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This paper aims to explore progressive stakeholders' understandings about and activities for sustainable catering as socio‐cultural embodiments in the Nordic countries. The paper also seeks to highlight focal points for development.

A total of 46 structured telephone interviews with stakeholders within the food system were carried out during 2006 in the Nordic countries. The theoretical frame was established by Billig's idea of “ideological dilemmas” and the interview transcripts were coded into conceptual versus pragmatic speech regarding catering for sustainability. Thereafter, five subcategories were topically identified in each category representing variation in meanings.

Sustainable catering as conceptually understood corresponds to a holistic picture while the pragmatic view represents more everyday working orientation. The analysis delivered five topical categories of conceptual and pragmatic sustainability, which show how sustainability was dealt with in speech by mixing the conceptual ideal with the pragmatic on the “shop floor”, while evidently there seemed to be conceptualisations which do not have their proper counterpart within pragmatic action. The way sustainability was viewed suggests a translation of ideology into practice and to do that proper tools and support are needed, both within own activities and in the linking with other stakeholders.

The participants represented progressive stakeholders as they were members of a Nordic network for healthy and sustainable catering.

The study includes progressive professional stakeholders in different positions within the food system. A system approach is used to better locate differences and similarities in understanding the concept and its translational potential within the food system.

Today, governance of food safety and quality as well as environmental aspects of food chains increasingly operates through public and private standards. This governance, as led by retail power, is often interpreted to undermine farmer’s agrarian independence by dictating detailed agricultural practices on the farm, thereby conditioning access into the food chain. Focusing on farmers’ discursive resources, agrarian writing implies an alternative social force, constructed here as farmer’s freedom. By analysing qualitative data from Finland along the theoretical axes of farmers’ interest in socio-economic achievement and willingness to comply with standards, a more nuanced understanding of farmers’ occupational freedom emerges. Freedom in economic interests and organic farming represents farmers as standard takers as standards supported values most important for them. Realizing freedom in economic creativity can be antagonistic to (public) standards and lead to contestations and negotiations for feasibility. Finally, freedom in self-sufficiency is antithetical to the commercial food chain; however, dissenting from standards displays a strong capacity to close the metabolic rift, along with organic farming. The evidence from the study suggests that farmers’ freedom has the character of a social force to modify food chains and to increase their socio-economic and environmental sustainability and to call for consumers’ freedom to join farmers’ efforts.

This case study aims to analyse dyadic empirical relations within food supply chains. The categories of market, hierarchy or power, network and social relations were used to disclose the coordinative structures on the chain level and connect these with the chain development.

The actors of three vegetable supply chains were interviewed. The coordinative relations of actors were identified and the coordinative structures on the chain level were made visible by combining the ego networks of chain actors. The “story of supply chain development” was intertwined with the analysis.

The studied food supply chains were coordinated mostly by duplex or multiplex relations, combining market, hierarchy or power, network and social relations. In addition to the strategic network, presented in literature, the study identified a coordinative structural mode of socially overlaid network. In general, the network relation was found to be used as an effective “glue” within all coordinative structures. Both coordinative structural modes exhibited substantial growth, on the condition that agricultural base and buyers enabled enlargement.

Economic sociological perspective has been used in explaining food supply chain development by making visible the coordinative relations and structures on the chain level. The chain level phenomena appear as a promising field of study.

This study aims to investigate three relevant antecedents of digital transformation (digital orientation, digital intensity and digital maturity) and their influences on the financial success of companies.

Building on the strategic management and digital transformation literature, five hypotheses are developed to find the relationships between these antecedents and financial success.

Digital orientation and digital intensity alone do not contribute to the financial success of companies. Specifically, digital intensity serves as a negative moderator between digital orientation and financial success, meaning that it reduces the performance effects of digital orientation. Digital maturity acts as a mediator between digital orientation and the financial success of companies and between digital intensity and the financial success of companies.

This research contributes to the literature on strategic management and digital transformation by providing a further understanding of three relevant antecedents of digital transformation (digital orientation, digital intensity and digital maturity) and how they should be positioned alongside digital transformation settings to achieve financial success.

The purpose of this paper is to examine Finnish ninth grade pupils’ (15-16 years) perspectives on hot school lunches and consider the potential of these perspectives as a resource for food and health education.

Data include observations, essays, and visually elicitated focus group discussions from a larger qualitative case study. Data were collected during the term 2012-2013.

