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The purpose of this paper is to summarise and analyse empirical research on protective factors that promote academic resilience in ethnic minority children mainly aged between 13 and 18 years attending schools in the Nordic countries.

This paper was opted for a literature review of 23 peer-reviewed quantitative articles published between 1999 and 2014. The analysis entailed protective factors at both the personal and environmental levels in ethnic minority children.

Some minority children’s school performance may be just as good if not better than majority children when having similar or even lower socioeconomic status than majority children. Protective factors at the personal level included working hard, having a positive attitude towards school, and having high educational aspirations. Protective factors at the environmental level included supportive school systems, supportive schools, and supportive networks including parental qualities and support. The findings are comparable to the findings outside the Nordic countries with one exception; minority children in the Nordic countries performed better than expected despite socioeconomic disadvantages.

Protective factors affecting academic resilience need further attention in a time with an increased global migration. Research implications may be related to how schools and policy makers develop supportive school systems, supportive schools, and supportive networks to contribute to making a difference for minority children’s educational opportunities in the Nordic countries.

Academic resilience is a relatively new research field in the Nordic countries. This review is the first review which has summarised and analysed existing findings on academic resilience in the Nordic countries in minority children.

The purpose of this paper is to describe, discuss and analyze forerunner cases from three different decades in workplace concept development in Sweden and Finland and discuss the transformation over time to better facilitate management of office development and disseminate Nordic experiences.

The reflecting paper is discussing the development of workplace concepts. It is based on case studies collected from 1980s to the new millennium. The reflection is based on the perspective of Nordic culture. The characteristics of the Nordic culture used in the paper are low power distance and individualism.

The evolution from “office as a city” to “city as an office” has taken place in both countries and Nordic cultural values have provided fruitful platform for them. However, the layer of organizational culture in the studied workplaces also has an impact on the development and implication of the concepts.

The selection of case studies is limited to two Nordic countries only. The comparison of all five Nordic countries could increase the understanding of Nordic culture and similarities and differences between the countries. The study could be deepened by a more thorough literature review including not only Nordic but also European cases.

The dilemma of management when designing workspaces for the changing world is in that individuals increasingly choose where to work, when, with whom and how. Facilitating that freedom of choice is a balancing act in modern workspace design where people is a scarcer resource than space. It requires an active management that sees their facilities as a part of their system not as a costly box top put it in.

Easy access seems to be the key to the workspace of the future when decision power shifts from organizations to individuals. Simultaneously, individuals need to take more and more responsibility and action to get their job done: the cases illustrate how this has been done and that the integration and interaction between office concepts and office work will need to be on business agendas.

The perspective of Nordic workplace concept development from 1980s provide the material for future development, without an understanding of the past one cannot understand the future.

NORDINFO (The Nordic Council for Scientific Information) was founded in 1977 after a long tradition of Nordic cooperation within the research library field. The Council is responsible for coordinating Nordic cooperative initiatives that can facilitate access to scientific information. Prior to that, Nordic countries developed a variety of cooperative forms: political, economic, cultural and scientific. During its 20 years of operation, NORDINFO has financed many experimental projects and financially supported many conferences, seminars and smaller projects with the general aim that these projects should have benefit beyond each individual country. Projects included an interface, which was to serve as a tool to search databases in different countries and structured in different languages. NORDINFO also financed Centres of Excellence where Nordic expertise could be developed. NORDINFO operates on a budget provided by the Nordic Council of Ministers and is given a three‐year contract based on strategy which must be accepted by the board, consisting of one member from each of the five countries that finance Nordic cooperation.

This analysis attempts a comparative specification of certain aspects of the country studies contained in this volume. The point of departure is the banking crises of the early 1990s (deep in Finland, Norway and Sweden, mini-crisis in Denmark and absent in Iceland) and the contrast to Iceland's financial meltdown in 2007/2008 (no crisis in the three, a new mini-crisis in Denmark). Detailed process tracing of the Icelandic crisis is provided. The case account is then used to shed light on the different roles of neoliberalism, economics expert knowledge and populist right-wing party formation in the five Nordic political economies.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse national state support programmes for women's entrepreneurship, in the Nordic countries, from a gender perspective.

From an analytical gender perspective based on a combination of Mayoux's framework of paradigms in support of women's entrepreneurship, Rees' approach to gender equality and Bacchi's analysis of what the problem is represented to be, the author performs a systematic comparative analysis of the varying policy goals, underlying paradigms and approaches in state support programmes for women's entrepreneurship in the Nordic countries.

The author concludes that all Nordic countries, with the exception of Iceland, have a programme or an action plan to support women's entrepreneurship, but vary in their underlying paradigms and rationales. The author places Norway at one end of the spectrum because its policy programme is most clearly influenced by a feminist empowerment paradigm intended to transform and/or tailor the existing support system through various measures. At the other end of the spectrum is Denmark, which most clearly focuses on economic growth in line with a neo‐liberal paradigm. Between these extremes, are Sweden, Finland and Iceland. The analysis reveals that state support programmes, in the name of supporting women entrepreneurs, tend to put women in a subordinate position to men and thereby risk sustaining a male norm.

