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Owing to the consolidation and globalization of the paper industry, manufacturing units have keen interest to focus on particular product groups. While this specialization will create opportunities for scale economics in production, management of supply chains becomes increasingly challenging, as one particular manufacturing unit serves a number of different sales locations. The aim of this paper is to identify improvement areas in the new supply chain context of paper production, and possibly give further support for the general discipline development.

Research work is based on two different case studies completed for one major North‐European paper manufacturer, which is mostly serving its customers in Europe and the USA. The first case study (a preliminary one) started when supply chain challenges were recognized at the end of the 1990s, and a manufacturing unit was seeking managerial remedies – this investigation only concerned one manufacturing unit, while not singling cut any particular supply chain in the analysis. During the most recent years a more detailed case‐study was conducted with this paper manufacturer, which concerned lead time performance of four different strategically important supply chains. These supply chains were championed by two different large manufacturing units (the preliminary analysis concerned one of these two paper mills). The objective of this research work is to identify whether general lead time and response studies, mostly completed in the automotive industry, are applicable to paper production.

According to the analysis North‐European paper manufacturers hold approximately 45 days of distribution inventory. Interestingly, in the case study it was found that in distribution this does not result in high efficiency–on the contrary different parties involved (railway, port operations and vessels) need to have a considerable amount of free and unused capacity in their operations to ensure the smooth flow of materials.

The case studies were conducted in the factories of one large North‐European multinational. Therefore, the observations are limited to this company. However, in order to generalize the results further, the authors have analysed North‐European paper producers through macro data and financial reports in any research environment. To cover a mismatch between company level quantitative analysis and macro data, the authors consulted several key persons in the case company concerning the research results. Therefore, triangulation in the empirical data was achieved.

It is argued that four reasons, namely: scale emphasis in production, IT systems to support supply chains, sea shipment, and outsourced distribution, play a vital role in the forthcoming performance improvement initiatives. At the moment this results in long supply chain lead times, whatever the distance to the actual market. Decision makers in practice need to find solutions for these in order to improve performance further.

Supply chains are rarely analyzed in research works through more than one supply chain – here analysis of four different supply chains concerning lead time is provided. The analysis is based on the enterprise resource‐planning database, and findings are verified with interviews with the managers and directors of the case company.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between corporate and supply chain strategy, as well as its implementation in a multinational paper producing company. Traditionally paper producing companies have had a strong interest in developing a physical infrastructure for their customer deliveries. However, supply chain thinking is still an unstructured issue in the case company.

This research work is mainly based on the case company's strategy material and interviews with senior management, is mainly qualitative and is based on a constructive research approach aimed at trying to find a workable and forward looking solution based on the three strategies.

The core findings concern the individual business division strategies, which jointly comprise the corporate strategy. Some of the business divisions do have a certain amount of supply chain management aims in their strategies. Furthermore, there is no real corporate supply chain strategy.

The research was conducted at a company with strong presence in Northern Europe, which limits its applicability. Thus, the research results mainly reflect a Northern European business environment and cannot be generalized on a global level.

The conclusions of the research work include a recommendation for a new management model for the corporate supply chain strategy, which is based on cooperation between the business divisions and logistics organization.

The value of this paper is based on the practical analysis of the case company's business divisions' strategies and interactivity between the logistics organization and the implementation of its strategy.

Previous research has predominantly focused on the meaning of prior entrepreneurial experience in the context of habitual entrepreneurship. To date, however, little is known about how previous experience affects the way in which several firms can be managed simultaneously. The purpose of this study is to examine entrepreneurial learning in the context of portfolio entrepreneurship and clarify how it is possible to manage several firms at the same time.

An exploratory study using a case method was conducted (Eisenhardt; Yin) by focusing on one portfolio entrepreneur. In this study, the case can be considered as unusual thus being suitable for a single‐case study. Data were collected through interviews and the entrepreneur also provided the researchers with a written description of the development and present situation of his entrepreneurial career.

This study proposes that failures may develop entrepreneurial knowledge as well as founding experiences. Development of entrepreneurial knowledge is viewed as leading to new ways of organizing and managing start‐up firms. Learning through previous experiences has strengthened entrepreneurial knowledge and contributed to the formation of the management team (MT). Without cooperation, delegation and sharing responsibilities, successful portfolio entrepreneurship would not have been realized. However, the results suggest that learning from failure is dependent on the entrepreneur's personal background.

This study seeks to bring new insight to portfolio entrepreneurship by concentrating on the entrepreneurial career of a well‐known Finnish entrepreneur by following the framework of Politis. In this case, a MT in each firm enabled effective control and management of the current firm portfolio. The study shows that in addition to the entrepreneurial team, the management teams can also have a significant role in the context of portfolio entrepreneurship although they have largely been ignored.

This article attempts to understand the dynamics of institutional management processes. This concept is defined here as managerial action vis‐a‐vis emerging political and infra‐structural conditions for business in the nation‐state arena. For this purpose the emerging patterns of relationships between business and politics in the Finnish forest sector are described and analysed. Our focus is on the impact of the four most societally loaded changes in political and infra‐structural conditions of the forest sector: its position in the core of the Finnish economy, the ownership of the key resources, the use of timber as the basic source of welfare, and the logging and transportation infrastructure. These changes become the key issues for the level of institutional management in the forest sector. They have remained significant over the studied long‐term period, but the efforts of their moulding have changed over time. These dynamics of institutional management are found to follow a cycle, divided in seven phases, coined as: (1) offensive confrontation, (2) operational co‐operation, (3) differentiation of institutional management, (4) exploitation of a core position, (5) justification of expansion and growth, (6) legitimation of decline, and (7) defensive confrontation. The authors provide examples and evidence of these changing patterns of institutional management, and offer a proposition about the underlying dynamics of the cycle.

