Scandinavian Journal of Management最新文献

The purpose of the study is to extend the coopetition concept to the regional level, throwing light on the dynamics of cross-border collaboration affected by paradoxical tensions between national and regional demands. We use in-depth interviews with home country institutional actors, utilizing immersive fieldwork on location and an iterative process in data analysis and theory development. We develop a conceptual model of unbalanced supranational coopetition, demonstrating internal tensions from nested paradoxes in a multilevel view. The balance is affected by unique contradictory interactions between regional and national interests, triple identities, ambivalence, and avoidance manifested at macro, meso and micro levels. The findings show the prioritization of non-regional demands and overall reactive dynamics, thereby contributing to the coopetition research stream.

We are witnessing increasing complexity of the business world and a need for business renewal. However, our common way of thinking, based on analytical thinking and its guiding principles—determinism, reductionism, and disjunction—has limitations in regard to tackling these challenges. In line with this analytical approach, the current literature is confronted with many issues, including three major ones: the vagueness of the notion of ‘value creation’, the lack of consensus on the components, and the questioning of the scope and level of analysis. Thus, the present manuscript proposes a systemic approach to the business model. After presenting the main principles of systems thinking—teleological, interdependence, and holistic principles—we present directions for conceptualizing the business model concept to present avenues of development, thereby overcoming inherent limits of the concept and renewing the approach to face complexity.

Over the past two decades, researchers have collected solid evidence on the ability of job-threatened workers around the world to preserve their jobs via takeover operations. Worker takeovers are effective strategies to preserve jobs in times of crisis, spread economic democracy and promote local development. Yet, collectives of workers running their own businesses under self-management challenge the premises of orthodox economics and entrepreneurship. By analysing critical contributions via an integrative literature review, the paper discusses core assumptions of methodological individualism and opportunity entrepreneurship. The paper also uses the case of worker takeovers to further falsify these assumptions and confirm the shortcomings of research approaches anchored to the individual-opportunity nexus. By building on the case of worker takeovers, the paper endorses approaches which adopt (collective) entrepreneurial actions as crucial metrics to analyse entrepreneurial undertakings.

Remote work presents managers with new and significant challenges. Work that occurs at distance limits managers’ abilities to observe staff behavior, raising concerns that managers may miss unspoken cues that indicate potential problems. Furthermore, in remote work contexts where observable behaviors and defined outcomes are elusive, and discretionary effort is essential, traditional behavior- and output-based controls may be insufficient. Drawing on Ouchi’s (1980) theorizing of social control mechanisms and Foucault’s (1982) notion of pastoral power, this research finds that when faced with limited observation, managers of remote teams engage pastoral control mechanisms to compensate for the lack of employee behavior oversight and to mitigate the risk of missing important cues. Practical, theoretical and ethical implications are discussed.

While ontology has been recognized as a contributing factor to theoretical disagreements in entrepreneurship, there has been a notable lack of effort to draw out and explicitly discuss the relationships between entrepreneurship and metaphysics. Drawing from Aristotle, we articulate metaphysics as a first philosophy – an ongoing theoretical engagement with the ultimate structure of reality – that supports and guides diverse ways of pursuing knowledge in entrepreneurship. We punctuate uniqueness and universality as two metaphysical pillars in entrepreneurial theory and conclude our perspective paper by discussing how better appreciation and understanding of ontological questions might improve entrepreneurship theory and practice.

Despite the increasing interest in business model innovation (BMI) as a way to improve the performance of firms, and the predominance of family firms (FFs) in modern economy, these two topics have so far not been combined. Drawing on socioemotional wealth (SEW) theory and the corporate social responsibility (CSR) concept, and on insights from research into BMI, we conduct a qualitative analysis using data from fifteen European FFs, examining the strategic and BM focus, the nature of the BM renewal, and the process and outcomes of BMI on their business models (BMs). Our results identify several BM configurations, with a focus on (1) growth by internationalization in combination with attention to increased quality in value creation, and (2) profit orientation based on increased efficiency, enabled by digitalization, mainly in the value delivery components of a BM. The latter reflects distinctive, innovative capabilities found in FFs, that contribute to the preservation of family objectives, as suggested by SEW theory and business orientation on CSR. Furthermore, there is a link between family involvement and limited, but specific, knowledge-related resources, and the way the dynamic BMI process is governed and executed.

Robot utilization is expected to result in significant changes in the way organizations and teams operate. The increasing prevalence of robots in the workplace offers an opportunity to research robot utilization and employee response behaviors to this phenomenon. A timely research question is, “What reactionary behaviors would organizational leaders and employees exhibit as they begin to regard robots as coworkers and teammates?”. The purpose of this commentary is to offer theoretical perspectives on leader response behaviors when leading human-robot teams as well as to understand employee reactions to working alongside a robot teammate. Drawing on paradox and Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theories and through postulation statements, we show the (contradictory) duality of leader and employee behaviors under conditions of high/low job demands in a human-robot team environment. In doing so, this discussion bears implications for research on team leadership, job crafting, the presence of behavioral robotics, and for the practice of organizational leadership.