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Drawing on paradox theory, this study explores how ambidextrous sustainability relates to organisational performance in hybrid organisations represented by Swedish municipal housing corporations, and how this relationship is contingent on the organisational structure of these organisations.

The study relies on the data collected from Swedish municipal housing corporations. These data sources consist of a survey sent to the management team members in Swedish municipal housing corporations, financial and non-financial archival data on these corporations, interviews with the management team and board members, and observations of meetings involving the management team and board of directors at a Swedish municipal housing corporation. Quantitative data of the study were analysed using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and linear multiple regression analysis. Qualitative data were analysed employing deductive thematic analysis and were used to illustrate and discuss the results of the quantitative analysis.

The quantitative findings show that ambidextrous sustainability, i.e. the alignment between an explorative orientation and an exploitative orientation towards sustainability, has a weakly positive relationship with financial performance and a positive relationship with social performance in hybrid organisations represented by Swedish municipal housing corporations. The study further shows that a high level of the structural element “connectedness” weakened the relationship between the ambidextrous sustainability and financial performance of the organisation in the study. In contrast, a lower level of connectedness reinforced and strengthened this relationship. Our qualitative material illustrates how the quantitative findings could be explained by the interaction between the board of directors and the management team of these hybrid organisations.

The study shows how ambidextrous sustainability, employed for conceptualisation of the sustainability strategy in hybrid organisations, represented by Swedish municipal housing corporations, can impact on facets of performance (i.e. financial, social and environmental) differently. The study further highlights the importance of organisational structures in these relationships in a hybrid context.

This paper explores how public audit institutions establish themselves as distinct actors on the public stage through communication practices. By focussing on the journey of the European Court of Auditors (ECA), this paper addresses the following research question: how does a transnational audit institution construct its actorhood through visual communication practices?

Using the theoretical framework of actorhood theory and inspired by the visual accounting methodology, this study explores the ECA actorhood journey through the visual analysis of front pages of its official journal (ECA Journal) from its inception in 2009 up to 2019. The visual analysis is conducted through content analysis and a two-step cluster analysis.

By showing how combinations of different visual artefacts have evolved over time, this study highlights the ways transnational public audit institutions, such as the ECA, construct their actorhood and position themselves on the public stage. It further reveals the underlying legitimacy mechanisms through which organisations such as the ECA position themselves in the public eye.

This study sheds light on the depiction of individuals and their contexts in interaction with each other and how this interaction reveals the development of the actorhood journey of the ECA over time.

The purpose of this paper is to explore board functions and their location in family firms.

Through structured induction in a four-case study of medium-sized Swedish family firms, the authors demonstrate that board functions can be located in other arenas than in the common board and suggest propositions that explain their distribution.

(1) The board is but one of several arenas where board functions are performed. (2) The functions performed by the board vary in type and emphasis. (3) The non-family directors in a family firm serve the owners, even sometimes governing them, in what the authors term “bidirectional governance”. (4) The kin strategy of the family influences their governance. (5) The utilization of a board for governance stems from the family (together with its constitution, kin strategy and governance strategy), the board composition and the business conditions of the firm.

Being a case study the findings are restricted to concepts and theoretical propositions. Using structured induction, the study is not solely inductive but still contains the subjectivity of induction.

Governance agents should have an instrumental view on the board, considering it one possible governance arena among others, thereby economizing on governance.

The institutional pressure toward active boards could paradoxically reduce the importance of the board in family firms.

The board of a family company differs in its emphasis of board functions and these functions are performed with varying emphases in different governance arenas. The authors propose the concept of kin strategy, which refers to the governance importance of the structure of the owner and observations on bi-directional governance, indicating that the board can govern the owners.

Access to financing has long been identified as a stumbling block for the economic endeavors of immigrant entrepreneurs (IEs) in host countries. Yet, little is known about the internal enablers for the IEs success to overcome their financing barriers in host countries. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to introduce the theoretical concept of the financial ambidexterity of IEs as a potential behavioral ability some IEs develop over time to access financing in both host and coethnic contexts.

The paper uses sociopsychological lenses to introduce and discuss the term “financial ambidexterity of IEs” by synthesizing empirical evidence drawn from the different literature on immigrant entrepreneurship, biculturalism, financial literacy and cultural intelligence. This discussion is carefully embedded within the framework of the immigrant entrepreneurship literature.

The study proposes and discusses the role of bicultural identity integration, cultural intelligence and financial literacy in enabling the “financial ambidexterity of IEs.” It further defines the “financial ambidexterity of IEs” as their ability to explore and exploit financing opportunities, either simultaneously across the contexts within which they are embedded, e.g. coethnic and mainstream, or alternately in one context when barriers occur in the other.

The paper mainly contributes to the literature on immigrant entrepreneurship by suggesting an explanation for how IEs overcome financing barriers in their host countries, and why some IEs are more successful in that than other peers. Moreover, the paper attempts to advance the understanding of immigrants' entrepreneurial endeavors using a sociopsychological lens that considers cultural, cognitive and knowledge-related factors.