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The purpose of this study is to compare and validate firms’ internal and external stakeholder considerations in sustainable business practices across business settings. It aims to assess the validity and reliability of a stakeholder framework appearing in previous studies.

The study uses a questionnaire survey and a cross-industry sample consisting of the largest firms in corporate Sweden. Multivariate analysis tests the stakeholder framework. Each of the 294 key informants was initially identified and contacted by telephone, generating a response rate of 36.5 per cent.

The tested stakeholder framework appears valid and reliable across countries to assess the internal stakeholders of focal firms, as well as their up- and downstream, market and societal stakeholders. This study provides additional empirical support to categorize firms’ stakeholder considerations in sustainable business practices.

This study validates previous findings in terms of Swedish firms’ considerations of internal and external stakeholders in sustainable business practices in relation to one similar country (Norway) and one different country (Spain). The study also shows how the three countries perceive the focal company and societal stakeholders differently.

The tested framework sheds light on focal firms’ stakeholder considerations in sustainable business practices and elucidates the extent to which firms’ account for their internal and external stakeholders in sustainable business practices.

This study contributes to the development of valid and reliable stakeholder theory across contexts and through time. In particular, it contributes to the development of a valid and reliable framework to categorize firms’ stakeholder considerations in sustainable business practices.

The triple bottom line (TBL) is still commonly explored in research without joint consideration of economic, social and environmental elements of business sustainability (BS). The purpose of this paper is to re-test and validate a BS framework based on the TBL approach.

This study is based on a questionnaire survey consisting of the largest firms in corporate Sweden. A total of 107 usable questionnaires were ultimately received, for a response rate of 36.5 percent.

The findings validate and extend a framework of a TBL-dominant logic for BS. A total of 19 dimensions indicating satisfactory validity and reliability of the BS framework were identified.

The BS framework offers relevant insights to monitor and assess a TBL-dominant logic for BS. It also provides opportunities for further research.

Managers can use the BS framework as a tool to map firm priorities in connection with BS. Each dimension of the BS framework offers insights into how to monitor and assess firms’ efforts in the TBL.

This study contributes to validate and extend the TBL-dominant logic for BS. The BS framework also offers a timely and relevant contribution to both scholars and practitioners engaging in business sustainability.

One difficult problem in robotics is localization: the ability of a mobile robot to determine its position in the environment. Roboticists around the globe have been working to find a solution to localization for more than 20 years; however, only in the past 4‐5 years we have seen some promising results. In this work, we describe a first‐of‐a‐kind, breakthrough technology for localization that requires only one low‐cost camera (less than 50USD) and odometry to provide localization. Because of its low‐cost and robust performance in realistic environments, this technology is particularly well‐suited for use in consumer and commercial applications.

The purpose of this article is to investigate attempts to safeguard classical humanism in secondary schools by appealing to a cultural-historical link with Antiquity, voiced in the face of educational reforms in Sweden between 1865 and 1971.

By focusing on the content of the pedagogical journal Pedagogisk Tidskrift, the article highlights a number of examples of how an ancient historical lineage was evoked and how historical knowledge was mobilized and contested in various ways.

The article argues that the enduring negotiation over the educational need to maintain a strong link with the ancient past was strained due to increasing scholarly specialization and thus entangled in competing views on reform and what was deemed “traditional” or “modern”.

From a larger perspective, the conflict over the role of Antiquity in Swedish secondary schools reveals a trajectory for the history of education as part of and later apart from a general history of the humanities. Classical history originally served as a common past from which Swedish culture and education developed, but later lost this integrating function within the burgeoning discipline of Pedagogy. The findings demonstrate the value of bringing the newly (re)formed history of humanities and history of education closer together.

The purpose of this study is to explore the exogenous and endogenous drivers of the high-growth of Unicorn start-ups along their life cycle, with a particular focus on Unicorns in the fintech industry.

