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The aim of this case study is to describe what commitment and actions are needed in the Swedish school so that principals — within the Swedish school policy framework and with the goal of creating an inclusive school culture and practice — can positively affect schooling for students with disabilities, with a particular focus on students with autism spectrum conditions (ASC). Three research questions guide the study: (1) What commitment and actions do principals consider important for developing an inclusive school for all students, with a particular focus on students with ASC? (2) How do the principals reflect on their own leadership in the development of inclusive education, with a particular focus on students with ASC? (3) Based on the results, what are the implications of the study in practice?

As part of a three-step data collection method, a snowball sampling was conducted in which n = 6 principals were initially interviewed and the data analyzed by an inductive thematic content analysis.

(1) Certain structures are needed when planning how to develop mutual values when organizing an inclusive school involving students with ASC, (2) the principals could, at times, feel a sense of loneliness in relation to their superiors and decision-makers and (3) more accountability from educators and greater consideration for the student perspective in decision-making are needed.

It was found that (1) certain structures are needed when planning how to develop mutual values when organizing an inclusive school involving students with ASC, (2) the principals could, at times, feel a sense of isolation in relation to their superiors and decision-makers and (3) more accountability from educators and greater consideration for the student perspective in decision-making are needed.

Index for inclusion and elements from the inclusive leadership model were used in the data collection and analysis.

This study examines the relationship between trust, organizational climate and team learning among project team members (PTM). In recent years, many companies have come to recognize the important role team learning plays in achieving competitive advantage.

Data were collected through a survey questionnaire, and responses from 86 PTM provide support for the research model and demonstrate that how organizational climate mediates the relationship between trust and team learning.

The structural equation analysis of the data collected from 86 project team members indicate that both vertical and horizontal trust influences organizational climate, which, in turn, is a determinant of team learning. In addition, although both types of trust contributed to organizational climate, the results indicated that horizontal trust had a greater influence on organizational climate and team learning.

The study employed the survey method and is not without limitations. The first limitation concerns our sample size, which was selected from one global company. Second, the survey data were all collected at a single point in time. Therefore, the authors cannot unambiguously infer causality. To attempt to do so, it would be useful to investigate the model in the context of organizational and development change. Despite these limitations, the results of the study have implications for theory and practice.

The implication for theory is that the results provide empirical support for the view that organization climates mediate the relationship between trust and team learning. On the practical side, the organizations should also pay more attention to increasing trust at the work place, especially among PTM that may contribute to favorable organizational climate, which is vital for team learning.

This paper addresses the simultaneous role of vertical and horizontal trust on organizational climate and how it contributes to team learning. The results indicate that organizations emphasis on horizontal trust can plays a vital role in team learning, which is a contribution to enhancing teamwork and performance in organizations.

The purpose of this study is to show under what conditions a special economic zone will succeed at spurring development and at sparking broader liberalization.

The authors use a combination of formal modeling and case studies.

Most special economic zones fail because of rent-seeking. Successful zones create positive economic and political externalities to other regions. Credible reforms are associated with turning the opposition to the zones into supporters, as a consequence to the positive externalities.

The authors add heterogeneity to the model of political elite dynamics, which leads to significant enhancements of the model and removes the pro-centralization bias of the Blanchard and Shleifer's (2001) model. They also criticize Weingast's federalism model as applied to China. Success of China is explained by a different mechanism, which we put forth in this paper.

This study aims to assess higher education students’ interest in learning sustainability competencies and their pro-ecological worldviews at a large research-intensive university in Finland to provide a background information for developing a sustainability science course.

In total, 797 students participated in the study. The data were collected through an online survey that measured students’ interest in learning sustainability competencies and their pro-ecological worldviews. Participants were classified into five categories based on field of study. The data were analysed by using Pearson’s correlation, independent samples t-tests, and analysis of variance.

The participating students perceived learning of critical thinking and values thinking most interesting. Interest in learning sustainability competencies and pro-ecological worldview appeared to differ across fields of study. Participants studying humanities expressed lower interest in collaborative use of digital technology compared to the participating students in science and agriculture. Participating students in health and welfare scored lower on interest in learning values thinking than students in other study fields.

The response rate was low. It is likely that the participants felt strongly about sustainability challenges, therefore making them more interested in sustainability competencies. The limited number of sustainability competencies studied does not allow generalisation to all sustainability competencies.

The differences in interest in learning sustainability competencies and pro-ecological worldview should be understood and considered when planning sustainability education.

These results provide new insights into the interlinkage of students’ interest in learning sustainability competencies, their pro-ecological worldviews and their field of study.

