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This study seeks to investigate how a more lateral style of working, such as the Swedish model of management that reflects a more linear manner of managing organizational knowledge, is carried over and transferred to Swedish managed organizations in Singapore.

A total of 33 top‐level managers (23 Scandinavians and ten Asians) who worked in Swedish managed organizations in Singapore were interviewed for this study. It was necessary that the respondents were in top‐level management positions, the assumption being that it was their decisions and actions that steered the organization to its goals. The respondents were selected randomly and came from a variety of industry backgrounds.

The Swedish style of handling information and knowledge within the organization has proven more open, flexible and accessible than Singaporeans might initially expect or understand. This cultural difference of who gains access to timely information and who should use that information to make decisions, for example, first met with a lack of understanding and even inaction on the part of the Singaporeans and active measures are needed such as re‐structuring the organization or a constant communicative strategy by the Swedes to first make a change in direction in organization behaviour. This means that the organizations in this study, in keeping a high standard of employee satisfaction, get to retain, harvest and profit from their organization's knowledge base while enjoying a low turnover rate in human capital.

This study aims to take a complementary approach of exploring the Swedish management style via discourse analysis, with the transcribed long interview data sorted with the coding procedures adapted from grounded theory.

In this chapter, each case is analyzed in phases to reflect on the development of the business process between Swedish firms and local partners from the transitional emerging economies. Initially 20 cases were studied but the final number was 10 cases as other alliances or their continuation in some other forms cannot be traced. Transformation of the alliances shows how the partners have gained experience and grown over the years. Out of the 10 cases, three phases in eight of the cases can be identified. Only two phases are found in the remaining two cases. The analysis is done in such a way that cases can be compared in terms of the variables of the conceptual framework, which includes motives, resources, learning, network, performance, and business environment prevailing in the case countries. The analysis is in two steps: first, each case is discussed in different phases and second, all cases are compared together, also in separate phases. The result of the analysis is the starting point of the next chapter where general findings are discussed and related to the relevant literature.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the phenomenon of innovation in the current Swedish governmental administration system. More specifically, the paper explores the current understanding within the system of what innovation is, as well as why and how it should be achieved. Innovation is currently at the top of many agendas worldwide: not only in the private sector but also when it comes to increasing quality, efficiency and effectiveness in public administration. In Sweden, this is reflected in the recent call from the Government for innovation in public management. However, innovation has not traditionally occurred to any significant extent on the strategic level of Swedish public management. Furthermore, governmental administration is a complex system in need of coordination and alignment for this new call to be effectively realized in practice.

This paper has been based on a qualitative approach with a case consisting of three embedded units: the Government itself, a ministry and a Government agency. The data have been collected from documents and interviews.

This paper shows that there is currently a notable disparity when it comes to how aspects of innovation are understood at different levels within the Swedish governmental administration system. Furthermore, the recent business development to increase the standardization of work processes is perceived as having created poorer preconditions for working with innovations.

The results highlight critical areas of disparity and possibilities for improvement toward a shared understanding and aligned innovation actions within the system.

This paper contributes knowledge about the current understanding of innovation in the Swedish governmental administration system.

There is little research on managers’ meanings of commitment. Unprompted responses from interviews with 37 senior engineers in three major UK and Swedish engineering companies indicate a shift from the traditional conceptualisation of commitment as desiring to remain in, and identification with, the organisation, towards a meaning putting more emphasis on a highly proactive, innovative and challenging approach to work, as a mutually beneficial psychological contract between organisation and individual. Women responded with less visible meanings of commitment. When engineers are assessed on commitment for promotion, or for UK chartered engineer status, these differences may impact on the process differently for men and women. More Swedish than UK engineers identified task delivery, involvement, and ready for challenge, while more UK engineers mentioned creativity and innovative behaviour, as part of their meaning of commitment. These findings are indicative of the shift towards high performance, high commitment HRM in both countries.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss and problematise how leadership and employees, or “employeeship”, are constructed within IKEA, a global firm often associated with national identity, and connected to distinct values and a leadership ideal. From a critical management perspective, the authors' intent was to study whether there were hierarchies and polarisations in constructions of leadership and, if so, how they were manifested.

The empirical material consists of 17 interviews with Swedish and non-Swedish managers at the senior management level and internal documents.

