To Örebro University

Denna rapport delger lärdomar och kunskap förvärvad inom ett ettårigt Vinnovaprojekt (diarienummer 2018-04685) som sökt beskriva och analysera möjligheter och hinder för en omställning till en cirkulär ekonomi utifrån ett företagsekonomiskt perspektiv. I detta samverkansprojekt har tre huvudaktörer drivit arbetet; forskare från Handelshögskolan vid Örebro universitet och dess Centrum för hållbart företagande (CSB), den ideella föreningen CradleNet som syftar till att accelerera den cirkulära ekonomin samt det privata företaget Econova  med mångårig erfarenhet inom återvinning och återanvändning av restmaterial och avfall. I projektet har vi arrangerat fyra interaktiva kunskapsmoduler där aktörer med intresse för en övergång till cirkulär ekonomi samlats och tillsammans diskuterat nuvarande praktiker samt vägar framåt. I projektet har vi arbetat med en bred definition av cirkulär ekonomi; definitionen inbegriper hantering av material med målet att minimera avfall, samt en materialhantering som är miljömässigt, socialt och ekonomiskt ansvarstagande. Rapporten summerar de viktigaste lärdomarna från projektet och beskriver olika sätt som företag –tillsammans med andra – kan påbörja resan mot en cirkulär ekonomi.

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.

Purpose: The purpose of this essay is to explore the opportunities and challenges that early-career researchers (ECRs) face when they seek to contribute to academic knowledge production through research activities “other than” those directly focused on making progress with their own, to-be-published, research papers in a context associated with the “publish or perish” (PoP) mentality.

Design/methodology/approach: Drawing broadly on the notion of technologies of humility (Jasanoff, 2003), this reflective essay develops upon the experiences of the authors in organizing and participating in a series of nine workshops undertaken between June 2013 and April 2021, as well as the arduous process of writing this paper itself. Retrospective accounts, workshop materials, email exchanges and surveys of workshop participants provide the key data sources for the analysis presented in the paper.

Findings: The paper shows how the organization of the workshops is intertwined with the building of a small community of ECRs and exploration of how to address the perceived limitations of a “gap-spotting” approach to developing research ideas and questions. The analysis foregrounds how the workshops provide a seemingly valuable research experience that is not without contradictions. Workshop participation reveals tensions between engagement in activities “other than” working on papers for publication and institutionalized pressures to produce publication outputs, between the (weak) perceived status of ECRs in the field and the aspiration to make a scholarly contribution, and between the desire to develop a personally satisfying intellectual journey and the pressure to respond to requirements that allow access to a wider community of scholars.

Originality/value: Our analysis contributes to debates about the ways in which seemingly valuable outputs are produced in academia despite a pervasive “publish or perish” mentality. The analysis also shows how reflexive writing can help to better understand the opportunities and challenges of pursuing activities that might be considered “unproductive” because they are not directly related to to-be-published papers.

Previous studies of macroeconomic accounting have focused on the conceptual and political development of national accounts and how such theoretical concepts generate economic reality. By turning focus to the calculative practices of macroeconomic accounting, studying the Norwegian Quarterly National Accounts (QNA), the present work underlines that the national economy is not only constituted in the political discourse of growth and within international classifications, but also within the everyday processes of calculating the numbers. It shows how the QNA team struggles to adhere to the formal classifications and find reliable empirical accounts that matches them. In such situations, epistemic strategies are employed to handle the “gaps” and misalignments between the formal classifications and the everyday calculative practice. By theorizing the validation and support of weak numbers within a calculative culture shaped by the handling of second-order measurements and interrupted representations, the present study contributes to an emerging accounting literature on interrupted and hyperreal representations.

Corporate governance phenomena have traditionally been, and are still, studied foremost as relationships between principals and agents. Studies of how accounting plays out in corporate governance settings rather share the interest in hierarchical influence than challenge it. The present thesis argues that when studying accounting in corporate governance settings we must, in addition to studying hierarchical influence, take into account the ‘field of governance’ in which accounting is situated. The hierarchical influence with which the corporate governance literature is concerned does not occur in an isolated setting, but in a field with pre-existing, concurrent and entering governance initiatives, technologies and actors. Such aspects of the field of governance necessarily influence how accounting is able to serve corporate governance ends.

