To Örebro University

The two studies reported in this thesis are about problem solving at a low organisational level in an organisational unit in a Swedish manufacturing company, which has adopted ideas of World Class Manufacturing. In the first study, we analyse, from an organisational learning perspective, the implementation of the well-known concept Continuous Improvement at shop-floor level and how management accounting may facilitate or impede improvement work. A case study was conducted in two workgroups in one production unit for about seven months. In one of the groups, management accounting facilitated improvement work with high organisational scope and, in the other group, impeded the organisational scope. Our conclusion is that management accounting may facilitate a high organisational scope by supporting the leadership style, stressing co-operation, dialog and participation, or, by the way the manager uses management accounting, make boundaries distinct between groups of employees and between departments, and therefore impede improvements with high organisational scope. In the second study, we analyse, from a rule-based behavioural perspective, how ideas of World Class Manufacturing are institutionalised in cross-functional problem solving at a low organisational level. A case study was carried out in two cross-functional weekly group meetings for about nine months. Problems raised and solutions decided followed a repeated pattern. The actors draw on instrumental rules, which can be described as technical as well as economic. We concluded that ideas of World Class Manufacturing were institutionalised as different variants of World Class Manufacturing in the different functions at a low organisational level. At the meetings, contradictory instrumental rules were activated by the functions and treated according to interaction rules. Two overall patterns of action, articulated the two main interaction rules guiding actors in how to treat contradictory ideas of World Class Manufacturing.

Boken är en praktisk och helhetsorienterad redovisningsuppgift i extern redovisning. Uppgiften utgår från ett fiktivt, men verklighetstroget företag som tillverkar färg. Utifrån en bakgrundsbeskrivning av företaget, föregående års balans- och resultaträkning, bolagsstämmeprotokoll, styrelseprotokoll, bankkontoutdrag samt verifikationer för ett räkenskapsår, skall studenterna organisera redovisningen, genomföra den löpande bokföringen, göra bokslut samt upprätta årsredovisning enligt gällande lagstiftning och praxis. Till detta kan även ett moment av revision tillfogas.

Boken är en praktisk och helhetsorienterad redovisningsuppgift i extern redovisning. Uppgiften utgår från ett fiktivt, men verklighetstroget företag som importerar och 
säljer orientaliska mattor. Utifrån en bakgrundsbeskrivning av företaget, föregående års bokslut, årsstämmoprotokoll, styrelseprotokoll, bankkontoutdrag samt verifikationer för räkenskapsåret skall studenterna planera redovisningen, genomföra den löpande bokföringen, göra bokslut samt upprätta årsredovisning enligt gällande lagstiftning och praxis. Till detta kan även ett moment av revision tillfogas.

Boken är en praktisk och helhetsorienterad redovisningsuppgift i extern redovisning. Uppgiften utgår från ett fiktivt, men verklighetstroget företag som tillverkar färg. Utifrån en bakgrundsbeskrivning av företaget, föregående års balans- och resultaträkning, årsstämmoprotokoll, styrelseprotokoll, bankkontoutdrag samt verifikationer för ett räkenskapsår skall studenterna planera redovisningen, genomföra den löpande bokföringen, göra bokslut samt upprätta årsredovisning enligt gällande lagstiftning och praxis. Till detta kan även ett moment av revision tillfogas.

Grundtanken är att förankra redovisningsproblem, såväl praktiska som principiella, i ett sammanhang till skillnad från traditionella övnings uppgifter som ofta är fragmentbetonade. Uppgiften ger också träning i ?att arbeta med en större självständig uppgift där helhet, systematik och kreativitet viktigt. En tidigare version av materialet har under flera år använts vid universitet, högskolor, yrkeshögskolor, och studieförbund och visar att uppgiften tar en till två veckors heltidsarbete att genomföra.

The seemingly paradoxical phenomenon of workers’ resistance to health and safety measures has been explained in various ways, for example through production or efficiency pressure, risk-taking behaviours or problematic safety cultures. This article addresses resistance but analyses it through the lens of hierarchical and social accountability. In a case study of a Swedish paper mill, a health and safety programme is resisted by workers even though it enjoys support from the local trade union. Explanations for this is found in the socialising form of accountability that conditions how workers perceive of work-related health and safety. The aspects of work identity, facilitation and visibility are identified and understood in terms of accountability. Who you are, how you perform work, and what is visualised is filtered and evaluated through horizontal relationships rather than in terms of hierarchical accountability to the company.

