Search results

The importance of decision maker interpretations in determining organizational responses to performance downturn is underscored and incorporated into a model proposed by Ford and Baucus (1987). In this study, we adapted a Ford and Baucus model to examine 25 organizations in an area of economic downturn. Managerial perceptions of the business environment were related to internal and external organizational responses. Findings were interpreted as supporting the portion of the model dealing with active responses. Logical relationships between variables were observed. Moreover, a series of linkages was suggested. While the model shows distinct categories of responses, an important finding of this research is that firms' responses could not be characterized as falling exclusively into any one specific category as predicted by the model. Instead, we found complex networks of internal and external strategies.

This study examines how deans and associate deans of a group from similar universities use networking. Specifically, we consider whether the deans, traditionally considered to perform boundary‐spanning functions, make more use of external networking than do the associate deans, who are their subordinates. We examine the relationship between accuracy in perceiving a network and influence in the network. Finally, we consider the relationship between reports of networking outside the sample and influence within the sample. We find support for our first two propositions and raise several issues related to our final one.

We examined factors contributing to the formation of a communications clique among deans representing a group of AACSB accredited colleges of business. We considered whether several variables which appeared to be related to clique status could be used to predict clique membership. We found some support for the idea that several factors play a role in determining group membership, but only agreement in opinion had a significant effect. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Purpose – This chapter explores the m+eaning and significance of family business social responsibilities (FBSRs) using a metasystem approach, placing emphasis on the role of the family.

Design/Methodology/Approach – We employ a revelatory case study to investigate the complexity of family business (corporate) social responsibility. The main case, a German shoe retailer, is supplemented by other case illustrations that provide additional insights into FBSR.

Findings – To fully understand social responsibility in a family firm context, we need to include social initiatives that go beyond the actual family business as a unit. This FBSR connects family members outside and inside the business and across generations. As FBSR is formed through individual and family-level values, its character is idiosyncratic and contrasts the often standardized approaches in widely held firms.

Practical Implication – Family businesses need to go beyond the business as such when considering their engagement in social responsibility. Family ownership implies that all social initiatives conducted by family members, regardless if they are involved in the firm or not, are connected. This includes a shared responsibility for what family members do at present and have done in the past.

Recent empirical and theoretical developments related to the microprocesses of institutional logics have helped to cultivate a powerful theory of agency. We build on these developments to show how the institutional logics perspective can shed light on important questions related to frame construction and how institutions matter. In particular, we show how the emergence of an economic democracy frame in post-war Sweden generated different efforts to define that frame with concrete ideas and practices linked to different logics – socialism and neoliberalism. We show how socialists tried to define economic democracy as requiring a radical transformation in the nature of ownership and control embedded in the innovative financial practice of wage earner’s funds. In contradistinction, conservatives drew on neoliberal ideas and extant mutual fund practices to construct alternative meanings and practices related to economic democracy that enrolled citizens in Capitalism without challenging extant Capitalist ownership structures. While mutual funds and wage earner’s funds initially existed in a state of parabiosis – existing side by side without much interrelationship – struggles over the meaning of economic democracy led these practices to become competing solutions in a framing contest. Implications for the study of institutional logics, frames and the social organization of society are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to show how unaccompanied minors perceive the time they spend in transitional houses in Malmö in southern Sweden. An important outlook when presenting the empiric data is to provide the perspective of the child, not just to have a child perspective (i.e. an adult perspective on children's experiences).

The paper is the result of interviews with 11 unaccompanied boys living in transitional houses, i.e., group homes. The theoretical section has two purposes, to describe the Swedish context and the ambivalent discourse regarding immigrants in Sweden and to give a background on aspects that are relevant to understand unaccompanied minors situation.

Even though many unaccompanied minors suffer from psychological difficulties and worries about the asylum process, the interviews show that the children in this study are generally content with the transitional houses. The staff strives to support them in coping with daily life, and strengthen their sense of coherence.

Since unaccompanied minors do not have family close by, the interviews shows the importance in different sorts of activities to promote wellbeing. A stronger focus on participation could also be a way of reinforcing the children's sense of coherence.

This paper gives an insight to life in transitional houses from unaccompanied minors point of view.

A review essay on Ronald Findlay, Lars Jonung and Mats Lundahl, eds. Bertil Ohlin: Centennial Celebration (1899–1999). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002. Pp. xvi, 546. $60.00. The Swedish economist Bertil Ohlin was born in 1899 and died in 1979. Less than half of his professional life he spent as a full time academic scholar in economics. He was a student at the University of Stockholm and was supervised by his teachers, Gustav Cassel and Eli Heckscher. In 1922, Ohlin presented his licentiat thesis where he set out the ideas later conceptualised as the Heckscher-Ohlin model. Two years later, in 1924, he took his doctoral degree under Cassel with a dissertation simply called Handelns teori (The Theory of Trade). A longer version of this dissertation was later published in English as Interregional and International Trade (1933). This work made him a famous trade theorist in a line of tradition going back to Ricardo and Torrens. Paul Samuelson in 1941 coined and immortalised the term “the Heckscher-Ohlin theorem” which he and Wolfgang Stolper developed further in a famous article in the Review of Economic Studies (1941) entitled “Protection and Real Wages.” Already at the age of 26 the bright young man Ohlin became a professor in economics at the University of Copenhagen and five years later he was appointed to a chair in the same subject at Handelshogskolan (The Stockholm School of Economics) in Stockholm.

This paper focuses on the relationship between the national curriculum in Sweden and the training of head teachers. The original responsibility of the principal in the centralized system was to be a guarantor for good quality and to see that the state curriculum was carried out in accordance with the intentions in the law. The head teacher remains in charge of all educational activity in the school and should be familiar with everyday work in the school and promote educational change for school improvement. Since the mid‐1980s a national head‐teachers training programme has focused on pedagogical school leadership and school improvement. The aim of the present programme introduced in 2002 is that head teachers should develop and use a democratic, learning and communicative form of leadership that has its starting‐point in the national curriculum. After having completed the training, the head teacher should, on the basis of democratic principles and with regard to individuals' integrity and equal value, be able to lead and develop the school as well as asserting the rights of children and pupils to the education guaranteed in the government's legislation and regulations.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on how firms draw on historical references in corporate marketing. The paper seeks to analyze the logic behind such efforts from a corporate identity perspective and to propose potential risks and/or benefits of doing so. The paper aims to inspire the understanding of how references to history are used in marketing and the outcome of such use.

The paper mainly draws on literature relating to corporate marketing and the use of history in organizations. Combining these theories, and pointing at empirical examples, the paper clarifies why references to history can be important manifestations of corporate identity. The paper comes up with propositions concerning what consequences the reference to history in corporate marketing can have for firms' marketing strategies and business development.

The paper outlines a connection among corporate identity, organizational identity, and image through corporate communications. It suggests that among the range of corporate characteristics, historical references can be particular valuable for corporate communications thanks to the reliability age can provide (as opposed to liabilities of newness). Still, elaborations suggest that the planned use of historical references has both pros and cons in terms of business development.

Despite the notion that history, as an inevitable and distinctive firm feature, can play an important role in corporate marketing, research on the topic is quite scarce. This paper offers some remedy to this gap by elaborating on the internal and external rationales for applying historical references and how these can be explained in connections between corporate identity and history.