in management research.

The aim of this paper is to give an account of how the author aims to engage with his new appointment as co-editor-in-chief of the Society and Business Review (SBR) and to reflect on why an academic journal like the SBR is relevant – if not absolutely necessary.

By drawing on a synthesis of past publications in the journal, academic roots and editorial trends of the SBR are presented.

Three promising areas of research in the “business & society” field are identified for the future: monitoring the expansion of managerialism, analysing the role and impact of management education in society and conceptualising the politicisation of corporations.

Although these trends are promising and subjectively identified, the journal will obviously not restrict its scope to these three topics alone and will continue to welcome all submissions that fall into its mission statement.

This paper provides insights into how the editors evaluate not only articles but also special issue proposals and book reviews that are submitted to the SBR.