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The digital age requires people of all ages to communicate and organise their lives through digital technologies. The project EQualCare investigates how the growing population of older people living alone is managing this transition, how it shapes their (non-)digital social networks and what changes on a local level need to be brought about. This paper aims to give insight into the process of participatory action research (PAR) with older people in the community across four countries and reflects on experiences made by academic and co-researchers.

Following the emancipatory underpinnings of PAR, which aims to reduce inequalities through collaboration and co-design, EQualCare involved nine teams of co-researchers across Finland, Germany, Latvia and Sweden making older people the centre of policy development. Co-researchers were involved in formulating research aims, collecting data, reflecting on data, formulating and disseminating recommendations for local policy stakeholders.

Co-researchers’ motivation to invest considerable time and effort was driven by a desire to create a more equal future for older people living alone. Moreover, they were keen to involve marginalised older people and became frustrated when this proved difficult. Power dynamics played a role throughout the process but became productive as roles and responsibilities were renegotiated. Doing PAR with older people can be emotionally challenging for co-researchers when negative feelings around ageing are encountered.

The paper advances understanding on the process of PAR in ageing research by reflecting on the social, cultural and political contexts of doing PAR with diverse sets of older people.

The use of brand ambassadors is a quite recent phenomenon, even in the business world. This paper aims to explore the employment of ambassador networks as a place marketing and place development tool. This is done by identifying various kinds of networks, understanding how networks are governed, and pinning down the motivations and expectations of network members.

The study used interviews and a survey to collect empirical material. The research process employed an approach with many inductive elements, deemed appropriate given that research into the topic is scant.

The study identified four main dimensions of networks and, on this basis, we outline a typology with four main categories of networks. One major finding is that ambassador networks are seen not only as a communication channel, but also as a development resource. That means they are seen as enhancing the general competitiveness of the place involved. The networks are also seen as a resource for mobilising local citizen pride. Another finding was that ambassadors value getting access to first‐hand information about the place much more than the opportunity of taking part in meetings and events and forming new relationships.

The findings are in line with the perspective of the place brand as a “relational brand network”, extending place branding beyond a matter of just one‐way communication. It is somewhat surprising that ambassadors value getting access to information more than interaction, given that other research puts such a high value on interaction and dialogue as value‐creating factors.

Based on the observations in the study, it is argued that ambassador networks have the potential to constitute an integral component of place brand management.

Research on the application of ambassador networks in place marketing seems to be scant, not to say non‐existent. The present study relates to the implementation of place branding, and can hopefully contribute to a more efficient practice as well as a better theoretical understanding.

Since early 2000s, several efforts have been initiated to market the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) globally, and the BaltMet Promo project is among them. Simultaneously, several other cases of supra‐national branding have emerged, e.g. the Greater Mekong region, Danube region, and Visegrad countries. Little attention has yet been paid in the literature to branding of supra‐national entities. The purpose of this paper is to discuss branding of BSR using the examples of supra‐national product building of the BaltMet Promo project (2010‐2011).

Branding BSR has faced criticism against its supra‐national perspective which may be seen as a direct competitor to city or nation branding. To shift from competition to cooperation BaltMet Promo acknowledged a bottom‐up approach and nine organisations from six countries created supra‐national products to promote tourism, talent attraction, and investments. Each product concept was built on intensive background research and transnational triple‐helix cooperation.

The case of BaltMet Promo shows that supra‐national branding benefits from a bottom‐up approach that uses concrete products and services as the core of the brand identity. To shift from competition to cooperation the partnership promoted BSR as a common region with a common work plan. Different scales of branding serve different markets. The more distant the market, such as Japan in the case of BaltMet Promo, the more cost effective supra‐regional branding becomes compared to more narrow scales of branding.

The paper introduces recent developments in supra‐national branding using data of the BaltMet Promo project. The analysis aims to contribute to product building, triple helix stakeholder cooperation, and policy making.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of relational embeddedness on entrepreneurship in Taiwanese subsidiaries in China that are facing an uncertain and emerging environment.

First, four case studies are conducted to modify theoretical concepts and measuring instruments to fit them into the entrepreneurial context of multinational subsidiaries in a transitional economy. In the second stage, a survey is conducted to examine the associations between relational embeddedness and subsidiary entrepreneurship. A total of 265 executive officers, which is approximately 29 percent of 922 managers in the mailing list, reply to the questionnaire on their subsidiaries.

