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This paper presents an approach for short‐term maintenance planning, based on information about the technical health of an item. A simple cost/risk model is used to calculate the expected costs when postponing preventive maintenance for an item that is soon to fail, based on the cost of corrective and preventive maintenance and the probability of failure. The probability of failure is calculated on the basis of an underlying probability density function f(t), which is determined from available quantitative and qualitative information. The preventive maintenance cost is time dependent, and can be described either as a general cost function or as a specific cost function. The specific cost function can be derived from stochastic shifts in the maintenance cost for the actual problem at hand.

Networks and relationships are not stable. On the contrary, they change and are transformed by the actors who take part in them. Change and transformation result from the actions and reactions of these actors. However, a key issue is what makes the actors choose some actions and reactions while refraining from others. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors argue that the actors’ expectations to the future of the network are formative for the actions and reactions and, furthermore, that the future expectations are formed by interaction among the actors that take part in the networks.

The authors depart from the existing foresight literature, but realign its ideas to fit with the core tenets of the IMP approach. Thereby, the purpose is twofold: to explore and conceptualize network foresight phenomena as well as to contribute to the practice of collective foresighting in business networks.

The authors suggest research into formations of expectations in networks with a specific view to the interactive and structural effects of networks. Furthermore, the authors suggest a framework for categorizing network episodes and linking these to the formation of recognized issues and solutions.

The authors provide a framework for analyzing the focus of business networks in terms of solutions and issues, and analytically breaking down the interaction among these.

The authors introduce the concept of business network foresight, both as a distinct concept that enables us to understand change and transformation in networks, but also as a procedure for supporting actors’ strategizing efforts in business networks.

Contemporary categorizations of western-style welfare states distinguish a particular pattern of organizing social security mainly found in Scandinavian countries, and sometimes labeled as a “social democratic welfare regime.” This is characterized by general access of the population to a social security system organized and administered by public authorities. This categorization is widely acknowledged, but the Scandinavian “social democratic” model is rarely ever analyzed in detail.

While most health services are provided by public actors, it is often overlooked that health services in Scandinavian countries in certain fields are delivered to a substantial part by private actors. In Norwegian rehabilitation specialist health care, these private actors stand for more than 30% of all service delivery.

Based on a content analysis of publications of the Norwegian Ministry of Health and Care Services we look into the relation between public and private actors in rehabilitation and relate our findings to classifications of Scandinavian welfare states into an institutional, social democratic model.

We report three findings in a comprehensive study of hourly wage differences between women and men working in same occupation and establishment in Sweden in 1970–1990. (1) Within same occupation and establishment in 1990, women on average earn 1.4% less than men among blue-collar workers, 5.0% less among white-collar employees. This occupation-establishment level wage gap declined strongly from 1970 to 1978. (2) For white-collar employees, occupational segregation accounts for much of the wage gap, establishment segregation for little. For blue-collar workers both types of segregation are important. (3) The within-occupation gaps are small, below 4% and 7% for blue- and white-collar workers.

The limited academic literature available on niche marketing has mainly focused on market‐specific factors, and the discussion has in particular centred on the characteristics of what a niche is and what causes it to exist. In an attempt to fill this gap in the literature, the purpose of this paper is to identify the strategic capabilities of niche firms.

In this paper, aspects regarding niche marketing and strategic capability are identified and briefly discussed with reference to the existing literature. Next, the methodology for the research at hand is presented, followed by a discussion of its findings. The paper then continues with the conclusion of this research, followed by pinpointing some of its limitations and providing recommendations for future research.

All the investigated case firms follow a focused differentiation strategy to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. The focus aspect of the niche firms' strategy is mirrored in the reported narrow geographic market focus, which could be limited to only one country, a limited number of customers – one sole customer in one case – or a limited number of customer types. With regard to strategic capabilities, the results were rather similar across cases, particularly for each pair of case firms within similar sectors (wine, organic salmon, and stockfish). From the case firms' point of view, it is clear that having access to high‐quality raw material is critical to their strategy of delivering high‐quality products. Finally, many of the identified resources and competences appear rather static, or fixed over several years.

The strategic capabilities as identified in this paper can be described and placed at different stages within the firms' value chains. Each stage has its own set of important strategic capabilities. These stages are: inbound logistics, production or refinement, and marketing and sales.

The purpose of this study is to look into the extraordinary performance of Rosenborg Ballklub (RBK) under coach Nils Arne Eggens’ leadership with several appearances in the Champions League, competing with more clubs with more resources.

In-depth interviews with the coach and key players. Also combining with document studies.

This study identified six key postulates that could be viewed as a minimal structure that was important for creating a picture of how Rosenborg’s attack play should be carried out. This study identifies a high commitment to the way of playing. Even if the way of playing was well known, the play was carried out with both a high pace and precision, making it hard for opponents to defend. The play pattern is closely linked to social interaction. Furthermore, the playing pattern was reproduced repeatedly, creating a platform for collective mastery.