The study employs an explorative longitudinal analysis with a matched-pair of two cases of Unicorns start-ups with similar antecedent features to understand holistically drivers over the longer term.

High-growth patterns over the longer term are the result of a combined industry- and company-life cycle perspective. Drivers and growth patterns vary significantly according to the time of entry in the industry and its development status. The findings are systematised within a set of propositions to be tested in future research.

The limitations lie in empirical evidence, as the analysis is limited to one-matched-pair. The revealed Unicorns' drivers for long-term growth might encourage future research to further investigate these drivers on a larger scale.

The study offers practical recommendations for start-ups with high-growth ambitions and advice to policy makers regarding the development of tailor-made support programs.

The study significantly extends extant work on growth and high-growth by examining endogenous and exogenous triggers over time and by linking the Unicorn-life cycle to the industry life cycle, an approach which has, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, not yet been applied.

In the present discourse of university politics, collegiality has come to be viewed as a slow force – seemingly inefficient and conservative compared to popular management models. Concerns have thus been raised regarding the future prospects of such a form of governance in a society marked by haste and acceleration. One way to bring perspectives on this contentious issue is to perceive it in the light of the long history of the university. In this article, I derive insights about the shifting state of collegial governance through a survey of an intense period of reforms in Sweden c. 1850–1920 when higher education was allegedly engaged in a process of modernization and professionalization. Drawing on recent work in historical theory and science and technology studies (STS), I revisit contests and debates on collegiality in connection to a number of governmental commissions. Focusing on the co-existence – and collisions – of multiple temporalities reveals that overcoming potential problems associated with heterogeneous rhythms required an active work of synchronization by universities in order to make them appear timely, as higher education expanded along with the mounting ambitions of national politics, focused on centralization, efficiency, and rationalization. The analysis is structured around three focal issues for which collegial ideals and practices, including their temporal characteristics, were particularly questioned: (a) the composition of the university board, (b) the employment status of professors, and (c) hiring or promotion practices. Pointing at more structural challenges, this study highlights how collegiality requires a constant maintenance paired with an awareness of its longer and complex history.

Lean remains popular in a wide range of private and public sectors and continues to attract a significant amount of research. However, most of this research is not grounded in theory. This paper presents and discusses different expert viewpoints on the role of theory in lean research and practice and provides guidelines for future research.

Seven experienced lean authors independently provide their views to the question “is Lean a theory?” before Rachna Shah summarizes the viewpoints and provides a holistic outlook for lean research.

Authors agree, disagree and sometimes agree to disagree. However, a close look reveals agreement on several key points. The paper concludes that Lean is not a theory but has plenty of theoretical underpinnings. Many lean-related theories provide promising opportunities for future research.

As researchers, we are asked to justify our research drawing on “theory,” but what does that mean for a practice-driven phenomenon such as lean? This paper provides answers and directions for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how early career professionals “do gender” in their new professional context. Specifically, it explores how two groups of graduates, psychologists and political scientists, “do gender” as early career professionals with a particular emphasis on how they acquire legitimacy in relation to their colleagues and clients.

Drawing on a qualitative research methodology, graduates from two Master's programmes in Sweden were interviewed after 30‐34 months of professional work. Analysis of the interview data is located within a “doing gender” perspective with special reference to Acker's conception of employment and organizations as gendered processes influencing individual action.

The paper identifies two different ways in which participants “do gender” in their professional practice in order to acquire legitimacy: “self‐presentation” and “strategy”. This finding suggests that female and male early career professionals acquire different kinds of legitimacy, which could, in turn, be derived from the gendered processes that exist in contemporary organizations. The paper will also report that when they “do gender” participants also produce and reproduce a gendered notion of a professional project that influences their subsequent professional practice as well as how they position themselves as knowledgeable and competent.

The perspective of “doing gender” contributes an alternative understanding of graduate employment and the encounter with working life. It especially enables us to capture gender as an important influence on individual action in the organizational context.