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In this paper, the authors address the lack of methodologies and tools that support community and consensus processes in online settings while also acknowledging agonistic conflicts and a diversity of interest communities. The purpose of this paper is to develop a methodology and tool support for analysing discursive processes, as well as for creating structural support for better informed deliberative processes.

This participatory design is based on two case studies of urban planning projects in Swedish municipalities. An ethnographic study of information practises among municipality officials and residents exposed a need for supporting the direct communication with citizens and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), as well as democratic processes within groups.

The authors show how a general participatory methodology on different levels of governance can be supported using a standard type of interface and analytical tools for structured discussions and statistics.

The tool design has not been tested in any larger scale. The tool is at present foremost useful for communicating in participatory contexts. The actor perspective in the methodology used means that the actors, rather than organisations, are highlighted as the owners of specific questions. It also means that a survey or discussion initiated by a government can have competition from other actors using the same instruments or data.

Except for being an analytical tool for analysing participatory attributes and for better understanding of how decisions are formed, the platform also includes tools for more elaborated decision support, as well as support for voting and pro/con argumentation integrated with discussion forum for providing reasonable conditions for a broader more well-structured participation.

The actor perspective in the suggested methodology and tool support means that the actors, rather than organisations, are highlighted as the owners of specific questions. It also means that a survey or discussion initiated by a government can have competition from other actors using the same instruments or data.

This platform provides integrated analytical tools and elaborated decision support for individual users, to support democracy from a micro-perspective rather than from a government perspective, and reaches significantly beyond the capacities of similar tools and methods presently available. The traditional dichotomy between the government and the citizens in e-government research is, thus, avoided by developing a tool that takes the individual actor as the starting point rather than an abstract collective.

Organisations working with children have acknowledged that unaccompanied refugee minors (URM) across Europe are exposed to environments and situations that put them at risk for becoming addicted to drugs or becoming involved in crime. The purpose of this paper is to study an examination of existing international research concerning URM and of whether, and if so how, issues relating to drug use and criminality among these children are discussed in the international literature.

A literature review was conducted using PsycINFO, PubMed, Sociological abstracts and ERIC databases, which together cover the social and behavioural science and also medicine.

Findings from the present review show that the issues of drug abuse and criminality among URM are rarely acknowledged in the international research literature. When the occurrence of substance abuse and/or criminality is discussed, it is often in relation to mental health problems and in terms of self-medication, i.e. that alcohol or drugs are used by the URM to cope with painful experiences or mental health problems, and also with the challenges of integrating into a new society, difficulties finding work, unsuitable living conditions and a lack of social support.

This review shows that several researchers have emphasised that untreated mental health problems, stressful living conditions and a lack of support and control might put these children at risk for substance abuse and criminality, and this suggests a need for further research in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to add to our understanding of how external factors such as funding and external accountabilities affect the organisational inner workings, especially identity issues.

The paper is based on a comparative case study of two professional chamber orchestras, one in Sweden and one in the UK. The two orchestras had significantly different funding conditions and had different relations with funders and were thus exposed to different kinds of accountability dilemmas. The two organisations were studied using and ethnographically inspired approach. The developments of various parts of the organisations were studied, such as funding, management, strategy, management control and identity issues.

The paper illustrates how the solution to accountability dilemmas in an organisation can, over time, result in the protection or the dilution of a perceived organisational core and thus in an identity struggle. Especially, management has to deal with the balance between financial and operational accountability, where organisational members could perceive the decisions to be confirming or rejecting what they perceived as being the higher purpose of their work.

This paper may help managers become more aware of the long ranging consequences of managerial decisions and how such decisions may affect the identity orientation of organisational members.

The paper combines the concept of identity with the concept of accountability, something that has not been done to a large extent in previous research.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and discuss to what extent and why women's entrepreneurship contributes to rural economic viability and gender equality in an advanced welfare state.

The authors use detailed register data to explore men's and women's rural businesses in the most common industries for rural women entrepreneurs in the Swedish welfare state. Based on a literature review, the authors develop hypotheses and analyse how family, business and industry factors influence earnings.

Women's rural entrepreneurship is important for rural viability, as women's businesses provide a wide range of services necessary for life in rural areas. Although women's rural businesses are not significantly smaller than those of men, women's income is lower and more sensitive to business and industry variables. Marriage has positive effects for the earnings of men but negative effects for the earnings of women. The authors argue that the results are contingent on the gendering of entrepreneurship and industries, as well as on the local rural gender contracts. For these reasons, the importance of women entrepreneurs for rural viability is not reflected in their own incomes. Hence, women's rural entrepreneurship does not result in (economic) gender equality.

Entrepreneurship scholars rarely explore women's rural entrepreneurship, and particularly not in the Global North or Western welfare states. Therefore, this empirical study from Sweden provides novel information on how the gender order on the business, industry and family levels influences the income of men and women entrepreneurs differently.

