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Transaction costs, responsive housing supply, rent controls, tenant protection, and access to credit affect residential mobility – these different parts of housing policy are included in what has been defined as housing regimes, which embrace regulations, laws, norms, and ideology as well as economic factors. In this chapter, we investigate how these regimes change by using institutional theories of path dependence. We use Sweden as an example and study three Swedish housing market reforms during the past decades that may have affected residential mobility, each related to one of the main institutional pillars of housing provision: tenure legislation, taxation, and finance. More precisely, we study the development of the rental regulation since the late 1960s, the tax reform in 1991, and the new reforms on mortgages since 2010. What caused these reforms? What were the main mechanisms behind them, and why did they occur at the time they did? We argue, besides affecting residential mobility, these reforms have the common feature of including interesting elements of path dependence and forming critical junctures that have led the development on to a new path. Institutions of tenure legislation, housing finance, and taxation are often claimed to have effects on residential mobility. Although they are seldom designed with the explicit aim of supporting (or counteracting) residential mobility, they may sometimes do so as more or less unintended consequences.

This chapter examines observed regional inequalities and centralization tendencies in Norway. Small, rural, municipalities experienced a favourable population development from 1970 to the mid-1980s. After this, the percentage population growth has been strongest in the largest municipalities/cities, and this tendency has accelerated during the last 10–15 years. Data post-1970 strongly support the reasonable hypothesis that population growth is positively related to centrality. The major source of changes lies within the labour market regions, whereas the changes between the regions are modest. Jobs have not become more centralized than households over the period.

A conceptual model is developed, offering a useful taxonomy of municipalities in three dimensions: the unemployment rate, the employment growth, and housing prices. This provides a classification that contributes to clarify the changes in the urban-rural divide. The discussion demonstrates that distinguishing between different categories is important, since different explanations of centralization and regional disparities call for different menus of policy instruments.

We study the relationship between population growth, unemployment rates, and employment growth in Norwegian municipalities, to distinguish between disequilibrium and equilibrium explanations of the situation in regional labour markets. At a national level our results indicate that neoclassical adjustments dominate weakly over amenity-based mechanisms. However, results from many regions support the hypothesis that amenity-based adjustments are dominant for municipalities within a labour market region. One possible explanation is that the diversity in job opportunities is considered as an amenity. A thicker labour market is better fit to meet the demand of workers with specific qualifications.

The aim of this chapter is to investigate regional inequality and centralization tendencies in Sweden. For this, we use official data from Statistics Sweden on house prices and employment. The data is on the municipality level and covers the period 1985–2014. The research question then becomes, in relation to employment and house prices, which municipalities have gained and which have lost during this period? The time period has been divided into three subperiods that reflect different phases in the process of economic structural change. Two major economic crises are used to signal the end and the start of new structural phases in the Swedish economy. The study uses two dimensions of local economy: employment rates and house prices in municipalities in relation to the national mean. The results indicate increasing divergence between Swedish municipalities over the period. However, the magnitude of the divergence differs within the studied period. Particularly, when it comes to house prices, the third subperiod (2009–2014) shows increasing divergence between Stockholm and Gothenburg in relation to Malmö and the rest of country. Further, when we study the two dimensions simultaneously in accordance with our model, the number of municipalities with above-national-mean employment rates and house prices decreases over time. In the last period, 2009–2014, municipalities with means above the national mean are concentrated in urban agglomerations mainly located close to Sweden’s three largest cities.

The chapter aims to explore the size and evolution of spatial inequality in Croatia and Serbia with emphasis on labour market developments. The analysis focuses on municipalities (LAU 2 level) in both countries to explore patterns of change in the labour market. We estimate spatial inequality based on the distribution of population, employment, unemployment rates, and wages. We find that regions with major cities in both countries are leading in the recovery from the recent recession, while rural areas are lagging behind. Further, there is a durable trend of both population and job concentration in the capital city area, or in urban areas generally.

