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To analyse the evolution of the Swedish telecommunications sector (1970‐2003), with a focus on barriers and drivers of innovative activity.

Developing a functional approach to innovation systems analysis, where six basic interdependent functions need to be served for a new technology to be developed and diffused and for a supporting industry to evolve. The sector is divided into four major sub‐sectors: traditional fixed telecom; mobile telephony; fixed data communications (including internet); and mobile data communications (including mobile internet).

Relate to two questions: first, how did it happen that Sweden developed a leading innovation system for mobile telephony but not for data communication; and second, what are the strengths and weaknesses of the innovation system for mobile data communications? Findings include that early developments mattered, innovative search direction is crucial as are the provision of incentives for innovative activity.

Functional analysis of innovation systems useful for guiding policy actions, which should have the purpose of strengthening weak functions, removing bottlenecks and stimulating inducement mechanisms, in particular if used to stimulate the transition from one phase to another. It needs further development, in particular with respect to the understanding of diffusion processes.

The stimulation of innovation in, and diffusion of, mobile and broadband data services is crucial to development of the innovation system, globally, in Europe and in Sweden. An innovation system which allows for entrepreneurial experimentation should be fostered. Early stage financing and diffusion of services are major system weaknesses. Regulatory authorities should consider addressing innovation explicitly.

New (adapted) approach for guiding policy action. Better understanding of dynamics in the telecom sector, and the comparative success and failure of Swedish industry in sub‐sectors.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the papers in the special issue on “Next generation mobile telecommunications networks challenges to the Nordic ICT industries”.

This introductory paper summarises the key points of each paper.

The competitive environment of the Nordic ICT industries has changed and is far more complex now compared to the previous single‐standard environment of 2G. The avenues for influencing competition between basic technology platforms and standards are much narrower and involve interaction with a much greater number of stakeholders and technologies on a global level.

The six papers of this Special Issue highlight interesting viewpoints both on the possible future evolution of the mobile telecommunications industry in general, as well as on the past development and present challenges that the Nordic countries face.

This paper aims to focus on 11 digital technologies (i.e. building information modeling, artificial intelligence and machine learning, 3D scanning, sensors, robots/automation, digital twin, virtual reality, 3D printing, drones, cloud computing and self-driving vehicles) that are portrayed in future trend reports and hype curves. The study concentrates on the current usage and knowledge of digital technologies in the Swedish architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry to gain an insight in the possible expectations and future trajectory of these digital technologies.

The study applies an abductive approach which is based on three different types of methods. These methods are a literature and document study which focused on 11 digital technologies, two workshops with industry (13 participants) and an online survey (N = 84).

The paper contributes to a current state analysis of the Swedish AEC industry concerning digital technologies and discusses the trajectory of these technologies for the AEC industry. The paper identifies hype factors, in which the knowledge of a digital technology is related to its usage. From the hype factors, four zones that show different stages of digital technology usage and maturity in the industry are induced.

The contribution of the paper is twofold. The paper shows insight into opportunities, the current barriers, use and knowledge of digital technologies for the different actors in the AEC industry. Furthermore, the study shows that the AEC industry is behind the traditional Gartner hype curves and contributes with defining four zones for digital technologies for the Swedish AEC industry: confusion, excitement, experimentation and integration.

Building information modeling (BIM) is mostly limited to the design phase where two parallel processes exist, i.e. creating 2D-drawings and BIM. Towards the end of the design process, BIM becomes obsolete as focus shifts to producing static 2D-drawings, which leads to a lack of trust in BIM. In Scandinavia, a concept known as Total BIM has emerged, which is a novel “all-in” approach where BIM is the single source of information throughout the project. This paper's purpose is to investigate the overall concept and holistic approach of a Total BIM project to support implementation and strategy work connected to BIM.

Qualitative data were collected through eight semi-structured interviews with digitalization leaders from the case study project. Findings were analyzed using a holistic framework to BIM implementation.

The Total BIM concept was contingent on the strong interdependences between commonly found isolated BIM uses. Four main success factors were identified, production-oriented BIM as the main contractual and legally binding construction document, cloud-based model management, user-friendly on-site mobile BIM software and strong leadership.

A unique case is studied where BIM is used throughout all project phases as a single source of information and communication platform. No 2D paper drawings were used on-site and the Total BIM case study highlights the importance of a new digitalized construction process.

This study aims to explore the propensity of university students to use different sustainable transport modes, taking into account individual and specific trip characteristics, as well as students’ psychological traits (i.e. attitudes).

Using the transport mode preferences of 827 students who responded to a travel survey, a two-step analysis is conducted. The first step examines the effects of individual characteristics, travel experience and origin or destination features on students’ stated preferences (i.e. self-selected values assigned to personal attitudes). The second step analyses students’ travel mode choices, given their intrinsic mobility attitudes.

The results suggest that informing students about environmental issues increases their propensity to use sustainable mobility, leading to an average decrease in private transport usage of 5.8 per cent. Interestingly, improving the public transport service and promoting sustainable transport mobility have different impacts on individual campus areas. For campuses located in the city centre and in the historical hamlet, improvements in public transport are found to decrease solo driving by 3.3 per cent and 5.3 per cent, respectively. In suburban areas, this value increases to 9.5 per cent.

