E-Business Adoption by SMEs--Prerequisites and Attitudes of SMEs in a Swedish Network

The context for this research is the transformation process of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from traditional (t-) businesses toward e-businesses and the accompanying development of the knowledge and competence among employees. SMEs constitute a great part of the Swedish industry and economy. This and the fact that they have special prerequisites concerning human and technology resources makes SMEs an interesting research focus when looking at the transformation process toward e-business. The aim of this research is to investigate SMEs with the purpose of designing, implementing, and evaluating information technology-supported activities that will allow SMEs to approach e-business. This article presents results from parts of an ongoing study, that involves seven SMEs. This study will be conducted in two main phases: first, informative and preparatory activities and second, business transformation and competence development activities. This article focuses on the first phase of the study, but an insight in its current status and further research is given. The underlying prerequisites for SMEs as well as the research approach are described. A working model is presented that illustrates stages of maturity for taking an enterprise toward e-business. The last sections present the research design, that is, planning, actions, observations, and reflections of the study up until now. New actions to take are discussed at the end of this article.     

‘Don't give us an assignment where we have to use spinach!’: food choice and discourse in home and consumer studies

The aim of the study was to describe classroom Discourses about vegetables during the planning, cooking, eating and evaluation of meals in the Swedish school subject Home and Consumer Studies. Fifty‐nine students and five teachers were recruited from five northern Swedish villages and towns, and then observed, recorded and in some cases video‐taped during lessons that took place between 2010 and 2012. Based on 56 instances of talk about vegetables, four Discourses were identified and related to the three aspects of Belasco's culinary triangle of contradictions: identity, responsibility and convenience. The results indicated that the identity‐based sensory and cultural Discourses sometimes clashed with the more responsibility‐oriented health and evaluation Discourses. The health Discourse was only used when there was an element of evaluation, with assignments connected to grades. In all other cases, the sensory and cultural Discourses guided vegetable use. Sometimes different sensory or cultural assumptions could clash with each other, for example when the teacher insisted on the use of a specific recipe regardless of a student's taste preferences. Since these preferences did not always harmonize with curricular demands for responsibility, there might be a risk of basing grades on aspects of students’ identity. Alternatively, students might feel constrained to argue against their own identity in order to be favourably evaluated. Then again, if teachers always bow to student tastes, this limits their chances of learning about food and physical health. Viewing the dilemma through the lens of the culinary triangle of contradictions may help teachers and researchers develop teaching methods that take all aspects of food choice into account.     

Vision Zero--a road safety policy innovation

The aim of this paper is to examine Sweden's Vision Zero road safety policy. In particular, the paper focuses on how safety issues were framed, which decisions were made, and what are the distinctive features of Vision Zero. The analysis reveals that the decision by the Swedish Parliament to adopt Vision Zero as Sweden's road safety policy was a radical innovation. The policy is different in kind from traditional traffic safety policy with regard to problem formulation, its view on responsibility, its requirements for the safety of road users, and the ultimate objective of road safety work. The paper briefly examines the implications of these findings for national and global road safety efforts that aspire to achieving innovative road safety policies in line with the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020, declared by the United Nations General Assembly in March 2010.     

Tax policy and entrepreneurship: empirical evidence from Sweden

This paper examines the relationship between income taxes and the decision to become self-employed using data from Sweden. By making it possible to track a large number of individuals over extended time periods and across a number of tax rate changes while controlling for important additional determinants, available tax-return information from Sweden allows for statistical estimation of the influence that income taxes have on the probability of becoming self-employed. The changing tax rate structure combined with the fact that the Swedish tax system does not provide additional tax benefits to small-business entrepreneurs compared with those who work as employees provides a powerful setting through which to examine the tax rate structure’s influence on individuals’ choice to become self-employed. Contrary to many earlier studies based on US data, this paper finds that both average and marginal taxes have a negative impact on the decision to become self-employed.     

Realization of Open Innovation: A Case Study in the Manufacturing Industry

Continuous innovation is regarded as an imperative for most companies. In this regard, open innovation suggests a successful approach to new product development, wherein the emphasis is on external collaboration. Previous research has provided examples from some industries, whereas mature and traditional companies such as manufacturing firms have gained limited interest. Thus, this paper seeks to answer two critical questions: why should manufacturing companies shift toward open innovation approaches and how can they adopt open innovation for product development. Based on case study in two companies, a list of opportunities, challenges, and efforts for organizational change toward open innovation are discussed.     

