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We construct yearly fiscal series for Sweden between 1719 and 2003 including expenditures, revenues, deficits and debt. We present measures for the fiscal branch of the central government as well as for the consolidated fiscal and monetary branch, which includes fiscal seigniorage. We evaluate the reliability and consistency of the series by calculating the difference between budget deficits and the change in debt to test if the differences are serially uncorrelated around zero, which we confirm.

The purpose of this article is to introduce the themed section of History of Education Review on “The History of Knowledge and the History of Education”, comprising four empirical articles that together seek to bring the history of education into fuller dialogue with the approaches and methods of the nascent field of the history of knowledge.

This introductory article provides a broad overview of the history of knowledge for the benefit of historians of education, introduces the four themed section articles that follow, and draws out some of their overarching themes and concepts.

The history of knowledge concept of “arenas of knowledge” emerges as generative across the themed section. Authors also engage with problems of the legitimacy of knowledges, and with pedagogy as practice. In addition, focusing on colonial and postcolonial contexts raises reflexive questions about history of knowledge approaches that have so far largely been developed in European and North American scholarship.

The history of education has not previously been strongly represented among the fields that have gone into the formation of the history of knowledge as a synthetic, interdisciplinary approach to historical studies. Nor have historians of education much engaged with its distinguishing concepts and methodologies. The themed section also extends the history of knowledge itself through its strong focus on colonial and postcolonial histories.

The purpose of this paper is to critically review and explore how organizations knowledgeably respond to unfavorable institutional environments that exert institutional pressures and thereby limit their decision-making and eventually their actual behavior.

Based on a thorough structuration and analysis of the literature in management and related fields, the authors present a comprehensive synthesis of organizational knowledgeable responses to institutional pressures.

Based on the review, the authors categorize organizational knowledgeable responses into three major types – passively responding to avoid non-conformity, reactively mitigating institutional pressures and proactively developing institutional environments toward less interfering setups.

The authors discuss the enabling conditions for the categorized organizational knowledgeable responses as well as limitations to their application. They identify research gaps and formulate research questions to offer promising avenues for future work. The authors expect this detailed synthesis to lay the framework for investigating how the knowledge-based view of the organization influences its knowledgeable response to institutional pressure.

The authors elaborate on distinct passive, reactive and proactive strategies, which firms can apply to cope with institutional pressures. The contribution of this study will be of relevance to practitioners managing organizations in the face of unfavorable institutional setups, as well as to policymakers engaged in the development of institutions and interacting with affected organizations.

This study provides a valuable overview on developments in institutional theory, particularly on contributions to the “nascent literature” that examines heterogeneous organizational knowledgeable responses to institutional pressures.

Creating value through service innovation requires new processes and ways of communicating to multiple stakeholders. Institutions and stakeholders within the service ecosystem, however, often resist change. Adopting a new service strategy entails two distinct costs – monetary and psychological. The tensions between an organization’s need to generate incremental revenue and the challenges of balancing business as usual and the costs associated with service innovation are explored. Specifically, this paper aims to explore the adoption of a customer relationship management (CRM) technology solution in a bureaucratic setting, and the sequence of events needed for successful implementation, with emphasis on overcoming various barriers and hurdles.

A case study methodology is used to gather and analyze data on how the Arizona State University (ASU) athletic department responded to the changing competitive environment via adopting a CRM technology solution. Data collection consisted of ten semi-structured interviews.

The experience of ASU illustrates that the primary benefits of a CRM technology solution include the generation of incremental revenue, capturing data and personalized marketing. The main challenges are coordinating adoption, obtaining commitment, developing competency, estimating costs and creating content.

A conceptual framework emerged from the data that describes the likelihood of a service technology’s successful implementation based upon the interaction of the strength of key actors, organizational situation perception and organizational commitment. The model extends the proposed duality of service innovation outcomes as either success or failure to acknowledge the likelihood of a partial implementation where marginal success is achieved.

The sequence of events needed for successful implementation of a service technology is highlighted, with emphasis on overcoming various barriers and hurdles. Implementation steps are provided, as well as a model to help pinpoint issues.

The case study provides insight for overcoming pitfalls and barriers to adopting a new service technology in a traditionally bureaucratic organization where resistance to change is the norm, and innovation is not.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how a new tool, material flow cost accounting (MFCA), can effectively support and be used to improve food waste management in the restaurant industry, thereby improving the financial viability and environmental performance of restaurants.

The paper brings together two previously unrelated research streams – MFCA and restaurant waste management – with specific focus on food waste.

The advantages of using MFCA for assessing food waste in the restaurant industry are derived from the joint literatures. These include simplicity and low cost of application of the tool, as well as the potential for experimentation on a case-by-case basis to demonstrate the advantages for assessing and managing food waste in the industry.

This pragmatic research introduces the MFCA tool to the restaurant industry. It highlights the need for restaurants to implement MFCA for themselves for it to be effective. It also encourages small restaurants to work together to obtain the resource and financial advantages MFCA can deliver.

This is the first paper to integrate the internationally recognised International Organization for Standardization 14051 MFCA literature with the problem of food waste management in restaurants.

Why is it that highly trained and seasoned executives fail? On the surface, this doesn’t make sense because they are very successful; yet research in the organization sciences provides no shortage of evidence to prove just that. From the classic Mann Gulch fire disaster of Weick’s famous collapse of sensemaking study, to studies of myopia of learning, escalation of commitment, threat-rigidity, dominant logic, the architecture of simplicity, the Icarus Paradox, to core competencies turning into core rigidities, and navigating new competitive markets using “old” cognitive maps, and many more such examples point to a ubiquitous phenomenon where highly trained and experienced professionals find themselves “stuck” in the heat of battle, unable to move and progress. On the one hand, for some, there is a desperate need for change, but are unable to do so, due to their trained incapacities. On the other hand, some simply cannot see the need for change, and continue with their “business as usual” mentality. For both, their visions of the world shrink, they have a tendency to cling onto their past habitual practices and oversimplify the complexity of the situation. In moments like these: DROP YOUR TOOLS and UNLEARN! This book chapter introduces a framework (grounded in clinical psychology) that has had consistent success in helping seasoned executives and key decision-makers open up the alternatives whenever they find themselves stuck with complexity.

Based on a review of the Chinese ethic of bao (reciprocity), this paper aims to study the issue of reciprocity of trust at firm level by analyzing multiple-source data while controlling for the effects of several contextual variables.

The authors collected data from the supplier–buyer partnerships in China’s automotive industry. Hierarchical linear regression approach is adopted to test the hypotheses.

The data show that reciprocity of trust between parties involved has a significantly positive effect on the stability of the supplier–buyer partnership, and that this reciprocity also moderates the relationship between trust itself and stability. In addition, several contextual variables, i.e. the suppliers’ sensitiveness to their buyer’s need, personal contact of top managers, motivation to develop symbiotic partnership and firm location, can also have significant and positive effects on the stability of the supplier–buyer partnership.

This study presents empirical evidence on how the Chinese ethic of bao may influence the stability of the supplier–buyer partnerships, suggesting that examining this Chinese cultural element is a useful exercise. Related to this issue, the data show that the level of trust between the parties in business transactions differs, and that this difference influences the stability of the partnership. In addition, the study suggests that several other factors have significant and positive effects on the stability of the partnership. Interestingly, the data suggest that these effects are more likely to be observed when the reciprocity of trust or bao between the partners is taken into account. By demonstrating empirically the significant direct and moderating effect of bao or reciprocal trust, this study makes an important contribution to the literature on trust and the stability of the supplier–buyer partnership.