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Changing industrial trajectories through business model innovation: a case study of the oil and gas industry in Norway

ABSTRACT The oil and gas industry is expected to develop and restructure into a sustainable energy industry. This in-depth case study investigates how business model innovation can contribute to industrial restructuring. Our findings imply that, while there is no ‘one size fits all’ business model, most oil and gas companies will need to innovate their customer segments, value propositions, key resources, key partners and cost structures to succeed. The oil and gas industry landscape significantly influences the need for adapting the business model to changing market forces, industry forces, key trends, and macroeconomic forces pushing for sustainable change, the emergence of new technologies and markets, and changes in market conditions. Our findings demonstrate that the need for change differs from the willingness to change. The production companies’ willingness to change is currently low as production is still highly profitable, while the supplier companies’ willingness is high because it is not profitable to expand. Oil and gas companies will face several internal barriers in the process, including challenges with the dominant logic of the company, deficient managerial knowledge, the uncertainty and complexity of new business models and limited business model routines or processes.

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Do honesty‐nudges really work? A large‐scale field experiment in an insurance context

AbstractBusinesses want their customers to self‐report information honestly. One increasingly popular way to stimulate desired behavior is by using nudge interventions. But can customers be nudged to self‐report information more honestly? This is currently a debate in the literature, where empirical results are inconclusive. Building on related literature on nudges, we add to this debate with a controlled field experiment (N = 5704). We used data from actual customers making real decisions when they file claims online to a large Nordic insurance provider. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the effects of honesty‐nudges on self‐reported information when filing insurance claims using a controlled field experiment. We designed and tested three honesty‐nudges on insurance customers: (1) signing‐at‐the‐beginning, (2) a descriptive social norm message, and (3) a solidarity message. Across five outcome measures, we found that the honesty‐nudges, standalone or in any possible combination, do not have significant effects in reducing indicators of insurance claims fraud. But interestingly, customers in all treatment groups used significantly more characters to describe losses than customers in the control group. Also, in post hoc analyses, we found signs that the direction of nudge effects varies across customers' age and customer loyalty.

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Citizen initiative: www.covid19data.no

Norway confirmed its first case of Coronavirus on the 26th of February 2020. As the number of infections continued to increase, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health started releasing daily reports on the 9th of March 2020. Public interest peaked with Norway locking down on the 12th of March. Local transmissions and outbreaks generated a growing demand for more granular data than the county-based level reported released by public health officials. The absence of detailed data created a market for some media outlets to release district-level situation reports behind paywalls (Aftenposten). Others implemented daily Corona-trackers on their front page by sourcing information from Norway's 358 municipalities (VG). While public authorities were tracking local infections and media published their results, none of the actors released detailed information in a complete, timely and accessible manner. Covid19data.no was launched as a citizen initiative on the 16th of April 2020 to provide historic and daily updated data for all municipalities and districts in Norway. The launch included daily updated dashboards and the release of all data in a cleaned, granular and machine-readable format. Soon, other citizens began contributing to the project, adding to the already existing list of data sources. The citizen initiative was launched 2 months before the Norwegian Institute of Public Health began releasing similar detailed data.Citizen dashboards can represent a valuable addition to public reporting, but also represent new challenges:How can you trust data and dashboards from a non-official actor?How do you keep data updated when running the dashboard on a voluntary basis?How are metrics and visualizations decided when creators have no experience with public health and epidemics?How do multiple collaborators effectively work together when they have never met before?This presentation will focus on the role of citizen initiatives, their challenges and opportunities.

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Sustainable development through commitment to organizational change: the implications of organizational culture and individual readiness for change

PurposeFuture organizations must focus on their ability to change to be sustainable, and this calls more attention to sustainability as an organizational issue. However, change initiatives often fail because of a lack of employee commitment. The purpose of this study is to examine how organizational culture and individual readiness for change (IRFC) relate to types of commitment to change.Design/methodology/approachSurvey data from a sample of 259 employees in a Norwegian public organization undergoing major strategic changes were used to test the hypothesized relations.FindingsThe results show that flexible and stable organizational cultures did not relate differently to types of change commitment. This may indicate that the strength, rather than the type, of organizational culture is vital for change commitment. Nevertheless, a flexible organizational culture had a clearer relation to positive change commitment; in part through its positive relation with both change self-efficacy and negative personal valence. These are important dimensions of IRFC.Originality/valueThe study contributes to a nuanced understanding of the role of contextual and individual factors in explaining various types of commitment to organizational change, in particular, by examining the distinction between flexible and stable organizational culture, as well as separate dimensions of IRFC. A flexible culture together with both of the included dimensions of IRFC is shown to be of importance in fostering affective commitment to change – the gold standard of change commitment. Recognizing sustainability as an organizational issue underscores the need for creating a culture conducive to change.

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Towards a European health research and innovation cloud (HRIC)

The European Union (EU) initiative on the Digital Transformation of Health and Care (Digicare) aims to provide the conditions necessary for building a secure, flexible, and decentralized digital health infrastructure. Creating a European Health Research and Innovation Cloud (HRIC) within this environment should enable data sharing and analysis for health research across the EU, in compliance with data protection legislation while preserving the full trust of the participants. Such a HRIC should learn from and build on existing data infrastructures, integrate best practices, and focus on the concrete needs of the community in terms of technologies, governance, management, regulation, and ethics requirements. Here, we describe the vision and expected benefits of digital data sharing in health research activities and present a roadmap that fosters the opportunities while answering the challenges of implementing a HRIC. For this, we put forward five specific recommendations and action points to ensure that a European HRIC: i) is built on established standards and guidelines, providing cloud technologies through an open and decentralized infrastructure; ii) is developed and certified to the highest standards of interoperability and data security that can be trusted by all stakeholders; iii) is supported by a robust ethical and legal framework that is compliant with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR); iv) establishes a proper environment for the training of new generations of data and medical scientists; and v) stimulates research and innovation in transnational collaborations through public and private initiatives and partnerships funded by the EU through Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe.

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The role of formal and informal mechanisms in implementing lean principles in construction projects

PurposePrevious research shows that implementing lean construction is not a straightforward task. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of formal and informal mechanisms in implementing lean principles in construction projects.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws on a single case study of the implementation of innovative lean principles in a public construction project in Norway. The study is based on qualitative data, including 17 semi-structured interviews with 21 individuals, document analysis, and observations in meetings and seminars, in addition to informal conversations.FindingsFormal mechanisms, including contractual arrangements, have the potential to both facilitate and hamper the implementation of innovative lean principles in a construction project. They might create coherence, but at the same time they might limit the scope of the concept in such a way that others do not accept it. Informal mechanisms, including social and lateral relationships and trust aid implementation, both directly by creating commitment and by modifying the challenges that the formal mechanisms potentially incur. Formal mechanisms may, in turn, nurture the informal ones.Research limitations/implicationsThe research is based on a single case study within the Norwegian public sector, which is dependent on specific public procurement regulations and subject to strong contractual traditions.Originality/valueThe research extends the existing knowledge of implementation of lean construction in the construction industry. It helps refining the understanding of the role played by formal and informal mechanisms, and the interplay between them in the implementation process. This knowledge is also relevant for process innovations in construction in general.

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