This paper presents a review of 100 empirical papers studying corporate codes of ethics (CCEs) in business organizations from the time period mid-2005 until mid-2016, following approximately an 11-year time period after the previous review of the literature. The reviewed papers are broadly categorized as content-oriented, output-oriented, or transformation-oriented. The review sheds light on empirical focus, context, questions addressed, methods, findings and theory. The findings are discussed in terms of the three categories as well as the aggregate, stock of empirical CCE studies in comparison with previous reviews, answering the question “where are we now?” Content and output studies still stand for the majority of the studies, whereas the transformation studies are fewer. Within these areas, two new trends are found to have emerged: discursive analyses and a focus on labor conditions. The review finds that (a) the content of CCEs is still predominantly self-defensive, (b) that CCEs are insufficient in themselves in terms of protecting workers’ rights, (c) that CCEs are likely to encounter tensions when implemented across national and organizational boundaries, and (d) that while perception of CCEs is generally positive, CCEs may lead to both positive and negative outcomes. Based on these findings, potential areas for further exploration in the area of CCE research are suggested.

Despite some two decades of research on Responsible Management Education (RME) relatively little is known about RME within business. In particular, different variants of RME in business have not been studied enough to give us a thorough understanding of the nature, role and function of RME in business. To provide some remedy, this article studies RME from an internal business perspective. Through action research, it shows how a specific form of RME, building on the Shared Value (SV) concept, is shaped, developed and manifested within the life-insurance and savings company Skandia. Furthermore, it develops a model for a holistic understanding of RME in business, taking into account RME actors, concepts, methods, and use. Apart from being an empirical illustration from within business of how RME becomes a tool for strategy, identity and innovation, and constructing a model for understanding RME, the article also highlights SV as the conceptual basis for RME.

The role of the Sustainability Manager (SM) is expanding. Whether SMs are turning into a new profession is under debate. Pointing to the need for a distinct professional logic to qualify as a profession, we identify what is contained within a professional logic of SMs. Through analyzing ambiguities present in the role of the SMs, we show that there is no specific distinct professional logic of SMs, but rather a meta-construct building on market, bureaucratic, and sustainability logics. In addition, we point to the complex configurations of and relationships between these underlying logics. The complexities also explain why the SMs differ from traditional professions and why it is problematic to talk about a ‘SM profession’. Rather, SMs are ‘organizational professionals’. The article builds on 21 interviews with SMs working for Swedish companies.

This article offers new knowledge on the role of industry as external facilitators in the case of designing responsible management education (RME). Drawing on a case of a Swedish business school that developed a two year master's profile in sustainable business, we find that industry partners acted as external facilitators in the form of ‘Legitimizers’. This type of external facilitator, Legitimizer, complements Vazquez-Brust and Yakovleva’s (2017) existing categories: ‘Guides’, ‘Monitors’, ‘Enablers’, and ‘Networkers’. Based on the findings, we propose that business can take on four types of legitimizing roles in academia – business collaboration: The Visitor, The Planner, The Co-operator, and The Co-educator. We further identify various forms of legitimacy, particularly cognitive and pragmatic, that the corporate activities and interactions generate. Interestingly, in the case of RME, companies are instrumental to legitimizing the education, rather than being the ones seeking legitimacy.

Hur organiseras e-handel? På vilka sätt förändrar den kundmötet? Hur fungerar distributionen? Leder e-handel till ökad hållbarhet? Kommer e-handel att ersätta den fysiska butiken? Frågorna är många och viktiga att besvara när detaljhandeln går in i en ny era och elektronisk handel blir en självklarhet.

Den här boken svarar på frågorna. Den tar upp e-handelns organisering, kunder, distribution och frågor om hållbarhet. Särskilt viktigt är det att förstå hybridhandel, som innebär att företag bedriver både fysisk handel och e-handel parallellt. Boken är skriven ur ett företagsekonomiskt perspektiv och fungerar som en introduktion för alla som vill veta mer om e-handel.

Although ethical issues in e-commerce have received increased interest in recent years, the relational context between e-vendor and e-customer has remained relatively unproblematized. Rather than assuming an anonymous interface between e-vendor and e-customer, with specific ethical issues related to it, we examine a case of a hybrid organizational context where physical stores within the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector use an intermediary to sell goods via e-commerce. The co-existence of physical stores and Internet solutions creates multiple relationships to customers and, as we argue, ethical problems of partly different kind compared to the ones identified in the literature. In the article, both the nature of the relationships between e-vendor and e-customer is analysed and ethical issues related to these relationships identified. From a theoretical point of view, the article widens the discussion on e-commerce ethics from a relational perspective inspired by Martin Buber’s philosophy.