The purpose of this article’s research was threefold. Firstly, it aimed to investigate how social services professionals coped during the pandemic period by comparing their involvement in five different national contexts. Secondly, it analysed how these professionals have performed their duties according to the street-level bureaucracy theory. Finally, the third question examines social workers' strategies to guide their professional role when they may have had more discretion in their actions. The research also examined whether discretion has increased during this phase and, if so, how it has been exercised.

This article is based on the findings of the project called “Theory and Practice of Social Work in the World in Times of Pandemic”, which was funded by the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW). The project involved 11 universities across five countries in Europe and Latin America, including Argentina, Brazil, Italy, Spain and Sweden. The research was conducted over 24 months to analyse the practices and measures taken to protect vulnerable people by adapting social services during the extraordinary period of the pandemic. In addition, the research explored how the awareness of emergency arose among social workers and how it influenced the services delivered from the perspective of the street-level bureaucracy theory. In different countries, the level of resourcefulness of services has varied based on their recognition of the severity of the pandemic and the impact of the government’s narratives. In some cases, these narratives have been conspiratorial or even anti-scientific. Additionally, there has been a reduction in the distance between professionals and clients, increased inequalities in access to services and a positive reassessment of the potential of new professional tools, such as digital social work, in establishing a trusting relationship.

As revealed in the interviews, the elements shaping this high degree of discretion among social workers can be classified into three levels: macro- and micro- (Saruis, 2015) plus a meso-level. Each level has four significant aspects. At the macro-level, these are legislation, public information, large associationism and integration of the social services-health system. At the meso-level, these are interpretations of role performance by managers technical equipment, self-organization and community action. The micro-level pertains to personal and family situations, emotions, ethics and social workers' direct relationships with those in charge.

This study investigated how social workers responded to the Covid-19 pandemic. The data gathered sheds light on their understanding of the situation, as well as the differences in experiences across the five countries studied. However, it is essential to note that the findings may not apply to all situations or countries. Nevertheless, this research serves as a stepping stone for future studies to delve deeper into the results and explore them in greater detail .

The study highlights the crucial role of social workers as street-level workers in managing, negotiating and creating meaning in the interaction between professionals and the people they serve. This is especially relevant in Latin America. Additionally, the study emphasizes the significance of social workers as policy actors and the political nature of social work practice. The findings also underscore the importance of effective communication and collaboration between social workers, their teams and the organizations they work for. The sources cited in the study are Barberis and Boccagni (2014) and Cuadra and Staaf (2014). The research has also underscored the potential of social service workers to build networks and cooperate. Such networking can play a vital role in implementing their acquired knowledge. The study has, therefore, emphasized the importance of social workers being an integral part of the societies they serve. They need to continuously enhance their communication skills, using all the necessary tools to gain a comprehensive and updated understanding of the evolving needs of their clients. Integrating digital social work as a mode of service provision has emerged as a crucial aspect, especially in the three European countries observed. This approach has demonstrated its potential and is expected to continue being a part of services to some extent, even after the return to normalcy. However, it is essential to ensure that the accessibility and proximity of services are not compromised in any way.

An unexpected result was observed during the research: the pandemic circumstances have led to valuable reflections. These reflections can help in rethinking and recreating social services. Social workers have been given a unique opportunity to return to the essence of their profession and develop less bureaucratic and more humane ways of working. This experience has also enabled them to recover a closer relationship with the people they serve. To sum up, this study emphasizes that social workers, when given more leeway in their work, rely on cultivating and upholding relationships with other professionals, organizations and stakeholders to stay connected with the community they serve. This is crucial for ensuring the delivery of effective and sustainable social services.

The research employed a thematic analysis approach (Bazeley, 2007) to identify themes related to the concept of consciousness as derived from the field experiences of social workers. Additionally, an in-case and cross-case analysis method (Fereday and Muir-Cochrane, 2006) was used to connect themes related to individual experiences with those gathered from the overall experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to apply a capability perspective to investigate the shift from relationship lending to transaction lending in a bank’s corporate segment. The authors investigate the impact of three operational capabilities: assisting corporate clients in funding and business operations, management of customer relationships and internal cooperation on performance in relationship and transaction lending.

The primarily empirical material comprises longitudinal survey data, collected on three occasions during the period 1998 throughout 2001 from one of Sweden’s largest banks. Data are analyzed using factor analysis and OLS regression.

Results show that the effects of the three capabilities are contingent on the type of lending strategy: In relationship lending, assisting corporate clients has no significant direct effect on performance; however, it has an indirect effect on performance via the management of customer relationships. In transaction lending, assisting corporate clients has a direct effect on performance, and this effect becomes stronger as the transaction strategy is further implemented. The results also show that the direct effect of the management of customer relationships and cooperation on performance is significant in both strategies; however, the relation is stronger in relationship lending compared with transaction lending.