This study finds that subsidiary entrepreneurship has an inverse U‐shaped relationship with regards to customer or supplier relational embeddedness, a positive relationship with corporate relational embeddedness and no relationship with government relational embeddedness.

Based on this study of Taiwanese subsidiaries operating in China there is an inverse‐U‐shaped link between relational embeddedness and customers and suppliers. Hence, this study confirms that over‐embeddedness with customers or suppliers negatively influences subsidiary entrepreneurship.

The purpose of the study is to test if it, by the use of a survey methodology, is possible to measure managers' awareness on, and specifically if there exist preconceived beliefs on, overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) results. The paper presents the design of the survey methodology as well as a test of the survey in one case company.

Actual OEE logs from a case company are collected and a survey on the data is designed and managers at the same case company are asked to answer the survey. The survey results are followed-up by an interview study in order to get deeper insights to both the results of the survey as well as the OEE strategy at the case company.

The findings show that the managers at this particular case company, on a general level, does not suffer too much from preconceived beliefs. However, it is clear that the managers have a preconceived belief that lack of material is logged as a loss much more often than what it actually is.

The test has only been performed with data from one case company within the automotive manufacturing industry and only the managers at that case company has been active in the test.

The survey methodology can be replicated and used by other companies to find out how aware their employees are on their OEE results and if possible preconceived beliefs exists.

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first attempt at measuring if preconceived beliefs on OEE results exist.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to develop a more fine-grained model of the relationship between multinational corporation (MNC) external embeddedness and subsidiary contribution to firm-level competitive advantage.

Methodology/approach – We briefly review previous international management literature and show that the conception of MNC embeddedness in external networks is often simplistic. We develop the concept of the HQ–subsidiary dyad being externally embedded and derive propositions on how this more holistic concept of MNC embeddedness influences subsidiary contribution.

Findings – We argue that subsidiary contribution depends not only on the relational embeddedness dimension of the subsidiary but that there is a complex interplay between several embeddedness dimensions on multiple levels. We suggest that the much emphasized effect of subsidiary relational embeddedness might be contingent on the HQ's own relationships, and the structure of the overall network. We also develop propositions which show that subsidiary relational embeddedness mediates the relationship between overall network structure and subsidiary contribution.

Research limitations – For the sake of theoretical stringency, we keep other influencing factors such as MNC strategy and specific subsidiary mandates as constant.

Originality/value of the chapter – Subsidiaries are an important source of firm-level competitive advantage. Subsidiary resources have also been shown to develop to a large extent in relationships with external actors. Despite this importance, we argue that our understanding of how the MNC is embedded in external networks and how this in turn influences subsidiary contribution is limited. This chapter attempts to make a first step into filling this gap.

Studies of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and stakeholder engagement have recently gained traction in the global strategy field. However, they have mostly developed as parallel streams, thereby limiting the cross-fertilization between global strategy research and stakeholder theory. We believe that because the CSR context in essence calls for the simultaneous participation of a large and heterogeneous set of local and global stakeholders, it requires a novel theorizing of multinational enterprises’ (MNEs’) worldwide practice implementation. Thus, we develop a series of propositions in the context of CSR to highlight the role stakeholders play in MNE subsidiaries’ implementation of initiatives, depending on the complex institutional pressures that they undergo, their distance from the parent’s home country, and their level of network embeddedness. We focus in particular on the role of stakeholder demands alignment in subsidiaries’ CSR implementation. Our conceptual propositions are enriched by the consideration of illustrative data on initiatives undertaken by Iberdrola from 2008 to 2014.

This study contributes to the understanding of the health effects of pesticides exposure and of how pesticides have been and should be regulated.

This study presents literature reviews for the period 2000–2013 on (i) the health effects of pesticides and on (ii) preference valuation of health risks related to pesticides, as well as a discussion of the role of benefit-cost analysis applied to pesticide regulatory measures.

This study indicates that the health literature has focused on individuals with direct exposure to pesticides, i.e. farmers, while the literature on preference valuation has focused on those with indirect exposure, i.e. consumers. The discussion highlights the need to clarify the rationale for regulating pesticides, the role of risk perceptions in benefit-cost analysis, and the importance of inter-disciplinary research in this area.

This study relates findings of different disciplines (health, economics, public policy) regarding pesticides, and identifies gaps for future research.