Although ethical issues in e-commerce have received increased interest in recent years, the relational context between e-vendor and e-customer has remained relatively unproblematized. Rather than assuming an anonymous interface between e-vendor and e-customer, with specific ethical issues related to it, we examine a case of a hybrid organizational context where physical stores within the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector use an intermediary to sell goods via e-commerce. The co-existence of physical stores and Internet solutions creates multiple relationships to customers and, as we argue, ethical problems of partly different kind compared to the ones identified in the literature. In the article, both the nature of the relationships between e-vendor and e-customer is analysed and ethical issues related to these relationships identified. From a theoretical point of view, the article widens the discussion on e-commerce ethics from a relational perspective inspired by Martin Buber’s philosophy.

Even though current research literature pays much attention to e-commerce as an aspect of retailing, relatively few strategic approaches elaborate on the fact that many contemporary retail firms are hybrid firms, which implies offering products both online and offline. Notably, much of extant research sets off from the premise that traditional retail chains adopt e-commerce to complement the physical stores. An important observation is that today also ‘pure’ e-tailers open physical stores, which means that hybridization develops from different vantage points. Current strategic understandings of hybrid firms’ strategies do not necessarily take into account the different and sometimes contrary approaches to what it means to be a hybrid firm. The purpose of this article is to develop a two-dimensional model of strategic choice in hybrid firms. It makes it possible to identify different strategies along the dimensions of a) locality (of the physical store) and b) the role of the physical store when it comes to distribution. Through this approach, a deeper strategic understanding is reached, for example with regard to the physical distribution aspect of hybrid firms.

Purpose

- The purpose of this article is to understand conflicts in sustainability reporting (SR) preparation.

Design/methodology/approach

- In the preparation of SRs, the logic of financial rationality is often assumed to take precedence over the logic of sustainability. Based on an explorative qualitative case study of a large Swedish retailer, the paper problematizes this view. Over a reporting cycle, employees and consultants involved in the preparation process are interviewed. Conflicting ideas about SRs are identified and analyzed through the lens of institutional logics.

Findings

-The study identifies five tensions in SR preparation. These tensions relate to conflicting ideas of what a SR is, how it should be written, and how it should be used. Among findings, a conflict of logics can be found as the basis of at least one tension. However, tensions may also emerge within a shared sustainability logic.

Research limitations/implications

- A contribution of the study is that it sets its finger on the actual fieldwork with SRs. The study shows that it is unreasonable to claim that SRs are ‘self-evidently’ captured by management according to financial rationality. Possibly, the nature of the studied firm, a company within the pharmaceutical and health sector, implies a stronger sustainability logic than in other firms.

Practical implications

- According to the study, the results of a SR preparation process are highly dependent on the sometimes conflicting ideas of preparers and others within the company. It is of high importance to identify and clarify such conflicting ideas already in the beginning of the process, to link the SR to the CSR strategy of the firm, and to involve top management in the process.

Originality/value

- The study identifies underlying tensions in SR preparation. It also introduces a theoretical framework that makes it possible to analyze tensions in the preparation process.

In the literature, organizational sustainability identity tends to be treated as something that is ‘engineered’ within business organizations through control, reporting, target setting, strategic communication, and other instruments. Through a case study of a company mainly active within the recycling industry, an alternative understanding is given. A distinct organizational sustainability identity is, rather, a social construct based on perceptions of the core operations as “sustainable in themselves” and collaborative work with customers that is perceived as entailing sustainable solutions. Understood in this way, organizational sustainability identity has relatively little to do with formal controls such as codes, policies, reports used by management to position the company as sustainable. Rather, for organizational members, the process of constructing oneself as sustainable builds on convictions about the core operations and the possession of specific capabilities manifested in customer relations. The article adds to current literature through its constructivistic approach and through identifying underlying beliefs that condition the process of forming an organizational sustainability identity.

Sustainability, in a wide sense of the word, is a prerequisite for business legitimacy in today’s society, not least in retail. To many, sustainability becomes an issue that must somehow be managed. Commonly, management of sustainability is understood in more or less the same fashion as managing business in general. For example, sustainability is assumed to be controlled in the same manner as any other business activity. Control is a concept traditionally referable to a specific internal context, usually assuming a rational, instrumental and closed organization where goals and objectives are formulated at top level, even if the mechanisms of control may vary considerably. 

In this paper, we question the prevailing ideas of management control when it comes to sustainability. Based on how sustainability issues are actually managed within retail, we point to inadequacies of understanding sustainability as an issue that can be managed in a traditional way.  The paper builds on interviews made within a large Swedish retail firm with relatively developed strategies and understandings of sustainability and the need for responsible business conduct, both in practice and communication.