Decentralisation in health care has been proposed as a way to make services more responsive to local needs and by that improve patient care. This study analyses how the senior management team conceptualised and implemented a decentralised management model within a large public health care delivery organisation.

Data from in-depth interviews with a senior management team were used in a directed content analysis. Underlying assumptions and activities in the decentralisation process are presented in the logic model and scrutinised in an a priori logic analysis using relevant scientific literature.

The study found support in the scientific literature for the underlying assumptions that increased responsibility will empower managers as clinical directors know their local prerequisites best and are able to adapt to patient needs. Top management should function like an air traffic control tower, trust and loyalty improve managerial capacity, increased managerial skills release creativity and engagement and a system perspective will support collaboration and learning.

To the authors’ knowledge this is the first a priori logic analysis of a decentralised management model in a healthcare delivery organisation in primary and community care. It shows that the activities consist with underlying assumptions, supported by evidence, and timely planned give managers decision space and ability to use their delegated authority, not disregarding accountability and fostering necessary organisational and individual capacities to avoid suboptimisation.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate how decisions are taken in the early stages of a renovation project, up to the design brief, leading up to the decisions on how to proceed with the renovation in the design phase. Although many technical solutions are visualised in the design phase, it is in the early evaluations of needs and demands, leading up to the design brief, that set the requirements for viable solutions in the design and production phases.

The study was carried out as a longitudinal case study of the planning phases of a school renovation. The studied buildings were researched by document analysis and by attending meetings over a four-year period between the building owners and the municipality.

Aspects such as technical status, energy use and indoor environment in the buildings were not discussed to any great extent. A few inventories were carried out in the buildings to establish their technical and accessibility status. The aspects mainly discussed in the studied renovation project have been: accessibility, functionality with respect to teaching and learning requirements in addition to architectural and cultural values.

This study illustrates the comprehensive analysis needed when renovating a building and on difficulties of addressing and evaluating all the viable aspects of concern. It also shows that this planning for a renovation is not a straight line but rather a process where conditions are continuously changing.

This paper aims to formalize long-term trajectories of human civilization as a scientific and ethical field of study. The long-term trajectory of human civilization can be defined as the path that human civilization takes during the entire future time period in which human civilization could continue to exist.

This paper focuses on four types of trajectories: status quo trajectories, in which human civilization persists in a state broadly similar to its current state into the distant future; catastrophe trajectories, in which one or more events cause significant harm to human civilization; technological transformation trajectories, in which radical technological breakthroughs put human civilization on a fundamentally different course; and astronomical trajectories, in which human civilization expands beyond its home planet and into the accessible portions of the cosmos.

Status quo trajectories appear unlikely to persist into the distant future, especially in light of long-term astronomical processes. Several catastrophe, technological transformation and astronomical trajectories appear possible.

Some current actions may be able to affect the long-term trajectory. Whether these actions should be pursued depends on a mix of empirical and ethical factors. For some ethical frameworks, these actions may be especially important to pursue.

Since the first Volume of this Bibliography there has been an explosion of literature in all the main areas of business. The researcher and librarian have to be able to uncover specific articles devoted to certain topics. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume III, in addition to the annotated list of articles as the two previous volumes, contains further features to help the reader. Each entry within has been indexed according to the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus and thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid information retrieval. Each article has its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. The first Volume of the Bibliography covered seven journals published by MCB University Press. This Volume now indexes 25 journals, indicating the greater depth, coverage and expansion of the subject areas concerned.

Having a varied set of skills is essential for becoming and succeeding in entrepreneurship, and developing students’ entrepreneurial skills is a key objective of entrepreneurship education programs at universities worldwide. Moreover, measuring the learning outcomes of education is essential for designing effective training. This review provides a framework of the variety of skills measured in the entrepreneurship education literature.

We reviewed the entrepreneurship education literature and identified 79 studies that used skill-related measures. We identified, grouped, and operationalized entrepreneurial skills related to the entrepreneurial tasks of sensing, acting, and mobilizing under uncertain conditions.

We synthesized the current knowledge related to developing various entrepreneurial skills and provided a framework of ten types of entrepreneurship-related skills measured in prior studies of entrepreneurship education initiatives. We showed that entrepreneurship education develops various skills relevant to entrepreneurship and other concepts, indicating the value of entrepreneurship education for increasing students’ general skill level.

Our framework provides a valuable tool for discussing what skills-related training should be included in entrepreneurship education curricula and how the learning outcomes from entrepreneurship education can be measured. Focusing on students’ entrepreneurial skills is closer to entrepreneurial action than intentions or mindsets, and skills are a more realis-tic and inclusive outcome of entrepreneurship education than start-up rates and self-employment. Thus, entrepreneurial skills are a useful concept for clarifying and measuring the specific learning outcomes of entrepreneurship education.