Management & Organisation
The research portfolio of the Management & Organisation Section can be schematically separated into five themes.
The research portfolio of the Management & Organisation Section can be schematically separated into five themes, at times overlapping and yet distinct.
- Managing sustainability
- Managing Human Resource
- Managing new technologies
- Managing Multinationals
- Managing innovation and growth
Business and Society scholarship addresses a wide variety of challenges facing today’s globalized industries and firms including sustainability issues, questions pertaining to the integration of a diverse workforce, the role of unions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the ability to live up to internal regulations and legal framework today imposed on companies and collaboration between private and public organizations.
Our research in this field is primarily concerned with how firms develop sustainable strategies, i.e. the transformation towards economic, social and environmental sustainability.
Example of projects
Implementing building-integrated solar electricity / Managing Renewable Energy
HRM scholarship examines how both investment in human capital and human resources create long-term competitiveness of a firm or an industry and create qualify of work life benefit. HRM is a long-standing research tradition in business administration rooted in the human relations movement developed at Harvard Universities in the 1930s and today demonstrate a great deal of variety.
Our research in this field is primarily concerned with how human resource management is transformed in times of change.
Example of projects
Organizational capability for delayed retirement – an intervention study
Organising labour market integration of immigrants – theory and practice
Managing new technologies has always been a central part of management and organizational scholarship. Studies in this field is concerned with the how organizations develop and adopt new technologies, the impact of technologies on various organizational processes and how organizational actors use technologies.
Our research in this field is primarily concerned with how new technologies create new opportunities and challenges in the everyday life of organizations and the blurred boundaries between human and non-human actors.
Example of projects
Creativity and working conditions in the video game industry: The role of the independent scene
One of the most important areas of interest within the research field of International Business is concerned with understanding the ways multinational corporations (MNCs) operate in the age of globalization.
Often the focus is on the relationship between the headquarters and the subsidiaries – e.g. the control mechanisms used – and how this relationship differs due to the global structure chosen and strategy applied. Empirically, recent focus in the field has been on understanding MNCs from emerging markets, the increasingly important role played by subsidiaries in the MNCs’ global networks – e.g. due to offshoring of R&D activities – as well as the development of subsidiary capabilities due to the change of subsidiary mandates.
Research at the Centre for International Business Studies, CIBS, is very much in line with the above sketched overall interest, however, distinguishes itself from the prevailing literature by applying longitudinal case studies, which not only allows an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon studied, but not at least also the opportunity to understand the various (change) processes over time involved.
Example of projects
Strategic renewal in the Swedish industry
The Globalization of R&D in Multinational Enterprises: A Need of New Theoretical Explanations
This line of research examines how firms and industries are capable of not only accommodating to and complying with institutional, political, and cultural changes in its environment but also how they create competitive advantage on basis of the ability to e.g., produce new innovations (goods or services), penetrate new international markets, and to pursue economic value-generating strategies. In addition, new sources of economic value creation are generated on basis of skilled entrepreneurship, creating business de novo, and thus making the economic system more dynamic.
Our research in this field is primarily devoted to open innovation, clusters, entrepreneurship and strategic responses to the use of new technologies, such as digitalization.
Example of projects
Time, Temporality and Speed of Firm Internationalization
Open innovation between large corporations and scale-ups