Thus, the purpose of the paper is to show how control in terms of sustainability escapes traditional conceptions of management control. This, we argue, is not just an issue of academic interest. In a wider sense, we identify why the issue of sustainability requires other means and competencies to be successfully managed compared to traditional business issues. Basically, we formulate our contentions against the concept of accountability, the contents and consequences of which must be understood and handled by companies in order to provide a credible sustainability profile.

I den första delstudien undersöks vilka frågor detaljhandeln kommunicerar och lyfter fram som viktiga ansvarsfrågor. Den andra delstudien fördjupar förståelsen av de ansvarsstrukturer som används, medan den tredje undersöker förhållandet mellan ansvarsstrukturer och det stöd dessa kan ge medarbetare på butiksnivå. Slutligen ges förslag kring hur strukturerna kan utvecklas.

Rapporten presenterar resultaten från forskningsprojektet ”Hållbarhetsredovisning och interna organisatoriska processer för ökad hållbarhet”. Syftet med projektet har varit att undersöka vilken betydelse hållbarhetsredovisning har för handelsföretags interna organisatoriska processer för ökad hållbarhet samt, att öka kunskapen om hur dessa processer konkret kan bidra till ökad hållbarhet inom handeln. Projektet bygger både på en bred översikt över hur handelsföretag kommunicerar sitt hållbarhetsarbete via hållbarhetsredovisningar och på fördjupade studier av hur ett fåtal större handelsföretag internt arbetar med hållbarhetsprocesser och hur detta kan relateras till just hållbarhetsredovisningens roll. Denna rapport presenterar de olika delstudiernas resultat på ett relativt övergripande plan och knyter dem till de forskningsfrågor som projektet har utgått ifrån. I den första delstudien visas att en relativt liten andel av handelsföretagen använder sig av hållbarhetsredovisning över huvud taget. Det finns heller inte en tydligt externt kommunicerad processförståelse av hållbarhetsarbetet. Kommunikationen kan ibland vara omfattande i rapporterna men det saknas oftast en sammanhängande redovisning av hur hållbarhetsfrågorna hanteras, med vilka medel, enligt vilken strategi och hur (eventuell) framgång mäts. Vad företag väljer att rapportera är också väldigt varierande. En del företag koncentrerar sig på hållbarhetsfrågor kopplade till kärnverksamheten medan andra fokuserar på aktiviteter som ligger långt utanför kärnverksamheten. Utifrån de två kvalitativa delstudier som genomförts har betydelsen av hållbarhetsredovisning som instrument, dess roll och relevans kunnat identifieras. I de två fallföretag som använder sig av hållbarhetsredovisning går det att urskilja ett antal funktioner av redovisningen som kommer till uttryck i högst varierande grad. Vi identifierar här hållbarhetsredovisningen som motor för hållbarhetsarbetet, uppföljningsdokument av hållbarhetsarbetet och som profileringsdokument för företaget. En övergripande iakttagelse är att hållbarhetsredovisningen inte entydigt kan knytas till någon av dessa roller utanuppvisar aspekter av samtliga. Den är exempelvis inte en motor för hållbarhetsarbetet i stark mening utan har en plats i ett vidare hållbarhetssammanhang som företaget verkar inom. Relevansen av hållbarhetsredovisningen diskuteras i kontrast till företag som inte använder sig av detta instrument. Här framförs argument från de olika fallföretagen av högst skiftande karaktär. Redovisningen beskrivs i olika utsträckning som irrelevant, delvis relevant och väldigt relevant för hållbarhetsarbetet. Utifrån det som har framkommit av studierna identifierar vi tre åtgärder som kan göra relevansen av hållbarhetsredovisningen större. Dessa är: - Indikator- och nyckeltalsanvändning som prestationsmätning snarare än leveransposter från enskilda enheter i organisationen. - Synkronisering av vad hållbarhetsredovisning är och förutsätts betyda i organisationen i förhållande till både hållbarhetsarbetet i stort och övergripande strategier och målsättningar (inte bara på hållbarhetsområdet). - Fasta strukturer och roller för arbetet med hållbarhetsredovisning för att klargöra ägarförhållandet till redovisningen.

