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This study aims to identify user categories of mobile travel services and analyze the differences between the categories based on individual characteristics, the individuals' perceived barriers to use internet-/mobile services during a trip and the individuals' preferred channel strategies.

An extensive online survey in Finland was conducted to collect the data and a cluster analysis is used to identify the user categories.

The study indicates that there are four user categories of mobile travel services: “info-seekers”, “checkers”, “bookers” and “all-rounders” and one group of “non-users”.

Due to the online data collection method and the self-selective process, the sample may be biased towards respondents finding electronic travel services important. It would be of value to conduct similar studies on a representative sample of the total population of different countries.

The identified categories can be seen as consumer segments for which travel service providers can target mobile services.

This study contributes with a categorization of mobile travelers and provides insights on the diffusion of mobile travel services.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of heterogeneous strategies for new knowledge development in the internationalization processes of firms.

A typology of international learning strategies is developed. The typology is supported by a case study of seven Swedish international firms that show heterogeneous strategies. The case study suggests links between learning strategies and international growth.

The results suggest an international learning-strategy typology derived from extant theory on knowledge acquisition in internationalization, constituted by four types: Passive Learners, Endogenous Learners, Exogenous Learners, and Diversified Learners. The results further suggest that the typology is empirically relevant and, moreover, suggest a potential heterogeneity in outcomes for these strategies. The study suggests that there is a link between learning strategy and outcomes in terms of growth and international sales distribution.

The strategy for how firms learn when internationalizing has implications for the firm's international growth. The case-study design has limitations for generalizability and future quantitative validation is called for.

Managers need to be aware of the consequences of their learning strategy for the internationalization performance. This study informs strategic decision making for how to learn from international markets.

The results suggest a typology based on heterogeneity of international learning strategies and their consequences for internationalization.

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.

The purpose of this study is to analyse and discuss K-12 mathematics and technology teachers' perceptions on integrating programming in their teaching and learning activities, and perceptions on different programming tools.

The approach of a case study was used, with data collected from three instances of a professional development programming course for K-12 teachers in mathematics and technology.

The findings show that there are perceived challenges and opportunities with learning and integrating programming, and with different programming tools. Many teachers perceive programming as fun, but lack the time to learn and implement it, and view different programming tools as both complementary to each other and with individual opportunities and challenges.

The practical implication of the research is that it can provide guidance for teachers and other stakeholders that are in the process of integrating programming in K-12 education. Further, the research provides useful information on teachers' experiences on working with different programming tools.

The social implication of the research is that the overall aim of the nation-wide integration process might not succeed if the challenges identified in this study are not addressed, which could have negative effects on the development of students' digital competence.

The value of the research is that it identifies important challenges and opportunities for the integration of programming. That is, that many teachers perceive the different programming tools available as complimentary to each other, but are hesitating about what is expected of the integration. Findings could also be valuable for future course design of the teacher professional development.

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.

How can we foster entrepreneurship? This was one of the basic questions to ask when we, like many others, started to consider different approaches concerning how to motivate students to become interested in entrepreneurship. We soon became puzzled by the theoretical approaches to entrepreneurship. Something seemed to be lacking, for example, the important question of how should one educate entrepreneurs? However, as noticed by Landström (2000) and Sundnäs, Kjellam and Eriksson (2002), it is through the expansion of the theoretical roots of entrepreneurship, i.e. from the economic, behavioural and business studies to multidisciplinary research, that the picture becomes more understandable, albeit more complex.

Digitalization denotes an on-going transformation of great importance for the retail sector. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the phenomenon of the digitalization of retailing by developing a conceptual framework that can be used to further delineate current transformations of the retailer-consumer interface.

This paper develops a framework for digitalization in the retail-consumer interface that consists of four elements: exchanges, actors, offerings, and settings. Drawing on the previous literature, it describes and exemplifies how digitalization transforms each of these elements and identifies implications and proposals for future research.

Digitalization transforms the following: retailing exchanges (in a number of ways and in various facets of exchange, including communications, transactions, and distribution); the nature of retail offerings (blurred distinctions between products and services, what constitutes the actual offering and how it is priced); retail settings (i.e. where and when retailing takes place); and the actors who participate in retailing (i.e. retailers and consumers, among other parties).