The findings indicate that the choice of lending strategy is more complex than a choice between a strict relationship strategy and a strict transaction strategy and that a strategy that leads to competitive advantage includes elements of both strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to gain a better understanding of how national board administrators, more precisely, officials at the Finnish National Board of Education (FNBE) have perceived the primary influencing factors, or “regulators”, of the national core curriculum reform and the success of the implementation. The alignment between the identified regulators was also explored.

Altogether, 23 FNBE officials participated in this mixed methods study.

The results showed that the officials perceived the core curriculum reform as a systemic entity: the reform was implemented using a top-down and bottom-up strategy, and several regulators were identified at different levels of the education system. The officials also viewed the implementation as successful, and identified more promoting than hindering factors in it. However, they emphasised regulators at the administrative level, whereas regulators at the district or national levels were less often identified. They also highlighted the importance of orchestrating collaboration in comparison with the other regulators.

The results imply that in addition to considering separate determinants of reform success, it is important to pay attention to sufficient alignment between the regulators at different levels of the education system in order to better understand and promote the implementation of a large-scale reform.

This study provides new knowledge on national board administrators’ perspectives on what regulates the implementation of a large-scale curriculum reform.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is highly prevalent in the United States, yet is largely culturally invisible. This study examines what people know about their illness, both before and after diagnosis, and the relationship to race. The data are from in-depth interviews in 2004 with 53 persons, mostly white or African American, with HCV in the southeastern United States. The respondents have varying educational backgrounds, family incomes, and possible modes of transmission of HCV. Regardless of whether the diagnosis of HCV came as a surprise, respondents had a range of reactions including fear, shock, sadness, and ambivalence. Knowledge of the disease postdiagnosis varies as some people have expert knowledge, moderate knowledge, or inaccurate to no knowledge of the disease. Minority respondents have less knowledge of HCV than whites. This racial disparity in knowledge has profound implications for people with HCV and the larger society.

To explore the present logistics performance of Finnish small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) and to analyse the relationship between logistics performance and financial performance in these firms.

The dataset comprises 424 SMEs that participated in a nationwide Finnish logistics survey in 2006. Logistics performance measures were derived from the survey data, and based on these values logistically top‐performing firms were identified within different industry groups. The financial performance of these firms was then examined vis‐à‐vis their industry peers using financial reports‐based data.

The results imply that the overall level of logistics performance among the examined companies might be at such an elementary level that no statistically observable positive linkage between logistics performance and financial performance exists. The group of firms for whom logistics is a key source of competitive advantage in this sample is small and therefore statistical analysis at an industry level might be too aggregate to reveal this linkage. It is also surprising that service level and logistics cost efficiency are positively related; thus, companies who have a relatively high‐service level tend to have relative low‐logistics costs. These findings might imply that logistics is just starting to gain more attention among SMEs in Finland and at least in the short‐term, it might be relatively easy for SMEs to gain competitive advantage by focusing more on logistics performance.

This study is the first large‐scale attempt to focus on the logistics performance of SMEs and analyse the linkages between financial and logistics performance among the companies using both self‐reported data and financial reports‐based data. In addition, a theoretical framework of the linkages between logistics performance and financial performance is suggested and revised based on the findings of the study. The revised framework requires testing as a part of future research.

This paper aims to examine policy innovation among street-level bureaucrats at low-threshold services to people who use drugs during the COVID-19 pandemic in Denmark.

This paper builds on two research projects conducted during the first pandemic lockdown in Denmark. The first is a case study of how COVID-19 impacted on people who use drugs (PWUD) and services for PWUD at the open drug scene in the neighborhood of Vesterbro in Copenhagen. The second is an ethnographic study of how users of services at the intersection of drug use and homelessness were impacted by lockdown.

Drawing on Kingdon’s “multiple policy streams” approach, this study shows how lockdown opened a “policy window” for innovating services to people who use drugs. This paper further shows how the pandemic crisis afforded street-level bureaucrats new possibilities for acting as “policy entrepreneurs” in a context where vertical bureaucratic barriers and horizontal cross-sectoral silos temporarily collapsed. Finally, the authors show how this had more lasting effects through the initiation of outreach opioid substitution treatment.

In Denmark, the emergence of a “policy window” for street-level bureaucrats to act as street-level “entrepreneurs” occurred in a context of rapid government response to the pandemic. For crises to act as “policy windows” for innovation depends on strong, preexisting institutional landscapes.

This paper adds to existing literature on policy innovation during COVID-19 in two ways: methodologically by contributing an ethnographically grounded approach to studying policy innovation and theoretically by examining the conditions that allowed policy innovation to occur.