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The purpose of this article is to explore how agency is distributed between human actors and nonhuman elements in entrepreneurship.

It is based on an inductive longitudinal case study of a garden in a rural community in northern Sweden. The methodology includes an ethnography of the garden, spanning the course of 16 years, and a careful investigation of the entrepreneurial processes contained within it.

This article identifies and describes different practices to explain how agency is distributed between human actors and nonhuman elements in the garden's context. Three different practices were identified and discussed, namely “calling”, “resisting”, and “provoking”.

Agency/structure constitutes a longstanding conundrum in entrepreneurship and context. This study contributes to the on-going debate on context in entrepreneurship, and introduces a posthumanist perspective—particularly that of distributed agency—to theorising in entrepreneurship. Rather than focussing on a human (hero)-driven change process, induced through the exploitation of material objects, this novel perspective views entrepreneurship as both a human and a nonhuman venture, occurring through interactions located in particular places and times. Coming from the agency/structure dichotomy, this article reaches out for elements traditionally established on the structure side, distributing them to the agency side of the dichotomy. As such, it contributes to an understanding of the agency of nonhuman elements, and how they direct entrepreneurship in context. This theoretical development prepares entrepreneurship theories to be better able to engage with nonhuman elements and provides example solutions for the ongoing climate crisis.

Industry standards affect the diffusion and adoption of new technology and the competitiveness of individual players but their development is not under the direct control of individual actors. Examines the role and importance of personal networks in the development of industry standards on the basis of a case study of Ericsson’s involvement in the development of standards for 3G mobile telephony. Notes how relations among parties and many types of forums stemming from previous development and marketing involvement affect the complex set of interactions shape the bottom‐up self‐organizing way in which standards emerge. The case study has implications for our understanding of the way standards develop and for managers attempting to influence the outcomes.

In this chapter, we explore the impact of socioemotional and financial wealth on the resource management of family firms. We use MoDo, a Swedish pulp and paper firm, covering three generations of owner-managers from 1873 to 1991, to grasp the shifting emphases on socioemotional and financial wealth in the management of the company. Identifying four strategic issues of decisive importance for the development of MoDo, we analyze the organizational values that guided the management of these issues. We propose that financial and socioemotional wealth stand for two different rationalities that infuse organizational values. The MoDo case illustrates how these rationalities go hand in hand for extended periods of time, safeguarding both financial success and socioemotional endowments. However, in a situation where the rationalities are no longer in line with the development of the industry context, the conflict arising between the two rationalities may have fatal consequences for the firm in question.

Swedish interest in research on channels of distribution for industrial goods has been limited historically. The same is true in other countries as well, as has been reported, for example, by Ford. In fact, this is tree for the field of industrial marketing in general. It is a little surprising that industrial markets have been so neglected. If economic values are considered, producer markets are dominant over consumer markets. According to Flodhammar and Nielsen, the turnover of the Swedish producer market is four times that of the consumer market. One reason for the slight research interest is that up to the 1970s many industries could be characterised as operating in a “seller's market’. Demand exceeded supply. No kind of modern marketing existed; it was only a question of selling.

This paper aims to examine how input from the digital restructuring of the workplace and productivity affects the risk of job loss and unemployment.

Relying on the concepts of technological unemployment and the productivity paradox as well as the theory of skills-biased technological change, the analysis incorporated micro-level individual determinants of job loss, macro-level economic determinants of input and the contribution from traditional (machinery and equipment) vs innovative (ICT) factors of production. The model has been also controlled for “traditional” indicators of “outsiderness” in the labour market. The Quality of Work Life Survey, which is a broad-based national interview survey produced by Statistics Finland, for 2018, the latest year available (N = 4,110) has been used in the analysis. Binomial logistic regression has been applied in order to estimate the effects of individual- and macro-level factors on the risk of job loss.

The results support arguments for the divergence between effects from labour- vs total-factor productivity on the risks of job loss, as well as the divergence between effects for temporary (layoff) vs permanent job loss (dismissal or unemployment). While the contribution from “traditional” factors of production to labour productivity potentially decreases the risk of permanent job loss, input from “innovative” factors of production on total-factor productivity potentially causes adverse effects (e.g. growing risks of permanent job loss).

The paper contributes to the theoretical discussion about technological unemployment and productivity by means of including two different concepts into a single econometric model, thus enabling examination of the research problem in an innovative way.