Based on two empirical cases, institutional investors and trade unions, active in a field of governance concerned with social and environmental aspects of corporate performance, this thesis consists of four studies investigating the different aspects (who, what and where) of the field of governance and the influence these aspects have on accounting in a corporate governance setting. This thesis, as a result, proposes a new way to study accounting in corporate governance settings and identifies further conditions for accounting’s constitutive ability.

Öppnar cirkulär ekonomi möjligheter för förnyat hållbarhetstänkande och produktivitet inom planetens gränser?

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to offer a new and more elaborate view of the relationship between information and knowledge in accountability settings.

Design/methodology/approach: The study investigates how knowledge is accomplished when accountability is demanded. The knowing-in-practice perspective (Lave, 1988; Orlikowski, 2002; Pentland, 1992) is introduced to theorise knowledge as the ability to purposefully go on with practice and information as a resource that may contribute to this knowledge. Empirically, the study investigates Nordic investors' engagement with companies addressing environmental, social, and governance issues.

Findings: The findings illustrate how information may contribute to knowledge in an accountability setting. Whether or not the information contributes to knowledge in the accountability setting depends on the information's origin, convergence with other accounts, and use in contradicting and disproving executives' information are all important aspects. To understand whether information allows the investor to hold the company accountable, the author need to consider these aspects. The analysis also shows how knowledge in accountability settings may be achieved without information - for example, by enacting theories.

Research limitations/implications: The study suggests that research should more carefully distinguish between knowledge and information. According to the perspective used here, knowledge is the ability to purposefully go on with practice. Information is one of many resources that can contribute to knowledge.

Practical implications: This study provides insight into the relationship between accounting systems and the practice of demanding accountability. Such understanding is valuable when designing accounts-based governance and civil regulation, such as for addressing sustainability issues, as in this study.

Originality/value: The study challenges the view of knowledge as a representation or factual commodity, and provides a new and more elaborate view of the relationship between information and knowledge in accountability settings by introducing the knowing-in-practice perspective to the accounting literature.

Organising waste disposal to achieve waste recovery, i.e. circular solutions, requires the active participation of citizens (Hänninen, 1995). For this purpose, schemes are put in place to “make up”, and shape, circular consumers who will return waste. These schemes tend to rely on calculative mechanisms to influence individuals’ decision-making in the desired direction. The present work studies one such government-mandated scheme, the Swedish deposit-refund system for beverage containers. The deposit-refund incentive requires customers purchasing a beverage to pay a deposit which is refunded if/when the beverage container is handed in for recycling. Using focus groups to study Swedish young adults subject to the scheme, the study aims to expand academic knowledge of the role of accounting, and particularly personal accounting, within circular schemes. The study finds that the official scheme rarely succeeds in imposing its deposit-refund accounting categories. Instead, there are plentiful examples of what Zelizer (1994) calls “counter earmarking”, i.e. personal accounting at odds with the official scheme. Exploring the young adults’ counter earmarking practices, the study shows the difficulty of imposing an accounting ideology onto individuals. 

In response to Asdal’s (2011) call for studies of accounting numbers and authority, the present work studies how sustainability accounting numbers achieve authority in company-investor relations. Thereby, the study aims to further develop the literature’s explanation of accounting numbers’, and in particular sustainability accounting numbers’, authority. The study does so by analysing three conditions that contribute to quantitative techniques’ seemingly objective character and thus their ability to lend authority, according to Porter (1992a, 1992b, 1995). The study finds that the investor analysts’ familiarity with the sustainability accounting issues, the system and practice, rather than what the numbers seek to represent, allowed them to question the authority of the accounting numbers. Most frequently, the investor analysts questioned the use of sustainability accounting concepts. Rather than responding with further numbers, the corporate executives addressed such questioning by further describing and explaining their work, more or less successfully.

