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1 – 10 of 80Asa Malmstrom Rognes and Mats Larsson
The purpose of this study is to examine whether regulations can prevent financial crises based on the case of Sweden in the 20th century. The evolution of banking regulation…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine whether regulations can prevent financial crises based on the case of Sweden in the 20th century. The evolution of banking regulation relies heavily on learning across borders as well as responding to recent and remembered crises. Sweden went from being an open economy with a highly protected national banking system with several banking crises under the Classical regime, through the Statist regime with no crises followed by abrupt liberalisation in the 1980s as the country changed to a more market-based regime. This study examines the regulatory responses to crises in each of these periods to assess how, and whether, an often backward-looking regulatory framework can address forward-looking risks.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is a qualitative study using a historical method. The authors use archival material, official publications and statistical data as well as secondary literature to succinctly analyse crises and regulatory responses in different regulatory regimes in the 20th century. The theoretical framework builds on three macro- and microeconomic policy regimes, the Classical, the Statist and the Market regime.
Findings
The authors find that regulations can play a decisive role in alleviating a banking crisis, but the relationship between regulations and economic development is complex, and regulations alone cannot prevent a crisis.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first longitudinal study of banking regulations in Sweden and how these change in response to crises with the aim of improving the role of banks in financial intermediation and financial stability. This study contributes to a body of literature on financial crises with a long-term perspective and an assessment of regulations as a policy response.
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Mats Larsson, Mohammed Arif and Hani M. Aburas
This paper highlights one of the limitations of the continuous improvement (CI) philosophy and contends that CI cannot go on forever. It further suggests that in order to further…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper highlights one of the limitations of the continuous improvement (CI) philosophy and contends that CI cannot go on forever. It further suggests that in order to further improve organizations need to increase the system boundary, and proposes ways of doing so.
Design/methodology/approach
In order to highlight the limits of CI this paper describes a case study. Using a literature review, it further proposes nine ways of increasing system boundary.
Findings
The first finding is that CI is not limitless and there is a logical point where CI cannot be economically justified. At that point, the possibility of increasing the system boundary is required. This paper proposes nine possible ways of expanding this boundary.
Practical implications
The paper presents ways of bringing about radical improvements by increasing the system scope. These ways can be explored by practitioners to bring about major improvements, once incremental improvements have been exhausted.
Originality/value
This paper presents ways for companies to explore radical improvement possibilities, once the incremental improvements have reached a level where they can no longer be financially justified.
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Inheritance practice and rules are important keys to understanding the property rights of any rural society. This is especially true for Swedish rural society, traditionally…
Abstract
Inheritance practice and rules are important keys to understanding the property rights of any rural society. This is especially true for Swedish rural society, traditionally predominated by freeholders. Freeholders, unlike tenants, owned their own farms. This means among other things that their children had the right of inheritance to the landed property.
Malin Sundström, Klas Håkan Alm, Niklas Larsson and Oskar Dahlin
This paper aims to identify content strategies on social media that influence engagement and to analyze those operations to describe important features for co-creation and trust.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to identify content strategies on social media that influence engagement and to analyze those operations to describe important features for co-creation and trust.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper addresses the question of how social media content can influence engagement by using a medium-sized Swedish company for an empirical case study. This empirical study is based on a participatory action research methodology. By using the company account on LinkedIn, the authors experimented with relational content to understand the effects on customer-perceived value and trust.
Findings
Results reveal that action-oriented messages had a more significant impact on engagement than product-oriented messages and value-based messages.
Originality/value
This paper builds on the existing literature in two ways: drawing upon business-to-business relationships and perceived value and using recent advances in the use of social networking sites to understand the value of co-creation through a participatory culture.
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The article explores the transformations low-income women make to appropriate their housing that often goes unnoticed. The aim is to document, acknowledge and make low-income…
Abstract
The article explores the transformations low-income women make to appropriate their housing that often goes unnoticed. The aim is to document, acknowledge and make low-income women's efforts to appropriate their housing visible. Lessons learned are assumed to inform the Ugandan low-income housing discourse on design considerations that can contribute to the provision of housing designs that are conducive to low-income women. The study confines its investigation to the housing designs provided under the governmental low-income housing projects in Uganda.
This article presents results from a case study on Masese Women Housing Project MWHP that targeted women as its main beneficiaries. Post Occupancy Evaluations POE methodology was utilised to collect data on the performance of the housing designs provided by the project and the transformations women make to increase their housing appropriateness. Open-ended interviews were carried out with women owners to investigate the transformations they apply to their houses. Results are documented through photography, sketches and measured drawings. Results are synthesised and analysed under outdoors and indoors transformations.
The study confirmed the substantial contribution low-income women make to appropriate their housing. It argues for acknowledging and including women's efforts in the Ugandan low-income housing discourse to support the provision of housing designs that are more user-friendly to them. Design considerations that are essential to attain low-income women convenience with their housing are: its capacity to accommodate women's triple roles, their potential for incremental development and their ability for segmentation into autonomous housing units to allow for their flexible, economic and functional use. The study advocates for directing efforts to the development of traditional building technologies instead of introducing improved but alien ones as an alternative that is more favourable to women.