Towards sound environmental behaviour: Exploring household participation in waste management

The article reports a study of household participation in waste management. The empirical material stems from a long-term experiment with local composting carried out in a suburb of the city of Göteborg, Sweden. Fifty-two households of a population of 180 voluntarily participated in the field experiment where three makes of compostors were tested. The aim of the paper is to shed light on some critical factors that are of importance when introducing and evaluating new waste management systems that rely on active participation by households. The motives behind the initial decision to participate, as well as factors influencing continuation or discontinuation, are identified and analysed. Data were collected through three interviews carried out in the homes of participating families during the experimental period of one year. Amongst the results reported it can be seen that a general environmental concern was a common factor behind the decision to participate in the project. The positive attitude towards composting was strong throughout the experiment, although composting behaviour in the implementation phase declined in such a way that less material was composted due to lack of knowledge, technical misfits, and problems related to internal household dynamics. Another important result found was that the obstacles perceived by prospective participants prior to the commencement of the composting were not those that in fact proved to be decisive.

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In Richtung auf umweltverträgliches Verhalten: Die Untersuchung der Beteiligung von Haushalten an Abfalltrennung und Müllvermeidung

Zusammenfassung Das empirische Material der Studie, über die der Beitrag berichtet, stammt aus einer Langzeituntersuchung in einem Stadtteil von Göteborg in Schweden, bei der es um lokale Kompostierung von Müll ging. 52 Haushalte aus einer Population von 180 Haushalten nahmen freiwillig an einem Feldexperiment teil, bei dem drei verschiedene Fabrikate von Kompostieren verglichen wurden.Der Beitrag möchte einige kritische Faktoren beleuchten, die bei der Einführung und Evaluierung solcher Müllsysteme von Bedeutung sind, die die aktive Teilnahme der Haushalte voraussetzen. Analysiert werden die Motive zu einer solchen Teilnahme ebenso wie die Faktoren, die gegebenenfalls einen Abbruch der Teilnahme bewirken. Die Datenerhebung erfolgte durch drei Interviews, die in den Haushalten der teilnehmenden Familien während der Untersuchungsdauer von einem Jahr durchgeführt wurden.Zu den Ergebnissen gehört der Befund, daß ein allgemeines Umweltbewußtsein ein allgemeiner Faktor ist, der hinter der Entscheidung, am Projekt teilzunehmen, seht. Von Bedeutung ist ebenfalls eine positive Einstellung gegenüber dem Kompostieren, obwohl das Kompostierungsverhalten während der Untersuchungsphase aus mehreren Gründen nachließ, unter anderem wegen Wissensmängeln, wegen technischer Pannen oder interner Haushaltsprobleme. Ein anderes wesentliches Ergebnis war, daß die Hindernisse, die die prospektiven Teilnehmer vor dem Beginn der Kompostierung zu erkennen glaubten, nicht die waren, die sich als entscheidend herausstellten.

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Helena Åberg is doctoral candidate and Helena Shanahan is associate professor at the Department of Hand Craft and Home Economics at the University of Göteborg, Box 12204, S-402 42 Göteborg, Sweden. Sven Dahlman is associate professor at the Department of Consumer Technology at Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg. Roger Säjö is professor at the Department of Communication Studies, Linköping University, S. 581 85, Linköping, Sweden.The research reported here was financed by the Swedish Council for Building Research, the REFORSK Foundation, the Swedish Association of Housing Companies, and the National Board for Consumer Policies.     

The effects of input tariffs on productivity: panel data evidence for OECD countries

Based on a panel of 16 OECD countries and 10 manufacturing industries over 1996–2007, this paper investigates the impact of tariffs on foreign intermediate goods on productivity growth in downstream manufacturing industries. The results show that imposing tariffs on imported intermediate goods is particularly harmful for industries that operate close to the global technological frontier. We also consider the possibility that input-tariff liberalisation may have different effects depending on the technological content of imported intermediate goods. Our findings suggest that protecting imports of high-technological goods is more harmful for productivity improvements in industries that operate close to global best practice.     

Multinationals,competition and productivity spillovers through worker mobility

Multinational firms are believed to impact the productivity of domestic firms through worker mobility. Fosfuri et al. (J Int Econ 53:205–222, 2001) suggest that worker mobility and technological spillovers are more likely to materialize when the local and the multinational firm do not compete fiercely in the product market. We assess empirically the importance of the hypothesis by using the Finnish longitudinal employer–employee data. Consistent with the predictions of the model, we find that competition is negatively related to worker mobility but only in high-tech industries where productivity spillovers are present. Thus, our results detail a channel through which competition may negatively affect the productivity of purely domestic firms .     

What do conferences do? What is academics’ intangible return on investment (ROI) from attending an academic tourism conference?

ABSTRACT

Conferences are funny events. They are self-evident elements of our lives as academics: meetings that occur, often annually; take place in various locations; and involve (hopefully) like-minded people, aiming to share their latest research findings. Conferences are actually so self-evident that very little research exists analysing what takes place at conferences, why people attend them in the first place, and essentially what the conference does to delegates as participants. This article is, on one hand, a reflective report from an academic conference: TEFI 9—Celebrating the Disruptive Power of Caring in Tourism Education. But it is also simultaneously an analysis of the implicit and explicit rationale and return on investment for attending academic conferences, in the words of three, at that time, PhD candidate rapporteurs and one professor rapporteur, who acts as this article’s narrator.