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Although the potential of innovation networks that involve both university and industry actors is great variances in cultures, goals and knowledge poses significant challenges. To better understand management of such innovation networks, the authors investigate different strategies for balancing diversity. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In this multiple case study, the authors draw on network and trading zone theory to examine the strategies of four research centers that govern university-industry innovation networks.

The authors provide empirically grounded descriptions of strategies for balancing diversity in innovation processes, extend previous theorizations by suggesting two types of trading zones (transformative and performative), and identify four strategy configuration dimensions (means of knowledge trade, tie configuration, knowledge mobility mechanisms and types of trust).

Further research is needed on transferability of results when, e.g. cultural collaboration and communication patterns change, and performance implications of different configurations. The research provides conceptual tools for future research on the impact of different diversity strategies.

The findings point to the importance of identifying desired types of innovation outcomes and designing the appropriate level of diversity. To implement the selected strategy, managers need to configure communication channels and strength of relationships, establish associated capacity for knowledge transfer and build appropriate levels of trust.

While extant research has provided a solid understanding of benefits from diversity in boundary spanning innovation processes, this paper outlines strategies for managing associated challenges.

Drug sales facilitated through digital communication on the surface web and on darknet cryptomarkets have increased during the past two decades. This has resulted in an increase in drug law enforcement efforts to combat these markets and a subsequent increase in judicial sentencing of people selling drugs online. The aim of this study was to analyze how Swedish courts describe sentenced sellers and how the courts apply case law.

The empirical material consists of 71 sentencing documents produced by Swedish courts in cases of online drug selling between January 1, 2010 and January 1, 2020. In total, 99 sentenced persons occur in the documents. Using a qualitative research design, the authors analyzed the material through thematic text analysis.

Overall, in their descriptions of online drug sale operations, the courts’ characterizations of the concepts of street capital and digital capital show a dichotomy. These forms of capital are situationally described as both aggravating and mitigating aspects in the application of case law, indicating that it may be fruitful to view both street and digital capital as resources used on contemporary drug markets in general.

Very little research exists into how judicial systems describe and perceive the developing phenomenon of online drug sales. Using a relatively large sample from a decade of sentencing, the authors provide an analysis of how Swedish courts view and valuate capital forms in the online drugs trade.

This article aims to identify methodological openings and barriers for using managerial relevance as a method to further business to business (B2B) marketing theory.

There is currently an imbalance between two research modes; notably, the normative knowledge accumulation mode confers scant space to the solution mode. This negatively affects both the production of managerially relevant research and theoretical developments within B2B marketing which, in turn, hinders the development of marketing as an applied science. Against the background of an upgraded methodological cartography, emphasizing the equal importance of the two research modes, this article illustrates the context of using managerial relevance as a method to forward B2B marketing theory. An aggregate picture of corresponding calls in the literature shows why this is important.

Calls for increased managerial relevance and methodological diversity outside the normative knowledge accumulation mode will face difficulties in terms of changing researcher behavior, as long as the biased relationship between the two research modes persists. For managerially relevant research to increase, and for B2B marketing science to progress, underlying assumptions of different methodological stances have to be uncovered, calling for increased methodological clarity.

To prevent a relapse, the analysis suggests a further strategy by which to modify schematic models to study organizational change and behavior.

A more significant role attributed to managerial relevance for theory development early in the research process, permits to align the perspectives of research with the needs of practice and will decrease the research–practice gap.

The article pinpoints two research modes and three epistemological stances – predict, describe and depict – which sharpens methodological clarity beyond traditional qualitative–quantitative, and conceptual–empirical classifications.

There is a tendency in team research to employ concepts of stepwise models, reaching from the primitive to the excellent, to suggest that a higher level of evolution is better than the basic and simple. This tendency includes typologies of teams. This article aims to question the relevance of this view.

Data were collected in three steps. In the first step, articles and books analyzing teams and teamwork from stepwise analytical models were collected. In the second step the collected data were classified into different themes. Each stepwise model was classified into one essential denomination. This classification resulted in eight themes. In the third step each theme was analyzed, which led to the fusion of some of the themes.

The conclusion is that a synchronous, complementary or mature team is not necessarily optimal. Contrary to this, a differentiated, sequential or multi team approach can be optimal for some purposes. Team research needs to establish a more open, inductive and critical attitude than at present.

The paper highlights the need to observe and use team theories in a balanced and critical way.

A common understanding of what events to regard as production disturbances (PD) are essential for effective handling of PDs. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to answer the two questions: how are individuals with production or maintenance management positions in industry classifying different PD factors? Which factors are being measured and registered as PDs in the companies monitoring systems?

A longitudinal approach using a repeated cross-sectional survey design was adopted. Empirical data were collected from 80 companies in 2001 using a paper-based questionnaire, and from 71 companies in 2014 using a web-based questionnaire.

A diverging view of 21 proposed PD factors is found between respondents in manufacturing industry, and there is also a lack of correspondence with existing literature. In particular, planned events are not classified and registered to the same extent as downtime losses. Moreover, the respondents are often prone to classify factors as PDs compared to what is actually registered. This diverging view has been consistent for over a decade, and hinders companies to develop systematic and effective strategies for handling of PDs.

There has been no in-depth investigation, especially not from a longitudinal perspective, of the personal interpretation of PDs from people who play a central role in achieving high reliability of production systems.