The paper contributes a much‐needed systematic comparative analysis of support for women's entrepreneurship in the Nordic countries. This analysis is important in order to further the discussion of how policy actors can refrain from putting women in a secondary position to men, and thus avoid sustaining a male norm in entrepreneurship support.

Earlier Nordic comparative studies show variation between countries in child welfare practice, reflecting cultural differences, and that case workers share the norms, values and attitudes of their society. Can cultural factors be concretised for discussion? Child welfare workers in Denmark, Iceland and Norway were presented with five child care stories (vignettes) that focused on the ‘threshold’ between preventive measures and out‐of‐home care (consensual or compulsory). Vignette themes included parental neglect, maternal alcohol misuse and youth problems. Study participants gave written answers to the vignettes and took part in group discussions with colleagues. The results showed significant differences between countries in case workers' responses. Variations in arguments, decisions, use of compulsion and working style reflected national views and priorities. A central dimension was how case workers balanced parental interests with children's needs: in Denmark they were reluctant to intervene with parental rights, whereas the Norwegians were more accepting of compulsory decisions to protect children.

Abstract: The Nordic Electronic Research Library is a concept which NORDINFO, the Nordic Council for Scientific Information, will use as an umbrella for its activities during the coming years. The concept is based on national developments within the research library sector in each of the five Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. The goals of the Nordic Electronic Research Library are built on national goals, which in general terms are to make scientific and technical information easily available in all the Nordic region, independent of subject area, publication form and location of the user. This paper explores briefly the developments of the electronic research library in the Nordic region and how the concept is carried out. NORDINFO provides grants and project money to support coordination and cooperation within the field and the question is raised as to how NORDINFO can assist this development and increase cooperative efforts.

Travel and tourism have had a long history in the Nordic countries, but research on tourism has a relatively short tradition in the region. Recently, academic interest in the Nordic tourism space has grown and diversified especially as a result of increasing numbers of academics and institutions involved with tourism geographies and studies and education in the region. The Nordic context has provided thematic focus areas for empirical studies that characterize tourism geographies in the region, with topics including nature-based tourism, utilization of wilderness areas, second-home and rural developments, impacts in peripheries, and tourism as a tool for regional development. In addition, there are emerging research themes outside of the traditional core topics, such as urban, events, and heritage tourism.

The chapter discusses the characteristics of audiovisual (AV) media sectors in the Baltic Sea region. Therein it focuses on the specifics of media industries in small countries in the region as they are challenged in ways notably different from large countries with large domestic markets for media content. It discusses the differences between the AV media industries in the Nordic and Baltic countries and suggests that while in the first case long-term welfare society policies and conscious policy-driven system building have conditioned growth and international success then also in the second case innovation policy rationales have facilitated recent growth and dynamics. It then discusses the specific challenges, especially platformisation to small media industries in contemporary globalising media markets, and suggests that opportunities to resist these challenges may be in local inter-sectoral cooperation, that is, in building cross-innovation systems.

In the swiftly evolving business landscape, environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations have gained exceptional prominence, as stakeholders increasingly emphasize accountability and sustainability. This study aims to meticulously probe the intricate interplay between ESG factors, financial performance and the distinct corporate governance landscape that characterizes the Nordic region's crucible of proactive societal and environmental commitment.

The authors begin with a data set of 899 Nordic firms across Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. Using the Thomson Reuters database, they refine this data set by excluding non-regional headquarters and entities without ESG scores or year-long financial data. This resulted in a focused data set of 1,360 firm-years spanning a decade, forming the foundation for investigating the link between ESG factors and financial performance in Nordic firms.

Drawing upon empirical data, the authors systematically dissect the correlation between specified financial ratios and ESG scores on the bedrock of sustainability evaluation. The findings underscore a partially significant, yet robust relationship between ESG endeavors and financial performance metrics. Furthermore, the intricate interplay of corporate governance dimensions’ reveals intriguing correlations with financial indicators among the surveyed Nordic enterprises. However, the findings also reveal an intricate weave that underscores the ESG and financial performance nexus.

This study addresses stakeholders’ theory and unique positions and contributes to the current discussion on sustainability reporting literature by providing empirical evidence of ESG influences on firm profitability through board characteristics in the specific context of the Nordic region. The sample for this study encompasses firms listed in Nordic countries; thus, the results may not be generalizable to unlisted firms and other countries or regions.

This study suggests that Nordic firms are advanced in reporting ESG in response to diverse stakeholder demands as part of their regular activities. This study provides valuable insights for diverse stakeholders including researchers and regulatory bodies.

This study provides an understanding of stakeholders about the association of ESG and sustainability practices with firm profitability, which might lead to making the world a better place.

While illuminating the multifaceted ESG-financial performance nexus, this study reveals its intricate nature. This complexity accentuates the compelling need for further exploration to decode the exact outcomes and myriad factors contributing to the array of correlations observed. Through this comprehensive inquiry, this research advances the understanding and underscores the pivotal role of a focused investigation. This study seeks to harmonize ESG practices and financial performance seamlessly within the Nordic business realm.