The current study provides a detailed insight into the development of performance within a football club using different approaches. However, creating a common picture of what should be performed.

The current study can provide insight to football clubs but also other teams identifying a common pattern based on certain values.

The study of Rosenborg Ballklub demonstrates the combinations of individual characters and strength (signature strength) within a collective using a holistic and complementary approach. One should focus on the strength of the team.

Original in understanding the way RBK performed. It also demonstrates a unique insight in applying flow theory as a means of developing a football team.

This paper aims to make a contribution to the offender-based perspective when researching white-collar and corporate crime. Previously, the offender-based perspective has emphasized general characteristics of actors such as social and occupational status, respectability and power.

This paper presents categories of offender types in their roles when offending.

Based on the theory of convenience with 14 convenience propositions along three dimensions, it is possible to identify eight offender categories.

Alternative theories for identification of offender categories might be applied in future research to compare with categories presented in this paper based on convenience theory.

These offender categories are labeled opportunist, illusionist, manipulator, ignorer, defender, reactionist, rescuer and controller.

The offender-bases rather than the offence-based perspective is needed to increase law enforcement understanding of white-collar and corporate crime.

When researchers study the extent of seriousness of white-collar and corporate crime in the future, it is suggested that they use such labels to distinguish between serious and less serious offenders.

Scandinavian societies do not figure prominently as study objects in the international social science literature. To the extent they do, their analysis tends to revolve around one seemingly unavoidable concept, that of equality. There is much agreement among Scandinavia experts that if there is one cultural trait that recurs again and again in this part of the world it is what some have described as “the passion for equality” (Graubard, 1986). Many writers have suggested that the Nordic passion for equality springs from a peculiarly strong preoccupation with equity (rettferd). But this is not the only reason why: according to Hans Frederik Dahl (1984, p. 95) “[t]he Nordic equity ethos…appears to apply both to the political action of leveling out – making the rich pay, taxing the top – and, in a jealous comparison, of making sure that nobody overtakes and passes you in position or possessions.” Like Dahl, other Norwegians consider envy to be a central element in this quest for equality, a sort of Nordic “crab antics” (Wilson, 1973).¹ Envy provides a plausible explanatory frame for the drive at leveling out – “making the rich pay, taxing the top” – a meaning the Norwegian term likhet does indeed encompass. But in addition to equality likhet also means similarity or sameness, a parity that does not necessarily have to do with equity and cannot always be described in terms of getting rid of (unfair) privileges. Earlier debates on the Norwegian notion of equality were often inconclusive because they failed to address this critical duality of meaning which lies at the core of the concept of likhet. To assume that likhet is only a matter of equality, and that it all boils down to envy is too simplistic. In this case, the question that needs to be addressed is: can envy account for the drive at cultural assimilation? Can it explain demands made by the masses to individuals who are neither richer nor more powerful? I am thinking for example of the kind of relations that have been observed between Norwegians and Saami in the Helgeland region (Henriksen, 1991). Here, Saamis’ claims to a different identity and a different experience are frequently met with the non-Saami majority’s counter-claim that there are no differences, cultural or otherwise, between the Saami and themselves. “When the Saami person insists that his or her identity is rooted in a Saami culture, s/he may be requested to specify what such differences consist of,” writes Henriksen (p. 410). This emphatic denial of difference is not perceived by Saami as an inclusionary device to integrate them within the warm embrace of a universal Norwegian Gemeinschaft. Rather, says Henriksen, they view it as “a lack of recognition by the encompassing Norwegian society of their cultural and social identities and their expression, and of what they perceive to be their legitimate rights” (p. 414); in other words, they view it as an attempt by the Norwegian majority to deny Saami their right to experience life in general and ethnic encounters in particular in a way that differs from the majority’s experience. When played out in relation to individuals and groups that are marginal, dominated, or simply in minority, the quest for likhet cannot be motivated by envy. Rather than “passion for equality,” therefore, it would be more accurate to describe this cultural trait as “antipathy for difference.” Such antipathy, I suggest, is grounded in a normative expectation of conformity in behavior, experience, and awareness, to an unquestioned cultural pattern embedded in, and structured by, daily practice, and with ramifications in all areas of social life. In this sense, equality (sometimes translated into Norwegian as likeverd, literally “equal worth,” but more commonly as likhet) rests on the fundamental requirement of cultural similarity (also known, as we have seen, as likhet): to be equal is first and foremost to be alike (see Gullestad, 1984, 1992). The opposite of likhet, ulikhet, can mean either difference or inequality. Most of the time it is conceptualized as both.² Of course, the conceptual and sociological boundaries between equality and similarity are blurred everywhere, not only in Norwegian culture. Nor am I suggesting that Norwegian society is empirically devoid of inequality or that instances of anti-egalitarian behavior do not obtain in real life. Nonetheless, these empirical observations do not make the Norwegian normative discourse on equality-as-similarity any less real or any less compelling.