For the expected increase in the capacity of existing transportation systems and efficient energy utilisation, smart maintenance solutions that are supported by online and integrated condition monitoring systems are required. Industrial internet is one of the smart maintenance solutions which enables real-time acquisition and analysis of asset condition by linking intelligent devices with different stakeholders’ applications and databases. The purpose of this paper is to present some aspects of industrial internet application as required for integrating weather information and floating road condition data from vehicle mounted sensors to enhance effective and efficient winter maintenance.

The concept of real-time road condition assessment using in-vehicle sensors is demonstrated in a case study of a 3.5 km road section located in Northern Sweden. The main floating data sources were acceleration and position sensors from a smartphone positioned on the dash board of a truck. Features extracted from the acceleration signal were two road roughness estimations. To extract targeted information and knowledge, the floating data were further processed to produce time series data of the road condition using Kalman filtering. The time series data were thereafter combined with weather data to assess the condition of the road.

In the case study, examples of visualisation and analytics to support winter maintenance planning, execution and resource allocation were presented. Reasonable correlation was shown between estimated road roughness and annual road survey data to validate and prove the presented results wider applicability.

The paper describes a concept of floating data for an industrial internet application for efficient road maintenance. The resulting improvement in winter maintenance will promote dependable, safe and sustainable transportation of goods and people, especially in Northern Nordic region with harsh and sometimes unpredictable weather conditions.

By drawing on a detailed case study of the work of tax consultants, the purpose of this paper is to develop a more detailed understanding of the role of ambiguity in professional work, and its relationship to the division of labour in professional service firms (PSFs).

The paper is based on a three-year, longitudinal interpretive case study comprising 42 interviews, supplemented by observations and document data.

The research determines that processes of “obfuscation” and “privatisation” separate client work from case work. This maintains a division of labour between junior and senior professionals, which in turn facilitates financial leverage. The findings indicate that a more nuanced view on the role and origins of ambiguity is needed; particularly the role ambiguity plays in the division of labour. While inherent in professional work, ambiguity is also an effect of the way work processes are organised in order to obtain leverage.

The research is based on a case study. Therefore, the paper explores its topic in empirical detail, but at the same time calls for exploring the topic in different contexts. The paper encourages further research on the role ambiguity plays being constituted by structural arrangements, and on the way the core of professionalism is inverted by the division of labour. The paper highlights the value of detailed empirical approaches for understanding professional work.

The paper draws attention to the way ambiguity becomes a part in sustaining a division of labour among professional workers, and to the importance of this in maintaining financial leverage as well as in creating a precarious work situation for junior professionals.

The paper raises concerns about the way professional work is legitimated in society as opposed to how it is constructed in PSFs.

The paper challenges prevalent notions of professional work as ambiguous, offering instead a way of engaging with professional work processes in detail, theoretically and methodologically. Traditional assumptions about the division of labour and the “core” of professional work are problematized, and traditional assumptions about ambiguity as a cause of specific structural arrangements are questioned.

The purpose of this paper is organizing mindfully for relevant process research on strategic change. This essay arises from an increasing concern that our understanding of strategic change is not delivering meaningful, relevant and true process wisdom that allows researchers to enrich their academic discourse and practitioners to effectively realize strategic change imposed by hostile business markets. Our goal is to challenge fundamental assumptions of our field’s dominant discourse in performing research and generating theories for strategic change under real contexts, and redirect attention to a mindful organizing perspective to understand process elements of strategic change that really matter.

This paper is an essay based on theoretical reasoning. We address the relevance gap in the strategic business marketing field by focusing on one specific gap: the study and understanding of strategic change. To illustrate the relevance of a mindful organizing perspective for closing this relevance gap, we focus on the processes of mindful organizing identified by Weick and Sutcliffe (2007) and argue how these organizational processes contribute to a better understanding of strategic change while implicitly assuming a complexity-based perspective on organizing. These five processes, moreover, address the identified limitations of present approaches, i.e. formative causality, pre-interpretation and independent linearity.

We suggest a “provocative change research avenue” elaborating on the role of mindful organizing to bridge the relevance gap in this area. This advances a richer and more relevant framing to elevate theorizing in the area of strategic marketing and management beyond existing avenues, which not necessarily reflects organizational life’s equivocality, interdependencies and intricacies. We, thus, call for the field of strategic marketing and management to adopt a discourse grounded in complexity-based assumptions.

Overall, this essay highlights that closing relevance gaps in our field cannot be done with quick fix recipes. The endeavor implies a fundamental re-framing of the way we look at firms and managers. It also implies different theoretical underpinnings and more interpretive research approaches to tap the richness in real-life business settings. By focusing on one area, we have shown how such an effort might proceed.

Although the paper is mainly written for researchers of change processes and innovation in industrial companies, practitioners will get inspiration as several viewpoints for mindful organizing will help them in building a more realistic and viable change approach.

Our intended contribution is to advocate a deeper and richer process understanding of strategic change by advancing mindful organizing as an epistemological and praxeological perspective on strategic change, thereby bridging the relevance gap (Hodgkinson and Rousseau, 2009; Weick, 2001) and enriching our field’s strategic change theories. Epistemologically, mindful organizing offers a useful perspective by stressing the change process’ complexity, interdependence and emergence. Praxeologically, mindful organizing represents an adaptive organizational capability that allows organizations to develop higher awareness of their strategic change processes.