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The purpose of this paper is to study how the concept “middle archive” is related to the Swedish archival theory and practice, by exploring its background and its practical and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study how the concept “middle archive” is related to the Swedish archival theory and practice, by exploring its background and its practical and theoretical implications. The overarching aim is to increase the understanding of the interrelations between the archival theory and practice, with a special focus on changes occurring in the digital environment in Sweden.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on a qualitative study of texts produced between 2010 and 2013, which were read and analyzed iteratively. The research design and analysis is inspired by Dryden (2014) who recommends taking the context into account. The three types of digital repository developed by Millar (2010) are used as a comparison to further extend the understanding of the concept of the “middle archive”.
Findings
The findings indicate that the “middle archive” was introduced as a solution to practical problems of managing digital records, and that there is a need to further discuss how the term relates to existing theoretical, legal and administrative contexts.
Research limitations/implications
The study is limited to contemporary Sweden. The researcher did not follow the discussions and drafts which contributed to the development of the final definitions of the “middle archive”.
Originality/value
The study contributes to the research and development of archival concepts, with a special focus on recent developments in Sweden. The paper highlights some of the challenges relating to archives and records in the context of e- government development.
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Employees are increasingly speaking out against their employer on relevant social issues, which raises the human factor to a next level in organisational affairs. The aim of this…
Abstract
Employees are increasingly speaking out against their employer on relevant social issues, which raises the human factor to a next level in organisational affairs. The aim of this chapter is to shed light on the concept of employee activism and locate it in the academic and professional discussion about employees' active role as organisational communicators. After scrutinising some of the most popular cases from recent years, the relevant literature in the fields of social activism and employee communication as well as strategic organisational communication and public relations is critically reviewed with the idea to (1) provide a terminological clarification regarding employee activism, (2) outline the unique characteristics of its current forms, (3) discuss several factors that may trigger externally directed employee activism and (4) elaborate on the communicative nature of this phenomenon as well as its implications for organisational development and reputation. As a result, five propositions are suggested to explain what constitutes employee activism as a specific form of employee communication behaviour. The chapter also calls particular attention to related risks and opportunities for organisations and opens up questions for further research.
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Matt Offord, Roger Gill and Jeremy Kendal
The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of interaction in the process of leadership. Interaction has been claimed to be a leadership competence in earlier research…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of interaction in the process of leadership. Interaction has been claimed to be a leadership competence in earlier research into leadership in the Royal Navy. The aim of this research is to define how interaction works within naval teams.
Design/methodology/approach
The research uses Grounded Theory. Following a series of leadership discussions in separate focus groups, discussion topics were coded and subjected to recursive qualitative analysis. The grounded approach is used to synthesise and develop existing leadership theory strands as well as to extend the trait-process approach to leadership.
Findings
The research discovers the key interaction behaviours of engagement, disengagement and levelling. Our findings support recent developments in follower-centric perceptions of leadership and in interaction specifically. The authors develop engagement theory by combining it with the less well researched area of leadership resistance. The authors then re-frame resistance as social levelling, a more comprehensive interaction mechanism.
Research limitations/implications
The research is highly contextual because of its qualitative approach. Some of the detailed reactions to leadership behaviours may not found in other naval or military teams and are unlikely to be generalisable to non-military environments. However, the mechanism described, that of engagement, disengagement and levelling is considered highly generalisable if not universal. Rather than develop new theory fragments in an already confusing research environment, the authors fuse engagement and resistance theory to extend trait-process theories of leadership. The result is a coherent and integrative model of leadership dynamics which frames leadership in the mundane interaction of leaders and followers.
Practical implications
Interaction as a competence is strongly supported as is the encouragement of cultures which promote interaction. Selection procedures for future leaders should include interaction skills. The use of subtle methods of resistance are highlighted. Such methods may indicate poor interaction long before more overt forms of resistance are apparent.
Social implications
The continual monitoring of leaders and implied ambivalence towards leadership could be critical to our understanding of leadership. A dynamic feedback circle between leaders and followers may be a more useful paradigm for the characterising of leadership throughout society. A better understanding of the power of followers to frame and re-frame leadership would help to manage the expectations of leaders.
Originality/value
This research uniquely uses Grounded Theory to extend current theories (competence based leadership and trait-process theories of leadership), explaining the complexity of leadership interaction. The research also synthesises and develops engagement and levelling (resistance to leadership) theories for the first time. As such the project suggests a full range model of follower response to leadership including subtle forms of resistance to power. The value of group-level analysis using focus groups is recommended, especially for other collective leader-follower approaches to leadership. The research is of interest to those studying leadership process theories, competencies, leader-follower traditions, engagement and power/resistance research.
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Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some…
Abstract
Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.
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