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This paper extends the discussion on stability and change through focus on specific relationship characteristics. Quality management systems prescribe established routines for supplier selection and monitoring, and may thereby designate the nature and longevity of customer–supplier relationships. The purpose of this paper is to describe and discuss the effects of quality management systems on stability and change in different forms of customer–supplier relationships.

A number of illustrative examples based on participatory data and interviews help to capture different types of customer–supplier relationships (private/public; certified/non-certified) related to quality management systems.

While certified customers in most sectors only need to prove that their suppliers have procedures in place, many customers equate this with requiring that their suppliers should be certified. The paper further shows that customers replace deeper understandings for their suppliers’ procedures with the requirement that they be certified.

The paper contributes to the existing literature through integrating quality management systems literature with the business network approach. For business network studies, the discussion on quality management systems as constricting regimes is interesting and provides practical insights to the business network studies as such quality management systems increase in importance and spread.

Retail has evolved over the past century alongside megatrends such as urbanization, consumerism and digitalization. To contribute to existing knowledge on patterns of retail form evolution, the purpose of this paper is to investigate when and how novel retail forms have evolved in the Swedish sporting goods market.

An evolutionary approach that encompasses population thinking is used to interpret the history of sporting goods retailing in Sweden from the interwar era onwards. Drawing on archival data and interviews, the focus in the historical analysis is on the evolution of retail form variation in terms of size, strategy, product range and retail channel (online/offline).

The paper suggests that evolutionary mechanisms cumulatively have changed the sports retail population from a rather homogenous set of smaller generalist stores toward a larger variety and specialization in mainly two directions: one trajectory toward small and service-focused niche specialists and the other toward high-volume sales outlets.

The paper provides a detailed empirical account of sports retail history in Sweden and an application of theoretical concepts contributing to an integrated investigation of empirical issues and theoretical positions. It concludes that being able to attain “closures” – finding ways to close off a section of the market and avoid direct competition – has historically been a crucial capability for individual retailers to thrive.

The recording industry has gone through a far-reaching disruption, but the major record companies from the past continue to surge. The following question is addressed: Why has disruption in the recording industry not followed the patterns of generic examples from other sectors? The purpose of this paper is to describe and explain why the digital disruption does not lead to the disruption of all types of companies.

This longitudinal study is based on a large set of secondary sources combined with in-depth interviews in Sweden’s recording industry.

Findings indicate that when customers turn to streaming, the major record companies’ direct control of which music the consumer is exposed to increases. This main finding contrasts statements that streaming services would facilitate peer-to-peer sharing activities between music customers and make record companies redundant. The major record companies have remained at a prosperous position due to the control of valuable content and marketing assets, as well as asymmetric interdependency among parties in the supply chain.

The recording industry is different to many other sectors based on the latent value of catalogues, and the conclusions drawn from this paper should thereby not be taken for granted for other industries.

Findings suggest that by “reading” the development of the industry and understanding what key resources create dependencies and revenue flows, managers would be better at tackling disruption.

The paper contributes to previous literature by describing how incumbent companies survive and even prosper post-disruption. It adds to the understanding of the digitalization of the recording industry and points at how dependencies help to understand disruption.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the knowledge on business model transformation (BMT) by developing an integrative framework for BMT dilemmas, including strategies for shaping and stabilizing market structures.

The study uses a case-based approach, with data from the Swedish electric utility industry.

The findings uncover practices related to both shaping and stabilizing market structure. The study contributes with insights for firms to overcome the BMT dilemma. Shaping strategies involve disruptive innovations while stabilizing strategies concerns incremental improvements in existing structures; by balancing these efforts, firms can find ways toward successful BMT.

With a focus on incumbent firms and the balancing act of BMT in a network, the study covers areas that have scarcely been addressed in the existing literature. Even though most business model literature has focused on shaping consumer markets, the need to consider BMT as a dual-directional process in an industrial context is emphasized in this study.

