To Örebro University

What is the role of innovation policy for accomplishing renewal of mature industries in Western economies? Drawing upon an unusually rich dataset spanning 9752 digitized archival documents, we categorize and code decisions taken by policymakers on several levels while also mapping and quantifying the strategic activities of both entrant firms and incumbent monopolists over a decade. Our data concerns two empirical cases from Sweden during the time period 1980–1990: the financial sector and the telecommunications sector. In both industries, a combination of technological and institutional upheaval came into motion during this time period which in turn fueled the revitalization of the Swedish economy in the subsequent decades. Our findings show that Swedish policymakers in both cases consistently acted in order to promote the emergence of more competition and de novo entrant firms at the expense of established monopolies. The paper quantifies and documents this process while also highlighting several enabling conditions. In conclusion, the results indicate that successful innovation policy in mature economies is largely a matter of strategically dealing with resourceful vested interest groups, alignment of expectations, and removing resistance to industrial renewal. 

Digital entrepreneurship may result in institutional turbulence and new initiatives are frequently blocked by vested interest groups who posit superior financial and relational resources. In this paper, we explore the role of cities in facilitating digital entrepreneurship and overcoming institutional resistance to innovation. Drawing upon two historical case studies of digital entrepreneurship in the city of Stockholm along with an extensive material on the sharing economy in Sweden, our results suggest that cities offer an environment that is critical for digital entrepreneurship. The economic and technological diversity of a city may provide the field conditions required for institutional change to take place and to avoid regulatory capture.

This paper aims to analyze how consumers’ articulate goals associated with the sharing economy and its associated implications for consumer policy. By utilizing the methodological approach of Social Media Analytics (SMA), we track the ways in which consumers’ express goals and criticism associated to the popular accommodation sharing platform Airbnb. Based on our empirical material that covers 7,022 user-generated content published over a 12-month period, we illustrate a spectrum of eight distinct goals as well as associated dimensions of criticism that consumers demonstrate. While goals associated towards financial and efficiency gains are dominating, consumers’ criticism tends to be centered on macro environmental consequences of the sharing economy. In view of previous studies suggesting that utilitarian goals almost entirely dominate consumers’ goals associated with the sharing economy, this paper therefore contributes to extant literature on the phenomenon by illustrating the multitude of ways in which consumers relate to the sharing economy and the associated consequences for the scope, scale and speed of future ways in which the sharing economy can be regulated.

As the emergence of sharing economy firms changes existing institutional structures and bring forth increasing institutional complexity for firms, regulators and users alike, this paper aims to analyze how the public adhere to institutional orders in resolving emerging controversies associated with the sharing economy. By analyzing four cases of societal controversies concerning the accommodation sharing platform Airbnb in the Swedish market during 12 months between the years 2015-2016, we illustrate the ways in which the public adhered to three main institutional orders of state, market and community in resolving four identified controversies related to prostitution, racism, failure to pay taxes and housing shortage allegedly caused by the firm. In perspective to the ways in which extant literature emphasize state and market as fundamental institutional orders for resolving institutional complexity, our results highlights the role of community as a key institutional order situated in the intersection between the state and the market in the setting of the sharing economy.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of fashion weeks on brand constellations of participating fashion companies in social media.

Design/methodology/approach: The study analyses how brand constellations take form for seven Swedish fashion companies before, during and after Fashion Week Stockholm. In total, 3,449 user-generated contents referring to the sampled brands were collected and analysed.

Findings: On average, brand constellations of participating companies are increasingly incorporating other participating brands as a result of the fashion week. Based on the presented results, four brand constellation outcomes for participating fashion companies are identified: brand constellation amplification, concentration, division and dilution.

Research limitations/implications: As this paper is focussed on the Swedish market, additional results from fashion weeks taking place in other cities would be beneficial to verify the four brand constellation outcomes.

Practical implications: The results question the resilience of professionally curated brand constellations due to the emergence of user-driven constellations that also shape the position of fashion brands. Therefore, this development can potentially have a considerable impact on often carefully orchestrated brand positioning strategies executed by fashion companies.

Social implications: Digitally fuelled interdependences of brand constellations by professionals and consumers attest to the dilution of borders between consumers and producers.

Originality/value: This paper contributes to the field of fashion marketing and management by identifying four different brand constellation outcomes in social media for participating fashion companies as a result of fashion weeks and how to managerially handle these respective outcomes.