This chapter investigates how valuation devices are oriented towards each other. It underlines the social influences that affect how we assess value. Studying valuation devices in this way emphasizes that they are not simply composed in terms of what they assess. The ideas of how something should be valued come from somewhere. The chapter analyses orientation between devices in terms of the classic dichotomy of imitation and differentiation, informed by the work of Czarniawska and Joerges on travel and materialization of ideas. The analysis shows that while in one locality a device is considered as ‘new’, another locality views it as ‘the same’. Concurrently, the device may be viewed as an imitation from a translocal perspective. Connecting the translocal view of valuation devices with such local views, the analysis also shows when similarity in devices is not a consequence of imitation.

The present study investigates how accounts are identified as information. A precondition for the interpretation and use of information is that it is identified as potential information. How does this happen? Using the empirical case of investor analysts and environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, the study finds that to be able to distinguish information from irrelevant accounts, the analysts specify what they want knowledge about, the epistemic object. In fact, how the epistemic object is defined strongly influences which accounts are regarded as information. Still, the linking between accounts and what they are believed to reflect requires an interpretation. This effort is particularly visible when the ‘fit’ is lacking. Studying and reflecting on their informing process, the analysts acquire knowledge of what is captured but should not be and what is not captured but should be. Hence, the identification of accounts is not only the story of how available accounts are identified as information but also of how information is identified in its absence. 

The food sector is a potential site for the implementation of circular economy strategies. Food packaging cause concern due to high production volume, short usage, problems of waste management and littering. Circular economy strategies could address these concerns if there is consumer acceptance and participation in systems with food packaging. We seek to review current knowledge of consumer behavior in relation to circular food packaging. The study finds that circular economy in terms of the recycling strategy, are found foremost in European and American setting. While reuse strategies were more prevalent in studies from 1970-80s, such initiatives have been renewed.  

The food sector has been targeted as a potential site for the implementation of circular economy strategies. Food packaging, in particular, has caused concern due to its high production volume, short usage time, and problems related to waste management and littering. Circular economy strategies could potentially address these concerns if there is consumer acceptance and participation in circular systems. The present review seeks to inform future studies of the need for further research in this area by reviewing current knowledge of consumer behavior in relation to circular food packaging. When doing so, the study finds that studies have primarily focused on recycling, foremost in the European and American setting. However, less is known about consumers and circular packaging in developing countries. While reuse strategies were more prevalent in studies from the 1970–1980s, the review finds that such initiatives are yet again researched, which is promising given their generally favorable environmental footprint.

In the literature on the relationship between learning environments and students' approaches to learning, much attention has been directed to aspects that foster a deep approach. Considerably less attention has been directed to aspects that result in the opposite, namely a surface approach. Indeed, there is a small literature focusing on how learning environments can frustrate the basic psychological needs of individuals and, as a result, foster a surface approach. However, hitherto, this stream has focused on controlling elements in learning environments. We add to this latter literature, through focusing on learning-environment uncertainty. This notion emerged from a qualitative study of 19 students at a Swedish university, where we identified three types of learning-environment uncertainty, related to the basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The findings suggest that a surface approach to learning can be understood as a coping strategy that students adopt to reduce such uncertainties.

Regulatory intermediaries—organizations that operate between regulators (public and private) and target groups—perform a range of important functions. While most previous research has focused on intermediaries that have been delegated official authority, in this paper we focus on unofficial and informal intermediary functions aiming to advance the governance of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) chemicals. Chemical pollution is a growing environmental and health concern, leading to both public and private regulatory initiatives. By studying a particular segment—paperboard food packaging in Sweden—the study generates insights into critical functions performed by unofficial intermediaries (Svenskt Vatten and ChemSec) in this regulatory regime, which extend and expand regulatory reach in various ways. The study also shows the importance of different types of intermediaries that interact in dynamic ways, and the role of material artifacts in processes of intermediation. These unofficial functions are arguably important for the functioning of complex, hybrid forms of governance, but they also prompt critical questions about the effectiveness, legitimacy, and role of intermediaries in generating needed transformative change.