This paper exposes the development of markets-as-networks theory from formal inception in the mid-1970s until 2010 state-of-the-art, en route presenting its historical roots. This largely European-based theory challenges the conventional, dichotomous view of the business world as including firms and markets, arguing for the existence of relational governance structures (the so-called “interfirm cooperation”) in addition to hierarchical and transactional ones.

This paper deals with the organizing of interactive product development. Developing products in interaction between firms may provide benefits in terms of specialization, increased innovation, and possibilities to perform development activities in parallel. However, the differentiation of product development among a number of firms also implies that various dependencies need to be dealt with across firm boundaries. How dependencies may be dealt with across firms is related to how product development is organized. The purpose of the paper is to explore dependencies and how interactive product development may be organized with regard to these dependencies.

The analytical framework is based on the industrial network approach, and deals with the development of products in terms of adaptation and combination of heterogeneous resources. There are dependencies between resources, that is, they are embedded, implying that no resource can be developed in isolation. The characteristics of and dependencies related to four main categories of resources (products, production facilities, business units and business relationships) provide a basis for analyzing the organizing of interactive product development.

Three in-depth case studies are used to explore the organizing of interactive product development with regard to dependencies. The first two cases are based on the development of the electrical system and the seats for Volvo’s large car platform (P2), performed in interaction with Delphi and Lear respectively. The third case is based on the interaction between Scania and Dayco/DFC Tech for the development of various pipes and hoses for a new truck model.

The analysis is focused on what different dependencies the firms considered and dealt with, and how product development was organized with regard to these dependencies. It is concluded that there is a complex and dynamic pattern of dependencies that reaches far beyond the developed product as well as beyond individual business units. To deal with these dependencies, development may be organized in teams where several business units are represented. This enables interaction between different business units’ resource collections, which is important for resource adaptation as well as for innovation. The delimiting and relating functions of the team boundary are elaborated upon and it is argued that also teams may be regarded as actors. It is also concluded that a modular product structure may entail a modular organization with regard to the teams, though, interaction between business units and teams is needed. A strong connection between the technical structure and the organizational structure is identified and it is concluded that policies regarding the technical structure (e.g. concerning “carry-over”) cannot be separated from the management of the organizational structure (e.g. the supplier structure). The organizing of product development is in itself a complex and dynamic task that needs to be subject to interaction between business units.

The first and most basic issue is the position and role of Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) research in relation to contemporary economic research, where the authors raise the issue of phenomenon-driven theory development. The discussion hinges on the methodological implications of phenomenon-driven research and emphasizes the interplay of phenomena in focus, theory development and methodological approaches. Two approaches identified in a natural science field, depicted as image- and logic-based research, are used to examine research on business relationships, networks and interactions. The authors argue that the bulk of IMP studies has taken the image-based approach which, in the natural sciences, is considered to produce as hard facts as logic-based (theory testing) research. The detailed images (pictures) of the business landscape that IMP research has produced must be taken as seriously as any quantitative study of the same landscape. Greater awareness and more discussion of the ontological and methodological issues in researching the business world are needed.

Purpose – This chapter proposes three main objectives in relation to understanding customer involvement in business networks. First, to identify important aspects of the network structure and environment and how the actions of the customer and other network participants create and maintain these. Second, to identify and explore the mechanisms and processes of resource integration in the network. Third, to identify the capabilities and competencies that customers bring to the network, and to understand how these are enhanced and developed.

Methodology/approach – Conceptual.

Research implications – We recognize that aspects of the resources themselves are important and that the characteristics of the resource and the way in which partners align them were key components of resource analysis.

Practical implications – We note that the interaction of different operant and operand resource combinations opens new doors to customer knowledgeability and involvement, where power over either authoritative or allocative resources in itself will not guarantee value creation.

Social implications – We support the call for the development of more sociologically enriched and complex models of interagent resource exchange. In particular, we would advise the need for a better understanding of how different network structures and environments are created and maintained through domination, legitimation, and signification processes.

Originality/value of chapter – This chapter addresses the gap in our understanding of how customer involvement in business-to-business networks may influence learning, value cocreation, and innovation. This chapter makes an important contribution to research in the field in that it investigates how the inclusion of the customer in business networks alters current assumptions and practices.