Corporate responsibility (CR) communication has risen dramatically in recent years, following increased demands for transparency. One tendency noted in the literature is that CR communication is organised and structured. Corporations tend to professionalise CR communication in the sense that they provide information that corresponds to demands for transparency that are voiced by certain stakeholders. This also means that experts within the firm tend to communicate with professional stakeholders outside the firm. In this article, a particular aspect of the organisation of CR communication is examined, a phenomenon that we refer to as the ‘filtration effect’. By comparing CR communication in parent companies and their subsidiaries, we show empirically that there is considerably less CR communication on the subsidiary level compared to the parent level. We see filtration as a sign of conscious organising of CR communication that implies particular attention to certain stakeholder groups with clearly defined demands and expectations on companies. The strong filtration effect noted in the study suggests that CR communication does not seem to be very much adapted to customers, which may be problematic both from a communicative and ethical perspective. The study covers Sweden’s 206 largest retail firms.

There is a growing institutional pressure on retail companies to communicate corporate responsibility (CR) to a variety of stakeholders, but so far, there is scarce research on the topic. This paper focuses on how Sweden’s 206 largest retail companies communicate CR on the Internet, targeting who communicates and on what. The paper suggests that even though many Swedish retail firms communicate on CR, most of them do not. Most CR communication concerns environment and quality while traditional ethical issues get little attention. The study also shows that the frequency and direction of CR communication is clearly related to the retail subsector that the firm belongs to and to the size of the firm. Furthermore, there is no clear tendency that foreign ownership as such affects CR communication. Conceptually, we frame our findings within the ‘travel of ideas’ literature, arguing that in order to understand how retail companies communicate CR, we need to focus on the role of specific actors in the diffusion processes of macro ideas such as CR.

Sustainablity reporting (SR) is an established phenomenon in business. Despite this fact, there is relatively limited knowledge on the nature of the process of generating structured SR information. This paper shows how accounting information materializes and takes shape in a SR.  By relying on a storytelling approach and a qualitative case study of a large Swedish retailer, the article demonstrates how a SR process is characterized by ‘negotiations’ between internal constituents as to defining the ‘best’ story of the corporation’s sustainability impact. It is argued that such an approach better captures the nature of a SR process compared to rationalistic control-oriented or legitimacy-seeking ‘window-dressing’ characterizations of the SR process. Understanding the SR process as characterized by negotiated storytelling implies recognizing different factors as relevant to the outcome of a SR process. Such factors include the existence of competing motives based on different master-ideas, path dependency, competence issues and actorhood specificities and preferences.

This paper focuses on the significance of codes of conduct (CoCs) in the internal work context of two retail companies. A stepwise approach is used. First, the paper identifies in what way employees use and refer to CoCs internally. Second, the function and relevance of CoCs inside the two companies are identified. Third, the paper explains why CoCs tend to function in the identified ways. In both cases, the CoCs are clearly decoupled in the sense that they do not concern the immediate work context of the employees. Counter-intuitively, this facilitates the process of establishing the CoCs. Even though the CoCs are not directly relevant for the employees, they are accepted and embraced with regard to contents, focus and function. Above all, the CoCs seem to confirm and even strengthen employee identity. On the basis of these observations, it is suggested that CoCs should not only be valued in light of their direct organisational consequences or lack of such consequences. The issue is not just whether CoCs are decoupled or not. Rather, it is argued that researchers should consider more closely a two-level analysis that takes into account not only the concrete application of CoCs but also their function and meaning. An implication of this is that what might appear as a decoupled code cannot be dismissed as irrelevant to the ‘core’ business processes of the organisation.

The retail industry has to conform to norms concerning social and environmental responsibility. For that reason, retail companies engage in processes for increased sustainability. Research indicates that there is a strong presence of communication on sustainability, codes of conduct, sustainability reports, etc. Even though such instruments are numerous, it proves little when it comes to the actual processes for sustainability inside retail firms. The purpose of the paper is to reach a deepened understanding of processes for sustainability in retail firms. The paper is empirical, which means that we focus on how retail firms actually understand and describe their processes for sustainability. Qualitative content analysis is used. Setting out from information on sustainability given in sustainability reports, we apply a framework where we divide the contents of sustainability processes into visions, activities, structures and outputs. Our findings establish that even leading retail firms that devote substantial resources to communication on sustainability issues have difficulties in articulating coherent processes for sustainability. Even though there are exceptions, a fragmented picture of sustainability processes can be found when retail companies talk about their achievements in terms of sustainability. This may imply weak descriptions focusing mainly on visions or objectives for sustainable business without coherent reasoning that ends up in concrete activities or output measures. This can be interpreted as either signs of conscious or unconscious concealment of actual processes or as the lack of genuine processes of this kind. The implications of both alternatives are discussed.