The analysis of the empirical material supports the finding that employees are constructed in superior vs subordinate positions based on beliefs about nationality (ethnicity), wherein the construction of Swedishness is ranked above other nationalities. Based on these constructions, two different dimensions of a leader emerge. The first dimension is one of leading and supporting, which involves personal development and is regarded as something positive. The second dimension involves being a manager, which is perceived as conservative, dreary and unappealing.

The study illustrates how leaders in a global firm construct hierarchies and polarisation in the daily work.

Forms of employee empowerment often associated with HRM initiatives have increased considerably in recent years. This research examines communicational forms of empowerment in a British and Swedish bank. The findings are contextualised against a rapidly changing environment which characterised the banking sector in the 1990s. Research of this nature is often conducted in a mono‐cultural context despite the fact there is increasing evidence that managerial practices, including empowerment, are highly influenced by societal factors. The research confirms previous assumptions that Swedish workers have greater participation than the British in the workplace, but the strength of participation is mediated by external factors such as labour law, social values, technological change and economic conditions. Such factors can negatively impact on alternative forms of communication via trade unions. In such periods effective employee involvement is restricted to micro levels, despite expectations by employees of more involvement in organisational issues at macro levels.

Explores a managerial philosophy which focusses on teamwork. Investigates how a simple yet sound belief in people takes shape on the ground and infiltrates all aspects of organizational activity. The context is a heavy truck assembly plant which is Swedish‐owned yet located in northern France. Outlines the novel processes of work organization employed in this complex multicultural setting. Although both European countries, Sweden and France, are, in key cultural terms, polar opposites, represents an example of a successful inter‐cultural business activity. Based on a series of semi‐structured interviews with senior management from both France and Sweden and considerable observation of activities on the shopfloor, looks at the nature of, and differences between, Swedish and French national cultures in an attempt to account for the success of the plant and the skill of its managers in overcoming potential cultural pitfalls and discusses the contributions made by each culture to the success story.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight how women managers in Swedish higher education (HE) both support and resist policies about equal representation, and to discuss which factors influenced if, and how, these managers took on the role as change agents for gender equality.

The paper draws on qualitative semi-structured interviews with 22 women in senior academic management positions (vice-chancellors, pro vice-chancellors, deans and pro deans) in ten Swedish HE institutions.

The paper highlights how these women situated themselves in an academic context where gender relations were changing. They supported equal representation policies in their everyday managerial practice and also by accepting management positions that they were nominated and elected to on the basis of such policies. However, they also resisted these policies when they experienced a need to “protect” women from being exploited “in the name of gender equality”.

The paper addresses the call for research on the role of women managers in promoting, or preventing, change towards more gender balanced organizations. The paper builds on a small qualitative study with women only interviews. The study is therefore to be considered as explorative.

The paper makes a contribution to the research literature in the area of gender and change in academic organizations. The findings highlight how policies have different consequences in different settings and that people use their own (different) experiences when interpreting the effects of these policies. The findings thus show the varying impacts equal representation policies can have on women.

The discussion in the paper is situated in a unique empirical context characterized by demographic feminization and organizational restructuring. Most international literature on women in HE and in HE management is based on US or UK contexts. Swedish HE therefore provides an interesting setting. The analysis also addresses the call for more research that takes into account the multifaceted character of HE and that discusses disciplinary differences.

To most non‐Scandinavians Danes and Swedes are very much alike. The same language, the same social and democratic political system, and more or less the same history and culture. But there are differences which may be not observable to outsiders, but certainly are to the people involved. It is not the same managing an organisation in Sweden and Denmark. Based on personality tests data, this article confirm the perceived difference between the two groups. Swedish managers appear more organised, structured, and systematic, as they seek consensus through social processes. The individual strives for power and authority is on the group’s terms. The Danes are seen as more undisciplined and impulsive, with a tendency towards the anarchistic, because the individuals strive for power, authority and control more based on the individuals’ own terms.

This study reports the findings of a survey of Swedish auditors seeking opinions on the conceptual underpinnings of the long established private sector management audit in that country. The authors give the background to the historical calls for accountability and stewardship and draw parallels with calls for accountability by the large modern corporations which emanate from the agency contracts that management functions under. The findings conclude that the Swedish profession needs a theoretical base for its continued conduct of this audit function. The UK and US professions have taken tentative steps towards expanding the traditional financial audit but the rallying calls of visionaries seem as yet to be unheeded.