Suchergebnisse

"...this book advances the "practice perspective," using behaviour and activities of successful, experienced, and skilled managers as the primary data for theorizing good management."--Cover

This study investigates ethical tension situations that municipal managers face in their everyday working life by identifying the occurrence and nature of such situations, their contextual and organizational dependence and what resources are available to handle and/or solve them. The study is based on in-depth qualitative interviews with 21 municipal managers from various sectors. In total, 222 ethical tension situations were revealed. The main finding of the study is the identification of the importance of contextual and organizational dependencies, regarding not only managers' experience of ethical tensions but also the resolution of such tensions. In the paper a contextual model of managerial tensions is presented that gives account to the different logics, value systems, norms, regulations, and ethics, that make up the complex world in which municipal managers find themselves and need to handle.

Sweden has the reputation of being one of the most progressive countries in the world concerning work-life development and industrial democracy. In this article, an analytical overview of the development in these areas is provided, which includes the antecedents, major events, actor positioning and also the broad-term outcomes. Two major reform movements are described: one aiming to create a radically different work-life where workers control their own work with a power balance between labour and capital, and one a reformist movement aiming to create a degree of co-determination and a more engaging work-life without any major changes in power relations. The case shows that the radical movement was not able to generate radical change and that the reformistic movement achieved only partial success. The outcome over time has been a decreased interest in work-life development where co-determination practices are heavily institutionalized but perhaps do not provide better conditions for workers than in many other advanced industrial countries with a lesser degree of formal co-determination.

From the 1970s through the 1990s, Scandinavian work-life, especially in Sweden, was an international role model for work organization and industrial relations. Practices such as job enrichment, teamwork in semi-autonomous groups, multi-skilling, and long work cycles were commonplace. This article investigates if and how such practices, the Socio-Technical Systems model (STS), are still followed in Sweden after the arrival of lean production. The study was conducted at Scania, a Swedish heavy truck and bus manufacturer well-known for its innovative work organization and its previous use of a socio-technical work design. The study finds that as this production and management model has been substantially marginalized, a new model has emerged. The new model, inspired by the Toyota Production System and lean, is characterized by a line organization design, standardized work processes, daily control, all shorter cycle-times, permanent team leader positions, position ownership, and continuous improvement with rotation possibilities. This new model, Scania Production System (SPS), has enjoyed considerable success. Yet challenges remain with respect to employee commitment to work and their boredom with highly-paced, repetitive work, leading to an advocacy for more of a hybrid model between the SPS and the STS models. Although the study is performed in only one company it is an exemplar company in Sweden which has been highly influential also beyond the transportation industry. The article also expands the scientific knowledge of production systems by the help of a novel stakeholder model. The article's contribution is its demonstration of current work organization practices and to what extent these represent continuity or new trajectories. Lean production has had a vigouous reception in Scania but there are problematic features that are distinct from a stakeholder model perspective.

This paper presents the results from a textual analysis of "Letters from the CEOs" in leading Swedish corporations. The sample consists of letters from annual reports for the years of 1981, 1991 and 2001. The purpose of the paper is to discuss how the textual representations of issues related to corporate social responsibility (CSR) have changed over the period. The results show, not surprisingly, a substantial increase on a number of topics that can be linked to the general CSR-discourse in the 2001 sample. But the rise of a CSR-discourse is related to a drop of another discourse related to social responsibility, in which the CEOs used to comment upon the social, economic and political development of their native country. It is therefore doubtful to claim that business leaders of today feel a larger social responsibility than in the past. In the end section of this paper we discuss the consequences of the shift of responsibilities from a narrower national arena towards a globally dispersed community of stakeholders. It is concluded that the CSR discourse, firmly rooted in a self- regulation philosophy, have not yet emerged as an influential movement in Sweden that affects the overall business conduct in a more substantial manner. The CSR-philosophy seems so far to be a more liberating than restraining factor for those Swedish companies who have moved their operations across the national borders.

This paper reports on comparative research on how textual representations of issues related to corporate social responsibility (CSR) in corporate annual reports from Sweden, Canada and the Netherlands have changed over time. The results show a substantial increase on a number of topics that can be linked to the general CSR-discourse in the 2001 sample in comparison to the 1991 and 1981 samples. The rise in the CSR-discourse appears to be related to a drop in other discourses related to issues of social responsibility regarding the social, economic and political development of a company's native country.