Pupils considered the lunch break as their free time and valued discussions with friends. The taste of school food was important for them. Pupils solved contradicting expectations connected to school lunches through constructing social hierarchies, making compromises, and conforming to peers’ or general opinions. Desire for social belonging and independence were important justifications for breaking food-related rules.

Due to the focus on one school, further research needs to address contextual variation in different schools and age groups, as well as the viewpoint of teachers.

To genuinely engage pupils, potential contradictions between adults’ and adolescents’ perspectives need attention. Understanding food-related social determinants and justifications for food practices from pupils’ perspective are valuable pedagogical assets for teachers. Pupils’ speech and activities that counteract formal aims can be seen also as possibilities for dialogue, rather than merely problems to be changed by adults.

The paper describes how pupils’ perspectives to school lunch practices are in tension with the educational aims of school lunches, thus contributing to developing adolescent-centered food and health education in secondary schools.

The focus in this paper is on the extent to which bonding and bridging social relationships predict the performance effectiveness and attitudinal (identity) outcomes.

The research was survey-based, involving 76 work teams and a total of 499 employees in 48 organisations.

The analysis reveals a positive relationship between both bonding and bridging relationships and performance effectiveness and attitudinal outcomes. Team identity mediates the relationship between the team ' s social-network structure and its performance effectiveness.

The research investigates the performance effectiveness and attitudinal outcomes of social networks simultaneously, which is rare, but for study-design reasons fails to investigate behavioural outcomes. More extensive data would reveal more about the possible interaction between bridging and bonding.

In order to improve performance effectiveness managerial attention should focus on building a team and social networks.

The research shows that team identity fully mediates the influence of bonding and bridging social relationships. This finding sheds light on the processes that mediate performance effectiveness, which in turn facilitate understanding of how team dynamics lead to differing performance levels. The results also reveal how the type of social network affects the creation of a team identity: individuals identify with the team through the social networks to which they belong both within it and outside. Thus, team identity matters given the evidence suggesting that those who identify more with their work teams perform more effectively.

Businesses are increasingly using teams as their fundamental organisational unit. This paper aims to explore the impact of demographic antecedents and the social‐network structure, measured in terms of task‐related advice‐network density, centralisation and fragmentation, on work‐team performance. The paper seeks to examine: the impact of the social‐network structure (dense, fragmented or centralised) on work‐team performance and the origins of the social structure. It also tests whether team diversity (in terms of variety with regard to gender and separation with regard to age and education) has an impact on team performance.

A survey was conducted on 76 work teams (499 employees) representing 48 different organisations.

With regard to the first question, density was positively related to team performance. The impact of advice‐network fragmentation was also positive, and this is in line with the results of other studies focusing on teams conducting standard tasks. In addressing the second question the paper explored whether diversity as variety (age) and diversity as separation (age and education) had an effect on the work team's social‐network structure. Age and education had no effect, but gender diversity was related negatively to density and positively to fragmentation. It was also related negatively to team performance.

The contribution of this research is twofold in that it explores social‐structure effects on team performance and examines the possible antecedents of the team's social structure. The results of the investigation strengthen the rationale behind integrating the literature on social‐network analysis and teams.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how modularity is used for enabling value creation in managing healthcare logistics services.

Material logistics of four different kinds of hospitals is examined through a qualitative case study. The theoretical framework builds on the literature on healthcare logistics, service modularity and value creation.

The case hospitals have developed their material logistics independently from others when looking at the modularity of offerings, processes and organisations. Services, such as assortment management, shelving and developing an information platform, have been performed in-house partly by the care personnel, but steps towards modularised and standardised solutions are now being taken in the case hospitals, including ideas about outsourcing some of the services.

This paper proposes seven modularity components for healthcare logistics management: segmentation, categorisation and unitisation of offerings, differentiation and decoupling of processes, and centralisation and specialisation of organisations. Thus, this study clarifies the three-dimensional concept of modularity as a cognitive frame for managing logistics services with heterogeneous customer needs in a rapidly changing healthcare environment.

Modularity offers a tool for developing logistics services inside the hospital and increases possibilities to consider also external logistics service providers.

Managing healthcare logistics services through modularity has potential social implications in developing healthcare processes and changing the usage of health services. On a wider scale, modularity is helping healthcare systems reaching their goals in terms of service quality and cost.

This paper shows the context-specific antecedents of service modularity and the usage of modular thinking in managing healthcare logistics.