This work makes two contributions to the literature. First, it focuses on an unexplored setting, namely, that of a multi-campus university, with districts located in three different areas. This is used to explain how students are influenced by their travel experience and the cultural framework in which they are embedded. Second, the two-step analysis leads to a deeper understanding of the differences between attitudes and “intrinsic attitudes”, and their relative influence on the preferred alternative.

The aim of this paper is to explore whether and how external, political, financial and governance factors influence capital expenditure deviations in the Swedish municipal water and sewerage sector and to capture the consequences of municipal organisational fragmentation.

Panel data analysis of 238 municipalities and 1,190 observations of capital expenditure deviations over five years (2013–2017).

Apart from a low overall on average execution rate of 69%, the Swedish municipal water and sewerage sector seems generally sensitive to external stakeholder pressure for budget compliance, but not to the political power situation. Further, political signalling incentives generally do not influence capital expenditure deviations in the contexts of municipal corporations and cooperations, which supports the idea that these governance forms insulate the organisation from general stakeholder pressure and political control.

The practical implication is that large and constant capital expenditure deviations call for change in regulation and governance of the municipal sector. However, in countries such as Sweden, where externalising services to municipal corporations and cooperations is significant, this discussion needs to address the consolidated level of the municipality. Otherwise, a large share of the investment budget will be unscrutinised. More closely related to the Swedish water and sewerage sector, the risks associated with a constantly low execution rate should be analysed and addressed.

First, this paper contributes to the knowledge of aggregated capital expenditure deviations in general and specifically within the municipal water and sewerage sector. Second, analysing the municipal governance landscape adds further insights and suggestions on why budget performance varies. The results especially highlight that the governance forms of corporations and cooperations change the relation to political signalling incentives.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate long-term effects of previous policies for energy efficiency on energy performance and heritage values. A further ambition is to better understand the relationship between energy and preservation by exploring a quantitative method of combining energy performance data with official heritage designation.

The study is based on a quantitative analysis of energy performance, completed additional insulations, and official heritage classification for individual buildings. Data have been collected and analysed for a sample consisting of 289 multi-family buildings heated with district heating and constructed 1940–1949 in an urban area in Stockholm, Sweden.

The data exhibit a significant correlation between the studied features. The study further shows that additional insulation has been installed in roughly half of the buildings. The large majority of them were carried out in the national programme for home improvement called ROT.

The findings indicate that previous policies for energy efficiency had an important effect on energy performance and heritage values in the studied area. They continue to affect urban planning and building permit administration today. Research of the physics of individual buildings would be needed in order to determine the reason for differences in the sample.

By presenting a novel method, the study provides a useful tool for policy makers to bridge the gap between issues of energy and preservation and adopt a more holistic approach towards a sustainable built environment.

The aim of this paper is to explore the causes of variations in financial accounting and disclosure practices in a municipal setting highly influenced by governance reforms – the Swedish municipal waste management sector. This focus is motivated by the claim that recent governance reforms have made the organization of public services delivery more diversified and fragmented, which may have had a negative effect on transparency and accountability.

To document the accounting and disclosure practices of the Swedish solid waste management organizations, a questionnaire approach was selected. The study uses a conceptual theoretical framework that complements the basic variables considered to influence public sector financial accounting and disclosure practices with factors such as competition and municipal governance forms.

The results show that compliance accounting and disclosure transparency to some extent have different antecedents and that the external environment, including market competition, size and economic input, influences both. The governance forms, on the other hand, only influenced compliance accounting (negatively and positively) and not the willingness to disclose information in general. The overall conclusion is that changes to the economic and institutional context mixed with different municipal governance forms introduces a multiplicity of forces that makes the accounting practices themselves diversified and fragmented and not necessarily only in a “negative” direction.

From a policy perspective the results indicate that the changing institutional and organizational environment has not been matched by attention to, and regulation of, reporting structures that secure external vertical accountability processes. The general implication for future regulations should therefore be to recognize the influence of different economic and institutional forces and develop accountability models that enable and preserve the benefits of governance reform initiatives without losing accountability and transparency.

Few prior quantitative studies have theoretically related municipal accounting and disclosure practices to factors such as market competition and popular municipal governance forms (municipal corporation, regional cooperation, outsourcing, etc.). Knowledge of how reforms might influence municipal accounting practices might benefit future policy decisions on accountability models with aim of enable and preserve the benefits of governance reform initiatives without losing accountability and transparency.

The purpose of this research is to identify the sustainable practices of luxury fashion brands through their communications via official reporting documents to classify practices used for communicating sustainability performance.

This research uses the qualitative content analysis of Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)-oriented sustainability reports to examine the sustainable practices of 31 companies within the top 100 global luxury brands.

The authors classify the sample into four clusters: sustainability driven, sustainability newcomers, sustainability potential and sustainability passive. Results indicate that companies in this sector are focused on the issue of sustainability even though there is a remarkable fragmentation in terms of practices.

The study contributes to a better understanding of sustainability reporting activities and approaches in the fashion luxury industry by describing best practices and the effect of sustainability in corporate communications.