Seminars and events

At this seminar Gustavo Guzman, Andreas Diedrich, Simon Larsson and Magdalena Petersson McIntyre will present and discuss key insights from an anthology on the organizing properties of space recently published by Edward Elgar in the UK. The book broadly asks how space continually emerges and reemerges as people attempt to organize and reorganize their everyday activities together with objects. 
The book develops the concept of spatial agencing to make sense of these processes and to address their consequences. As space and society are the result of diverse ongoing activities that in turn enable further organizing to take place, the book concludes that one should abandon the idea of a given space that people inhabit and transform.
 The aim of the seminar is threefold: 1) to introduce the concept of spatial agencing, 2) to explore how the concept can help explain organizational phenomena related to space (this will be done by drawing on two studies presented in the book, the contemporary phenomenon of social media influencing, and the organizing efforts of Protestant missionaries during colonial times in what is today the Democratic Republic of the Congo), and 3) to present possible future avenues for research on spatial- and other forms of agencing.

Online shopping has increased dramatically during the last 15 years and is expected to continue to grow further in an accelerated speed. The clothing sector accounts for the largest category of products in terms of returns. The dilemma that confronts e-retailers is that a generous return policy probably generates more sales, but it also increases returns and the costs of handling returns. Optimally, e-retailers would find return policies that reduces returns but not at the expense of sales. In the present research the aim is to investigate how e-consumers value different aspects that constitute a return policy and look deeper into the psychological factors that influence e-consumers return behaviours. At the seminar Magnus Jansson will present two studies. The first study investigates psychological determinants of a responsible return behaviour. The second study is based on customer data of sales and returns from a major e-retailer and aims to characterize the frequent returners. Based on the two studies some tentative conclusions are drawn about the psychological drivers of both returns and a responsible return behaviour and some suggestions on measures that e-retailers should consider implementing to reduce returns.

Tourism destinations have been conceptualized as being in a persistent state of ‘becoming’, due to their ongoing sustainability actions and their commitment to sustainable destination development. Governments and DMOs have leading roles in the development of sustainable destinations, while other stakeholders also are involved in a participatory agenda. Collaboration and learning have been depicted as a key to success when developing sustainable destinations. There have been calls for further research on destination governance, its structures, processes and how it is carried out. The aim of this study is to explore how a destination is governed to become and appear sustainable, and especially how collaboration and learning materialises in the process. The study includes an analysis of national destination governance in Sweden in recent years, which has developed to involve more stakeholders and various aspects of sustainability. Methods include action-oriented research and document analysis, with a focus on national and regional initiatives. The findings outline actions and initiatives by the Swedish government, the national DMO and regional DMOs, to move the Swedish tourism industry, and Sweden as a destination, in a more sustainable direction. Collaboration and learning can be traced in all initiatives. A participatory agenda permeates the destination governance, through a multi-stakeholder process based on a distributed approach to steering and managing destinations. In tandem, leadership and guidance are desired when it comes to coordination and unifying of forces to move the destination Sweden in a sustainable direction.