Strategic option generation is a fundamental step in strategy formulation. Several lenses have been proposed to explain its foundations, including the microeconomics positioning school, and the resource and capabilities based view of the firm. These approaches are largely based on inductive and deductive logics, which are not the logics that provide strategic options that are potentially novel, profitable, and largely differentiated from competitive offerings. In this chapter, we propose a unifying framework of the cognitive foundations of strategic option generation. Building on five fundamental cognitive acts – imitation, framing, analogical reasoning, abductive reasoning, and mental simulation, this proposed model both synthesizes the extant literature and provides guidance about promising avenues for future theoretical and empirical research.

Studies of strategic change are mainly characterized by a linear time view, treating time as a variable, a package of narrative events or as a path that the organization “travels” over time. The purpose of this paper is to move beyond this view providing an alternative, nonlinear conception of time.

Framed by the logics of consequence and appropriateness an empirical example of strategic change within the Scandinavian consumer co‐operation is given, illustrating the exploration of business opportunities and the exploitation of socially and historically rooted values and principles. Drawing on philosophical hermeneutics a qualitative method is chosen, the basis on which the empirical material through interviews and documents is generated.

The empirical study illustrates that the logic of consequence communicates with the logic of appropriateness in a nonlinear manner while interrelating the future and the past. The exploration of business opportunities shapes the past, which is brought to light when opportunities are expressed through the present, continuously forming and reforming the present and in turn shedding new light on the past.

Although various forms of intellectual bridging and transfer are encouraged within the field of strategic management, notably lacking are studies that focus on time. This paper brings to the fore an alternative conception of time. It acknowledges the past in its hermeneutical significance when ascribing the past a dynamic repetitive role.

The purpose of this study is to systematically analyze family business research, which has experienced tremendous growth. Through this study’s categorization and evaluation of research, the authors illustrate the evolution of family business research in management, entrepreneurship and family business domains over the past decade.

This study provides an interdisciplinary systematic review of family business literature between 2008 and 2022 to analyze the family business field. Following similar previous reviews (Chrisman et al., 2003; Debicki et al., 2009), this study’s final sample includes 1,443 studies, which the authors categorize into six broad topics and 21 subcategories of management topics.

This study’s analysis reveals the field has grown nearly fivefold since 2007. As such, the authors examine the growth and decline of specific research topics. The authors also find in the past decade family business research has experienced rapid growth across a variety of outlets, signaling increasing reach, richness and legitimacy of the field.

By reviewing and analyzing 1,443 family business articles, the results illustrate the evolution of family business research over the past decade and what this means for its future. Based on this study’s systematic review, the authors offer insights into the state of the field and propose avenues for future research so the field can continue to prosper.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the Swedish Advertisers’ Association's role in the institutional development of Swedish international advertising during 1955–1972.

A qualitative analysis of business association sources is used to explore the institutional development of international advertising.

A new postwar paradigm that focused on a consumer-oriented brand ideology enabled marketing executives in the Swedish Advertisers’ Association to develop a new discourse on international advertising in Sweden, which then was institutionalized within a national network on export promotion. The institutionalization process was supported by a corporatist system typical of smaller export dependent postwar European economies.

While based on a national case, this study points to the importance of understanding how advertising concepts are embedded within other economic, political and cultural systems than in those they originated in and how this contributes to a heterogenous implementation of similar ideas and practices. This study also illustrates how members can use their association to institutionalize a new discourse on marketing and network with other actors to enhance the use and reputation of its ideas and practices.

By highlighting the importance of analyzing both internal and external organizational relations, this study contributes to the research on history of marketing by making salient the importance of an institutional perspective to understand key processes in marketing. In practice neither the institutional perspective nor the explanatory power of discourse has received much attention, therefore the study results should be both interesting and valid for practitioners as well.

The study of the historical development of international advertising is limited and often descriptive. This study contributes to the literature by using a theoretical and methodological approach to make salient how the interaction between discourse, marketing associations and other collective actors propelled the institutionalization of international advertising within a specific national context.

E-business is an important business tool, and the increasing presence on the internet reflects this fact. For small- and medium-sized firms (SMEs) interested in internationalizing, their internet offers some advantages, because, with e-business, borders between countries are becoming less relevant, and more direct interaction between business entities is made possible. In this article, we unravel the use of internet usage of different types of firms. First, we present a categorization of different local and international firms, and, second, we focus on the internet usage by born global firms compared to the other types of firms. We conclude that born global firms use the internet to convey their market presence, but only to a limited extent do they sell their products via the internet. Instead, they use the internet to support the already existing relationships by describing their products on web pages, offering services related to their products via the internet, facilitating product development via the internet, and building and maintaining relations to foreign customers. We also stress the importance of further research on how born global firms adapt to the internet in practice.