Till Örebro universitet

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.

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.

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.

Inköp och supply chain management ger en introduktion till de centrala principerna inom området genom att anlägga ett brett ledningsperspektiv.

Denna nya utgåva beskriver den senaste utvecklingen inom inköp och supply chain management och presenterar en rad relevanta och intressanta fallstudier tänkta att berika läsningen. Med hjälp av exempel från företag som Shell, Hewlett Packard, Mattel och Nespresso illustreras de typiska utmaningar som dagens globala organisationer ställs inför varje dag när det gäller inköp och supply chain management.

Centrala områden:

• En grundlig redogörelse av den senaste utvecklingen inom inköp och supply chain management, inklusive den cirkulära ekonomin.

• En mer ingående genomgång av inköp och affärsstrategi samt CSR (corporate social responsibility).

• Nya fallstudier som ger en ökad förståelse av inköp i praktiken.

• De senaste förändringarna i europeisk upphandlingslagstiftning.

• Utförliga diskussioner om partnerskap och samarbetsinriktade leverantörsrelationer.

The benefits of electronic ordering (e-ordering) systems are widely acknowledged, but achieving these benefits remains a challenge, in large part due to end-users’ resistance to using such systems. The present paper aims at making a contribution to this area by analysing practical recommendations given in the literature on individual e-ordering acceptance, thus increasing our understanding of the possibilities managers have to influence adoption and use behaviour. The literature-generated recommendations are analysed using empirical data from a 4-year longitudinal case study conducted at an organization that in 2002 began implementing an e-ordering system and by 2006 had achieved the planned compliance rate.

Using structures from adaptive structuration theory as an analytic tool and analysing data from a four-year longitudinal case study, the present paper focuses on structures that inhibit and enable end-user adoption and use of an e-ordering system. The structures presented, including routines, culture and how to order and authorize in the e-ordering system, have not previously been discussed in e-ordering research. Structures found to influence endusers’ adoption and use of the e-ordering system are: the restrictiveness and comprehensiveness of the technical system’s structural features, the order, working and authorization routine in place prior to the e-ordering system, and how well these routines correspond with how to order and authorize in the system. Organizational culture was also found to affect end-users’ acceptance of the e-ordering system.

Organizations have spent and continue to spend millions of dollars on information systems (IS) in order to enable business success. Information systems have long been used to help managers make better decisions, better understand the nature of customers and improve employee productivity. They have enabled transformations in organizations, such as simplification and acceleration of work processes, and contributed to continued improvement and innovation in these processes. It is not that easy however to make this simplification and acceleration of work processes to happen. A common problem is that individuals that are supposed to use these systems do not use them, and if an information systems is to contribute to business success it has to be adopted and used. The question is therefore, how do we get individuals to adopt and use systems that are implemented?

This dissertation focus on what influences individual adoption and use, and how we can get individuals to adopt and use systems that are implemented. The information system under investigation is an electronic ordering (e-ordering) system. E-ordering systems are used by individual end-users (requestors, authorizers and goods receivers) in an organization when ordering products and services. The system aims at contributing to reduced maverick (i.e. wild= purchases and increased compliance with a few centrally chosen suppliers, thus facilitating lower purchasing prices and a reduction of the costs for purchasing. The thesis also discusses the relative difficulty in getting individuals to continue to use the systems compared to get them to adopt it. Another issue that is discussed is that the acceptance process does not have to happen gradually, it can instead happen in short spurts. It is further discussed what can influence these spurts.

Implementing an e-ordering system in a successful way, i.e., managing the implementation process, overcoming the barriers that occur and achieving a satisfactory compliance rate, is not as easy as some consultants and software companies claim. Understanding how a given organisation has managed the implementation process (resulting in a satisfactory compliance rate) may help other organisations achieve the successful implementation of e-ordering systems. The present paper describes the implementation of an e-ordering system in a large pharmaceutical organisation, discussing the problems it faced and how those were overcome. An analysis of the success factors found in previous research is presented, revealing one area that influences implementation success to a larger extent: the end user uptake. A four-year longitudinal case study is presented, which is based on interviews, observations made in daily work, at meetings and training sessions, and other documentation.