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The purpose of this paper is to report on methods developed, within a three‐year Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) project at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, to achieve a higher degree of embedding of ESD in engineering programmes. The major emphasis is on methods used, results achieved and lessons learned from the work.

The basic idea that methods and activities were built on was that the only way to achieve long‐term changes is to increase the motivation and capacity of lecturers and program directors to perform the required changes.

Activities that were developed and tested focused on coaching discussions and on workshops for teachers, gathering teachers from one programme at a time. These activities aimed at starting learning processes in individuals. Special care was taken into keeping the feeling of responsibility and initiative in the faculty members within the programmes. A special “resource group” of experienced ESD teachers was available as support for programme directors and lecturers.

The methods reported on are further developments of a method that has been used in Delft University of Technology (the Individual Interaction Method) in the Netherlands. The experiences from Chalmers are discussed in such a way that they provide useful insights for others aiming at similar changes at university.

Due to observed problems in real-life projects stemming from the lack of a unified definition, the purpose of this paper is to formulate a new definition of project partnering (PP) through documenting the specific characteristics researchers attribute to this approach.

PP definition phrases extracted from a literature review were sorted into a basic framework of who, what, how, when and where. In a web-based survey, a group of experts marked the phrases from the literature review as being specific, generic, or irrelevant to PP. The expert group comprised highly ranked and experienced PP researchers. Based on the survey results, a new definition was formulated. The new definition specifies the participants, the objectives and the knowledge, skills, tools and techniques applied to pursue the objectives in PP. A verification survey of the expert group gave a 78-96 per cent combined approve and support score for each element of the new definition.

PP and a partnering project are defined by a framework encompassing three basic dimensions: participants, objectives, knowledge, skills, tools and techniques applied to pursue the objectives. The new definition is: “project partnering is a relationship strategy whereby a project owner integrates contractors and other major contributors into the project”. Through commitment to mutual project objectives, collaborative problem solving and a joint governance structure, partners pursue collaborative relationships, trust and improved performance. The new definition indicates that PP neither varies with early contractor involvement nor gain and pain share, but varies with the degree of mutual project objectives, collaborative problem solving and joint governance structure.

PP is a complex concept with no widely accepted definition. The basic framework applied to the formulation of the definition in this project can also be applied to define and implement a partnering project and to define and distinguish between other relationship-based procurement forms.

Despite the extensive research on the determinants and consequences of firm growth, research focusing on how the actual process unfolds is still evolving. An important part of firm growth process research is entrepreneurial cognition. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the relationship between entrepreneurial cognition and firm growth intentions. Specifically, we propose a theoretical model of entrepreneurial cognitive interpretation and categorization of market information as it relates to firm growth intentions. Drawing from the strategic cognition literature in general and strategic issue interpretation literature in particular, we propose that entrepreneurs’ interpretation of market information as opportunity or threat, gain or loss, and controllable or uncontrollable influences their firm growth intentions. Furthermore, our theoretical model discusses the condition under which favorable interpretation of market information leads to higher growth intentions by incorporating insights from the Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) construct. This chapter extends our understanding of firm growth processes by highlighting the important role cognitive interpretation and categorization play in facilitating or hindering entrepreneurial firm growth.

This article seeks to bring two hitherto neglected Polish language texts on selling and salesmanship to the attention of marketing historians. In contrast to Bartels' seminal work, this research aims to show that early marketing writing was not just in the English language and that early marketing thought was disseminated via instruction outside institutions of higher education. The research also intends to explore how marketing education served to acculturate one group of immigrants to American business norms.

The primary sources are Sprzedawca czyli: Sztuka Prowadzenia Handlu Podług Systemów Amerykańskich (Salesman: The Art of Commerce According to American Norms) by Józef Mierzyński and Sprzedawnictwo Sklepowe (Store Salesmanship), third edition, by Bolesław Z. Urbanski. Both were published in Chicago. Their tables of contents were translated and compared to selected English language texts on selling and salesmanship written about the same time. Additional information on the authors, publishers, and potential audience was also gathered to give context to these texts.

These Polish language books contained much of the same information as the English language literature on sales from the period, but with more information on personal comportment and more illustrative material. These books provide evidence of sophisticated business thinking among some Polish immigrants. Commercial correspondence courses and self‐instruction brought early marketing thought to this market and thus helped Poles enter the American economic mainstream.

The article shows that these are the first books on selling and salesmanship – or on any other marketing topic – known to be written in the USA prior to 1920 in a language other than English. They are worthy of close scrutiny because they reveal a new dimension to the early creation and dissemination of marketing thought.