A system consisting of an industrial robot and a computer was provided with a camera of high resolution. The camera/computer interface was provided with an electronic window which was made controllable by computer program. A rough raster scan was used for detection of presence and approximate location of the objects. A finer raster and a set of seven thresholds for the brightness were then applied in a limited window around each object only, in order to save memory space and time without losing accuracy. Thus, e.g. two objects could be detected at the location of an originally unified area, or objects of the same form but differing colors were distinguished. The observation, indentification and classification of the objects by the robot were performed as a fully automatic sequence.

Typically, the graphic paper demand is being forecasted with the development of GDP, population and the price of paper. Recently, diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICT) has been identified as one possible driver of its consumption. It could be assumed that in emerging markets paper demand is a combination of these classical and new factors.

The research examines the situation in the emerging Russian market with panel data regression analysis, accompanied with system dynamics simulation using Monte Carlo sensitivity analysis. So, the paper integrates different quantitative approaches to sketch long‐term paper demand forecasts through different alternative scenarios.

Results show that mobile telephones are complementary to both newsprint and magazine paper demand and the internet is a substitute, but these two factors are still relatively small compared to the effect of GDP per capita.

This research is limited to Russian markets, and in order to have more generalization power, it should be repeated in other emerging economies like, for example, former East European countries and Asia. However, used data in our analysis is longitudinal and has numerous observation points; therefore giving more reliability over the results.

The research work is seminal from the methodological point of view: it incorporates numerous quantitative methods to produce demand forecast using Monte Carlo simulation. Also, research studies taking into account the impact of ICT on emerging markets concerning paper demand are rare.

European paper industry has been struggling with margins and profitability for more than decade time period. At typical in markets of west, paper product demand is at long-term decline, mostly driven by continuously increasing internet use. However, in emerging markets demand still exists, and in Europe numerous small markets in east have even some growth available. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors analyse in this research work with longitudinal data (period of 2002-2009) from one large Finnish paper mill and data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach, how distribution efficiency to selected eight East European markets has evolved.

In general distribution efficiency has improved, but this has taken place in step-wise manner rather than being linear year-to-year development (year 2006 found to be the threshold). Reason is mostly in better management of transportation costs, and in particular lower monthly deviation of these costs. It is surprising that case paper mill has been able to manage transportation costs in rapidly increasing energy cost environment so efficiently. Maybe European Union enlargement of 2004 and 2007 has had its effects on distribution efficiency.

The research is limited to the deliveries of one paper mill located in Finland. Also East European markets in the early periods of this study were emerging papers markets, and distribution practices were clearly evolving.

Based on the study East European paper market distribution should give more attention on transportation cost control, and trying to find solutions to minimize it with low monthly fluctuation.

Very few studies exist from East European distribution issues, and particularly that of paper industry. Also used quantitative method of DEA is relatively new in this context and gives valuable insights for the distribution efficiency development.

There is growing political interest in new forms of precarious self‐employment located in a “grey area” between employment and self‐employment. A wide range of concepts has been used to debate this issue, and this paper aims to clarify these debates through the concept of involuntary self‐employment.

The paper reviews the empirical, conceptual and legal‐policy approaches to involuntary self‐employment via three country case studies in Finland, Germany and the UK. A range of relevant domestic academic literature, articles in the media, selected key expert interviews, and policy and legal documents are employed.

Conceptual clarity regarding involuntary self‐employment is achieved through a discussion of two aspects of the phenomenon: the characteristics of involuntariness from a motives‐based perspective, and the legal/economic perspectives and policy issues. The motives‐based analysis argues that involuntariness as such does not seem to have severe implications on the individuals' well being, given that the individual earns a satisfactory livelihood from her or his business activities. The discussion of the characteristics of and regulation related to working arrangements in the “grey area” between employment and self‐employment, where the self‐employed individual is strongly dependent on the principal, shows that it is very difficult to regulate quasi self‐employment without harming “voluntary” forms of enterprise and inter‐firm cooperation at the same time.

The key contribution of the paper is to facilitate a foundation for subsequent empirical research and policy development.

The aim of this research was to evaluate the new procurement practices of information and communication technology (ICT) services in Finnish-speaking schools in the City of Kauniainen. In the new model, schools define their needs and school administration mandates the procurement through tendering. The research included a review of the problems associated with procurement practices and the assessment of the procurement model. The results show that service levels have been improved and unit costs as well as the environmental load have been reduced. The new model requires the schools to have the skills and expertise to define their needs and the competencies to prepare and execute the procurement process. The case analysis of the Finnish “Dream School” in Kauniainen shows that administrative and governance aspects are equally important in successful deployment of technology.

The purpose of the paper is to explore the potential of autopoiesis theory to open up new ways to understand knowledge production in business organizations.

Initially essential theoretical information is presented, by reviewing the concept of knowledge‐based competitive advantages in business organizations, and describing the notions of autopoiesis as a basis for the understanding of knowledge production in organizations, and micro‐macro problem within the companies' structure and production. After that follows the main content of the paper, namely descriptions of processes influencing knowledge production in business organizations.

Knowledge is embedded in social practices and a local setting and it is very much tacit in nature providing then a basis for creating a sustainable competitive advantage for business organizations. A business organization's memory and production are mutual media for one another in autopoietic recursive processes.

Finding a viable perspective and approach with which business organizations can understand how their knowledge production takes place is an important issue. It is claimed in this paper that the idea of autopoiesis can potentially provide a new understanding for business organizations' knowledge production.