A Swedish workplace of the future?: The Tomteboda mail centre

In 1983, the Swedish Post Office opened the most technically advanced mail centre in the world. Here the author describes how work is organised in this futuristically designed workplace.     

Self-Employment Among Immigrants in Sweden – An Analysis of Intragroup Differences

This paper examines intragroup differences in self-employment within different immigrant groups and the native population in Sweden with the help of 1990 Census data. Intragroup differences are observed among all the groups. The study shows that differences in self-employment rates between individuals with different educational attainment exist for some of the immigrant groups. For immigrants from Southern Europe and non-European immigrants as well as for natives, the propensity for self-employment is lower among individuals with higher education. Furthermore, the study also shows that there are intragroup differences defined by gender and point in time for immigration. Finally, the study observes small differences in self-employment earnings within the different immigrant groups.     

The Impact of Generic Drug Competition on Brand Name Market Shares – Evidence from Micro Data

This paper analyses how market shares for brandname drugs are affected by generic competition. The analysis is based onmicro data for twelve different original drugs, which are all subject togeneric competition. For five of these drugs, we find that the price of theoriginal relative to the average price of the generic substitutessignificantly affects the market share of the original drug. In addition,the introduction of a so called ``reference price' system appears to havehad a significant impact on the market shares of five original drugs.     

Governance and Climate Change: A Success Story in Mobilizing Investor Support for Corporate Responses to Climate Change

Until fairly recently, the main approach to getting business to respond to climate change has been top‐down efforts to regulate emissions and enact various forms of “carbon pricing.” The aim of such efforts has been to make businesses “internalize” the costs associated with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Governments are expected to set the environmental protection rules for companies in their respective countries, and markets are expected to adjust to the new regulations and carbon prices. But this classical approach to economic policy does not work when applied to a global “public goods” challenge like trying to limit the extent and effects of climate change. Instead of a top‐down approach, in which economic actors are forced to respond to regulations imposed on them, the Paris climate agreement of 2015 was reached using a bottom‐up approach centered on the concept of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs)—along with a process that ended up encouraging the participation of all economic actors, not just governments. The authors provide an account of how the Paris agreement was reached, and why the “Portfolio Decarbonization Coalition” under the auspices of the United Nations is the most important of several private‐sector initiatives that are changing the way corporations operate. Thanks in large part to the PDC, investors can now undertake meaningful corporate governance action on climate change. With GHG emissions from a particular companies’ operations now much easier to measure, objective performance metrics on GHG emissions can now be set by boards and verified by shareholders. And current decarbonized indexes can be used as performance benchmarks for asset managers’ compensation, which can be tied to return outperformance relative to a “decarbonized” index.     

THE BECKER PARADOX AND TYPE I VERSUS TYPE II ERRORS IN THE ECONOMICS OF CRIME*

Two real‐world observations are not easily replicated in models of crime. First, although capital punishment is optimal in the standard Becker model, it is rarely observed in the real world. Second, criminal procedure and the evaluation of evidence vary across societies and historical periods, the standard of proof being sometimes very high and sometimes quite low. In this article, we develop a general equilibrium model of judicial procedure allowing for innocent persons being convicted. We show that the median voter theorem applies to this model, making judicial procedure endogenous. So formulated, the model can replicate both empirical observations.     

Lessons for Crisis Communication on Social Media: A Systematic Review of What Research Tells the Practice

This study analyzes explicit pieces of advice for effective social media crisis communication given by researchers in various subdisciplines of strategic communication. The themes are identified by a systematic content analysis of peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers (n = 104) published between 2004 and 2017. Five overall thematic “lessons” are identified and critically discussed. These are that effective social media crisis communication is about: (1) exploiting social media’s potential to create dialogue and to choose the right message, source and timing; (2) performing precrisis work and developing an understanding of the social media logic; (3) using social media monitoring; (4) continuing to prioritize traditional media in crisis situations; and finally, (5) just using social media in strategic crisis communication. These guidelines mainly emerged from quantitative research conducted in the context of the United Stated and on Twitter. There is need for more research focusing on other platforms and other empirical material. There is also a future need for an in-depth methodological discussion of how to further bridge the gap between research and practice on a global scale, and how to develop more evidence-based recommendations for strategic crisis communication practitioners.     

The agricultural revolution and the conditions of the rural poor,southern Sweden, 1750–1860

The social consequences of agrarian change have been widely debated. The traditional view of the lower classes becoming increasingly vulnerable due to the loss of access to resources has been met with the revisionist view that this change was counteracted by an increase in the volume and regularity of employment due to investments and new farming practices. This article address this issue by studying the agricultural revolution in southern Sweden using aggregate data at the parish level. New micro‐level data on actual harvest outcomes, supplemented by price data, make it possible to differentiate between the development of the local economy and exogenous price shocks. Our results indicate a clear mortality response to harvest fluctuations in general and to harvest failures in particular. The response differed greatly between farming regions, being strongest in the areas most dependent on grain production. The response also diminished during the agricultural revolution, indicating the increasing efficiency of the local economy. This indicates employment effects in line with the revisionist view. At the same time, vulnerability to fluctuations in prices of basic foodstuffs remained high until the second half of the nineteenth century and was also quite similar across farming regions.     

An econometric analysis of the European Commission's merger decisions

Using a sample of 96 mergers notified to the European Commission and logit regression techniques, we analyse the Commission's decision process. We find that the probability of a phase-2 investigation and of a prohibition of the merger increases with the parties' market shares. The probabilities increase also when the Commission finds high entry barriers or that the post-merger market structure is conducive to collusion. We do not find significant effects of “political” variables, such as the nationality of the merging firms.     

The charismatization of routines: Management of meaning and standardization in an educational organization

This paper reports a study of a Swedish School company, characterized by charismatic leadership and a radical vision, trying to create and implement standard operating procedures. We illuminate how efforts to bureaucratize are given meanings quite different to conventional ones of experiences of constraints and, at best, reluctant acceptance. The charisma that the members of the organization ascribe to the founder and the linking of standardization with radical corporate vision and identity building are viewed as central. Theoretically, the paper aims to throw some new light on the theme of organizational control through showing how different forms of control may intersect. The need to develop ideas that can bridge various forms of control is emphasized. Hence, we suggest a concept that may prove helpful in such a project: the charismatization of routines.