This study examines the scanning/strategy relationship in the context‐specific setting of the health care industry. It extends the current research on the strategy/scanning relationship to include performance. Results confirm the moderating role played by environmental scanning activities in the strategy/performing relationship, thus providing further evidence for the contingency relationship among the environment, the organization's internal processes, and performance.

It remains unclear how environmental scanning (ES) can generate firm performance through supply chain management (SCM) practices. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of ES on operational performance through supply chain integration (SCI) and supply chain responsiveness (SCR).

The scanning–interpretation–action–performance (SIAP) model and organization information processing theory (OIPT) are used to explain the ES–SCI–SCR–performance (S–I–A–P) relationships, which were tested by structural equation modeling of survey data of 329 manufacturing firms in China.

The results indicate that ES has a significant positive effect on SCI and SCR. SCI is significantly and positively related to SCR. SCR partially mediates the relationship between ES and operational performance, and fully mediates the relationship between SCI and operational performance.

Supply chain managers should collaborate with senior executives to obtain signals from ES activities, as input for building SCI and SCR and use SCI as a joint interpretation mechanism of ES signals for developing SCR to reap operational advantages in the rapidly changing business environment.

Strategic management academics and practitioners have explicitly emphasized the importance of ES in developing strategic plans but are unsure about the role of SCM in creating operational advantages through ES. Using the SIAP model, this study theorizes and demonstrates how SCI and SCR transform signals from ES into operational performance. In doing so, a more precise application of OIPT is explicated in the supply chain context.

Recent years have brought significant advances in research on behavioral ethics. However, research on ethical decision making is still in a nascent stage. Our objective in this paper is twofold: First, we argue that the practice of mindfulness may have significant positive effects on ethical decision making in organizations. More specifically, we will discuss the benefits of “reperceiving” – a meta-mechanism in the practice of mindfulness for ethical decision making and we provide an overview of mindfulness research pertaining to ethical decision making. Subsequently, we explore areas in which neuroscience research may inform research on ethics in organizations. We conclude that both neuroscience and mindfulness offer considerable promise to the field of ethical decision making.

The purpose of this paper is to study how insights from socio-cognitivism (sensemaking and interaction) in conjunction with institutional theory enhance our knowledge of strategizing in business networks through role and position.

This paper is conceptual and reviews extant literature from the fields under scrutiny, presenting and analyzing new combined approaches.

Current writings concerning strategizing in networks need to be supplemented in the area of strategic business network research. Interaction, sensemaking and institutionalization, as well as the network in which a firm is embedded, are important for strategically developing network positions and the roles of actors.

This conceptual paper suggests mechanisms affecting role and position in networks and calls for empirical research to deepen the understanding of the change forces at play in embedded relational situations for firms.

This study adds to current conceptual knowledge of strategizing in business networks. It presents a comprehensive perspective in viewing how key forces impact on the strategic position and role of corporate actors (both managers and firms) in networks.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the phenomenon of organizational unlearning with a focus on challenging path dependence and its implications on the organizational change field. By generating a taxonomy of unlearning definitions and examining the dimensions, actors and processes involved, the authors aim to offer a holistic understanding of organizational unlearning and its potential applications for organizations facing ambiguity and uncertainty.

This conceptual paper draws the literature on organizational unlearning to map existing definitions and categorize them into a comprehensive taxonomy to propose a model focused on the outcomes.

The findings highlight that organizational unlearning involves the three main organizational dimensions (micro: individuals; meso: groups; macro: organizations) and that the macro-organizational perspective represents the best fit for the concept. Furthermore, the authors’ argue that the most appropriate process for understanding the unlearning phenomenon is through challenge, as it allows the questioning of the present and facilitates critical reflection. Finally, applying organizational unlearning to path dependence concept, the authors’ posit that organizations can overcome negative transfer effects and build new awareness to reinterpret their dependencies in light of environmental changes.

This study contributes to the literature on organizational unlearning by providing a comprehensive taxonomy of definitions, clarifying the dimensions, constructs and processes involved. The integration of challenging path dependence with organizational unlearning offers a novel perspective on the potential for organizational change field. The paper’s findings have practical implications for organizations striving to survive and develop in uncertain environments.

Marion has just taken on the directorship of a joint university/public library. You, as her protégé, are interested in observing how she approaches the new venture. You are curious about what information she will gather, whose advice she will seek, how she will figure out the expectations others have of her and the library, how she will prioritize the many challenges before her, and how she will negotiate her leadership role with the staff. In other words, you want to study Marion's organizational sensemaking.