The framework developed can be used to further delineate current transformations of retailing due to digitalization. The current transformation has created challenges for research, as it demands sensitivity to development over time and insists that categories that have been taken for granted are becoming increasingly blurred due to greater hybridity.

This paper addresses a significant and on-going transformation in retailing and develops a framework that can both guide future research and aid retail practitioners in analysing retailing’s current transformation due to digitalization.

The economic theory of the firm apparently concurs with Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems with regard to the primary function of the firm to be complexity reduction, i.e. the alleviation of the cognitive burden on agents whose cognitive capacities are limited. At the same time, however, the theory of the firm ignores the attendant issues of societal sustainability emphasised by Luhmann. The paper aims to fill this gap.

Taking a theoretical approach, the paper builds on the conceptual construct of “the complexity-sustainability trade-off”, which combines two contrasting aspects of the relationship between a system and its environment, namely, the precariousness highlighted by Luhmann and the embeddedness highlighted by open systems theory. These themes are respectively reflected in the principles of complexity reduction and environmental dependence which constitute the trade-off.

Drawing inspiration from the classic Marshallian presentation of supply and demand in modern economics, the paper argues that the principles of complexity reduction and critical dependence translate into the demand for and supply of social systems. In the proposed systems-theoretic interpretation of the theory of the firm, demand and supply refer to the imperatives of achieving coordination and securing cooperation within the firm, respectively. Thus, in the theory of the firm, the complexity-sustainability trade-off manifests itself as a trade-off between coordination and cooperation.

The implicit focus of the theory of the firm on complexity reduction disregards the nature, importance and fragility of cooperation in real-world firms. In so doing, it impedes the authors’ understanding of unconventional types of business organisation, such as cooperatives. These defects can be corrected by reorienting the theory of the firm according to the proposed systems-theoretic approach, which holds that firms should not be governed or studied in isolation from their environment, as they too often are – and, accordingly, that apparently anomalous forms of organisation should be taken seriously, as they too often are not.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the logic and differentiators of organizational positioning and planning of sustainability initiatives between private and public organizations in the healthcare industry. Sustainability initiatives refer to organizations’ economic, social and environmental actions.

This study is based on an inductive approach judgmental sampling and in-depth interviews of executives at private and public hospitals in Spain have been used. Data were collected from the directors of communication at private hospitals, and from the executive in charge of corporate social responsibility in public hospitals. An empirical discourse analysis is used.

The positioning and planning of sustainability initiatives differs between private and public hospitals. The former consider sustainability as an option that is required mainly for social reasons, a bottom-up positioning and planning. It emerges merely spontaneously within the organization, while the sustainability initiatives in public hospitals are compulsory. They are imposed by the healthcare system within which the public hospital, operates and constitutes a top-down positioning and planning that is structured to accomplish set sustainability goals.

A limitation of this study is that it is undertaken exclusively in Spanish organizations from one industry. This study differs from previous ones in terms of exploring the positioning and planning of the sustainability initiatives, which focus on the organizational logic of such sustainability initiatives. There are both common denominators and differentiators between private and public hospitals.

The logic of determining the positioning and planning of the sustainability initiatives is mainly about satisfying organizational needs and societal demands. Nowadays, organizations tend to engage in sustainability initiatives, so it is essential to understand the logic of how organizations position and plan such efforts.

This study investigates the path that follows sustainability initiatives in public and private organizations. It reports mainly differentiators between private and public organizations. It also contributes to explaining the organizational reasoning as to why companies make decisions about sustainability initiatives, an issue which has not been addressed sufficiently in existing theory studies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how much value national governments worldwide place on political, economic, scientific, artistic, religious, legal, sportive, health-related, educational and mass media-related issues. This knowledge is critical as governments and policies are typically expected to be congruent with the importance these issues have for society.

Drawing on theories of polyphonic and multifunctional organization, the authors recoded and analyzed a US Central Intelligence Agency directory to test the cabinet portfolio of a total of 201 national governments for significant biases to the above issues.

The results suggest that governments worldwide massively over-allocate their attention to economic issues.

The authors conclude that this strong pro-economic governance-bias likely translates into dysfunctional governance and development at both the national and supra-national level.