Search results

The purpose of this paper is to lay a current, research-based foundation for investigation of the concept of innovative price models and its connection to business models.

The design is composed of a structured literature review of articles on price models published in 22 journals during 42 years. This then serves as a base for a subsequent conceptual discussion about the foundation of innovative price models.

The literature review yields only very few results that are loosely scattered across various areas and mostly without any kind of deeper exploration of the concept of price models. The paper therefore goes on to conceptually explore some fundamental conditions that might influence or even determine price models. The final outcome of this exploration is the relation, intention, technology and environment (RITE) framework that is a meta-model for conceptualising innovative price models.

The literature review could include additional journals and areas, and empirical testing of the RITE framework as yet has been limited.

The RITE framework can be used by practitioners as a tool for investigating the potential and usefulness of developing the capability to handle innovative price models.

The RITE framework provides fundamental conditions, which influence, or even determine, how innovative price models are developed and applied.

There is an increasing interest in employing e‐mail or other Internet‐based messaging systems in communication between patients and healthcare professionals. Many projects are put into practice, and numerous studies shed light on patients’ preferences regarding e‐messaging and their experience and use of e‐messaging. We argue in this paper that the conventional research in the field to some extent lacks a discussion about what kinds of knowledge an e‐messaging system generates among its users when it is put into practice. We suggest that placing the concept of knowledge as a discourse in focus, stressing how patients make judgements and distinctions in their use of e‐messaging, exposes important aspects not only regarding how patients relate to the system but also what e‐messaging in the healthcare sector means. We illustrate such a perspective with empirical material based on two focus groups of users of an e‐messaging system via a Swedish healthcare Web portal. Three kinds of knowledge formations are illuminated in this context: how patients develop knowledge by comparing e‐messaging services with traditional ways to contact healthcare; how the system generates a further demand for control by its users; and how the e‐messaging system helps users develop knowledge of the healthcare system in general.

Purpose – To explore the links between entrepreneurship and misbehavior.

Approach – Conceptual development using cases as illustrative examples.

Findings – The chapter finds that there is an overlap between the way misbehavior is defined and the way entrepreneurship is conceptualized in the literature. It also finds previous research, distinguishing between desirable and undesirable misbehavior based on the intentions or the outcomes of behavior, insufficient in relation to entrepreneurship as misbehavior. The reason is that for entrepreneurial ventures, the underlying intentions are often good, but the outcomes often not; and that making assessments of the outcomes of entrepreneurial ventures a priori is notoriously difficult. Assessing misbehavior based only on organizational level evaluations is likewise insufficient in relation to entrepreneurship. The reason for this is that support for the venture may be needed also from actors outside of the organization. Furthermore, what constitutes the organization is not always clear. Therefore, we argue that it is necessary to broaden the view of what institutions determine whether a venture classifies as misbehavior when analyzing entrepreneurship.

Research limitations – The cases used to illustrate the overlap between entrepreneurship and misbehavior are conspicuous and not necessarily representative of entrepreneurship and misbehavior in general.

Originality – This is a first attempt at merging the misbehavior and entrepreneurship literatures, which highlights an important niche with a great promise for future research.

The purpose of the article is to present MARC, a model for assessing – and improving – the health of organisations from a humanistic point of view.

The model has been developed in an organisational development clinical research tradition. The validity of the model rests on logical reasoning grounded in organisational and salutogenic research, and on it appearing useful to clients and members in organisations where it has been employed.

When using the MARC model to structure analyses and facilitate discussions in organisations that have sought aid, the model has helped reveal major sources of imbalance between its four aspects: meaning, authority, rationality and care. A major survey revealed no statistically significant differences between men and women. This indicates that the MARC concepts are general rather than gender‐specific. The results also contradicted the often stated notion that men emphasise “hard” aspects (A and R) while women emphasise “soft” ones (M and C).

The paper demonstrates that support for the importance of each of the four aspects – meaning, authority, rationality and care – as perspectives in analysing and understanding organisations can be found in the organisational research literature. The authors' contribution is to argue the case that they represent four important human needs that need to be attended to in balance in an organisation if cooperation between the individuals in the organisation is to be sustainable from a human‐centred perspective. MARC is designed to help visualise and focus this balance.

Emailing does not preclude emotional exchange and many times it causes us to engage in spiralling exchanges of increasingly angry emailing. The purpose of this chapter is threefold: to explore how factors of temporality are related to anger when emailing, to model circumstances that protect against, but also ignite, anger escalation, and to raise a discussion for practitioners of how to avoid damaging email communication. By intersecting literature on communication, information systems, psychology and organisational studies, factors leading to an ‘emotional verge’ are identified and summarised in a model showing factors likely to prime, but also protect against, anger escalation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore if and how a professional identity can be formed in the wake of the foundation of a new public service. In the article, the authors focus on how different forces, regulative and emergent, interact and contribute to a development of a coherent understanding of a professional identity in a decentralised service. The case of local authority energy and climate consultancy is an illustrative example of a nascent service occupation in Sweden where the individuals holding the job title are geographically dispersed.

This paper has a qualitative approach and relies on three different data sources: participatory observations, written documents, and in‐depth interviews with energy and climate advisers working in a particular region in Sweden. The study covers the years 2005 to 2010.

The findings suggest that identity formation among geographically dispersed individuals in a nascent service occupation is possible. The development of collective understanding of the professional identity is influenced both by regulative and emergent forces, which interact.

This paper is limited to one particular service occupation in Sweden, from which generalisations are limited.

The findings may serve as useful input for management in order to understand facilitation of identity building among professionals in decentralised functions.

The value of this study lies in the comprehensive approach to how different pertinent forces interact with each other in order for a cohesive understanding of a work‐related identity to develop in newly‐established service occupations.