Absorbing knowledge from partner firms is a key feature of marketing relationships. Recent publications have called for more dynamic and cognitive approaches in marketing relationship research. Also, established definitions of absorptive capacities have been questioned. This article aims to address propositions that take these overlooked and questioned elements into consideration, which can help explain conducts and dependencies, and affect relationship durability.

The authors put forward four propositions by combining literature on interfirm relationships and managerial cognition with evolutionary ideas from marketing and management literature.

The authors embrace a redefinition of potential absorptive capacity (the disposed capacity to absorb knowledge) and realized absorptive capacity (the absorption of knowledge actually performed). This distinction can, to some extent, be explained by the degree of cognitive attention given to the marketing relationship. Moreover, asymmetrically realized absorptive capacity vis‐à‐vis a partner substantially influences the dynamics of partners' conduct and dependency, which may vary the risk that the relationship will end.

The propositions illustrate how a motivated partner that gives more attention to the relationship is more likely to absorb more knowledge than its counterpart, which can threaten the durability of a relationship. Thus, managers need to be able to understand possible long‐term consequences of the partner's conduct in order to avoid losses of joint strategic resources and relational benefits.

By advocating an evolutionary approach, an impetus for more dynamism in marketing relationship research is presented. This study also shows the importance of including the longitudinal dimension in analysis if one wants to understand change in – and durability of – marketing relationships.

The authors explore how did the COVID shock hit European firms at the upper quantiles (high-growth superstars) and the lower quantiles (rapidly declining firms).

The authors analyze the European Investment Bank Investment Survey (2016–2020). This exploratory paper applies graphical techniques and quantile regression to evaluate the COVID shock along the growth rates distribution.

Regarding growth of sales and growth of value added, COVID had a negative effect on growth across the growth rates distribution. The negative COVID effect is larger at the lower quantiles. Employment growth shows no effect for many firms that have zero employment growth, but at the extreme quantiles, the authors can observe that some declining firms were adversely affected by COVID. For labour productivity growth, the COVID effect is small. Analysis of subsamples, and quantile regressions with interaction terms, emphasize that firms receiving policy support were relatively strongly affected by COVID, consistent with interpretations that COVID policy support was reaching the intended recipients. Finally, fully digitalized firms may have been somewhat shielded from the harmful effects of COVID.

First, previous studies have focused on the average effect of COVID on the growth performance. Our research contributes to understanding how the COVID shock affected the entire growth rates distribution, ranging to high-growth firms and declining firms. Second, governments devoted financial support to firms. Our analysis explores if COVID policy support was given to companies more affected by this shock. Third, previous digitalization may have boosted resilience by shielding firms from COVID’s harmful effects on firm growth.

In the Baltic Sea area, wood fuels have been traded internationally on a relatively large‐scale since the 1990s, with trade flows primarily from the Baltic States to Sweden and Denmark. This has been driven by strong demand for renewable energy in Scandinavia, inexpensive wood resources in the Baltic States and relatively low costs of sea transport. The purpose of this paper is to clarify if this trade has contributed to integration between the wood fuel markets of Sweden and Estonia.

The authors use co‐integration analysis of quarterly price series data from 1998 to 2010, in order to determine whether there are interconnections between wood fuel prices in the two countries. As wood fuels generally are rather bulky, transport costs often have an important impact on price levels. For this reason the analysis is expanded to include estimated transport costs from Estonia to Sweden.

It is concluded that wood fuel prices in Sweden and Estonia are not co‐integrated, regardless of whether the transportation costs are taken into account or not. In other words, the wood fuel markets in the two countries cannot be considered integrated, which could be seen as a sign that international wood fuel markets still are far from fully developed.

There are some uncertainties about data quality and lack of information on market structure – in terms of, for example, fuel delivery contract specifications and shipping arrangements.

Lack of market integration implies a lack of market efficiency in the international wood fuel market.

Co‐integration analysis has been applied to many commodity markets, but there are only very few studies of international wood fuel markets.